Ep. 196: Lan and Harlan Margaret Van Cao on Co-Writing their Mother-Daughter Memoir

Lan Cao is the author of Monkey Bridge and The Lotus and the Storm, and most recently of the scholarly work Culture in Law and Development: Nurturing Positive Change. She is a professor of law at the Chapman University School of Law, and an internationally recognized expert specializing in international business and trade, international law, and development. She has taught at Brooklyn Law School, Duke University School of Law, University of Michigan Law School, and William & Mary Law School.

Harlan Margaret Van Cao is a recent high school graduate. She was born in Williamsburg, Virginia and moved to Southern California when she was ten. She has a beautiful singing voice and plays the violin and piano. She will be attending UCLA in the fall of 2020 and plans to study economics and philosophy, while also continuing to write. 

Their book, Family in Six Tones, is at once special and universal, speaking to the unique struggles of refugees as well as the universal tug-of-war between mothers and daughters. 

How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of working writers with bestselling author Rachael Herron. Want tips on how to write the book you long to finish? Here you’ll gain insight from other writers on how to get in the chair, tricks to stay in it, and inspiration to get your own words flowing. 

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers.

Transcript

Rachael Herron: [00:00:00] Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing.

[00:00:15] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #196 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. Absolutely thrilled that you are here with me today. And the interview today is with a mother daughter team, which I’ve never had on this show. And it’s a marvelous interview. Lan Cao, and her daughter Harlan Margaret Van Cao are both on the show. They wrote a memoir together, and a lot of you know, how I feel about mother-daughters. That’s my core story, it’s what I write about all the time. My relationship with my mother was one of the most important relationships of my life. As, as is true with many people, but I so enjoyed talking to these two and I know that you are going to enjoy listening, so that is coming up. 

[00:01:03] A little catch up about what is going on around here. What is not going on around here? It has been such a week. In publishing, I got my, I got Hush Little Baby back again for another very quick revision. My editor just had two character changes that she wanted me to make. And I completely agree with everything she says as usual. And it’s just going through the book one more time and making sure everything matches and cleaning it up. And then it should go to copy edits, which is awesome because when you deliver a book, when you finish your editor revisions right before it goes to copy edits, that’s usually when you get paid for delivery of the manuscript in an acceptable form. So that’ll be a nice little money coming in. That’d be great. And, but in personal, holy Helen! It has been wild around here. We had, you may have heard this enormous lightning storm. I think it was Saturday night, Sunday night, this weekend? It must have been Saturday night and I am an ex-fire dispatcher, and like I always say, you can take the girl out of fire dispatch. You can’t take the fire dispatch out of the girl. And I was terrified. My sister, my little sister lives on the coast on highway one, one road in one road out. And she’s just surrounded by grassland by vegetation. There’s really, she lives, her house is really so low and then there’s a farm, you know, behind it there’s nobody out there. It’s an, it’s an idyllic place to live. She looks right at the ocean. But I contacted her while it was still storming and she was indeed awake watching the storming, because we know when we have summer lightning fires, like we had in 2008, 12 years ago, it’s bad. It’s really bad for California.

[00:02:52] I actually worked those fires in 2008 on the line as a dispatcher being at the fire up in the August lightning complex up in Eureka. So I know of which I speak and I was like, get out, get out. But she was committed to staying there and watching to make sure her neighbors were safe. And the fires actually didn’t start for another couple of days. They started. But they just kind of ramped up right as the wind changed. And then yesterday it was getting really, really hairy. And she gotten up early, she’d watched the Cal fire report and Cal fire had said about these two big fires that were burning within her eyesight. They, they could not, they didn’t have resources. They had no resources to fight these fires and they needed to divert the resources that they did have to other fires that were threatening more structures for Bethany lives that is not heavily populated. But in Napa and in San Jose, on, you know, all the rest of the places over the state, you prioritize lives and then property. And the less property there is, the less the fires are. But the less they’re concerned about fires with good reason. That’s the way they should be operating. 

[00:04:07] So this was the Waddell and the butanol fires, and it’s not Butano, these people in this area call it Butanol. I don’t know why, but those two fires emerged that day and basically kind of surrounded my sister. So she needed to evacuate. I was panicking on the social medias and I was just kind of furious. I had this furious reaction. I rarely go rage-y. But you all know my political beliefs on the show. So I’m sure that I will not surprise you when I say all of this is blamable on president Trump. And here’s how, if you want to sign out and go away, that’s absolutely fine. Goodbye. Because of our astonishingly inept response to COVID-19, we have responded in the worst way possible in every way we could possibly respond to the nation as compared to all the other first world nations who have handled it well. Because of his response, COVID-19 is ravaging the prison system. And in many States, including California, we rely on slave labor, for fighting our wildfires and that’s not an exaggeration for the 13th amendment slavery was abolished except for prisoners. Who can be used for labor without pay, although they do get $5 a day. So, yay. And the other thing is, is the prisoners opt in to do this fighting, it is a privilege. It is a privilege that they work for and they don’t want it taken away.

