Ep. 210: Pam Rosenthal on Not Letting the Page Know You’re Afraid

Pam Rosenthal has written award-winning sexy historical romance and award-winning brainy BDSM erotica, as well as occasional essays and reviews for Salon.com, the SF Chronicle, Dearauthor.com, and Socialist Review. She stands behind the quality of her product, but confesses that her writing process has been more than a little bit fraught. Currently, she’s looking toward making peace with that process, while she continues to work with her husband and longtime creative partner at their copyediting business — not to speak of working her ass off to elect Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and a Democratic Senate.

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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.

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode # 210 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. Thrilled you’re here with me today. Today, I’m talking to the fabulous Pam Rosenthal who has a lot of great stuff to say, including on why you shouldn’t let the page know that you’re scared of it. But let me tell you a little bit about my history with Pam. I, it was probably one of my very first national RWA’s: Romance Writers of America conferences, we were in Orlando, I believe it was bloody hot. And she won the Rita. I believe for historical novel. She won the Rita. That is like winning an Oscar and say what you will about the implosion of RWA that has occurred in this last year. I am no longer a member. I’m no longer on the board. I’m all the way out, but RWA was so pivotal and so important for a lot of people in learning the business and craft of writing. And that was, we’re not even gonna get into the RWA stuff. I’ve talked about it before, but I’m at this conference, and this woman walks into our suite holding her Rita and I got to hold it. And she was so modest and self-effacing, and really, I could tell she was surprised that she had won it.

[00:01:42] So, I read her book and it was astonishing. She’s such an incredible writer. If you’re looking for incredibly smart, incredibly sexy, erotic books that have true depth and meaning, and are also joyous and fun. I’m saying, go pick up a Pam Rosenthal. So I was elated to get the chance to interview her for this. So you’re going to enjoy that, now that I’ve built her up as she deserves. What’s going on around here? Well, I am happily NaNo-ing along, I am, I think about 30,000, 32,000 into this new book. And I just kind of want to talk for a moment about what a crappy first draft looks like, because I hear from students a lot that they think they are writing the crappiest first draft that has ever existed. I’m sorry, you can’t, because that is what I do really, truly what my words look like on the page are a gobbledygook mess. The one thing I do not allow myself to do is ever go back and edit or revise anything. The one exception to that is if I need help getting into writing for the day, I’ll go back and look at the previous day’s writing and kind of smooth that a little bit, you know, correct all the misspellings, put things into Italics that I had put into caps because I’m using a program that won’t allow Italics. You know, I’m generally writing on the alpha smart nowadays. So there are no Italics on that, doing that kind of thing, but otherwise, I have a whole books worth of snippets, fragments, sometimes I have a whole scene. Sometimes I have a whole really good scene, but more often I have these fragments of scenes that I don’t know what I’m going to do with. I don’t know if they’re going to fit. I allow myself to stop writing a fragment of a scene at any point. As long as I don’t go back and edit, I can do anything.

[00:03:42] I generally don’t write out of order. And this is just me, when it comes to jumping ahead. But I do write out of order when it comes to jumping back, because as I’m writing forward, I often have a really good idea for something that should have happened before. And I will sketch that out. It’s not, it still counts to me as moving forward because it’s brand new words. And I don’t go back and look where in the book it should go. I just usually write in all caps, fit in somewhere. And then I write the little snippet of the scene that I see that could help me later. And then I write in all caps going back to, and then I go back to where I was. Nothing has to be pretty, nothing has to be smooth. And in fact, you’ve heard me say this a million times and I’m going to argue for it again. I think that nothing should be beautiful or smooth. The more beautiful you make your writing in a first draft, the more impossible it will B to C, that that particular scene or scenes do not fit in the book you actually end up writing. We always think we’re writing one book. It’s never true. We are writing a different book and we will not know that until after two, three, four, five revisions, then we’ll know what the book really wants to be. And if we’ve made the language beautiful, if we’ve made those scenes really strong on their own as a scene, it’s much more painful to lift them out later. 

