Ep. 235: Nancy Stohlman on Why Writing Short is So Exciting

Nancy Stohlman is the author of four books of flash fiction including Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities (a finalist for a 2019 Colorado Book Award), The Vixen Scream and Other Bible Stories (2014), and The Monster Opera (2013). She is the creator of The Fbomb Flash Fiction Reading Series and FlashNano in November. Her craft book, Going Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction, is forthcoming from Ad Hoc Fiction in 2020. She teaches writing and rhetoric at the University of Colorado Boulder. When she is not writing flash fiction she straps on stilettos and becomes the lead singer of the lounge metal jazz trio Kinky Mink.  She dreams of one day becoming a pirate.

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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 # 235 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron, and I am thrilled that you’re here with me today as I speak to Nancy Stohlman on why writing short, and I mean, short, short, short is so exciting. I found this conversation completely fascinating, and I hope that you do too. So she was a delight, please stick around for that. What’s going on around here? Well, the move continues a pace, we did a pretty- not pretty, a very difficult thing. This last weekend, when we gave our kitty Waylon to someone who’s adopting him and it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. And I know that sounds over-reactive if you are not an animal person, but if you are, you understand. Waylon is too old to make the trip safely. Cats just die. His age, either during the flight or during the quarantine, and we can’t do that to him. Waylon is also the one that lost his dog this, you know, a couple of months ago, also lost his twin brother about a month ago. So, rehoming him was so much harder than it normally would have been because we felt like we were stripping everything from him, which we were, and it was awful, but, we took him to a home with three incredible, adorable, smart kids who just want to love him. And Waylon is just made of love and apparently he’s just been loving everybody in the house and fitting in and we’re crossing our fingers. But it works out really well and that he stays there and, that’s why we did it early. 

[00:01:59] So they have some time to take him for a test run although I don’t think they have any interest in taking him for a test run. I think they have adopted him wholeheartedly and that makes me feel good and it makes me sad, but we are one- I think that was honestly the hardest thing we’re going to have to do in this move. I could just say goodbye to my sisters and my people, because I can talk to them. I can continue talking to them on zoom. I can come back and see them. You can’t explain this kind of thing to a little old man cat. So, yeah, I’m glad that’s done because it was excruciating. What else is going on around here? Well, I just finished doing our taxes and this was the best year ever since I talked about that in my money show at the beginning of the year, but it’s always a little bit different in April when my tax person says, oh, and don’t forget, you made this here, and you made that. And here’s your, what you made- net and she just pointed out to me couple hours ago, the year that I went full time, 2016, I netted $20,000 from my writing business. And in 2020, 4 years later, I netted $160,000. That’s after expenses. So that’s amazing! That’s so awesome. And I am proud of myself and I am happy and grateful. And I wanted to take this moment to talk to you a little bit about money. And I’ve said this before on the show, and I will say it again, but this is for you, if you want to be a full-time writer. And by that, I mean, if you want to be a person who sustains financially half or more, of a household. 

[00:03:46] I needed to continue to bring in my half of the mortgage and our half of the bills. And we live in the bay area and it’s expensive. And honestly that first year of 2016, that net did not cover what I needed, we had to go a little bit in the savings then I believe if I’m remembering correctly, I know that I needed to bring in $36,000 a year, when I left the job in order to cover those things. And here is what that looks like: If you want to be full-time, if this is something that you must bring in money to support your family or yourself, there’s one thing that you have to do. There’s a few things, but the most important thing you have to do is get out of debt. And I know that we don’t talk about that enough in America or, you know, anywhere really, but debt is one of those things that so many people carry around. And they don’t talk about it because it’s shameful. And by carrying it around and being ashamed of it and not talking about it, it gets worse and worse and worse. And I have a set on the show and I’ll say it again. I think our deepest in debt moment was not including our house. We were $125,000 worth of dollars in debt. That included an IRS bill, my student loan, 40 or $45,000 worth of credit card debt and something else. Now, maybe it was just those three things. We have never carried any money on the cars because we drive hoopies, and that’s okay. That’s what we like. But that was a lot of debt and that is why I worked a full-time job. And I wrote for the first, for six or seven years after I was first published. Yeah. Six years. My first book came out in 2010. So I’d been getting paid for writing since about 2008 when I sold my first book and I continued to work double full-time jobs until 2016 in order to get out of that debt. And I just wanted to put a plug in for a tool that is how we got out of debt. I’m not affiliated, I’m not getting any kickbacks for this, but YouNeedaBudget.com YNAB, Y-N-A-B. YouNeedaBudget.com is life-changing, I didn’t start using it until I was late thirties and I only started using it because best friend Sophie Littlefield was also really struggling with money after being divorced and winding up broke with nothing to show and no way of understanding how money works and how to take care of ourselves.