[00:05:45] I have been out on the fires. I have seen the prisoners. They are freaking incredible. They’re the hand crews. They are basically the ones on the front line. They are the ponds on the board that go out with shovels and dig lines. They’re doing the hardest work. They’re doing the most amazing work and guess what? We don’t pay them to do that and they can’t go anyway because they’re too sick. So California burns down. All of this is a preamble to say that I wrote a tweet about Cal fire saying that they had no resources, could not fight the fires, and I connected it to the COVID-19 outbreaks in the prisons and which, you know, was verified by other media and what I know, and it went viral y’all! It went viral, which was a ride. I’m going to pause this and look at my stats cause I haven’t looked in a while. Hold on, man. Yeah. So this was yesterday, a Wednesday, the 19th today’s the 20th as I record this. It has 17,300 Retweets. It has 1.7 million impressions are times people saw this tweet on Twitter and 160,000 engagements, which is a lot. And I’ve always known that if I ever go viral, I need to pimp a book, right? That’s what we do. 

[00:07:13] We are always kind of thinking about marketing. It would have been hard to do for some tweets that have gotten, you know, that I have made in the past. This one was actually appropriate because it was using my experience as a 17-year veteran 911 dispatcher as was, Stolen Things that came out in paperback last week, was written from the viewpoint of a dispatcher written by a 911 dispatcher, me. So I attached to, okay, so the quote that went, the tweet that went viral says “Cal fire admits and presser this morning that they have no resources to fight this. Like none. Guess why? Because the prison populations who have for decades been California’s primary firefighter, hand crews on wildfires are too sick with COVID to go.” And then I link to a SAC B, Sacramento, B article that talks about how sick they are and how they can’t go to the fires. So then in response to that, I, said while you’re here and rage-y, I wrote a thriller about police corruption based on a true story, about a 911 dispatcher, which I was for 17 years newly out in paperback from Penguin books, USA, Stolen Things, and put the picture and the Amazon link. And I thought that my publisher would either fire me or really liked that I had done that. And it turns out that it was okay. I didn’t get fired. They really liked it. I had been keeping a very close eye on the reviews, on Amazon, which haven’t changed. I haven’t gotten a new one. I was waiting for like, you know, those hate reviews that you can ask to have removed, like, like racist pizza parlor owners get on yelp, you know?

[00:08:56] I have watched the Amazon rank drop on Amazon, which is, you know, going the right direction. So it is becoming more popular. People were buying the book. It was really dumb when I was first posting the original tweet that that tweet that went viral was attached to, it was two screenshots of my sister’s area from the night before. And then the morning of looking at the NASA radiant hotspots. And, and I had just done screenshots and my email was open at the time. So you can see my most used email at the top of those screenshots. And I even saw it when I was pasting it in. And I thought to myself, no one reads my Twitter except people who know where I am and how to find me. My email is not hidden. It is a 4 seconds search, if you want to email Rachael Herron. So I didn’t bother to remove it. And I was expecting a lot of hate mail because the mentions all of the replies, I actually had to mute it because it was stressing me out. There were so many, there are so many people yelling and arguing at each other. They weren’t even arguing with me. They were just arguing near me. So I muted it. I have received not one piece of hate mail, which is fabulous. I did get subscribed to all the Fox news channels, daily briefings and also to the NRA, which is funny because you, you have to confirm all those. So I’m actually not subscribed.

[00:10:17] It just went to my email as somebody trying to subscribe me, which I actually thought was hilarious and good try. So, so that has been fun. And but the most important part of the story. It’s not about books. It’s not about marketing. It’s not about watching for opportunities, even though it feels really, really weird to attach a book to that kind of Tweet. The important part is that my sister got out, she evacuated to safety. She is staying at a friend’s house who is out of town in Oakland. So she’s really close by and she got out safely and her roommates got out safely. And who knows if their house is going to make it? I really hope it does, but she is safe. And for about 4 hours’ yesterday, she wanted to stay and me and my other sister really wanted her to go. So, I was panicking and, and it reminds me again that these feelings that we have, this fear that I had, those, those tears, that I was crying as I was so angry that I wasn’t able to talk her into leaving earlier. You know why? Because she’s an adult human person who gets to make up her own mind on doing everything. And she’s way more sensible than I am anyway. About most things, perhaps all things, we get to use and mine, all of those strong emotions and put them on the page and yeah I didn’t think about writing at all yesterday.

[00:11:44] I really tried towards the end of the day, but I was exhausted from emotion and from being viral, which was just a very, very strange experience. Solid out of Brian, picked it up Chris, somebody else, some pundit picked it up. So, people were texting me, sending it to me, which was very strange. So I didn’t get any work done yesterday. But today I’m at the page. And again, you understand this, I’m letting the emotions that I felt be used. I am channeling them into the work. And I know, one of my characters is, is dealing with fear right now. And I know what fear feels like viscerally inside my physical body. Which is the, which is I think the best thing to put on the page when we were talking about emotions. It’s, it’s, it’s one thing to say, she felt fear. And another thing to say, the nausea roiled as her, you know, in her, in her throat as her skin when clamming or whatever it is that you are actually gonna say creatively. But yes. So today I’m back at the manuscript. I’m back here talking to you, the world has gone back to normal for me and my immediate family. Not for the people whose homes are burning all over the state. Thanks to that lightning storm and, it’s just what a, what a year. Another reminder that it’s a rollercoaster. Get you ready then when you can, and don’t worry about it when you can’t. Sometimes you just can’t. 