[00:05:07] And indeed, sometimes it’s impossible to see that you should. It’s much easier for me if I have a bunch of crappy scenes, when I’m in revision to apply my brain to the problem at hand and see, oh yeah, that really doesn’t. That seems not doing anything for me. It’s a bunch of crap. It is very easy to put into the trash pile. So that is why I do this. That is why, why I think this is best practice for most writers, not all writers, but for most writers I’ve ever, ever dealt with this is best practice for them. Don’t make any of them pretty, until you know, it has earned its place in your book and you cannot know what kind of scene, even what kind of character, even what kind of plot belongs in your book until that big first draft is done and until your elbows deep in the second draft and making it make sense for the first time. Your first draft should not make that much sense in a lot of ways. And it is still how we do it and can still be so fun. And I just feel like this book has been kind of gift like to me in the everyday when I sit down, I’m having fun. It’s just still a good time. I have no idea what’s going on. I am headed toward the midpoint. I know what’s going to happen there. I have no idea what’s going to happen to the rest of the book. I haven’t figured it out. I have love interests. Don’t know what to do with her. Not a clue, but she’s sexy. And I’m liking that I’m writing. This is really my first time writing a gay love interest in a mainstream book. So that’s been super fun. It’s not a romance, but it has a romance in it because life has romance in it. So I dunno, I’m having a great time. 

[00:06:51] Are you doing NaNo? How is it going? Remember if you’re behind, don’t try to catch up. That’s oh, it’s too hard. Maybe you’ll catch up at the end of the month. And that would be great. Awesome. If you are behind though, today, just write 1,667 words. Tomorrow, aim for the same thing. Don’t try to write 8,000 words to catch up to where you should be. That kind of pressure can crush a writer and make you walk away from this book for forever. So don’t let that happen. Just write a few more words, no matter what you’ll end up at the end of November with a lot more words than you would have had, had you not attempted NaNoWriMo. And if you haven’t attempted NaNoWriMo this year, there’s always Camp NaNo. And I think April in July, those will be coming up. So that’s something, something to think about, what else is going on? Next week I will have a mini episode. I’ve got some good questions queued up. If you are a patron at the $5 level and up, please send me any questions that you might have about anything. Nothing is off limits. I mean, you can try me on that, but I, I doubt you’ll find something. Don’t try too hard, I guess. 

[00:07:55] Winners of CJ Cooks’ The Nesting and Becca Syme’s Dear Writer, You Need to Quit are, Holly and Michelle. Thank you to everyone who entered that and the winners have been notified. Well, that’s all the business I think I have. And we’ll just jump right into the interview. Oh, speaking of the interview, I don’t know if you, if you watch on YouTube as some people do. I’m sorry, I don’t know why it’s not showing my face during the interview. I actually don’t mind but zoom has decided just to record the other person and I’ve gotten a few comments about that. They actually want to see me on the video, and I, I’m sorry about that. I am not on this video. It’s just, Pam’s beautiful face and I’ll try to figure out what’s going on with zoom but the audio is all there and that is what matters.

[00:08:41] So, no matter what, whether you are NaNo-ing or not NaNo-ing, I want you to take just a second right here to think about the next scene you want to write. Take a second. I’m going to give you actual time to think about this. Go. Okay. I don’t know why I closed my eyes. We’re on a podcast, but I do want you to think about that next scene you want to write, think about the next scene that you are excited to write about. If you’re in the middle of a dull spot right now, and you’re just beating your head against the rock that is your book, jump forward, or, you know, jump back and write something new that does excite you. Remember to bring the sense of play into your work. If your work is amusing you, it will amuse somebody else. And you know, really who cares about that other person right now? The job your book has for you is to amuse yourself. You are writing the book that you can’t find. The book that does not exist yet and you’re writing it because it should exist. And you’re the only one who can bring this book into existence. So please, please, please keep going. Write that next scene that just flashed into your brain in those 9 seconds that I gave you and then find me somewhere online and tell me about it. I always love to hear from you. So enjoy this interview with Pam Rosenthal and I wish you had a happy writing.

