Donna Baier Stein is the author of The Silver Baron’s Wife (PEN/New England Discovery Award, Foreword Reviews Winner), Sympathetic People (Iowa Fiction Award Finalist), Letting Rain Have Its Say, and Scenes from the Heartland: Stories Based on Lithographs by Thomas Hart Benton (Foreword Reviews Finalist). A Founding Editor of Bellevue Literary Review, she founded and publishes Tiferet Journal. She has received a Bread Loaf Scholarship, Johns Hopkins University Fellowship, and other awards. Donna’s writing appears in Next Avenue, Virginia Quarterly Review, Saturday Evening Post, Writer’s Digest, LitHub, Washingtonian, and other journals as well as in I’ve Always Meant to Tell You (Pocket Books) and To Fathers: What I’ve Never Said (featured in O Magazine).
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 #207 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. I’m so thrilled that you’re here today. Today, we are talking to Donna Baier Stein about her surprising tip for getting into the voice of a character. It was really, really fun to talk to her and the way she mixes art and writing. And I know that you are going to enjoy that portion of the podcast and what’s been going on around here. Well, I have been writing my Patreon essay, which is about to go out and I know that I have told you, the past that I’m writing this memoir called You’re Already Ready. It was called Replenish, and it was the result of me burning out at the end of 2017. I decided to take 2018 to do a month- sorry, a year-long challenge. Every month would be a different challenge, I would focus on one different thing and see if it could help replenish my empty well. Well, what ended up happening, was completely unexpected and it happened exactly at the inciting incident wherein right about 20% through that year because of what I was doing and because of the journaling I was doing, I discovered that I had slipped into alcoholism, which was my biggest fear of my life. One of my biggest fears. And it had happened, after many years of being a heavy drinker, I was no longer able to stop drinking. So I continued to write those monthly essays for my Patreon subscribers, and they were true and real and honest, and they told the way I felt, but I kept all mentioned of my recovery out of them. We’re just going to have to ignore that cat; who’s yelling in the background. I apologize for that. That’s what he does. [00:02:05] And so I kept all the mention of alcoholism and addiction out of those essays. I am now as I’m revising the memoir, I’m putting them back in because I wanted to be a true representation of the year that I spent. So I am pulling in a bunch of stuff from the journals and I am doing one essay and then I do a little bit of a journal about what was happening at that time in terms of recovery. And today I am working on that inciting incident moment of that discovery and what happened after that and how I felt, which was not good. It was not good. Let’s, let’s put it that way. So it’s been actually a really fun for the last few days to be going through those journal entries and doing what we get to do with journal entries. When we are memoirists, we get to put things together. We get to take out the boring idiotic sentences and finesse some of the sentences that were not even real words. If any of you were journalists, you know what I mean. Not adding anything, but cleaning them up and making them readable and hopefully enjoyable. And I get to send that out this week for my Patreon subscribers. And I’m a little bit nervous because this is, that was an intense thing that happened and it didn’t feel good. I really liked writing about perhaps not feeling as good and then finding out how to feel better and that doesn’t happen for a while in this part of my story. And it doesn’t happen in this particular journal entry. How that goes over the course of a couple of the first days of me getting sober. So I’m excited to send that out and I am nervous and I’m happy to do that. [00:03:49] So that’s been my writing for the last couple of days and I’m also plotting for NaNoWriMo, for the few people who are listening, who don’t know what that is, it is National Novel Writing Month. It happens every year in November. It starts November 1st, ends November 30th. It is a free online challenge in which you write a book in a month, you write 50,000 words. As soon as you write 50,000 words, you win, you win NaNoWriMo. What do you win? Not much. You win, congratulations! A heartfelt congratulation from the NaNoWriMo staff. And, but the big thing that you win is you could just say forever that you won NaNoWriMo, that you wrote a book in a month. It’s a short book. 50,000 words is a short book. It’s like a Hemingway-esque of maybe like a, of, of Mice & Men Steinbeck length but it’s a book. My first time I did NaNo was in 2006 and that book became How to Knit a Love Song, my first published book from Harper Collins and I have participated every year since then. I don’t always win. I hope I win