[00:06:34] And somehow I got into our late thirties and I’ve always been the one who does the bills, but I just didn’t understand how money worked. And I didn’t understand how much I needed to save and put away and not spend every month because of the bills that were going to be coming. Like I’m a smart, intelligent person. I thought I always knew what was coming and yet, we were always clap caught flat-footed we were always needing to use the credit cards because we just weren’t gonna make it through that at the end of that month and this is nothing to be ashamed of. This is normal. I’m going to look up a stat. I found it. It is from a study by the federal reserve. This came out last year. Almost half of American adults would not be able to cover a $400 emergency with cash from savings. That’s almost half of Americans don’t have enough to cover $400 worth of emergency anything. So if you’re in that camp, don’t feel embarrassed. I mean, I know it’s normal to feel shame, but the more we talk about it, the more we look at it, the more we gaze upon it, the more we understand that we’ve all been in that boat, the easier it gets. So why YNAB, YouNeedaBudget, is kind of like mint or, you know, other budgeting software, but in another way, it isn’t at all. It is nothing like those things. I can’t explain it to you. They will have to explain it to you. They have a million awesome, cute cartoon, lank little videos that teach you how to use the software, but basically, you give every dollar that you own at this moment, a job, and that’s the magic of it. So even if you have $10,000 in your checking account right now, in your head, when you look at YNAB, it might show you that you have maybe, you know, $700 left for the rest of the month, because every other dollar in there is being held for something.

[00:08:33] And that, I was thinking about it today, because that is why we stopped getting pets. This is true when Lala and I moved in together 15 years ago, we just adopted animals and they are all dying out. Because animals, dogs and cats typically live around 15 years. And that is why we have lost three of five this year to old age. And then a fourth too. Adopting away. And then we’ll loan my dog Dozy to my friend, Sophie, while we’re looking for housing in New Zealand, and then we’ll bring Dozy over. But we’ve lost three out of five because we all, we adopted them. We filled up the house with animals and then using YNAB, I came to learn over the course of months of using it, that amortized over the year, every single animal cost us about a hundred dollars a month, in pet supplies and in veterinary care. So if we had five animals, we were spending on average $500 a month on something pet related and we were broke, broke, broke, broke, and we were drowning in debt. And I realized, oh my God, if I keep the kitten that I just found, cause I’m always finding animals. That’s another a hundred dollars a month. We can’t afford it. And that’s when I started being really, getting really good at finding alternate homes for pets. And that’s kind of what I did for a while because I find animals. And, so it taught as things like that. And you save up for things so that when things arise, or fall in your lap, you have the money just to write the check, just to spend the money because it’s in his own little bucket and I cannot explain how it works so well, but it does. 

[00:10:09] And I’ve told so many friends and family about this app and they get out of debt and they tell me that it has changed their lives and retell YNAB. YNAB has testimonials on their site about how people’s lives have been changed by this. I owed money to the IRS, today, after I met with my tax person, but I knew what I owe, and it was in a savings account and I just get to write a check and it’s covered. I have the money right there waiting to be paid. And it is a monthly fee nowadays. It used to be that you could just buy the program once, but of course they’ve moved over to a monthly thing. I can’t actually remember how much it is. Maybe $10? I’m guessing. It is worth it. If you are struggling with your finances in any way at all, and if you want to be a full-time writer someday, get you the YNAB. I’m really, I couldn’t push this more, this is right up there with, in order to be a writer, you have to sit down and do some crappy, terrible wordsmithing. Sometimes, if you want to support yourself by writing, you need to be out of debt. Debt is an emergency. I don’t include mortgage debt. Personally, I do include student loan debt because that is your sorriest. I can never say that word. You should. You know the word I’m talking about. I read it. I can’t say it. You serious. They are so predatory. I took out a loan for $40,000 for my master’s degree after paying it for I’ve written all these stats down, now I forgot them, after paying it for 12 or 13 years, I owed them $50,000 and I’d paid them $26,000 over those years. So I owed them more than I had taken out after paying them $26,000. And believe me, once I finally did that math and they do not make it easy, then we started funneling all our money at that last debt that we had because everyone says student loan, that is okay. I don’t think it’s okay. So treat your debt like an emergency, if you want to be a full-time writer and if you have to bring in money for your household, and that’s probably the best thing you can do for your writing self apart from doing the writing.