[00:10:10] Do you wonder why you’re not getting your creative work done? Do you make a plan to write and then fail to follow through? Again? Well, my sweet friend, maybe you’d get a lot out of my Patreon. Each month, I write an essay on living your creative life as a creative person, which is way different than living as a person who’ve been just Netflix 20 hours a week and I have lived both of those ways, so I know. You can get each essay and access to the whole back catalog of them for just a dollar a month. Which is an amount that really truly helps support me at this here writing desk. If you pledge the $3 level, you’ll get motivating texts for me that you can respond to. And if you pledge at the $5 a month level, you get to ask me questions about your creative life, that I’ll answer in the mini episodes. So basically I’m your mini coach. Go to patreon.com/Rachael (R A C H A E L) to get these perks and more and thank you so much.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:09] Alright, Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show today my friend, Pam Rosenthal. Hi Pam! 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:11:14] Hi, Rachael. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:16] It’s been a long time that I haven’t seen you. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:11:18] Yeah, well, I’ve been, I’ve been missing an action from writing for really a long time, so, 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:25] Oh, and I love that we’re going to talk about this on the show and I’m, I’m also just so readers are aware. I am one of Pam’s biggest fan girls, so I just- I love your work. So I’m just thrilled to have you, let me give you a little bit of a bio here. Pam Rosenthal has written award-winning sexy historical romance and award-winning brainy, BDSM erotica, as well as occasional essays and reviews for Salon.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, Dearauthor.com and Socialist Review. She stands behind the quality of her product, but confesses that her writing process has been more than a little bit fraught. Currently, she’s looking forward to, looking toward making peace with that process, while she continues to work with her husband and longtime creative partner at their copyediting business, not to speak of working her ass off to elect Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and a Democratic Senate. Hell yes. You have been busy, then that’s a lot of work to do be doing. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:12:24] I, yeah. You know, I actually, I called Wisconsin yesterday. Just like you did. 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:29] Yay! How did it go? 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:12:31] Well, the first couple of calls, cause you know, you do this automated you know, I, they, they could smell fear and they just coming up, you know, I didn’t know how to deal with the, with the, with the software. And then I don’t know, I put in my earplugs and I took a deep breath. And all of a sudden, I’m having this wonderful conversation with these people, you know, who sound like they’re from Fargo, right. Because you know, and one woman is a, she’s a, she’s an aspiring romance writer, and we both just said if only we could talk all afternoon, you know, 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:04] Oh that’s wonderful

Pam Rosenthal: [00:13:05] It’s so fun. And, you know, and it was interesting and of course I got a couple of people who, you know, as politics, I did not agree with although I was very polite, but it was, it was good. I liked doing it. I haven’t, I mean, I’ve done, you know, phone calls and door knocking before, but I, I have to work myself up to phone calls. It’s- 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:24] I really do. Phone calls are so, so difficult, but when you’re calling in a state like Wisconsin or any of the other swing States, it feels very important. And I’ve signed up to do my next shift next weekend, too. So.

Pam Rosenthal: [00:13:35] I do it on Monday. I’ve signed up for Mondays. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:36] That’s awesome! Yay. Okay. So now let’s talk about your writing process. Tell us about what your writing process has been like in the past and maybe what it looks like now. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:13:48] Well, my writing, you know, I have to say, I’ve spent more of my life as a non-writing writer, as a wannabe writer, as a sometime writer, as a, than I ever- as a, as a writer who just wasn’t you know, it wasn’t working then I ever spent as a successful writer. So I have to say that, and this isn’t my process. This is my, my overview. And I’ve told this to people who say, you know, you have these gaps. And I say, yeah, you know, I listened to your show and I listened to people who are successful. And I think, wow, these people they know how to write and like, it’s a marriage, it’s a good marriage. Lot of work, it’s not always wonderful, but it has, you have skills that you learn and you employ, I’ve never done that. It’s been like affairs and a lot of pain at the end and, you know, 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:39] it’s gorgeous. Incredible smart books.