[00:13:19] If you follow me on Twitter yesterday, I wrote, I made a flow chart for a decision making chart for when you can’t focus because of events. So that’ll be over my Twitter, @RachaelHerron (R A C H A E L H E R R O N) @ Twitter. If something like that would help you. I basically really wanted a decision tree for, I am distracted by everything. Should I push myself into writing? So that is at the Twitters. All right. That is a very long introduction, but I want to say very quickly, thank you to new patrons, have a few here because I don’t think I thanked them last week. Johanna Spears and Amy Bethkey, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Nicole Knightly and Rosie, Rosie Radcliffe. Thank you all so much for joining the Patreon. It means that I have the chance to write those essays for you, and it means the world to be able to write those for you. So that is over patreon.com/Rachael. And now let’s jump into the interview with this fantastic mother and daughter writing duo. I know you’re going to love what they have to say. Okay. Happy writing. And please for the love of God, stay safe. 

[00:14:27] Hey, you’re a writer. Did you know that I send out a free weekly email of writing encouragement? Go sign up for it at www.rachaelherron.com/write and you’ll also get my Stop Stalling and Write PDF with helpful tips you can use today to get some of your own writing done. Okay, now onto the interview.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:245] Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show today two people a mother and daughter duo, Lan Cao and Harlan Margaret Van Cao. Welcome both of you. 

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:14:57] Thank you so much for having us 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:58] It’s so exciting. Let me give you, let me give everyone your both of your bios, cause they need to know both of these. Lan Cao is the author of Monkey Bridge and The Lotus and The Storm, and most recently of the scholarly work Culture in Law and Development: Nurturing Positive Change. She is a professor of law at the Chapman University School of Law, and an internationally recognized expert, experts specializing in international business and trade, international law, and development. She has taught at Brooklyn Law School, Duke, and the University of Michigan Law School, and William & Mary Law School.

Harlan Margaret Van Cao, her daughter is a recent high school graduate. She was born in Williamsburg, Virginia, and moved to Southern California when she was 10. She has a beautiful singing voice and plays the violin and piano. She will be attending UCLA in the fall of 2020 and plans to study econ and philosophy while also continuing to write. And the two of you wrote, just the most beautiful book, Family in Six Tones. And you did it together. And I really want to kind of dive into what that looked like for your process. Cause I know that if my mother and I had ever written a book together, when I was your age Harlan, it wouldn’t, it would not have gone wrong. Well, it would not have gone well. So, but first of all, this, this podcast is about process and writing process. Lan, you have a lot of experience in writing, but this experience must have been completely different. What is your process? What was your process like for this particular book?

Lan Cao: [00:16:32] For this particular book I had to really learn to let go.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:37] How was that? 

Lan Cao: [00:16:38] That’s very hard. Somebody who is very focused, let’s say on measurable standards of achievement. So for example, you know, I am originally from Vietnam. So when I first came to this country, it was very important for me to have like an objective and have a kind of list of to do things that will get me towards that objective. Right. So it’s been very, been very disciplined in terms of knowing what to go after and how to achieve it. And you work with another writer, and I think this, this might be an issue with any collaborator, but all the more with when it’s your daughter at a particular age, also, I think you have to realize that because it’s a collaboration, you really can’t always have your way. And it’s a very big compromise when you’re writing, because in writing, I’ve written other books and articles and it’s, you know, it’s whatever you want to do. It’s, it’s your space, right? It’s, it’s your imagination. And with her having to sort of just go with the flow in a really freeing way was hard. It felt constricted at first. Interesting but letting go felt constricting to me because it sounds like a paradox and having to take her vision and what she wanted to write about into consideration was very hard for me. And also because we write about each other also in the book, you see right away how the person remembers a particular episode and it’s not how you remember it. And it’s not necessarily that one person’s memory is going to override another. It’s just sort of like the Rashomon, right, they’re just so many different perspective, 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:41] Yes. 

Lan Cao: [00:18:42] I just have to let all of that go. And just go by faith and hope that the finished work will cohere. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:49] How did it work, deciding how to put the pieces together?

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:19:10] Well, the publishing house would recommend, you know, we want you to do, Lan-Harlan, Lan-Harlan,

Rachael Herron: [00:19:16] Okay.

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:19:17] I think also doing that is good because it gives both of us breathing time, but we both have very different strategies in writing. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:26] Tell me about that. 

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:19:27] Well, I think my mother, I don’t want to speak for her, but I’m pretty sure, you know, her past books are novels, unless they’re about law, 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:37] Right, right.

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:19:38] So if you have a novel and you write as a therapy, you can hide behind characters, 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:45] Yeah

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:19:46] Right, like you say outright, like this happened to me. Originally, like for example, I never imagined when I was little and I thought about being a writer. I never thought my first book would pretty much just be like a confession. I thought, I thought it would be more so like, if I wanted to like talk about, I don’t know, like at the time, whatever felt important, like a boy or something. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:09] Right, right.

