Rachael Herron

(R.H. Herron)

Rachael

Ep. 264: Amber McBride on How to Write a Novel in Verse

Amber McBride is an English professor at the University of Virginia and holds an MFA in poetry from Emerson College. Her poetry has been published in several literary magazines including Ploughshares and The Rumpus. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia with her dog, Shiloh. Me (Moth) is her young adult debut.

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Rachael Herron: 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 #264 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. And I’m so glad that you are here with me today, as I talked to the author of a book that I loved. I absolutely loved this and I filmed this recording way back because I’m quite ahead in schedule, which is an awesome problem to have. And I have been dying to tell you about it. It’s called Me Moth and I could not put it down. I could not put it down. It was incredible. It was gorgeous. And it is different. It is structured differently than any book I’ve read in a long time. It is a novel wrote in poem form and it works. It is magical. So you’re going to love the conversation that I have with Amber. 

[00:01:11] What’s going on around here? I’ll make it quick because I know I’m already late in uploading this podcast this week, because I was real tired yesterday. The biggest thing, well, I guess there’s one big work thing and one big life thing. Let’s do the life thing first because that’s really, really big. We got the house. We got the three-bedroom house to rent as the upper, as the upper floor of a large house on the side of a hill in Wellington that looks over the harbor. There are Harbor views from the living room, from the kitchen, from the dining room and from the bedroom. The main bedroom and the other two bedrooms don’t have views and that’s great. There’ll be offices. And it has a garden, a very neglected garden, which I will be able to plant flowers and vegetables, hearty things that can stand up to the wind of being on a Wellington hillside. So I’m going to learn about that. But, we move in, it is as I record this the 16th of October, 2021, and we will move in on November 1st. So just about two weeks from now, we will be able to unpack our things for the first time in five months. We will be able to put things in drawers and leave them there. We will be able to buy things. 

[00:02:35] My consumer tendency has really been quelled and that has felt pretty good. We haven’t bought anything except food because we have had no place to put it. Literally no place. I couldn’t have fit an extra playing card into my luggage that we’ve been carting around. That is a total lie. Now that I say it out loud, because if I turned my head to the right here, I can look up 12 books that I’ve bought. I think that’s all the books I bought since we’ve gotten here. Oh, that can’t be true. It’s got to be, but no, I can think of where a couple more. I am an inveterate book buyer and I will never stop and those just get shoved in the car, where they fit, that will fit in there somewhere, but otherwise we have not been buying anything.

[00:03:17] So I’m moving into this house. We really won’t have to buy big stuff, honestly. I think I mentioned it, but this house comes furnished because the people that were taking the lease over from are moving out of the country and they had to get rid of everything. And instead of getting rid of everything one by one, we offered to buy it all because we have nothing. So we bought all their furniture, their outdoor furniture, their barbecue, their kitchen appliances. And it’s feeling like this really exciting grab bag that we have bought. We’re going to go on November 1st and we’re going to start opening drawers and find out what we own. We’re going to say, oh, this is what our towels look like. Oh, these are our sheets. Oh, this is where the couch is comfortable and where it is uncomfortable. And that is so exciting. It’s so exciting. Also exciting is the news that we have, apparently our stuff is in Wellington somewhere. Out of customs, these are the 70 or so small boxes that we shipped over. I don’t, I’m having a real hard time thinking about them. 

[00:04:20] I don’t need a thing. I have everything I need right here, except most of my boxes, hold unread books. So that’ll be good. I’ll have a little library coming. But I know that I shipped over a bunch of clothes that I don’t need. I have enough clothes right now for about 10 to 12 days without doing laundry. And every place we’ve stayed has had laundry. So you do laundry once a week. I don’t need any extra clothes. I love my clothes. I have t-shirts when I’m writing, t-shirts and yoga pants. And if I leave the house, I wear linen and that’s, that’s it. That’s all I need. The layers have been adequate for the low temperatures and the warmer temperatures that we’re moving into as we move through spring here. We have just entered peony season and if you’re watching on the YouTube, I will just do you a favor. Look, this is as big as my head, you guys. You should really come over. This is, it’s a peony. It’s incredible. It’s pink and huge and as big as my head, open right now, it’s anyway, loving spring, loving Wellington, super excited. 