Pam Rosenthal: [00:14:41] Well, thank you for that. You know, so I just want to say, yeah, I have to, I’m going to honor that and say, yeah, that’s good. And maybe who knows how I will, you know, whether I will be able to do it in the future. I’ve been very, for, you know, when I did it well, you know what I had these times and I, you know, when I think of when I was writing Almost a Gentleman, the first romance, the first novel got published. And I, I didn’t know- I didn’t even know who did it, you know, who did the murder or whatever. And, but I, I did know, well, we were going to go to the country. Now we were going to go to the city now. Because I have this armature of skills from doing more, just general erotic writing. I know about set up. I know about sort of scenes, you know, strange and, and, and, and it making scenery and costumes and, and, and that’s, that’s what I know how to do. And, so I was able to just base it on that and figure that whoever did it was, was good enough. And just, and I wrote you know, my 800 words every morning. I got up at four and because I was working as a computer programmer and I would get to work at 9:30 or quarter to 10, which is better as late as you could get in, I’d be the last person to enter and the last person to leave. And it was a very happy thing. I had done the important work before I’d gotten to work and that was great. And then it became harder. The, you know, the books and I wasn’t prepared for the career part. The career part did me in. I thought I would, I thought like reading reviews would be easy, it wasn’t. 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:24] No it can, can crush a person. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:16:25] You know, I was a, of course. I mean, because you know, my, I mean, my first published books, I was in my forties and the first published romance novels in the fifties, I’d had a whole life of thinking that what was wrong with my life was that I wasn’t a writer. And then being a writer would solve all my problems. And you know, that, that is the most poisonous thing. Being a writer doesn’t solve any problems and 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:49] It does not. And you know what, people don’t talk about that enough. I really have this feeling like on the morning that my first book was released, I would wake up and be a different person and I wasn’t. I was exactly the same person, the whole world kept going around me the way it always had. Nobody cared that I had a book out, you know, 17 people did, but, but otherwise things don’t change. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:17:14] Exactly and yeah, so that was very difficult. And then I’m not convinced why, why I wasn’t able to continue with romance, but I always had big topics and I couldn’t think of another big topic and, and, and, and romance was going in a place where you had, you know, 11 siblings and they each had their little story. And I, I don’t know. I had always disposed of all the siblings when the first book and I couldn’t think of, you know, so I, I just. Whatever, but I think really it was more like the emotional issues I honestly do. And I think, I think it was my lack of social, not social. What did they say? Emotional intelligence of not, not knowing what an incredibly tough business it was. And also not knowing that there were, you know, the part of the job was the promo- you know, it was the production and the promotion, and I didn’t know how to change off. I had a lot of reasons for not. I, I don’t know why, but, you know, so I kind of stopped and I was very sad. I mean, you know, and I’m thinking, do you get to call yourself a writer? You know, if you’re not writing? And,

Rachael Herron: [00:18:27] Yes

Pam Rosenthal: [00:18:28] and here’s why I decided that I could, because, so just this year we had this novella, the, The Rights Were Returned to Me and I thought, well, you know, could do it, put it up. Why not? And writing it, and then the rewriting part made me so incredibly happy, writing. And I thought, well, this happiness proves, I mean, I haven’t had this happiness in 10 years, so that was just glorious. And I, so, you know, it’s interesting when it came to do the promotion, I, I don’t know how to do that stuff, but I just, I put myself in places where I’m going to write a, a guest blog post. I’m going to write something, forced myself to writing and wasted all this time when I could have been sending out arcs and all these other things, because that was because I was forcing myself to write. And it was just worth every moment. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:29] That’s gorgeous. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:19:30] And it’s been lovely and yeah, yeah. So, and then it was also nice because my husband’s a terrific editor. Well, we had this, I mean, it’s only a 30,000 word story, you know, and it’s not, and we thought, well, we’ll just straighten it out. You know, it’s, it’s not, we didn’t either of us when starting felt that there was that much to do except really good. We want to get copy editing kind of perfect because we’re copy editors and we wanted to be like a kind of you know, presentation piece. And then, so we were doing all of that. And then, you know, we got all the commas and all the, you know, Oh, like there was a room where the walls were blue and then they were green, you know, all that stuff we’d fixed and Kensington press never, you know, that was fun. And then my husband’s, I remember, the first important question he asked me, why don’t you use this verb tense? And why don’t you use the past perfect? You know, he had done, it sounds fiddly. It sounds fussy. Why do you do that? And you do it all the time. You know why? And I said, because, because I started as an erotic writer and for me, verb tense, what really people think, I think that erotic writing is you just let loose. For me, it’s the most precise thing I do. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:55] Wow 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:20:56] Goes what, where to frame, if I had very difficult perceiving at the same time and where’s, you know, where’s that other arm and, you know, I mean, it’s both, you know, it’s, it’s what happens sexually is very complicated and putting it into words and putting it into point of view and making that a strong you know, making that narrative. Is w- it’s kind of, you know, it’s both a joyous thing and a challenging thing for me. It’s, it’s the craft that I have. And it started because my first writing was more kinky, and kinky sex is premeditated and narrative and people, that’s why people think it’s dirty. You know, because they think that because they think that, you know, sex should just be something that sweeps you away and you disappear and, you know, you kind of close your eyes and I like sex writing when the eyes are wide open and there’s a lot of perceiving going on

Rachael Herron: [00:21:55] Right. When you’re swept away, you’re releasing any, responsibility for it. Yeah

Pam Rosenthal: [00:22:02] So I learned a lot of that when I was doing more straightly, erotic writing, but then because, you know, there were people involved. I started to think, well, did they love each other and stuff? And that’s how I sort of got into romance. And I won and I was very fortunate. Cause that was about the year 2000 when erotic romance was a thing, I had the chops and that was rare at that time. You know, so, so that was really fun. And I got lost. What was your question?