[00:12:18] So, that’s my little pep talk today and I want you all to be able to be that full-time writer, if you want to. Do that, it is absolutely possible. Yeah it’s and it’s awesome. And now we’re moving to New Zealand and that’s, we can afford to do that because we don’t have debt behind me, if you’re watching on the YouTube video, I’ve got the Hush Little Baby poster just went up over my shoulder that comes out in about three weeks. I really should be doing more for that. And I’m not. So I need to get on that. I’ve got a couple of articles to write. But I’m getting excited about that. I will let you guys know about the launch party, which will be online at a Murder by The Book in Houston with my friend John, who runs the bookstore. So that’s going to be fun. I believe let’s look that up right now. If you want to mark your calendar, it’s free to come. I would love to have you. It is on May 14th. I think it’s free to come. They may want you to buy a book. I haven’t actually looked into the details, but it is Murder by The Book on May 14th, please come. I would love to see you. I’m also going to be sending out signed book plates for anybody who buys a book from Murder by The Book. So if you want a signed book plate to put in your Hush Little Baby, I would love to do that for you and there. My plug is done for that, and we can go into the interview with Nancy Stohlman. Please enjoy it. Please enjoy your own writing. And I’m really, really glad that you’re here. 

[00:13:43] 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 from 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: [00:14:43] All right. Well, I could not be more happy, and pleased to welcome to the show, Nancy Stohlman. Hello, Nancy! 

Nancy Stohlman: [00:14:49] Hi! How are you? 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:50] I’m so glad to talk to you. You’ve got, if anybody’s watching on the video, you’ve got the campus, it’s the university of Colorado Boulder behind you, right? 

Nancy Stohlman: [00:15:00] Yes. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:01] Where you would be if you were actually teaching today on campus

Nancy Stohlman: [00:15:04] Exactly. And where the trees in my, in my fantasy are already blooming and we’re already in spring, so 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:12] Yes, we’re getting so close here, all the daffodils have just sprung up. So. Getting closer. Well, let me give a little bit of a bio for you. Nancy Stohlman is the author of four books of flash fiction, including Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities, which was a finalist for the 2019 Colorado Book Award, the Vixen Scream and Other Bible Stories, 2014 and The Mons- I love that title and The Monster Opera, 2013. She is creator of the F-bomb Flash Fiction reading series and FlashNano in November. Her craft book going short, an invitation to Flash Fiction is forthcoming from Ad Hoc Fiction in 2020. Is it already out? 

Nancy Stohlman: [00:15:53] It’s out. Yes. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:54] Okay. We will correct that, to say it is out, now. Fantastic. She teaches writing and rhetoric at the University of Colorado Boulder. When she is not writing flash fiction, she straps on stilettos and becomes the lead singer of the lounge metal jazz trio Kinky Mix. She dreams of one day becoming a pirate. As a lead singer in a yacht rock band called Sausalito, the lead singer in me, honors the lead singer in you. 

Nancy Stohlman: [00:16:19] The lead singer in me honors the lead singer in you. That is, I want that on a t-shirt 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:25] There are two leads in my band, but how are you doing with the whole pandemic and not being able to perform? 

Nancy Stohlman: [00:16:34] Say that one more time?

Rachael Herron: [00:16:35] Oh, sorry. It froze a little bit. How are you doing with the pandemic and not being able to perform, not being able to play? It’s been really driving me crazy.

Nancy Stohlman: [00:16:44] Oh, I know I’ve got this fan to see, once I saw all the people over in Europe doing like the balcony cello concerts and things like that. And I have a pretty big balcony here and I’m up on the third floor. So I get a pretty good crowd if we did a balcony concert, and I have yet to convince my bandmates that this is a good idea, but I have not given up hope that we’re going to have a balcony concert here soon.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:10] I think it is a fantastic idea. And if you do, you should record it and broadcast it. I think that is amazing. Okay. So let’s talk about your writing though. You are a master of the flash of the short, and I kind of wanted to talk to you about your process around this. Maybe how did you come to a flash fiction and how do you write it, really?

Nancy Stohlman: [00:17:34] That’s such a big question. 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:36] I know

Nancy Stohlman: [00:17:37] So, let me clarify. So how do, how did I get started writing it? or how would another person get started?  

Rachael Herron: [00:17:48] Oh no, how did you, how did you get started writing it? 