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:20:10] I would think like, I’m gonna write about him in this way and put him in another character. I never imagined I’d have to think, like, I’m just gonna change his name a tiny bit and kind of use this as a way to say, to just spill it all. So for, for my mother, I think, especially for someone who’s gone through something so traumatic, she’s very used to not- she did, she never had to say outright this happened, or explain, also it is very difficult I think when you are writing about parenting, because people judge so much on parenting. And it’s usually also the people who’ve never have a child. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:46] Definitely.

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:20:47] So the audience, I’m not sure exactly who that is yet, but if somebody is a parent they can judge on, am I writing, am I the same as Lan? Or am I not or someone who doesn’t have a child they’ll judge also. I think there’s a lot of pressure for that too. So I- I’m very respectful of how she handled it. Cause I can imagine how hard it is because for me separately, it’s different. I’m only, I just turned 18. So even though I did write about a lot of things, it’s not 60 years’ worth of- sorry 59 year’s worth of stuff. And on top of it, I’m not being- because the kid never is usually judged in how they are a child, you know, like they’re judged as a person, not how they react to the mothering. Whereas the mothers are judged on how they mother, and who they are as a person. So that’s why its different.

Rachael Herron: [00:21:40] That leads me to an interesting question that, so I teach memoir a lot. I teach a semester long course at Stanford, and one of the things that students in memoir have a very hard time learning how to do, is how to be confessional and transparent on the page in a very real way, which both of you do beautifully. In your book, both of your voices are completely real and believable. Did either of you struggle with that? 

Lan Cao: [00:22:13] I, I struggle because it’s a brand new form for me. I’m much more used to doing fiction and the reason why I was more drawn to fiction, even though it takes, it just requires a lot of imagination in friction. Even if it’s based on some kind of event in your life, you have character plot, narrative, you know, all of, all of everything having to work together. With memoir, you are committed to telling the truth. Even if your version may be different from another person, you’re not making things up. So it just felt so raw and exposed to me that it’s just very stark. And once I accepted that, that was the big hurdle for me. But once I accepted it, I didn’t have trouble plunging into it and she, on the other hand was, had no trouble at all. So I, I was sort of- she was the engine in the sense that, because she had not done fiction, this is her first foray in writing and it’s a memoir form. So it’s natural to her. I had to overcome letting go of fiction to enter this particular universe. So in that way, she was the engine that pulled me into this direction, which felt more raw, more exposed. More unveiled. And that was hard for me so we actually had a lot of disagreement about what we’re going to include. Now, one very, and this also has to do with letting go that I have talked about. I never wanted to say to her, I don’t want you to write about this. I, I say, I’m uncomfortable, but I wouldn’t say you’re absolutely forbidden, even though I really wanted to. And part of it was because I wanted her writing experience to be one about writing, opening up the world for you, right. It’s a soaring process. You’re flying. You’re floating. You’re not within any kind of self-imposed or externally imposed confined. So I didn’t want to restrain her. I didn’t want writing to be about her strength, even though I felt like it should be restrained because the memoir form is very raw to me. So as a result of wanting her first experience to be about freedom, she basically was the engine. She took us, she, she, she would write about something, that I didn’t want to write about, but once she has written it, because it’s a memoir, I can’t just say go, right. I feel like I, if I read it, I would have to at least contextualize it in my chapter. So in many ways it’s kind of like an echo. Yeah. Even if I didn’t want to, I would have to at least address it in some form in my section.

Rachael Herron: [00:25:32] So did you do this narratively through the whole process? Would you write a chapter and then Harlan read a chapter and then you would be reacting to it? No it was out of order, tell me about that.

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:25:41] No, we do not consult each other, unless it wasn’t an argument. To be honest with you. First of all, I-

Lan Cao: [00:25:48] We had a lot of arguments. 

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:25:49] Yeah. It was a, it was a lot, and it’s also hard because it didn’t- it would start with the book and it would go into other things that normal, like parent-daughter would write argue about?

Rachael Herron: [00:26:00] Sure

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:26:01] And it becomes like at the end of the argument, you still have to sit down together and think like, so what about the actual problem at hand? Like, are we going to write about this or not? And sometimes I’m not gonna lie. I was mad, so I would write about it anyway, and then she would find out and I figured if she responds to it, that’s great. But if she didn’t, it’s still totally okay, because then the reader themselves will notice. Okay, Lan didn’t respond to what Harlan said, this is interesting. Maybe it’s like, it symbolizes something else. Because with memoir, I always thought memoirs are for people who are kind of like at the end of their career. No offense. You’re not the end. But someone who’s already experienced things, not someone who is not even in their twenties. So-

Lan Cao: [00:26:42] I, I think she was, you were 16 when you started? Yeah

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:26:44] I was 16 when I started. So, I was always more comfortable with novels anyway, just because again, like I never prepared to write a memoir. So what we found is a small compromise, which I think is good any way when you write, anything is to just imply. You don’t, you don’t have to always explicitly say something. A lot of the time, but sometimes I would imply too much like those, those chapters where I kind of hint at shadow selves, for example, like they, they became kind of so vague that the person who was meant to, you know, there’s a lot of process for the book. So a lot of people would go and try to catch things that didn’t seem right. People would ask in the comments, like, what are you trying to say? Because it was too much, too vague. So you have to come up with that together. We would have very long discussions about how to describe it perfectly, but a lot of the time that would lead to arguments, of course. Because we’re very different people. I feel like with a very intense parental relationship, you, the kid either will be just like the mother in a certain way or exactly the opposite. So in terms of, kind of like censoring oneself, I think I am the opposite of my mother, just because I always felt we should complement each other. Do you know what I mean? 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:03] Absolutely.