Rachael Herron: [00:22:30] Oh no, no, I’m just going with you. This is wonderful. So now, what are you working on right now?

Pam Rosenthal: [00:22:35] Well, what I worked on, what I finished was this was just a novella, you know, men and women meet and, and, and a house. And it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, I think I was probably inspired by Last Tango in Paris, but that’s a very exploitative story and mine is not people, there’s much more of a there, the, the, the character- oh your cat,

Rachael Herron: [00:22:57] I know

Pam Rosenthal: [00:23:00] Yeah the power balance, I think, is what’s interesting about this. It isn’t this Marlon Brando and this girl basically out of her teens, it’s, you know, there there’s really a lot of back and forth. And I, you know, that, that was really fun for me. So I was writing it my- anyway, so my husband said, well, why didn’t you do this verb tense? And I had to think about it and I had to go and I, and I realized that I was right. There was something very complicated going on in that scene, but why not write what it was called? You know, just don’t take the shortcut of the verb tense. So that kind of 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:35] How cool

Pam Rosenthal: [00:23:36] And then he started to say things like, you know, I don’t think this character would have said something this here and maybe, and what I learned. And it was interesting cause there’s a kind of kinky scene. And at that point he said, you know, I’m not even going over this because you you’ve got you, you have the timing so down for that, you know, but afterwards, what are they thinking? I don’t think you’re so clear about that. And I started to think, you know what, it’s interesting. I thought that I was bringing all these erotic chops to romance writing, but in fact, I had more to learn about romance writing. That was what I learned from this. And that was very, very exciting to me, 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:20] It’s so cool. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:24:21] And so I wound up working very hard on the scenes where people were saying what they felt. And I, I, I got kind of humbled by that. Actually, it was pretty interesting and also pretty thrilling. And it was pretty thrilling to find that there were things that, because I hadn’t gone deeply enough. I didn’t understand that they were puzzle pieces that could lock in. And when I, when I got that was so thrilling. So I had all of those writing pleasures that I hadn’t had in so many years that the story was wiser than I was?

Rachael Herron: [00:25:00] Yes. Yes. Because you learned from it.

Pam Rosenthal: [00:25:04] Yeah. So it was, it was very, very, very cool. And whether I don’t know if I have an innate to write a whole book, a book, you know, I have some ideas and I’m not saying never say never. I don’t know. I mean also because it was interesting, but you know, I was a slow writer. I wrote these, you know, they were a little too literary for the field. I mean, you know, 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:32] Perhaps that’s why I love them so much. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:25:34] You know, we’re a little niche they had and I’ve had such, I have almost, I mean, I’ve had people say some horrible stuff about my writing, but people who have gotten it so profoundly that you know, it was wonderful like when I, I wrote some people for blurbs for this, you know, self-published thing and people were pointing to the new sentences and saying, I liked that, and you know what that, you know, what that. Yeah, that makes you feel like, oh my God, mission accomplished people, message has, you know, re-

Rachael Herron: [00:26:08] It worked.

Pam Rosenthal: [00:26:09] Yeah, you know, and so I have no idea. I mean, I know that I’d like to write, I do feel that I might have something to say, just sort of critical writing about the relationship between emotional and or, 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:26] I would love to see that

Pam Rosenthal: [00:26:28] And you know, I’m going to do some blog posts and you know, but they, and one of them talks a little about that. And one of them talks about other people’s writings. That’s the one for Dear Author. I had flushed frankly, that I could promote my book. And they said, no, if you get, you get a blog post on this thing, you got to really write critically about other stuff, other people. So I read a whole bunch of new people. I mean, I read, do you ever read, have you ever read Mary Baylor?

Rachael Herron: [00:26:54] No, but I’ve heard very good things. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:26:56] She’s, you know, I always thought she was just this ladylike Regency writer

Rachael Herron: [00:26:59] That’s what I thought too.