Nancy Stohlman: [00:17:50] Yeah sorry, there was a little lag there. I- it’s interesting because I wrote novels for a long time. I thought I was going to be a novelist and I love novels. I read novels all the time. I think novels are amazing. And so I just assumed, if one was going to be a writer, then one would be a novelist and that I should begin writing novels or poetry, but, I was always kind of on the prose then. So I wrote novels for many years and those were not published novels, but I was getting my feet kind of in the novel genre and there was just this part of me that was like, you know, sometimes I just want to say it faster and I don’t want to have to create all this like exposition and I don’t want to have to do so much explaining. Like, I think that there’s something mysterious about not doing so much explaining. And so I was sort of just battling myself in my own head. And then I discovered flash fiction, which is for those of you listening, who don’t know what it is already, the technical term would be a story, a full, complete standalone story in less than a thousand, its actually quite long once you’ve been in the flash fiction world. So, even much shorter, most of my stories are around 500 words I would say. And so here I am writing novels and all of a sudden, I discovered this flash fiction form in which the idea is to condense it down, to distill it down to the essence of the story without any of the fluff. And it just blew my mind and suddenly I didn’t want to write. I can just play with the reader and I can create stories that are using ambiguity and implication and white space and come up with something much more mysterious for me. So I just never looked back and I continued to write books and I continue to write books that have, you know, a novel scope to them, but I’ve never, ever wanted to return to traditional chapters and exposition and all of that.

Rachael Herron: [00:20:09] So you have the novel scope, but it’s told through these pieces of flashes, that right? 

Nancy Stohlman: [00:20:15] That’s where I’m headed these days. So, for years and years, I just wrote kind of single standalone flash fiction pieces, and I’m just like crazy about them. And then I started collecting them into books and I have several collections. You mentioned some of them, but I noticed even with my collections and beginning with the Vixens screen, which was in 2014, that I was, that the novelist in me was still wanting to tell this epic story, but now I was doing it through like, almost like a mosaic of taking all these flash pieces and kind of creating a mosaic that is interesting. The pieces are interesting, but then when you step back, oh, whoa! Suddenly, all these pieces made a portrait of you know- whatever. And so that’s where I find myself leaning now, is kind of this juxtaposition of the novel and flash fiction, which is really exciting for me.

Rachael Herron: [00:21:12] I find that so exciting. I find that so incredibly interesting to think about where do you, in terms of process, where do you fit your writing in around your life, and around your teaching? And how has that changed during the pandemic, if it has? 

Nancy Stohlman: [00:21:27] Oh yeah, for sure. I think it’s always a challenge. So I’m a mom, and my children are getting older now. I have a 22-year old and a 15-year old. So, I just have one at home still, but you know, I’ve been writing and I started writing novels when my first child was born. So 22 years ago, I sat down and said, well, I guess I better get to work if I’m going to be a novelist. And so all through my life of being a writer and a parent simultaneously, it has been a real creative exploration of you know, when do I have consistent time. And for many years, consistent time was nap time. I wrote entire books from 1 to 3 in the afternoon, consistent time would be bedtime. I wrote other books from 8 to 10 in the evening. And so I think that’s something that I’ve gotten really good at is, realizing that the ideal situations may not always be there or be, you know, easy, but you can always create a writing routine. You just kind of have to get creative about it. And just because one routine worked for you for a few years doesn’t mean that you won’t have to come up with a new routine again. And that’s sort of what happened to me with quarantine. I had gotten into a routine. It’s very funny because my life, you know, I was commuting to Boulder on the trains, and so my writing time would often be my train commute. So I would have, you know, 45-minute ride to Boulder, 45-minute ride back. That was an hour and a half of consistent writing that would happen every day. And so as non-ideal as it seems, non-idyllic, for sure. I was getting a lot of good work done and, you know, I’d get on, the doors would close then we take off on the commute and I would be in the zone. And so when the when the quarantine hit, surprisingly, I was missing my commute to work, even though I really don’t want to be commuting to work, but it was like, whoa! Now I have to re-imagine my entire routine again, just when it was going so well. So, with some trial and error, I’m now back into like an early morning, set the alarm for 7, make the coffee. I actually do a lot of writing in bed. I find that when I’m in bed, I kind of am half connected to the dreamy, unconscious deep zoo of my brain. And if I wait too long to start writing, then I just, then I’m practical then I’m making a to-do list of things I have to do that day and stuff like that. So, now I’m feeling like I’m kind of grooving in this like 7 to 9 time in the morning. Before I check my email or check my phone, or look at any of anybody else’s words or voices or anything, and that’s been working really well. 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:19] A couple of things, just to point out for listeners who are all writers listening to the show is that you are speaking very clearly about writing for, you know, an hour or two a day. And I always think that there’s this myth that goes with writers that we we’re probably sitting in one spot, 8 hours a day, turning out beautiful prose, page after page after page. And we can’t, we don’t, we can get in our hour and a half or two hours, maybe three hours on a really good day. But otherwise I don’t know about you, but I tap out in terms of the sheer deep focus creation part of it. 