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:28:04] Like, she’s very, like even at a dinner party, I remember when I was little, someone would ask her kind of a personal question and she would just glaze right over and they’d kind of look confused. Like I asked you something and she just kind of went on about something else. And I don’t know if she did it on purpose or if not, but I noticed, and then they’d ask me something, I would just tell them. Not to the point where it’s like weird, but you know, I was never uncomfortable admitting stuff just because I never felt the world should be something of judgment, you know, like I-

Lan Cao: [00:28:31] She’s more extroverted

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:28:32] Yeah

Lan Cao: [00:28:33] And I’m more introverted and that comes across in the way we approach writing also

Rachael Herron: [00:28:37] And it comes across in the book as well. And the way with which you both communicate with the reader and the two in this expression of this book, I think are really, really lovely. I’m sorry. I’m deviating totally from the questions I sent you, but I would love to know and perhaps, perhaps Harlan will want to answer this rather than Lan, but you might both want to. How has your relationship as a mother-daughter team changed over the course of the writing and the promotion launch of this book?

Lan Cao: [00:29:09] Well, even separate and apart from the book and you can pick up on the answer regarding the book. You don’t, we’re close in the sense that, we talk to each other and there’s a, there’s a relationship we’re not two shifts passing through the night in the house. And over the course of our relationship, I think we’ve had a lot more confrontations probably than I’m used to with my own mother, for example. And especially being raised in a traditional Asian household, the idea that you would just poke at your parents or dissect what they’re saying, or, you know, have to talk back at them in the same tone. Tit-for-tat would, would never happen, but she’s raised in this country and she’s fully American. So there’s much more of that. And every time that we’ve had that kind of collision, I’ve always felt really like, oh my God, this is terrible. And she always says, well, that was good. She, she thought it was good and that she thought it was, you know, somehow moving the relationship forward. And in my head I’m like, oh my God, I never did this with my parents. What the heck is this all about? 

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:30:21] Sometimes during arguments she’ll be like, don’t psychoanalyze me. Because during, during an argument, it’ll be like, I feel like we should talk about why you’re being so defensive. I’m like, what is it that happened to you? I really want to know. Like, cause she’s been through so much, you know, so 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:34] And now, you know, so much more, right? After the, because of this.

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:30:38] Yes. So I try to relate everything back to it. I think like the other day we got in an argument, it started because there’s a bin by the door that’s for blankets and the closet for coats is right by it. But when I’m like throughout the day, I’m a very lazy person. I don’t hang up the coat, I just drop it in the bin. So it starts with that, and we literally got to the point where I was like slamming the door shut, like something she would never have done as a kid, you know, because it goes into other stuff, all the time, every single time. But I do think of it differently. I think even though I’m realistic with my mom, I have to be the optimist in the relationship because she, as she said, she grew up in an Asian household, but writing the book together, I don’t know if it necessarily changed the relationship, but I think it made me more conscientious of it, more aware because now every time I argue with her, I, well, I mean, I’d obviously take her seriously, but I do still picture that I’m arguing with like a tiny kid, almost. Because I still think I see every part of her in herself, you know, she’s like one of those, like Russian nesting dolls that had like all the layers that you take off-

Rachael Herron: [00:31:51] That’s beautiful

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:31:52] So you, I sometimes, like, after an argument, I feel really bad because I know that she, she’s so high functioning as a person, like with her career and everything. But I know that if you’re going through, if you’ve gone through something so traumatic in your life at a certain age, like a part of you would always stay that age. So when I leave an argument for some reason, I feel this guilt that I don’t feel with anybody else in the world. Cause when I argue with other people, I really don’t care. Like I just want to make my point and then leave. But I think about it all the time with my mom, like, did I hurt her? I don’t want to upset her, but I still want to get my way, you know? So like where is the, where’s the, where’s the middle ground. So writing it definitely brought that part out of me where I’m way more aware and it- I’m sure it would have affected us differently if we had written it when I was 30 and she was 70 something you bring up your age. I’m sorry. She looks great. 

Rachael Herron: [00:32:46] You both look beautiful. 