Pam Rosenthal: [00:27:00] Older than I am, but in fact, she writes she’s and, and starting in the early nineties, she was writing incredibly unabashedly, sexually explicit stuff in such a ladylike way that I never got it, but now I get it. And I’m fascinated by her 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:20] Oh that’s so cool

Pam Rosenthal: [00:27:21] and written, like, I don’t know, a hundred books. I mean, you know, starting with like little Harlequins or whatever, I mean, but I- I’m, I’m kind of, she’s a little bit of an obsession with me now. I’m feeling a lot humbled by, there are things in romance that I didn’t get because I was very proud of what I uniquely was bringing to it, but not, I didn’t see that there were just things buried in it that are not buried, but that other people took for granted that I’m not taking for granted so much anymore. So it’s pretty interesting that I’m- I find myself more committed to romance than I would have thought. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:59] That’s beautiful. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:28:00] It’s, it’s interesting. Yeah. Well also, because, you know, starting with the 26th, so I was, well, let me just go back. You know, I was so depressed. I stopped writing in about 2011. There was, I wrote something horrible that I won’t really, my agent sent it everywhere and everybody was willing to read it and everybody hated it. I mean it

Rachael Herron: [00:28:21] Oh that’s frustrating. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:28:23] Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t good. It was very angry. I mean, I could see that now and I kind of- I got into time, time into knots with my own thing and I, and I don’t know whatever. So I stopped and you know that, and there was just a couple of miserable years and people died that I knew and people got sick and you know, it was the bad things. My husband was an independent book seller and yeah, it, he, his bookstore died in this you know, e-book climate, and that was this. And, you know, so, and then in, and then after the election, I stopped worrying because all of a sudden I had, I was reading all this genre fiction just to stay alive well, to get to essentially, because for the first time in my life, I needed happy endings because I’m not, I’m not- I’m not confident that we have a happy ending. And so, I, I, it was, I read long series. I mean, you know, things that I knew would work, you know, things that would work out and I have a few just incredible comfort and happy and admired series that I love. 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:43] Ooh. I might ask you to share those with us in the, in the book section.

Pam Rosenthal: [00:29:46] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I, I, I, I know, I mean, I have a very small area of expertise and it just has to do with like, what, what. Average people know about sex and love, only I think I can write about it, you know, and I don’t know anything else. 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:08] That is not an average talent. That is not a talent motion you have. Speaking of that, can you share a craft tip of any sort with us?

Pam Rosenthal: [00:30:16] Well the craft tip, it goes along with that, you know, this is the thing I think about. I once saw this interview with Meryl Share and Share said, this is after she was in Silkwood with Meryl Streep. And she said, I asked, you know, she was a new actress, said, well, you’re your Meryl Streep. Tell me how to act. And Meryl Streep said, I’ll tell you one thing that when you, when I’m acting, you know, in your you’re just responding, you have to act even harder when you’re just listening to me talk, that’s when the acting chops really come in. And I feel like when I write sex, I need to be thinking about the other. It needs to be that they’re really talking about philosophy. And when I talk about, you know, what’s going on, it’s there needs to be a sexual vibe in the background all the time. And I, I’m not a great plotter, but I think I’m a good inter weaver of those two modes. And that’s kind of that’s I think the craft tip and the other craft tip probably you know, I do crossword puzzles. My husband was learning how to do them. And the Saturday New York times is really hard. No, you can’t do that. And I said, you can’t let it know you’re afraid of it. And I, and I, you can’t let the page know you’re afraid of it. I still. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:36] So true!

Pam Rosenthal: [00:31:37] You know, it’s like that, that sometimes if you want to say, you have to say it, you don’t know why you’re saying it, you know, and maybe it’ll go. But so those, those were the craft too, you know, and then you have to just kill your darlings. Like you have to put it all down and then you have to kill it and, you know, and you just. It all comes down to bravery for me I think.

Rachael Herron: [00:32:02] Oh, I love that. It really does come down to bravery and some days we have it and some days we don’t and some days we can only fake it. I think. Kind of like not showing the page that you’re afraid of it. You may maybe afraid, but you’re faking that you’re not afraid and you’re going to put down some terrible words, fix them later. Oh, I love that. Can you, Oh, so what a thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way?

Pam Rosenthal: [00:32:23] What thing in my life. You know that I actu- Well, I mean, it’s surprising. I mean, I was surprised that I became an erotic writer, you know, I mean, everybody who knew me was surprised and you know, that, that I- What, what thing in my life? and then of course the partnership, this incredible partnership that I have. 