Nancy Stohlman: [00:24:54] Absolutely. I try to think about my writing time is about three hours a day, but I know that an hour of that is just journaling and maybe a half hour of that is taking a walk. So the actual time, like typing words is yeah, hour an hour and a half. And I try to say the same thing to writers that it is better to do less every day than to try to do these marathon writing sessions on the weekend. Because when you’re it, it’s like having a long distance relationship. You know, if you talk for 15 minutes every day, you haven’t really lost touch. You feel like you’re still kind of actively in the relationship. But if you wait until the weekend, you got to do a whole lot of catching up. There’s a little bit of a strange event that happens. And I think the same thing can happen with our work. If we wait too many days in between, then we have to kind of reread the whole thing from the beginning and trying to figure out where we were, what were we thinking? And so even 30 minutes a day, every day, or say 5 days a week is like cumulative. It’s like compounded interest. You’re going to get way more than just the 30 minutes because your unconscious is helping you in those other 23 hours and 30 minutes in between, because it knows you’re coming back. There’s like a trust.

Rachael Herron: [00:26:11] Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. I feel like if we do touch, touch it just like Chris Beatty of NaNoWriMo says to like open your computer and throw the chunk of meat at it and then shut it. Just feed the animal every, you know, every day if you can, keeps us going. That’s and I love your analogy about the long distance relationship. What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing? 

Nancy Stohlman: [00:26:32] Well, besides scheduling and time and logistics and things like that, I think it’s, it’s remembering that creativity goes in cycles. So sometimes we’re in that discovery phase where we’re not really sure what our next idea is going to be, and we’re just kind of playing around. And then sometimes we’re like gripped by the muse and we can hardly wait to get to our work. And then sometimes we’re in like a finishing phase and we’re kind of bringing things to completion and maybe putting it out in the world if we’re lucky. And then sometimes that phase is followed by a little fallow, you know, phase where we’re recuperating. Because I just put out going short in October, I’m kind of coming out of my fallow phase. And to me, that’s probably the biggest challenge, even though I know it’s coming, even though I know that you have to rest and recuperate and fill the well up again, I get nervous and I find that sometimes I even stall on the finishing. Just because I know what follows next is the fallow and I don’t and I get so, you know, can I do it again? Can I find another idea? What am I going to do during my writing time? So I’ve been trying to get really creative this time. Going into it, eyes open, I knew, you know, that I’m finishing the project and it’s complete and it’s beautiful and it’s gorgeous and I’m celebrating it. And I’m getting to talk to people like you and behind the scenes, I’m just going to be really gentle with myself. And I’m going to just do things for fun and play. And, you know, I don’t have a new project I’m working on yet because I’m waiting for it to show up. So I’ve been doing a lot of like, writing poetry, playing with techniques, reading a lot of craft books and just sort of waiting for that next idea to hit me. And I can enter that discovery phase again. So, some of it I’m saying out loud because I’m still coaching myself through it, but just remembering that the ebb and flow of the creative process always turns like it’s always going to turn and six months from now, I’m going to be in another phase. 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:36] And that is completely normal to feel that way. Have you read Wintering by Katherine May? 

Nancy Stohlman: [00:28:41] No, I’m going to write it down though. 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:42] I think you might like it. It’s about how the seasons are, you know, our lives are cyclical, these seasons are cyclical and we don’t get as a tree, we don’t get to go in a deciduous tree and in winter, doesn’t get to say no, I’m going to work real hard. I’m just going to work real hard and put out new leaves. Like they just don’t get that option and neither do we. So yeah, I think you might like it. What is your biggest joy when it comes to writing?

Nancy Stohlman: [00:29:07] I love it. Biggest joy, I mean, I think anybody listening knows that like amazing feeling of when, you know, you’re just feeling connected to like God and the universe and everything magical. And you’re like, I am a conduit for ideas. You know, they are coming through me. I’m a midwife and so, you know, trying to create the conditions for that to happen as often as possible. I do take what I call like little sabbaticals whenever I can. And it’s something that brings me a ton of joy because it lets me go really deep. And, sometimes these sabbaticals last just for the weekend and sometimes they happen in like, motel six, you know, and some, yeah, I mean, you know, there’s nothing interesting happening in motel six, so there’s no reason to leave your room and get distracted from your work. So it’s actually, I’ve had many, many, many productive sabbaticals in motel 6 but then sometimes I get to treat myself and spend like a week. I’ll get what I’ve been doing during quarantine is getting an Airbnb that I can drive to. And then I just stay there. You know, I just bring groceries with me and I don’t leave. And so it allows me to really kind of be always in that like half writing, half dreamy state. I’m very lucky that my children are old enough now that I can leave them for a week. Obviously people can’t do that as easily, but I even think if you can give yourself a weekend somehow in somebody’s house, house sitting. In the motel 6 or whatever it might be it is one of my very favorite things and I feel like I get so many breakthroughs when I give myself 36 straight hours to just be with my manuscript. Especially if you’ve been having a long distance relationship, and you got to reconnect with it over the weekend. So like manuscripting counter weekend. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:06] That’s a very sexy way to think about the writing, which sometimes can feel very, very, very unsexy. Can you share a craft tip of any sort with us?