[00:05:26] In terms of what’s going on with work, my assistant, Ed, he’s in episode 200 if you want to go hear him speak. He’s the most amazing. He’s also really good at getting Book Bubs. And so he got me a Book bub ad for the fourth book and the Cypress Hollow series. It’s called Cora’s heart. I have not owned the first three books in that series. So whenever we would get a BookBub for Cora’s Heart, we would try to push them on into another series, or to the fifth book in the series and then to another series. A Book bub ad is basically when you set your book to very cheap or free in order to give it away as a lost leader to get people interested in you to read a whole series. What’s really exciting is that I got the rights back for all three, all five of the books in America. I only owned two of them in America and all five of the books in the series from Australia who owned them all, Harper-Collins did, I think, or Random House. I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. I have all the rights back now. However, Harper-Collins in the states, when I got my rights back, they were super proactive. And they pulled down their eBooks, as they should have. 

[00:06:36] So right now on, also on November 1st, there’s going to be a BookBub for Cora’s Heart, which is book four in a series and books one through three do not currently exist. So suddenly, I am pulling up those old books, making new covers, choosing new titles, uploading them with Ed’s help, who is doing all the heavy lifting. But here’s the big problem. Books one through three were copy edited in the stone ages. I know I mentioned this in a previous episode. They would mail you the pages and you would mail them back when you were done. They were hard copy, copy edits. So I do not own them. I never got the final file. That was not a thing that they gave to authors. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they kept, you know, if they purposely didn’t give that copy edited file to the authors. So what I’m having to do is to go through the books, through these three books, superfast, bring them up to, I’m a better writer now. And so make them a little bit better and make them a little bit cleaner, which has been really fun, but I have to go fast and I will not have time to get them professionally copy edited before I need to put them up. To have them available for people to buy when they want to read books one through three, which they will. Readers fly through series. So I want this up there. This is an advanced dance move and I do not recommend it. I am not happy with this choice that I am making, but it is the choice that I need to make in order to publish these books quickly. 

[00:08:13] What will happen then is, so the first book, let’s talk about Cypress Hollow one. I have done my edit of it. I am now going to send it to my copy editor. My copy editor will have it for whatever amount of time she needs and then she’ll send it back to me. I’ll accept her changes. And then I will hire a proofer, who will go over it because tiny errors even slipped through a copy edit. So then you hire a proofer and then you can feel pretty comfortable. You can put it up online. It’s good. I’m skipping that at first. I have done my own edit/revision on it. I’m not doing a proof. I put it instead through pro writing aid, which is a tool I really like, and it catches a lot of typos and it does not catch all of them by any means. In doing the revision, I’m sure I have added some typos. And, but after that, that is the, that’s the file we’re going to upload and that’s the file people will buy. [00:09:09] Hopefully, there aren’t too many typos. Hopefully, I don’t get bad reviews immediately that say this is badly edited, typo written. But, I’m not going to trip on it too hard because it still will be copyedited, it still would be proofed. I will be able to re-upload the file because I am self-publishing it, which is so cool. And I can change the file at any time. And then every book moving forward, after I get those done, it’ll be a good, strong, mostly typo-free book, all books have a typo or two. But it’ll be mostly typo-free, by the time I re-upload it. If, for example, I got a hundred reviews, one star reviews says, this is the worst edited book I’ve ever read in my whole life, I will take down that book and I will re-upload it with a new ISBN, and start from scratch. 