Rachael Herron: [00:32:57] Yeah. Tell me more about that.

Pam Rosenthal: [00:32:58] It’s, well it’s, he’s it it’s he was a bookseller for many years and one day he comes home with Robert Darden’s book The Forbidden Bestsellers of Pre-Revolutionary France. And it’s a book about well it’s interesting because before the revolution they smuggled in, not they smuggled in Rousseau and Voltaire and stuff like that from province and countries. And they also smuggled in smart. And they call them all philosophical books. And this was so here I wasn’t erotic writer and he was bookseller. And, you know, we were like, we, we caused the French revolution and I wrote, essentially, I mean, in, in, in the book, the first book, the, the guy was the, the books seller was really my, my heroine, the Bookseller’s daughter’s favorite erotic writer in disguise because he was really the second son that centered the meanest Duke and profiles. Of course. You know, it’s I, what surprises me? I mean, the whole thing about body and mind. I mean, the phrase, the body mind problem pretty much. I’ve been surprised my whole life about these involuntary responses that my body has, and I really write to try to explain them and you know and that that’s being- I keep wondering if I’d study, if I’d study, I need something with it, with a topic, you know, if I hadn’t been an English major, would I know what I write about something I knew. Yeah. And a little bit, I mean, I’ve, I’ve written some stuff about software and about how that works when, because that’s what I was doing for a while so, but, but mostly I’ve just, I’ve read, my impetus is to write about what confuses me, why do I feel that way? You know? And, and, and I just got to put it in the words of characters to discuss it, you know? And so, yeah, 

Rachael Herron: [00:35:16] I think that’s our super power as writers is being able to figure out what we think and know and believe by going to the page and figuring it out. I wouldn’t be able to come up with the things I know if I wasn’t writing them out in some way or another. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:35:30] It’s, it’s really a way of knowing. It’s interesting, you know, and I, I was having this conversation with my therapist and my thera- and I said, you know, and it’s interesting. I said, there’s plenty of things I know about other aspects of my life. But when I talk to you about it, it has a weight and a reality that it didn’t have before. And it’s another mode of, of knowing. And I’m thinking you could divide life into so many modes of knowing they’re probably athletes who don’t know something until their body knows it. Or there are scientists who know it because they, they feel the experimental procedure, you know. 

Rachael Herron: [00:36:10] They test it. Yeah. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:36:11] And, and, and fiction writing or any kind of writing for me is, is, gosh, I know that, you know, now I know, I didn’t know it before. And you know all that stuff about the unexamined life. I mean, there you go. 

Rachael Herron: [00:36:27] yeah, there is not much of my life that is unexamined, unfortunately, I tend to be a Naval gazer you know, but that’s how I learn. Okay. So what is the best book that you’ve read recently? And you might want to tell us about any of these serries.

Pam Rosenthal: [00:36:37] I’m going to do three. So I will know Mary Bayleigh, you know, I probably read like. 20 of her books, because I feel like I have a lot to learn from this person who I would have thought was totally opposite from me, which is very, it’s kind of like the best literary fiction book I’ve read in a long time. I’ve probably read it more than a year ago, but it kind of turned my life around. It’s called Paula Spencer by Roddy Doyle. 

Rachael Herron: [00:37:02] I love Ronnie Doyle, but I haven’t read that one. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:37:04] I haven’t read a lot of Roddy Doyle. This is, she wrote a, he wrote a book called A Woman Who Walks into Walls. Yes. well, this is the, and I haven’t read that although I read a short port in the new Yorker and it was very hard to read about a very abused wife. Well, this is the next chapter. The, the husband has been arrested. I mean, he was in a stupid 

Rachael Herron: [00:37:29] Fantastic

Pam Rosenthal: [00:37:30] She’s, she’s not an alcoholic. She’s working now to be a non-alcoholic and she’s had a whole life of being an alcoholic and did hard stuff to her grown up kids, and she’s a house cleaner and it’s just a book about saying, okay, how do you build a life just, and it’s got the most amazing close- I don’t know how he did the things he did with point of view and stuff like that. All I know is that she’s got a knee problem or a back problem. I forget what it is. And it is the realist, knee and back problem. And it just goes through the pros. I mean, it’s this very close pros and, and it was when I was particularly miserable at night. And it just asked questions about how do you, how do you make a life? And I just think it’s a wonderful book. 