Nancy Stohlman: [00:31:18] Well, I think it’s really important to know what part of the writing phase you’re in. So are you in the creation phase or are you in the editing phase? And I think that we should keep those things very separate. So, and you know, I teach in college and so I’ll talk to people who are doing a lot of academic writing and I give them the same, you know, the same advice they think, well, it’s just a waste of time to write it, then go back and edit it. So I just edit it as I’m writing. I think edit as you’re writing is the worst idea, especially for creative people, because when you’re creating, you are literally like playing, you know, you’re just like taking risks and you’re like a little child and it’s so important to protect that. The editor is the like tough love parent, not the protective parent. So if you bring in the editor while the child is playing, it they just don’t co-exist. And I think that both processes are extremely important, but I think they have to happen in different spaces. So I never do those things at the same time. And I try not to do them on the same day even, or I do one in the morning and one in the afternoon with hours in between. But I think it’s really important to know where you’re at. And it also goes with like sharing your work. I think that sometimes people can get really excited to share their work because like, ‘Hey guys, guess what? I wrote something’ you know, and you really just want people to go, ‘Yes! You wrote something, you know, like, cheers!’ But the problem is you show it to somebody and instead of them realizing you just want them to give you a high five and say, I see you, you wrote something. They’re like, oh, well, it’s pretty good. But maybe you can do this, you know? And you’re like, I wasn’t ready for that. I think it’s hard for us to articulate that to people. So I think it’s really important to get kind of self-aware about where we are in that process. Am I in the place where I need to protect my work? Am I in the place where I need to get tough love? Am I ready for feedback, or not? And so yeah, I think that being very clear about your own process is going to help you give yourself what you need at the right time.

Rachael Herron: [00:33:31] I absolutely love that and I could not agree more. And it’s something that I’ve learned over and over again, is that whenever I get a draft of a book into shape where I think it’s finally time to like, let my wife read it. Now, that the back of my brain says, no, you really want her to read this after it’s done because if she reads it now and I’m going to make it better with my editor later, then I’m going to be bummed. She can’t read it again for the first time. 

Nancy Stohlman: [00:33:55] Yes, yeah. You’re right. 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:57] So anybody who is tempted to share stuff too early, don’t forget that no matter what, you will make it better. And then you will regret that your friend or your partner cannot see it in its better way for the first time. Yeah. I love that. What- yeah go on.

Nancy Stohlman: [00:34:11] Well, I think if you can like, I was going to say, if you can even establish I’ve got some friends who, you know, will share things, but it’s like, don’t need comments, just need a high five, you know?

Rachael Herron: [00:34:22] Yes

Nancy Stohlman: [00:34:23] And if you can do that for each other and be really clear about that can be great for just accountability. You know, I had a friend when I was on one of my sabbaticals and he was like, okay, I’m gonna email you something every day, just acknowledge that it was written and he did the same back and I was like, you’re writing and I see it, you know, and that was all that was really needed. And we were both extremely productive so,

Rachael Herron: [00:34:43] I believe in accountability groups. And I have a hard time believing in crit groups. Like I’ve seen crit groups can help sometimes they do, but for the vast majority of students who are new to this game, I’ve seen crit groups just take them down. So countability group all the way.

Nancy Stohlman: [00:34:58] Yep. Yep. For sure.

Rachael Herron: [00:35:01] What thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way?

Nancy Stohlman: [00:35:08] Yeah, I was thinking about this question actually, I think I’m very effective, you know, as we were both talking about being musicians, I think all creatives are usually creative in more than one field. So maybe we don’t specialize in more than one field, but we are affected by more than one field and we are, you know, actively appreciating. I feel like if I had 10 other lives, I would be 10 other kinds of artists, you know, artists’ fields. So I think I purposely allow myself to be affected by other art as often as possible. So, you know, I go to the museums alone and I just like spend an artist and date there. I listen to music. I actually go, well used to, go to classical concerts alone again, you know, and just this alone, it’s like me and my creativity we’re going to go get inspired, you know, get cross pollinated by other people’s art. And so all of it, photography, music, dance I feel like that’s one of the things that we can do is just allow other people’s creative expression to wash over us and through us, and then out in words, because that’s our specialty. And so that’s something that I’m, that I really try to do a lot is just put myself in situations where I can absorb the fruits of other people’s creative process, even if it’s not words. And especially, actually, if it’s not words, 