[00:10:01] I’m starting from scratch anyway, with zero reviews, et cetera. So, if that happens, I hope it doesn’t. I hope it’s clean enough. I hope these books are clean enough to pass muster. I write pretty clean anyway, but there are errors. But if that happens, I’ll take them down and restart. So, I’m having to move very, very quickly for the next two weeks, which is super fun for me anyway. And also, it’s good because I think I could have taken probably a couple of months to go through three, these three books and do all the work. And this is forcing me to do it fast. Just like, I just rereleased A Life in Stitches, the 10 year anniversary edition. I don’t want you to go run out and buy it because the audio book is not out yet. And you should probably get the audio book because I read it myself. But if you are interested in reading it with your eyeballs, it is out there. And I had to rush to do that because a knitting retreat wanted 120 copies of it and it needed to get in the mail. So I needed to finish all the uploading. So these books that I have gotten the rights back on, I am being pushed to do them fast. And that is good because I could take forever. 

[00:11:10] Speaking of that, I just did a little video which you might like, and I will make sure this is, this video is live by the time this podcast is live, go to rachaelherron.com/felt, F-E-L-T as in, I felt silly. And I just recorded four minutes of me doing a lightning round through an old manuscript when I still used words like felt and realized, those words, there’s a bunch of them. But for me, I kind of, my crutch words are felt and realized, especially in the old days, in my early writing. Now they just don’t come out. I don’t write felt or realized for the most part. What felt does, and what realized does is it gives a layer of distance from the character. And when you remove those words, you make the sentences they are in less passive and more active and more voicey. So if you want to see an example of me doing that and kind of talking my way through it, go to rachaelherron.com/felt. This is a micro revision. I will just warn you. This is something that you do at the very last minute, literally before you send it off to your agent or your editor, or right before or before you send it to your copy editor. But it can be a strong change to make. So if that’s something that’s fun for you, come check that video out. That’ll be up on the YouTubes. 

[00:12:41] Otherwise, let’s jump into the interview with Amber McBride. It was so awesome to talk to her, so exciting and, you should get the book because it is incredible. All right, my friends, happy writing, and we’ll talk soon!

[00:12:57] This episode is brought to you by my book, Fast Draft Your Memoir, write your life story in 45 hours, which is by the way, totally doable. And I tell you how. It’s the same class I teach in the continuing studies program at Stanford each year. And I’ll let you in on a secret, even if you have no interest in writing a memoir yet, the book has everything I’ve ever learned about the process of writing and of revision and of story structure, and of just doing this thing that’s so hard and yet all we want to do.  Pick it up today. 

[00:13:30] Rachael Herron: Okay. Well, I could not be more pleased to have on the show, Amber McBride. Hello, Amber! Welcome. 

[00:13:35] Amber McBride: Hi! How are you? 

[00:13:36] Rachael Herron: I am so excited to talk to you because I loved, loved your book. Let me give you a little bit of a bio here. Amber McBride is an English professor at the University of Virginia and holds an MFA in poetry from Emerson College. Her poetry has been published in several literary magazines including Ploughshares and The Rumpus. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia with her dog, Shiloh. Me (Moth) is her young adult debut. So we are recording this way in the past. We’re recording this on June 24th and it probably won’t come out for a while because I’m pretty backed up and podcast episodes. When does the book come out? 

[00:14:13] Amber McBride: It comes out on August 17th.

[00:14:15] Rachael Herron: Okay. So it’ll be after. We have time. How, but let’s talk about real quick right now. How are you feeling about leading up to the launch of this book? 

[00:14:25] Amber McBride: I, it’s amazing. It’s overwhelming. I think every writer says that their first book is, it’s surreal. Like you’re experiencing all the steps, but you’re like, is this real? I’ve dreamt of this, but is it? So I feel like I have a lot of those moments. When Moth was part of Indies introduced, I really was like, I don’t even know. Cause I would always look at the Indies introduced titles. So like it’s just been surreal and amazing and the amount of support with everyone, specifically because of the times we’re living in right now, for so many, 2020 and 2021 debuts has just been so great within the writing community. And it just like was very heartening to like, everyone’s just supporting each other. So it’s just been a wonderful experience. 

[00:15:09] Rachael Herron: And you are coming into it. Are you going to be able to have an in-person launch?

[00:15:13] Amber McBride: As of right now, no.