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:32:49] Yeah, but that’s what I, it wasn’t a negative thing during the time though, I would go to school. And I would be already exhausted starting the day off because the car ride would be plagued with arguments about it. So during the writing process itself, I was pretty pessimistic. Like I remember the editor read my ending and she was like, you sound way too sad with the world. Like you need to write. No, no, you’re looking forward to the future. And at the time I was like, but I’m not. And she’s like, you’re right that you are cause you will later on and you should feel better now. So I’m glad, you know, I didn’t just stick with kind of like screw the world, screw my mom at the time, which is what it was,

Lan Cao: [00:33:32] You know when you’re dealing with, you know, in adolescence, we all remember it because it’s a very traumatic. I mean you’re just up and down all the time and, you, you, you act out against the person who’s actually closest to you because it’s safest, right. That person is not going to abandon you.

Rachael Herron: [00:33:51] Right. 

Lan Cao: [00:33:52] And you know, doing that kind of writing with your teenage daughter, who is going through high school moods, and you know the age of social media on top of everything, it’s very hard, but it was, it really stirred up writing. I mean, I don’t remember when I was writing my two fiction books, which took me a much longer period of time to do. I don’t, I don’t remember ever being churned, in the same way. And that energy really provides the fertilizer for, for the writing in many ways, you know, because I find that writers have a lot internal going on. Right? And there’s just a lot of life inside every writer. And that’s what prompt us to write because it’s inside and it’s just sort of, it needs to come out. But when you write with your kid, there is an additional layer and in those teenage years, and you know, her father had just died also. So there’s just a lot of negative and positive energy. But in the yin-yang symbol, it looks peaceful because the whole point of being yang is that qualities that seem to be competing in fact are complimentary. That’s why you have the yin inside the yang part and the yang inside the yin. And they are, they’re sort of in harm- in harmony, but during the time when we were writing it’s as if you were taking that yin-yang symbol and shaking it up.

Rachael Herron: [00:35:32] Yeah

Lan Cao: [00:35:33] So it hadn’t settled down into harmony yet. Like eventually it would settle and coalesce, but at that point it was still in the shaking up space and it was good that we had the book to pour everything. 

Rachael Herron: [00:35:47] Absolutely. 

Lan Cao: [00:33:48] Because probably even though we did fight about the book, I think that if we didn’t have the book, we would have fought without the structure of the book. 

Rachael Herron: [00:35:57] Yeah.

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:35:58] Also, something good comes out of the argument. Yeah. I always say, like, I feel the only difference between the two of us and other mother-daughter relationships is that, you know, we just know how to put the words like aesthetically pleasing way, but I’m sure we still have the same kind of issues. I mean, not exactly the same, pretty unique, but the same tension as other, as other parent-daughter situations. And I feel very grateful because at least I have this kind of like piece of art to express it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:36:36] Yeah. This was your vehicle through those tumultuous years. Right?

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:36:39] There’s something, there’s something to that all the arguments will kind of speak for, and that’s important to me too. And as I’m leaving, I’m about to go to college, which feels so weird because I honestly still feel like a total baby, but as I’m leaving, we’ve argued a lot less now, but we still have moments, but I think it’s better to have like small moments all the time, then like 10 explosions. So that’s important. Whereas with the book, it would just be explosions like during those that year and a half, like once a week, probably huge. 

Rachael Herron: [00:37:18] That’s rough

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:37:19] Yeah. And then like the debris from the argument would kind of spread over like the half the week. So we don’t have good days every week 

Rachael Herron: [00:37:25] The fallout continued

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:37:26] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:37:27] Did you edit each other before it went to your editor? Thank goodness. I was thinking that would be brutal. 

Lan Cao: [00:37:33] I tried. I did once and tt was not good.

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:37:38] Just once.

Lan Cao: [00:37:39] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:37:40] That’s amazing. Can you, either of you or both of you- 

Lan Cao: [00:37:43] It was childish and petty because she wrote, “She screamed.” 

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:37:47] Oh, yeah, 

Lan Cao: [00:37:48] I change it to, “She raised her voice” or something like that. 

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:37:53] Yeah and I lost it. 

Lan Cao: [00:37:55] And it made her so upset. She put back scream.

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:37:56] Yeah. I made it work actually, I think. And I even ask her. I was like, I wrote again, I was like, I want to know where this comes from. Like, where does this need to have such approval on you? And she was like, don’t psychoanalyze, it’s always the same conversation. Like-

Rachael Herron: [00:38:09] I am enjoying talking to both of you. So, so, so, so much, this is amazing. Can either, or both of you share a craft tip about writing with our listeners who are all writers.

Lan Cao: [00:38:20] A what tip?

Rachael Herron: [00:38:21] A craft tip

Lan Cao: [00:38:22] Well, for me, you, you teach more creative writing? Right?