this year. I’m really going to give it a good shot this year. I might not. And that’s okay. I will still write more words because I’m doing NaNo than I would if I weren’t. And that is one of the awesome things. There won’t be any in-person NaNoWriMo events, which is too bad because those writings where you get together in cafes and you have challenges to see who can write the fastest. Cause you’re not writing good words in NaNo, you are writing fast. So necessarily, they’re going to be crappy and that’s what we want. [00:05:25] So there’s no getting together in cafes to do those kind of challenges. So there will be so many online sprints and challenges and zoom rooms, and you can find all of those at the forums in NaNoWriMo. I save looking at the forums, of course, for after I’ve done my work for the day after I’ve written my 1,667 words that day, I can spend as much time as I want in the forums. And to read what other people are doing and harnessing that energy of everybody doing this at the same time is something that’s really incredible. So as this goes out tomorrow on the 30th of October, we’ll be starting on Sunday. So I think you should join us. I joined my first year without even an idea of what my book was going to be about. I just knew it was going to be about a woman who loved knitting. There we go. And I started, and again, it doesn’t have to be good. You just write fast. There is something called the reverse Nano. If you want to Google that, pull that up. I’ve done that a couple of times. It’s pretty great. You start the month with a high word count per day. I think it goes from like 4,000 words and then down the second day, maybe to 3000 something, and every day you write fewer words until the very end of the month, the very last day, you only have to write one word. That’s your goal on the 30th of November is to write your 50,000 word and you can find that by Googling reverse NaNo. Maybe I’ll do that. I don’t know. We’ll see. [00:06:46] Anyway, I am excited about it. I’m excited about the book I’m going to write, and I’m going to try to bring to this book, just joy. Just happiness. Just fun. I want to have fun on the page and I want to remember to have fun. So you should come friend me over there. I think I am Rachael Herron. If I’m not Rachael Herron, I’m Yana Gogo. Although I think that’s my old name. Their website is kind of wonky right now. I’m not totally happy with the website, but it’s fine. It is what it is. It does what it does. It is a nonprofit that raises money to bring this into school. Their young writers program is amazing. And if you do NaNoWriMo, I would humbly plead you to toss them a few dollars. This is a nonprofit. They work extremely hard all year to promote literacy and they’re amazing. So that’s NaNoWriMo.org or just Google National Novel Writing Month, and you should play. [00:07:40] And now let us jump into the interview. I know you’re going to enjoy it. Come find me on the internet you can come over to HowDoYouWrite.net and leave me a comment or find me anywhere else that I am online and tell me how your writing is going. I really want to know. Okay. Happy writing my friends. [00:07:57] Hey writers, I’ve opened up some coaching slots. I’m not taking clients on a weekly basis right now as I’m working on my own books, but I am doing one-offs. I call them tune-ups. Tell me your plot problems and ask your character queries. Let me know what stumbling blocks you’re up against. Get tips and tricks to get you back on the right track. Ask any questions about all things publishing. Together we’ll brainstorm your specific plan of action, making sure you’re in the driver’s seat of your book again. You’ll receive a 30-minute call over Skype or FaceTime, giving you the honest encouragement you need to keep getting better or a polite ass-kicking if that’s what you need and ask for it. Plus, you’ll get an MP3 audio recording or MP4 video, your choice of our chat. So you can re-listen at your leisure. And if you want a little more help, I can also critique either 10 pages or your book’s outline and talk you through my findings. Just check out RachaelHerron.com/Coach for more info. I’d love to work with you. Now on to the interview.Rachael Herron: [00:08:59] Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show my guest, Donna Baier Stein. Hi, Donna.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:09:04] Hi, Rachael, I’m happy to be here with you.
Rachael Herron: [00:09:07] I’m thrilled to have you. Let me give you a little introduction before we get into the meat of it. Donna Baier Stein is the author of The Silver Barron’s Wife, which is a PEN New England Discovery Award, and a Foreword Reviews Winner, Sympathetic People. Which was an Iowa Fiction Award Finalist, Letting Rain Have Its Say and Scenes from the Heartland: Stories Based on Lithographs by Thomas Hart Benton, a Founding Editor of Bellevue Literary Review. She found it in publishes Tiferet Journal. Is that how you say it?
Donna Baier Stein: [00:09:38] Yes.