[00:15:16] Rachael Herron: It’s still all virtual? Yeah.

[00:15:18] Amber McBride: It’s going to be virtual. I do think some, I’m going to have something at a local bookshop, but it’s not going to be my launch-launch, but I’m still excited.

[00:15:25] Rachael Herron: I’m convinced that virtual launches now are the way to go. I had one from my last book a couple months ago and it is so awesome because people can come from anywhere. 

[00:15:33] Amber McBride: Exactly. And that’s the thing is like one thing, one wonderful thing is we’ve all started using technology more. And the fact that, like you said, anybody can come, it’s nice to have a local one where your, all your friends are there, but they have like that access for like the world. It’s amazing! It’s amazing. 

[Read more…] about Ep. 264: Amber McBride on How to Write a Novel in Verse

Ep. 263: Bella Mahaya Carter on How to Slow Down

Bella Mahaya Carter is a creative writing teacher, empowerment coach, speaker, and author of an award-winning memoir, Raw: My Journey from Anxiety to Joy, and Secrets of My Sex, a collection of narrative poems. She has worked with hundreds of writers since 2008 and has degrees in literature, film, and spiritual psychology. Her poetry, essays, fiction, and interviews have appeared in Mind, Body, Green; The Sun; Lilith; Fearless Soul; Writer’s Bone; Women Writers, Women’s Books; Chic Vegan; Bad Yogi magazine; Jane Friedman’s blog; Pick the Brain; the Spiritual Media blog; Literary Mama; several anthologies; and elsewhere. Where Do You Hang Your Hammock? Finding Peace of Mind While You Write, Publish, and Promote Your Book is her most recent book.

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Rachael Herron: 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 #263 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. And today I am talking to Bella Mahaya Carter and it’s one of those interviews, you’ve heard me do it before and you’ll hear me do it again, where I make friends with the person I am talking to. She was a total treat to talk to, and we talk about slowing down. It’s something I’m really, really bad at. So, I know that you will enjoy the interview when we get there. What’s going on around here? Again, I apologize for the sound, which is not up to my normal sound quality, but I am still in a co-working space, in a little town called Carterton. And, I just can’t attach my big microphone here, plus it’s pretty boomy in here so if you hear other voices, that’s because people are walking around doing things, doing their work. It’s a small town, but it’s, I’m really kind of falling for it. There was a fire overnight and burn down the grocery on the corner. And I was just so upset. It was as if it was my own little grocery and, this just such a small town, good small town feel. And, but tomorrow we go, no, wait, I’m sorry. Today, this afternoon, we get to drive to Wellington where we have a three-week stay in an old school house. I’m looking forward to exploring that. I really hope it has good Wi-Fi because I need it. Something that will support zoom, so I won’t have to be in a co-working space, that would be ideal. So fingers crossed on that. 

[00:01:56] Interestingly, when I was writing earlier, I was just doing my morning pages, which is three pages, longhand, a la Julia Cameron, and absentmindedly, I wrote, this afternoon, we’re going home. Going home to Wellington, going home to the place we hope will be our home. We hope we get that house. We will probably know by the time, next time I do an update on this show, hopefully we will have signed a lease. Everything crossed, if not, we will look for another place and that will be fine. But I’m pretty excited about home. Last night, actually last Sunday, we met up with friends of friends in a town called Palmerston North, a couple hours north of here, and had a lovely meal with new friends. And last night, our Airbnb hosts, Anna and Ross, they had us for dinner. They’ve never had any of their guests for dinner. So we felt very special and it was so lovely to be sitting at a dining table with them and their grandson, Dexter and their friend, Fiona. And we just laughed and ate chicken and gossiped and talked about politics in a really intelligent way, because all New Zealanders are so well apprised on everything that happens in world politics, including American politics. They know more than I do. 