Rachael Herron: [00:38:27] Yeah. Only creative writing

Lan Cao: [00:38:22] For me when I was doing scholarly writing it’s, it’s, I feel very structured because I have research. Right? So you can always, if you’re stuck, you can always do research, but in, because the kind of fiction I write, is not so much research based. You know, if I’m writing about the Vietnam war, I’ve already read so much about it that there’s no research, right. So I’m, if I’m stuck, I don’t feel like I can divert being stuck by doing something related to writing that would un-stuck me, but in fact, I can just go on and say, let me research what the ted offensive was because I already know it. So there’s no way out for me when I’m doing writing of the kind I’m doing creatively that would allow like research or anything like that. And I just have learned to accept, you know, I don’t panic anymore because sometimes at the beginning, when I was stuck, it could last for a week or two, and I would feel totally frustrated. And feel like time is running out. Now, I think it’s really important to just again, let go. And I usually to be un-stuck, I don’t, I don’t read what I’m writing because I feel it’s just too close as to what I’m doing. So what has helped me tremendously when I’m stuck is first relax, not judge so much what I’m writing and saying, it’s so bad, you know, how could this have been written? And I usually try to go towards some other creative form. I’ll go to an art museum gallery. It is very creative and artistic, just not writing. So it’s, it’s just a different form of artistic expression and it really motivates me. So if I see color in a painting, it’s helped me tremendously because a lot of my books, I tend to pick a color as a theme and somehow, you know, so for example, you know, I love the trilogy Blue, White, and Red by the Polish director.

Rachael Herron: [00:40:40] Yeah, yeah. They’re beautiful. 

Lan Cao: [00:40:43] Each one stands for like the principles of the, of the French flag, right. Equality, fraternity. So the interplay of one form of art with another helps me. Music also helps me, like if I just tune out of writing and listen to music, it, it unplugs you, but not in the same form as what you’re stuck with. And I have found that to be always eventually inspiring to me to go back, to write it. I just put writing, not angst, find some other art form that is a great for me, and it makes me feel great about writing again.

Rachael Herron: [00:41:26] The nut angsting, I think is the key part there. Yeah.

Lan Cao: [00:41:29] Yeah. It’s time to go to the angst room. 

Rachael Herron: [00:41:32] That’s default, default mode for a lot of us. Yeah.

Lan Cao: [00:41:34] Because writers are maybe anxious already to begin with. Right. So it’s natural to go back to your normal self, 

Rachael Herron: [00:41:44] But to have a method of dealing with that is great

Lan Cao: [00:41:46] That has own chord for me.

Rachael Herron: [00:41:48] Harlan. How about you? 

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:41:50] I’m honestly, very jealous of my mom’s answer cause it’s so healthy. 

Lan Cao: [00:41:55] But she’s not stuck, I mean

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:41:55] No. 

Lan Cao: [00:41:56] The kid is always writing.

Rachael Herron: [00:41:58] Yeah

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:41:59] But, okay. So honestly I don’t know if it’s a craft tip, cause I wouldn’t want someone else to do it this way, because I think it’s unhealthy. But first of all, the only thing I have to go off of, in terms of publishing is this memoir. And there was nothing that I had to come up with in terms of like a plot, because I know my plot happened.

Rachael Herron: [00:42:17] Right.

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:42:18] The only thing that was challenging to me was how do I phrase it? But as I said, you know, it’s all about implying. I think that’s always the safest way to go and also the most like aesthetically pleasing thing to read is more implying that something so harsh. But I’ve noticed with- well, I’m working on another novel because when we first started this, Penguin kind of hinted, like maybe if I want something in the future, I could do it by myself if I was good enough. And so I’ve, I’ve been brainstorming a lot of things and my idea was to do kind of a novel about a girl through high school and it will relate to, it’s not anything tacky, I hope, but it’s gonna relate to like friendship, the mother, like relationship with the mother, like losing a dad, like also boys, something that I don’t think we can relate on very well, but that too. So when I feel stuck with things like that, it’s usually when I go through either a stage of full-on rollercoaster emotions, like up, down, up, down, or I go through stages of total numbness. Like robot mode, feeling kind of like dissociated. Like I’m, I’m almost watching my own life on a screen. Like I’m not actually the person going through it. So that’s when it’s also hard to write because I don’t want to write something that’s so dull. But then I noticed, I realized after a while that I should anyway, because that’s, what’s interesting, is the reader will notice, right? Like at this point, for some reason, she’s very emotional, she’s describing everything. And then here, it’s kind of as if she took like more like depressive morphine, like she’s just totally, it’s like clouds there’s no, and I think that’s good. Cause it’ll show that’s what my idea was. It’s kind of the reader will see it’s implied that the person is kind of off a little bit. I exaggerate it too, but I try to take advantage of the mood swings. Like I incorporate it into the writing. And it, but it only works for what I’m writing, because my idea, like the premise is that the person is going to be a little bit off in a sense, like you don’t really know what happened. I don’t know if you ever read Eleanor Oliphant Is Totally Fine, it’s like I kind of, but not as nutty and wrote like my age. But before I accepted that I would do it that way and I wanted to feel something so I could write the way I wanted to, I would kind of poke at parts in my life. Like if I was going to write about a person and I couldn’t find the emotions to write about that stage of my life that affected me, I would in real life, try to see them again. Cause I don’t want my feeling’s gone, which isn’t good either, because then it causes like the storm going on. I remember I would come home, I’d be like, mom, guess what I did today? Like I made a mistake. I texted this boy. She, no, just sit there and listen, I knew she wanted to say something, but she knew it would turn into an argument. So she just listened and then I’d walk upstairs and just sit by myself and start writing about it. But yeah because it’s, during those times where I just don’t, I’m kind of just like the screw it attitude, you know, like I want to write about this. I can’t. So, this will bring out emotion. So I don’t know if that’s the healthiest way to deal with it, but I always feel like if you are going through something where you can’t write, like writer’s block and you know it’s because you’re depressed, maybe even though not everyone’s conscious of that, you should take advantage of it, you know, because then you look back and that’s the whole point of the book you see, like the up and down. 