Rachael Herron: [00:09:38] Great. She has received the Bread Loaf Scholarship, Johns Hopkins University Fellowship, and other awards. Her writing appears in Next Avenue, Virginia Quarterly Review, Saturday Evening Post, Writer’s Digest, LitHub, Washingtonian, and other journals. As well as in, I’ve Always Meant to Tell You from Pocket Books and To Fathers: What I’ve Never Said, featured in O Magazine. Welcome!
Donna Baier Stein: [00:10:03] Thank you, Rachael. Thank you.
Rachael Herron: [00:10:06] It’s- I was looking at your website and so the newest book is the scenes from the Heartland, right?
Donna Baier Stein: [00:10:12] Yes. Yes.
Rachael Herron: [00:10:15] So before actually I want to, I want to get to that at the end because it looks so fascinating. I was telling you before we got on here, that it’s at the top of my to be read pile right now, but let’s, first of all, that’s a lot of writing that you have under your belt
Donna Baier Stein: [00:10:27] and a lot of different directions too. So I tend to,
Rachael Herron: [00:10:32] I, I like that in a person I write in five genres.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:10:36] Yes. I noticed and it’s so impressive. All the books you’ve written and sold as well. So it’s terrific.
Rachael Herron: [00:10:43] But I really, and I really like that about people when we aren’t boxed in, when we have just, I know I’ve shot myself in the foot by going so many different directions, but I wouldn’t change it
Donna Baier Stein: [00:10:56] Yes
Rachael Herron: [00:10:57] because it’s weird. Yeah.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:10:57] Yeah, I feel the same because, each of the three fiction books are, they’re very different. And, but I feel like I want to write what I want to write. So it’s not the best marketing ploy, but as far as what one wants to do. So, and you have an animal there too. I have my cat. I’m trying to keep off my lap.
Rachael Herron: [00:11:22] I’m very sorry, my wife is getting home. So I’ll ask the question quickly and then I’ll go on mute. Can you tell us about your writing process, how you get it done?
Donna Baier Stein: [00:11:30] Yes. Usually I write in the mornings, sometimes at the computer, sometimes in a notebook and while I’m still in bed, I have to say that you know, I was thinking earlier, the last couple months I have been less, less consistent in my writing than I was earlier because I tend to get caught up in headlines, et cetera. I think it’s, it’s, you know, but I find, I really find, and I have always found this in my life that I feel much better when I write. As opposed to times that I don’t. Right, so having multiple projects is a good solution for that. So if I don’t feel like working on the, on the current novel, I, I can write a poem or an essay, et cetera, again, possibly not the most, you know, fine-tuned direct approach, but, but it’s what works for me, so.
Rachael Herron: [00:12:35] Now, let me ask about the writing by hand. How does that work? Is that like a first draft?
Donna Baier Stein: [00:12:41] Yes. And usually, and it’s actually interesting because it’s really just this summer that I went back to writing by hand I’ve, my first computer I remember was a televideo and I remember being so thrilled to, to be able to add it so easily and cut and paste paragraphs, et cetera, and not have to redo the whole- I’m older, so not, I didn’t have to redo the whole page if I wanted to change something on a page, as we used to have to do when we were using typewriters. So I love using the computer. My brain runs really fast. So, I find that typing on the keyboard generally works best for me, but again, this summer, I have found myself wanting to slow down a little bit and wanting the physical process of, of pen on paper. Spalding Gray, I don’t know if you know that name. He was from a long, from a while ago, he wrote something, I think, Swimming to Cambodia. He was on Broadway and he said something like, the pen becomes part of his musculature and I’ve just really wanted that physical presence of the pen on the, on the notebook. And then I type it into the computer, but, and, and that I do more for poetry and maybe an essay I don’t, I usually for the novel that I’m working on, I usually go directly to the computer. I write very messy first drafts and that’s something that do you too?
Rachael Herron: [00:14:25] Oh, the worst, the absolute messiest. They’re unintelligible to any other human beings.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:14:29] Yes. And I always write way too much and, and I researched too much. Right. And put it all in and then when I go back, I need to cut out. But, you know, and I think I, I’m teaching a number of writing classes now. And one of the things that I really want any writer to know is, get something on the page. It doesn’t have to be perfect Ernest Hemingway said all first drafts are S H I T. Virginia Wolf said she looked for the diamonds and the dust steep in her writing and yeah, there are people and I have friends who are writers. There are people who can write first draft, final draft. I’m not one of those.