[00:03:31] And, oh my goodness, Anna made a trifle for dessert. Lala has never had a trifle. And actually, we were just talking about that with the other people on Sunday when we were having lunch. And how delicious trifle is? And I thought in my mind, well, I love trifle. I was raised on trifle for dessert, which is kind of a, it’s a spongy cake soaked in liquor and topped with cream and berries throughout often flowers on the top of your very fancy, like my mother was and like Anna is, and I thought to myself, well, I’ll never have one of those because it’s soaked with Sherry, I think usually, and I don’t drink so. She made a trifle and it had come up in conversation that I don’t drink, and she made a separate trifle for me that was not alcoholic. And yes, I did have some for breakfast this morning and it was delicious. Trifle is always better the next day cause all the cream is soaked into the cake. Ugh. It’s just a delightful.

[00:04:30] Anyway, it just felt so good to be with people who could be friends. You could be friends. I am ready for friends. I am gasping for friends. As soon as we put boots down in Wellington, I am going to start going to more 12-step meetings. I’ve heard about a queer stitch and bitch group. I have, I want to get involved with all of the writers, all of the knitters. I need people. I need people since March of 2020, it’s mostly been me and Lala and for the last five months of moving and nine weeks of being here in New Zealand, it has been only me and Lala, and I love her and I am ready for an expanded repertoire of friends as well. This might be something I say every single damn week and I apologize for that. But as writers let’s bring it back to you as a writer, as a writer, you need a life. You cannot write all the time and you can’t wish that you were writing all the time, which is a lot of times what writing looks like. You have to have a life. You have to have an expanded network of people who supports you. So I hope that you have that. Even better than that is to have an expanded network of writers who get what you are going through. I do have a free slack channel. If you have nothing else, come join that. It’s always at the bottom of my podcast show notes. So you can always join that slack from there. Come say, hi, it’s not as active as I would like it to be. And I know that that’s on me cause I’m not as active as I would like to be over there. So let’s shake it up. Let’s have fun over in that slack channel. If you are interested in that, please come join us. 

[00:06:11] What’s going on in with work? This week, I started editing my very first novel, the one that I wrote in 2006. It became my first novel sold in 2008. It came out in 2010. It’s called How to Knit a Love Song. I got the rights back for the first five. Oh, the all- the whole series of five novels, plus a novella that’s attached. I got the rights back from my publisher in America and my Australian publisher, which was cool. So now I’m republishing those, however, I want to say how difficult this is. So I wrote that for the first, the first draft, of course, I’m not looking at the first draft, but I wrote it for the first time in 2006, that was 15 years ago. I am a much better writer now. For most of all of my most recent books, I normally have somewhere in my email, the copy edited version, because the editor will just kind of send it to you as a common courtesy. Here’s the final draft that we’re going to send before proofing. You don’t usually get the proof file, but you get the copy edited file. Back in the dark ages, 2008-2009, your copy edits would occur on paper. Blue pencil, paper, and then they would have put them in the mail, they would put this precious manuscript that has been slaved over for hours and hours and hours by a copywriter, in the mail to you, you know, signed delivery, you would get it, you would go through them and you would accept or reject on the page and then you would put that back in the mail and it would go to them. So for it, I gonna guess for at least three or four of these five books, I don’t have the copy edited version, which means that all of the gorgeous clean-up that my copy editor did, not just for typos, because that’s more of a proofing job, but for copy edits, you know, making the sentences more readable, checking for echoes and duplications of words when you’re, when you’re overusing a word. None of that is there.

[00:08:10] So I’m having to do it. And I always have this idea that this kind of thing goes quickly. It does not. It goes slowly. I slaved over it for hours of the day and I got 30 pages and it’s a 420-page book. And it’s due to my copy editor on Monday. It is Thursday as I record this. So we will see. Katrina, I hope I get it to you on time. Katrina is a freelance copy editor. And she’s been on my show, Katrina Turner. She’s fantastic. And when we have freelance editors, we honor that deadline because this is how they feed their families too. This is not just somebody working at a publishing house. Who’s going to get a bill, who’s going to get a paycheck, no matter what I do. No. I’m going to hit that deadline somehow. But what I am doing, I actually moved the whole thing into pro writing aid, which is a, an app that I really like. I think I’ve, am I paying yearly? I can’t remember. I may have just paid outright for this particular app. I think that’s what I did and it kind of copy edits on the way. I only have it turned on for typos, duplicated words, that kind of thing. And then I’m editing inside that because it will export it to a clean document and then I will send it to my copy editor and she’ll find a million more things. And that is what I am paying her to do, but it is, I always think it’s going to go fast. It just doesn’t go quickly. It is a special kind of agony to I’m super grateful that I get to do this. I’m super grateful that I get to bring some of the language into a better alignment that makes my soul happier. 