Rachael Herron: [00:45:54] I just wildly impressed that you are able to see this at this beautiful 30,000-foot level. It’s gorgeous. And another thing I want to point out Harlan, is that you keep alluding to, you know, this, this implying thing that you’re doing on the page, which is really an advanced writing method. What most writers do at first is to tell everything. And not what you’re talking about doing is including the reader in the journey and trusting the reader to be an intelligent person to make those logical leaps and to have to think about what’s going on in the page. And the thing that I’m always trying to teach students is that the more you include the reader on this journey, the more you make the reader work, the more they love what you’re writing, because you’re trusting them. And you already know that so internally and so intrinsically. I think it’s fabulous.

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:46:42] It was a battle though, because it’s like no offense to humans, but are they gonna be smart enough to realize that like, hopefully they don’t think it’s just bad writing.

Rachael Herron: [00:46:49] Some people will not be smart enough to realize it and that’s okay. And that’s okay. We just have to deal with that. I always try to write for someone who is as smart as I am or smarter, right. Cause I’m going to be getting smarter as I write this book, the book will teach me something. So what we’re, we’re running out of time, but I have to, I have to tell you that my mother was a writer and a huge reader. And we had this connection and my mother was my favorite person and almost every book I write is about the mother daughter-relationship. That’s my core story. That’s what I go back to again and again. And to see you two, together doing this, just like if anybody’s looking at me on the screen, I’m actually going red. I’m overheating. Just so happy about being able to talk to you and to read this beautiful book and to see you in person. Will you tell us where we can find you online? And maybe, maybe we haven’t done this. Tell us a little bit about the book, about Family in Six Tones what it, what it’s about.

Lan Cao: [00:47:44] So it’s, it’s a mother-daughter memoir and the format is quite unique because usually as, as you’re aware, a lot of mother-daughter books tend to be written about the, by the daughter when the daughter is already older and sort of reflecting back on her relationship with her mother. But this is immediate, you know, like she’s writing as the daughter. In present day time, and the story is just surrounding the, it’s a story that is, that revolves around various themes, which came out of an NPR interview that harder than I did for StoryCorps. And we did it 20, I think she was only 15 or 14,

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:48:33] I was like 12, 

Lan Cao: [00:48:34] 12 

Rachael Herron: [00:48:35] Wow

Lan Cao: [00:48:36] Long time ago and they dug it out in 2018 because it was the 50th anniversary of the tech offensive. So the entire interview was very long, but the portion that was played on NPR was in 2018 and it just dealt with the tech offensive. So somebody at Viking heard it and came to us and said, you should expand this because it was a Q&A, they included Harlan in, in division. And so the theme is about war, you know, the repercussions of war, the aftermath of war, intergenerational trauma, present trauma, past trauma, migration, being a refugee. Assimilating into a new country, what does being an American mean? So those are all sort of the main themes that we touch upon, but of course, you know, not in a didactic way, just sort of in a way that is incorporated naturally into our story palette. And so the first generation, second generation, so what does it mean for her to be raised, you know, as an American, but with that kind of edifice and framework in the background. 

Rachael Herron: [00:49:52] Yeah. Good way of putting it. 

Lan Cao: [00:49:52] And it’s very much to me also kind of like a love story to America 

Rachael Herron: [00:49:56] Yeah, yeah. I can see that.

Lan Cao: [00:49:58] Because America is, is almost a character in my life.

Rachael Herron: [00:50:02] Yes

Lan Cao: [00:50:03] So I, I make it as sometimes the protagonist, sometimes an antagonist in my life. Because just like a person, the country is very complicated too. You know, there are good days and bad days for the country. So it’s my relationship with this country that I’ve adopted also. 

Rachael Herron: [00:50:21] That is so beautiful. It’s also a love story between you two. 

Lan Cao: [00:50:25] Yeah. Yeah, it is. 

Rachael Herron: [00:50:26] And I adore that. I adore that. So where can we find you online? 

Lan Cao: [00:50:30] I’m on Facebook. She’s not on Facebook, but she’s on Instagram, 

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:50:34] Yeah. Harlan_vc, yes.

Lan Cao: [00:50:38] And the website, LanCaoAuthor.com  

Rachael Herron: [00:50:41] Perfect. Thank you both so much for this. This was absolutely beautiful. 

Lan Cao: [00:50:46] We want to give you a virtual kiss. 

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:50:47] You’re very sweet.

Rachael Herron: [00:50:49] I know, I know. Through all the coronavirus virtual hugs. Yes, I will let you know when this is live. And thank you so much that the book is a joy and so are you two.

Harlan Margaret Van Cao: [00:51:00] Thank you so much

Lan Cao: [00:51:01] Thank you for your time including us.

Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patreon and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/

Now, go to your desk and create your own process and get to writing my friends.