Rachael Herron: [00:15:13] I think they’re very few and far between, and they’ve developed a process of going through the garbage in their brain. And I always tell my students that that’s only your method, if you are revising as you go and you complete books. If you’re not completed books, that’s not your method. You should write a crappy first draft. But the other thing is, is it takes us so long to accept that. Because I really wanted for many years of not doing much writing, I wanted to finally be the writer who was good when I sat down. And I mean, we never get that way. I think it was Malcolm. I love your quotes. And Malcolm Gladwell said the first eight drafts of anything is terrible.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:15:47] Oh, good. Yeah. I have that to my repertoire. That’s good quote. Yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:15:53] Yeah. And it’s, it’s so hard to remember that. And I also love the, the by hand thing. I have gotten really into writing on my iPad, brand new thing, but the writing is actually searchable and you can change it into text if you want.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:16:09] So you use the stylus?
Rachael Herron: [00:16:11] Yes. You use the Apple pencil it’s really kind of satisfying both sides of my brain of wanting the kinesthetic spirit connected experience. And also, you know, if I needed to move it into the word document I could, which I must garbage, but yeah, that’s great. I’m sorry.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:16:29] Good.
Rachael Herron: [00:16:30] She’s finally stopped.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:16:32] Don’t worry. I have a dog back in the back of the house, so
Rachael Herron: [00:16:37] Good. What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing?
Donna Baier Stein: [00:16:41] Perfectionism and with The Silver Barron’s wife, for instance, that that novel is a topic that obsessed me, for decades and, Baby Doe Tabor, in Colorado. I first learned about her when I was seven years old and her life obsessed me and
Rachael Herron: [00:17:04] Can you give me a quick sentence of who she was? Cause I’m not sure-
Donna Baier Stein: [00:17:09] Yes. Okay. She was a woman who lived in the late 19th, early 20th century. She bucked a lot of social expectations. She worked in the silver mines, which women didn’t do. She had two marriages. The first was to Harvey Doe and, and then she left, she divorced him. He, he was a Philander and possibly an addict. And she caught the attention of Horace Tabor, who was a very wealthy silver Baron. He was worth about $24 million in 1883. When, when Horace and Lizzie married, they married at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC. President Chester Arthur came anyway her life and then when, when, the Sherman silver purchase act was repealed horses fortune, which was based on silver, being the standard for US, for the, for the United States, his fortune was, was lost and she stayed with him. And then when he died, she went to the matchless mine, where he had made most of his fortune. And she lived there for the next few decades, writing down thousands of dreams.
Rachael Herron: [00:18:25] Wait, she lived in, she lived in the mine?
Donna Baier Stein: [00:18:27] Well in the shack.
Rachael Herron: [00:18:28] Oh, how fascinating.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:18:29] Oh yes. So her life, her life includes fabulous wealth that dire poverty, materialism spirituality. She had two daughters, love, loneliness, just huge contrast in her life. And one of the things that really struck me, I think even as a child was I had these postcards of her one and an urban opera code and one standing in front of the cabin in the mine. And I thought, how does a woman go from point A to point B? How, how does a life go like this? And, and also the fact that she wrote down these dreams, which people were doing that, I mean, now there are dream journals and dream groups and, but, Freud’s interpretation of dreams I think was 1896, something around there, it was published. I don’t know whether she read it or not, but it was very unusual that she wrote down these dreams and there were thousands of them, that are in the history Colorado center. So she was a real, and she had some, there are some people, some theologians think she was a mystic. There’s a woman, Judy Nolte Temple who wrote a non-fiction book about Baby Doe Taber and her dreams. And she talked to some theologians and she, she had a lot of visions of Jesus and Mary and saints.
Rachael Herron: [00:19:54] Oh, wow.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:19:55] Other people think she was crazy. And
Rachael Herron: [00:19:58] What was that like to take that, put it into a book along with that perfection, perfectionism that you have?