[00:09:47] I don’t have time to re-do every sentence. And honestly, I don’t need to, this is a beloved book. It is not my favorite book I ever wrote, but it is the favorite of many of my readers, I think because it has some big tropes that people really liked to read that kind of strokes that, oh, I want that juicy, delicious, terrible stalker guy plus hot rancher, plus wish fulfillment in a, the quest from a will, so all of that kind of fun stuff, people really liked this book. I don’t need to stress myself out over it so much, and I am enjoying it. And I’m trying to enjoy the process rather than get lost in every sentence that I couldn’t make better. I need to remember the 80% rule. I’m going to do 80% of my best. I can’t do a 100% of my best. I could labor over this 15-year-old book for months and I absolutely refuse to do so. I’m going to try to do it in four days. 

[00:10:50] That is what I am up to this week. I will get back to you next week on how it went. So, I hope that you are getting some writing done in some format. 15 minutes before you go to work in the morning is enough to make you a writer. A writer writes. That’s all. That’s all. Are you writing? You’re a writer. Are you not writing? That doesn’t make you not a writer, you’re still a writer. You’re listening to writing podcasts. You know you’re a writer in your heart. Just claim that a little bit. Find me online, where I live. Tell me how it’s going. I’d love to hear about that. And let’s jump into the interview. I wish you happy writing. Next week I hope I have some good news about our rental. Okay, bye ya’ll!

[00:11:36] Hey, you’re a writer. Did you know that I send out a free weekly email of writing encouragement? Go sign up for it at www.rachaelherron.com/write and you’ll also get my Stop Stalling and Write PDF with helpful tips you can use today to get some of your own writing done. Okay, now onto the interview.

[00:11:53] Rachael Herron: Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show today, Bella Mahaya Carter. Hello, Bella! 

[00:11:59] Bella Mahaya Carter: Hello, Rachael. Thank you for having me. I’m delighted to be with you today. 

[00:12:03] Rachael Herron: It’s a thrill to talk to you. And a lot of times, what I love happens is when you make the connection before the show, which we have already done. So now we’re just like rolling full steam into the interview, having already enjoyed each other’s presence. But let me give you a little bio for those who might not know you. Bella Mahaya Carter is a creative writing teacher, empowerment coach, speaker, and author of an award-winning memoir, Raw: My Journey from Anxiety to Joy, and Secrets of My Sex, a collection of narrative poems. She has worked with hundreds of writers since 2008 and has degrees in literature, film, and spiritual psychology. Her poetry, essays, fiction, and interviews have appeared in Mind, Body, Green; The Sun; Lilith; Fearless Soul; Writer’s Bone; Women Writers, Women’s Books; Chic Vegan; Bad Yogi magazine; Jane Friedman’s blog; Pick the Brain; the Spiritual Media blog; Literary Mama; several anthologies; and elsewhere. Where Do You Hang Your Hammock? Finding Peace of Mind While You Write, Publish, and Promote Your Book is her most recent book. So welcome! 

[00:13:10] Bella Mahaya Carter: Thank you, Rachel. 

[00:13:11] Rachael Herron: We’re going to talk all things writing today, but, so I’m a little bit backed up in episodes right now. So your podcasts won’t be coming out for a little while, but as you and I are speaking, it just came out last week. Is that right?

[00:13:22] Bella Mahaya Carter: It came out last Tuesday, June 1st and June 3rd was my virtual launch and it was so much fun. 