Rachael Herron: [00:38:19] And look, what’s happened since then. Like, you’re, you’re now you’re doing this now you’re doing the novela and you know, 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:38:25] Yeah. I mean but really, you know, that it was nice. It was nice that the novella came, it was nice that I found things and it’s a, like, I was surprised it took me a year just to find a cover I liked. Not big on big chests and big dresses. And I found an illustration the night. I kind of like it and yeah, so that was good. Yeah. So I’m very happy about that. I just feel like, I want to think about these nice things I, you know, it’s and, and hopefully do some writing. I don’t know, but I do 

Rachael Herron: [00:38:58] You did say that you were going to tell me three books.

Pam Rosenthal: [00:39:00] I got them. It’s just such a great book. The warmth of Other Son’s by Isabel Wilkerson. Oh, I don’t know what that is. It’s, it’s a, epic huge nonfiction book about the migration from the South, the black migration from the South to the North in the first part of the 20th century. It’s, I don’t, it just recasts American history. It’s the America I knew, knew, but didn’t know it’s, it’s huge and it’s, you know, like so many other people I’m having to relearn American history. This is the most gorgeously written, just big. It was hard to read, it took me several months. Cause I would put it, you know, people would move into a neighborhood and then it would get, because they were black, their house would get burned down or terrible events. I mean, it’s a lot, but it was. It’s a very big and very beautifully told story. And she’s got a new book called Cast, where she, it’s more theoretical. She talks about the African-Americans in, in, in, in this country, Nazi, Germany, and the Indian cast system and draws all of these, draws these, these parallels and makes it, I honestly don’t know where it’s going to go. I, I stopped reading about two weeks ago because I came across a passage that was so hard for me. She talked about the, the, the Nazis, having, you know, very specifically, studied American rape Jim Crow, racial law. And, but there were parts of American Jim Crow racial law that they felt were too cool. To be, be inadequately,

Rachael Herron: [00:41:01] Qualm

Pam Rosenthal: [00:41:02] Yes. And I had just stopped, you know, because I’ve grown up with the whole cost obviously, and I just had to readjust everything for them.

Rachael Herron: [00:41:13] It sounds like such an important read, 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:41:17] She’s such a brilliant writer. She’s, she’s absolutely. I mean, it’s fluid and gorgeous and devastating, but the one from Other Sons, I, I that’s the one to start with that, it’s just amazing. 

Rachael Herron: [00:41:31] Speaking of books. Will you tell us about your novella please, and where we can find it and you?

Pam Rosenthal: [00:41:35] a house East of regions street

Rachael Herron: [00:41:39] Oh, I like that. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:41:40] Yeah. You know it well, because I live in San Francisco, I think about you know, real estate politics a lot. And this is, you know, this was when Region Street was being built and, the Prince region, you know, was, and, and, and, and changing London property values actually, and certain neighborhoods were going to be no longer posh neighborhoods, but it’s a man and a woman both wanna buy the same house. And, you know, obviously it’s just set of erotic encounters and there isn’t a Duke to be seen. He’s an ex-sailor and she’s an ex-prostitute.

Rachael Herron: [00:42:16] Oh lovely.

Pam Rosenthal: [00:42:17] It’s I, I, I, you know, it’s, but it’s a Regency, it’s definitely a Regency and it’s pretty sexy. 

Rachael Herron: [00:42:24] I cannot wait to read it. I really cannot. I am just, I think you were one of the first, when I was getting into romance, I was reading widely and reading a lot of the authors that everybody was telling me to read, because I was trying to learn about this genre. And I remember when I found you, I was just like, this is what I want. This is she’s writing for me. This is my jam. And I’ve pushed your books onto so many people. There’s, they’re incredible. Where can we find you online? 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:42:54] PamRosenthal.com 

Rachael Herron: [00:42:56] Perfect. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:42:54] And @PamRosenthal on Twitter. Not very hard, and Pam Rosenthal on Facebook (MollyWeatherfield) I mean, I’ve never come up with any of these 

Rachael Herron: [00:43:08] It’s better that way 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:43:09] Names and I, I now have a GoodReads page as well. So your basics and yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:43:17] Well, I, I’m going to encourage my listeners to go out and buy this immediately because 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:43:21] Oh thank you so much

Rachael Herron: [00:43:22] You’re welcome! Thank you for being on the show and it is lovely to see you. It is, it is heart good for me. 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.