Donna Baier Stein: [00:20:03] Well, it took a long time talking about the first, the first chapter of that book of that novel of this novel. I rewrote and rewrote and rewrote, really the first couple pages I had to get it perfect. And I, that was a mistake because I needed to write to the end and then perfect. So that was the lesson I learned.
Rachael Herron: [00:20:27] Yeah. Because we don’t know what our book wants to have
Donna Baier Stein: [00:20:30] Exactly
Rachael Herron: [00:20:30] In the first part until the, until it’s done.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:20:31] Exactly.
Rachael Herron: [00:20:32] Sometimes not even then. Sometimes it’s right there.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:20:35] That’s right. That’s right.
Rachael Herron: [00:20:36] Yeah. Oh, wonderful. What is your biggest joy when it comes to writing?
Donna Baier Stein: [00:20:41] Finding synchronicities in research, like
Rachael Herron: [00:20:46] Yes
Donna Baier Stein: [00:20:47] When I pull upon something, I love that. And like in the Thomas Hart Benton book, I- I own one lithograph by Benton. I’m from Kansas City originally and my father was given one of them.
Rachael Herron: [00:21:01] Oh how cool
Donna Baier Stein: [00:20:02] Yeah. So one day I sat down. I had written my first book was a collection of short stories and I thought I want to do something that’s, you know, kind of out of the realm of my daily life and not contemporary. And I started creating a story based on what I saw in the lithograph and that was published in Virginia court that stores in Virginia Quarterly Review. And then I decide, Oh, let’s do some more of these and I happen to own a book of lithographs, by Benton. And one of them, here’s an example of synchronicity and research. One of the lithographs shows two women standing by a flooded river and Benton had titled it The Flood. And it’s 1937. Well, I didn’t know, but there was a very large, very damaging flood in 1937. And, I did research and one of the places that was flooded was New Madrid, Missouri, which was on, and there was a landing that was literally called Compromise. And I remember, I can’t remember the year I wrote that story, but it was the last story I wrote for that book. And at the time, and this is before the day when it’s even more terrible. But at the time I was thinking about the divisiveness in this country. And I see this landing called Compromise and that struck me and there was a church in, in, in the research I found in New Madrid, there was a church that literally sat on a state line and the people from Kentucky sat on one side and the people from Missouri sat on the other and they had armed men with guns at the ends of the pews. Yeah, and I thought, whoa!
Rachael Herron: [00:22:58] Oh my gosh
Donna Baier Stein: [00:22:59] I know, so that really seemed to touch on what was going on and it’s still going on in this country, so that was an example of wow, you know, it was just perfect for a theme that I wanted to explore.
Rachael Herron: [00:23:15] And it’s so interesting when you go looking, you find something that’s just what happens. And the other thing I love about synchronicity is that how it happens all around us and listen things on the radio, and somebody mentions a word that you’ve never heard before you just learned for this book and you hear it four more times that week, you know,
Donna Baier Stein: [00:23:33] Yes,
Rachael Herron: [00:23:34] It’s a beautiful. So can you share a craft tip of any sort with us
Donna Baier Stein: [00:23:39] One thing that I’ve realized is that, that, is that it’s helpful that it’s something to consider as when you, when a writer is creating a character to at least do one draft in first person. I think writers need to be actors, psychologists, and wordsmiths. And, I, I find that getting into a character writing from that character’s first-person point of view is helpful. It may not stay that way. I may later go change it to third, but it helps me get inside the character.
Rachael Herron: [00:24:19] That is wild. And I love it. I have only gotten one book out of the 26 in first person and it’s the most recent book. And it was, it was really scary in a way to be that close inside her head. That’s fascinating. I love that idea. And I’m going to use that in the future.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:24:42] And 26 books, I’m so impressed. That is amazing. You must be a much more disciplined writer than I am.
Rachael Herron: [00:24:51] I, I have little discipline, but a lot of stamina. I just keep showing up and writing terrible, terrible first drafts.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:25:00] That’s what, that’s what it takes.
Rachael Herron: [00:25:03] I love that tip. Thank you. Thank you so much. That is completely unique and I’ve never
Donna Baier Stein: [00:25:06] I’ll looked for your last book too.
Rachael Herron: [00:25:09] Just came out in paperback.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:25:11] Okay, great.