Rachael Herron: [00:36:40] I have had a hard time with this since the lockdown and I’m wondering if you have found any other ways to do this because I am the same way. I love the artist states. I love going by myself to things, but because we are so locked in, I’ve taken to doing something I don’t do it often, maybe once a month, but I will lie on the couch or in bed or something and put in my headphones and listen to an album from top to bottom, the way we used to do it in the nineties girl, you know, and just like listen to the transitions. And especially if it’s a new, a new album to me, has been really firing some stuff up. Have you found any ways to treat your artist in this way? Take them on a date while we’re still under lockdown. 

Nancy Stohlman: [00:37:22] Yeah, I love that idea by the way. Here’s my very favorite of all, and because we’ve got daylight savings changing soon, I would, I’m planning to do it this weekend as a matter of fact is to get up early before the sun rises, like when it’s still dark, dark, dark, make some coffee, get in the car and drive east. Drive toward the sunrise and put on music. I love like Tom Waits, you know, and just drive and watch the sunrise to whatever music is like calling you and then drive home. And I mean,

Rachael Herron: [00:37:58] It is beautiful

Nancy Stohlman: [00:37:59] It changes everything. It changes everything and it’s, and it’s been my favorite thing to do during quarantine because I don’t have to interact with anybody and I come home and people are just waking up by the time you come home and you’re already like, ah, life is good, you know?

Rachael Herron: [00:38:14] I am going to do that. That is beautiful. I will tell you very quickly, just an aside, I met Tom Waits once at a, at like he was at in Yosemite, my girlfriend was lighting this fire and he helped her and she didn’t know who he was, but I followed him out to the back of the, I went to the woodpile with him, which is a great thing to say that you went to the woodpile with Tom Wait, and I will tell you how articulate I was. I said to him, are you? And then he said, ‘Yep’. 

Nancy Stohlman: [00:38:45] Wow. 

Rachael Herron: [00:38:46] Can’t get his name out of my mouth. I know it was awesome, but I’m going to, I’m going to take that driving east thing and I probably will play some Tom Waits. What is the- 

Nancy Stohlman: [00:38:55] I have the small change album or one of those old ones, that’s

Rachael Herron: [00:39:00] Yeah. I love all the old stuff. I love Holly Cole’s, take on that stuff. Perfect. What is the best book that you’ve read recently? And why did you love it?

Nancy Stohlman: [00:39:08] Oh, recently. So recently actually I’ve been doing a lot of rereading because

Rachael Herron: [00:39:00] What are you rereading?

Nancy Stohlman: [00:39:08] Yes. Well I’m in that fallow phase and whenever I’m in that fallow phase, I always go back to rereading. Cause I’m like, let’s remember all the things that have juiced me up in the past. So, two things I’ve reread recently, one is The War of Art, which is an amazing book by Steven Pressfield. If nobody, if you haven’t read it, it’s a little craft book, it’s tiny. It’s adorable. It’s fierce you can probably read it in a couple of days or a couple of hours depending. It very much inspired me for going short in the formatting of the book and yeah, it’s amazing. And then the other book that I’ve been rereading is actually one of my favorite books of all time, which is: For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway. And I’m a Hemingway fan

Rachael Herron: [00:39:58] I don’t think I’ve ever read that one. Actually, now that I think of it,

Nancy Stohlman: [00:40:01] I know most people haven’t read that one. And some of the ones that he’s the most famous for, I don’t enjoy it as much, but For Whom The Bell Tolls is set in the Spanish civil war, you know, they’re waiting in the hills to bomb the bridge and all of this. So it’s a 1930s, you know, Spanish civil war book, but there’s just something so interesting to me about the way he strings tension through that book, because so much of the book they’re waiting for the signal to like for the action and hundreds of pages, they’re waiting for the signal. And then of course, once they get the signal it’s goes fast. But what he does in those hundreds of pages, while they’re waiting for the signal is just so like to string you the tension that long, you know, where we’re like, oh my gosh, are we ever going to get the signal? But I’m not bored. I just, 

Rachael Herron: [00:40:47] Wow

Nancy Stohlman: [00:40:48] Found it fascinating. So, I’ve read it three or four times, and every time I read it, I just get something else from him, language, tension, I think he’s a real treasure to literature, so 

Rachael Herron: [00:41:02] I’m going to put them on my list. Also, I do love him. I’ve loved what I’ve read. And I also like that I’m always shelved between Hemingway and Hessa. And then there’s Heron and I’m like, you know, It’s- it doesn’t, it’s not weird. It’s a weird feeling to be between the two giants.