Rachael Herron: [00:25:12] Thriller about police corruption. So I don’t know if that’s up your alley,
Donna Baier Stein: [00:25:16] Awesome. But wait, for I saw something on Twitter where you a police dispatcher?
Rachael Herron: [00:25:22] I was. I was a police and fire medical dispatcher for 17 years. So this was the book that was about the dispatcher that I had to get out of the industry in order to write, I haven’t dispatched for a four and a half years, so.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:25:34] Wow, but you wrote it in first person?
Rachael Herron: [00:25:37] That one actually was in third. The one I just turned in that’s coming out in spring is in first person.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:25:41] Okay.
Rachael Herron: [00:25:42] Yeah. Yeah. But it was fun. It was really fun. Okay. So what thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way?
Donna Baier Stein: [00:25:57] Probably, well, there are two ways I can answer this. One is that, one is that, I sometimes let my emotions get the best of me as, and that affects the consistency of the writing.
Rachael Herron: [00:26:22] I think that might be a common thing for writers.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:26:24] Yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:26:25] And how does it happen?
Donna Baier Stein: [00:26:29] What, in that I, that I have to push myself more to get to the computer or the notebook. And I have to keep myself away from Twitter news and headlines. And again, especially with the pandemic and everything else going on right now, that’s kind of really up, up. And you know, that that’s the negative side, the positive lesson from that is, acknowledge what you’re feeling and go sit there and write anyway,
Rachael Herron: [00:27:06] I’m 48 years old and I’m just learning how to feel feelings. I am not good at it.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:27:10] Oh, I’m too good at it. It’s not, it’s not a plus, you know, so I mean, there’s a balance obviously, but, but I think the thing, I think the thing that’s important is that even if you don’t feel like writing, get out the pen and notebook and start free-writing and say, I don’t feel like writing right now, but and just come out. And again, the classes that I teach, you know, they have, I give them prompts and they have free writing sessions and it’s like silencing that inner critic and silencing that voice that says, I don’t want to do this right now and just doing it. And lo and behold, every time I do that, I feel better
Rachael Herron: [00:27:56] every single time.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:27:57] Right.
Rachael Herron: [00:27:58] It never misses. Sometimes you don’t get anything good out of it, but other times you get gold. You had no idea you could pull from nowhere.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:28:06] Exactly. That’s right.
Rachael Herron: [00:28:08] Yeah. And no matter what you feel better, my wife always tell- she can tell when I haven’t had a writing day
Donna Baier Stein: [00:28:13] Yes. Yes. Me too.
Rachael Herron: [00:28:18] not feeling emotions, but perhaps I’m good at showing them. Maybe too, too good. Okay. So what is the best book you read recently and why did you love it?
Donna Baier Stein: [00:28:26] No question about it. The Overstory by Richard Powers.
Rachael Herron: [00:28:30] I love Richard Powers, but I haven’t read that one.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:28:33] Well this is the first of his that I’ve read and it’s, oh my God. It blew me away. I think it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. I also really love Lincoln and the Bardo a few years ago, those two books are the best, are two of the best books I’ve ever read. And The Overstory is just a work of genius and I do
Rachael Herron: [00:28:53] What did you love about it?
Donna Baier Stein: [00:28:55] The way he shows the interconnectedness not only of praise
Rachael Herron: [00:29:03] Oh I’m so-
Donna Baier Stein: [00:29:04] Oh, it’s all about the environment and trees, have trees take care of each other and the importance. It’s also about video game creation. It’s, it’s I can’t even say what it’s about because it’s so huge. And there are multiple characters, multiple stories. When I first started reading it, I thought I didn’t realize it was a novel and I read the first section, chapter. And I thought it was going to be a collection of short stories and each chapter is focused on different characters, but he mag- he, with a genius touch, he ties every thread together. It, it touches, it’s a consciousness raising book in my opinion, about how we’re all connected about the planet and what we need to do to save it. And, it’s just a mind bogglingly, wonderful book.
Rachael Herron: [00:30:02] I love reading books that make me question my choice of careers. You know, I really, really love it where I am dumped by how someone can be that intelligent and do all of this. Like, that is one of my happy places. So that’s gonna be right underneath your book on my TBR pile. Speaking of your most recent book, can you tell us a little bit more about these stories and the lithographs and how this came to be?
Donna Baier Stein: [00:30:27] Yeah. Again, you know, I, I own one of the lithographs and you know, just having
Rachael Herron: [00:30:33] Is it nine, is it nine stories?
Donna Baier Stein: [00:30:36] Yes, either eight or nine. Hold on. That’s terrible. Yeah. Nine. Sorry. And it, it was just the first, it was interesting because my first book of short stories people, well, it’s not autobiographical. There are elements of it in it that are all biographical or things from friends’ lives, et cetera. And I really was thinking, I want to write something that’s not related to my life. Well, lo and behold, so I go into this Benton lithograph, which actually, I don’t know.
Rachael Herron: [00:31:26] Oh yeah
Donna Baier Stein: [00:31:28] There on the wall.
Rachael Herron: [00:31:29] Yes, gorgeous. It’s beautiful
Donna Baier Stein: [00:31:30] Yeah. And it’s a two boys on a horse and there’s a gray farm house in the background. And you know, I started just basically describing what I saw and then I started doing some research from Missouri, Missouri in that era and farming, et cetera. And I knew that I didn’t want the main character to be an adolescent boy. So I started thinking, well, there are logs cut, that means there’s an adult around, there’s farmhouse in the back, the parents are probably there and I went into the voice of the wife, mother, and it’s, it’s really her story. So what surprised me was that I mean anything we write our own psyche makes it stamp on it. So it surprised me that that came out in that story. But again, I love doing the research and I love making up a story based on a picture.
Rachael Herron: [00:32:28] I think that is such a beautiful, beautiful, idea plus your, I didn’t know who he was before, I, I love it.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:32:38] He was a regionalist painter from Kansas City and Martha’s Vineyard. He was actually the mentor-teacher to Jackson Pollock.
Rachael Herron: [00:32:45] Oh wow.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:32:46] In the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, there’s a room full of, I mean, his paintings are in museums all over the world, but at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there’s a room, that has murals or on all four walls and it’s called America Today and it shows, there are bankers and farmers and steelworkers and dance hall girls, you know, the, the, the incredible variety of people that make up America.
Rachael Herron: [00:33:16] I love that I would love to be able to go to New York and look at that
Donna Baier Stein: [00:33:19] Yeah
Rachael Herron: [00:33:20] Wait for us,
Donna Baier Stein: [00:33:21] You can Google it and see it’s really, so, so he was, he was a very, he was a very famous paint and
Rachael Herron: [00:33:31] Plus you have this connection to him through your father.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:33:34] Yeah
Rachael Herron: [00:33:35] Oh, that’s beautiful. Okay, and where can we find you online?
Donna Baier Stein: [00:33:38] My website is my name, DonnaBaierStein.com. And I also published an interfaith literary journal called Tiferet Journal. That’s (T I F E R E T) TiferetJournal.com
Rachael Herron: [00:33:53] What is, what does interfaith mean in this specific case? Is it?
Donna Baier Stein: [00:33:56] Well, my father was Jewish and my mother was Christian, so I grew up thinking we all need to get along. And so I publish authors from different faiths.
Rachael Herron: [00:34:05] It sounds like that might be one of your core stories. In your life, is, is that coming together and that
Donna Baier Stein: [00:34:12] Yes. I think that
Rachael Herron: [00:34:13] like, like that church and
Donna Baier Stein: [00:34:15] Yes. That’s right
Rachael Herron: [00:34:16] The vision of it being so separated, putting it back together.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:34:20] Exactly. Exactly.
Rachael Herron: [00:34:21] Beautiful. Oh, it is, it is
Donna Baier Stein: [00:34:23] Our country needs to do that too
Rachael Herron: [00:34:24] It absolutely does. It have some fingers crossed for the election. It has been such a joy to talk to you today.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:34:33] To you too, Rachael. Thank you. And I’m going to get your book and thank you so much for having me on
Rachael Herron: [00:34:40] Take care. Bye.
Donna Baier Stein: [00:34:41] Have a good rest of the evening or afternoon for you.
Rachael Herron: [00:34:44] Thank you.
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.
Join me.
❤️ Let me help you do the work of your heart. ❤️
Leave a Reply