Nancy Stohlman: [00:41:17] Yeah. I’m always shelled next to Bram Stoker. 

Rachael Herron: [00:41:22] That’s cool!

Nancy Stohlman: [00:41:23] That’s very cool. 

Rachael Herron: [00:41:24] That’s very cool. Speaking of shelving, will you talk about your new book Going Short, 

Nancy Stohlman: [00:41:31] Of course, I will.

Rachael Herron: [00:41:32] Full title, Going Short an Invitation to Flash Fiction,

Nancy Stohlman: [00:41:34] Invitation to Flash Fiction let’s see if it’s going to come up. 

Rachael Herron: [00:41:36] Perfect. 

Nancy Stohlman: [00:41:37] Yes! And so, yeah, so Going Short is really like 10-years worth of my, like living and loving in the flash fiction world. I feel like, I came into flash fiction in around 2007, which, obviously there were people writing flash fiction at that time, but it’s really become something that’s taken. It’s gotten a lot of momentum since then. So I really feel like that I’ve been on that vanguard watching it go from something, just kind of odd to something with a lot of momentum. And I’ve been teaching it for a long time, I’ve been, you know, publishing for a long time. I actually ran a small press, for a time in 2000 in the early, 2008 to 12 or so, and so basically Going Short is like everything that I possibly know about writing, flash fiction, editing flash fiction, how to put flash fiction in books, why it’s important, what it is, like, why you should write it, its philosophy, its tips, the chapters are very, very tiny because I wrote them as flash fiction pieces. So again, I don’t know if we’re going to be able to see this, you’re going to have to just buy it and look at it, but the chapters are written as flash fiction pieces themselves. 

Rachael Herron: [00:43:02] What a great idea. Yeah. 

Nancy Stohlman: [00:43:04] So the whole chapter is one page or half a page. 

Rachael Herron: [00:43:05] The form actually-

Nancy Stohlman: [00:43:06] It depends because it’s- exactly, I’m talking about the form through the form. And so for me, it’s, I don’t call it a textbook because I’m not like, okay, now do this, you know, it’s not like, here’s your exercise. It’s much more like, let’s have- let’s pour a glass of wine and let’s have a long conversation about flash fiction. And I’m gonna tell you everything I know about it. And so that was really the way that I approached it. Inspired by so many great craft books like War of Art, like Bird by Bird, like Writing Down the Bones, all of these books that have been so important to me in my growth, I really wanted to give something like that to the flash fiction world, because there really aren’t books that were specifically meant for that world. Although you can read this book as a non-flash fiction writer and get just as much out of it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:43:57] I love that it can be read both ways. Do you know Grant Faulkner?

Nancy Stohlman: [00:44:02] I do. Yes, we’re good friends. We have a little rivalry, actually. I’m sure he won’t mind that I say it. So I, every time we see each other, we always have a little rivalry of where, which city has the, is the flash fiction capital. So he says San Francisco’s flash fiction capital. I say, Denver’s the flash fiction capital. And we actually, at one point, we’re going to have like a flash fiction off, like family feud style at an AWP or something in which we would then, you know, bring it on, but of course 

Rachael Herron: [00:44:34] I knew you would-

Nancy Stohlman: [00:44:35] He’s wonderful. 

Rachael Herron: [00:44:36] He is wonderful. He’s a good friend of mine too. And I, and he’s very much on the vanguard of the flash fiction too. So I knew that you match each other. It has been wonderful talking to you. Absolutely wonderful. Can you tell us where we can find you out there on the interwebs? 

Nancy Stohlman: [00:44:51] Yes! So, Nancy Stohlman, S-T-O-H-L-M-A-N is how you spell my name, my website is NancyStohlman.com. So you can go there. I’ve got the books. I’ve got workshops. I’ve got well, all sorts of things over there. It’s really fun over there. And I’m on all the social platforms, Nancy.Stohlman on Facebook, Instagram (Nancy_Stohlman), Twitter (@nancystohlman), all the usual spots. 

Rachael Herron: [00:45:15] It has been a joy talking to you, and I might,

Nancy Stohlman: [00:45:20] It is my pleasure

Rachael Herron: [00:45:21] Might even be brave enough to do a flash at some point between you and Grant. You’ll both get me into it. At some point

Nancy Stohlman: [00:45:26] I would love it. I’m cheering you on not editing you, just hearing it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:45:32] Yes! Yes! Thank you, Nancy so, so very much and happy writing to you. 

Nancy Stohlman: [00:45:35] Thanks for having me, Rachael. Bye! 

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.