[00:13:28] Rachael Herron: How did the virtual launch go? 

[00:13:30] Bella Mahaya Carter: It was fabulous! I was, you know, I really got to benefit from the people who, the authors, who I published with. She writes press, and we have this Facebook community of women authors. It’s fabulous. And we pick each other’s brains. And when I was completing this book, I knew that I had to include a chapter on the virtual launch because it was 2020, and people were having to pivot to the virtual launch. And, you know, I got to speak to three people and interview them and pick their brains. And I got so much good information. So that by the time 2021 came around, I was ready. I don’t know, like those brave authors in 2020. 

[00:14:06] Rachael Herron: Oh. My God.

[00:14:07] Bella Mahaya Carter: Bless them. It was not easy to have to make, you know, all, they had all their launch plans in place and they had to change everything. 

[00:14:18] Rachael Herron: I recently launched a book and I don’t ever want to do it any other way. I love the virtual lunch. 

[00:14:19] Bella Mahaya Carter: That’s great. 

[00:14:20] Rachael Herron: Absolutely love it. What would be your top tip for a writer doing a virtual launch? 

[00:14:25] Bella Mahaya Carter: Oh, I have a lot of tips. Top tip would be, pay attention to the frame. You know, thinking that as a set, it is a set. It’s your, it’s your background. So pay attention to what’s in it. You know, don’t set up your computer in a place that’s busy, that’s cluttered, that’s crowded, that is visually stressful. 

[00:14:45] Rachael Herron: Yeah. And, for those of you, few of you who watch on YouTube, look at Bella’s background right now, it is perfect. I will describe it for the listeners. She’s got her book over to the right and behind her, you can see that her fireplace burning cheerfully. And then there’s a red tablecloth with fresh flowers and a red chair. And there’s outside greenery behind her. Your shirt goes with the painting behind you. Was that on purpose or was that on accident?

[00:15:13] Bella Mahaya Carter: That’s, you know, I would say that was unintentionally intentional. I mean, the truth is like I bought that painting years ago at Goodwill for $5 and I love it. It’s in my living room and I once had a photo shoot at my house and I wore, and that was years ago, and I have, I’ve wore for that photo shoot in the living room, what I’m wearing now. 

[00:15:34] Rachael Herron: The jewel tone. 

[00:15:36] Bella Mahaya Carter: So I think, yeah, I think I just kind of unconsciously remembered that and knew it would work in the living room. I haven’t used like, for my launch. I was in my office. I was, there were books behind me. I had pink flowers to match my book cover. I thought about in terms of wardrobe I thought about, okay, well then I actually went out and bought a green top and a pink top. And then before the event, I tried them on, I set up my zoom camera. I looked at it and with the help of my husband, who’s a great partner, and we’re like, I don’t know, those don’t really look that great. So I went into my closet and I just pulled out a white top. And the white top, you know, it was just something I had in my closet and I put it on and I looked at myself and I, and for some reason, you know, it was kind of working. And then I thought to myself, oh, that’s interesting. I’m not the hammock. I’m not the trees. I’m the sky. 

[00:16:25] Rachael Herron: Oh, I love that!

[00:16:27] Bella Mahaya Carter: And it was unconscious. But, that’s how it was.

[00:16:31] Rachael Herron: Wow! And the testing of it, the iteration is what I really, really like. That is something that I almost put no thought into. And right now, I’m living in the stage house with a strange painting that isn’t mine and weird curtains. 

[00:16:44] Bella Mahaya Carter: That’s actually really cool. That painting is really cool. 

[Read more…] about Ep. 263: Bella Mahaya Carter on How to Slow Down

Ep. 262: J.L. Torres on How to Read Like a Writer

J.L. Torres is the author of The Family Terrorist and Other Stories, the novel The Accidental Native, and the poetry collection Boricua Passport. His short story collection Migrations won the inagural Tomás Rivera Book Prize and was just released from LARB Libros. Born in Puerto Rico and raised in the South Bronx, he now lives in Plattsburgh, New York and teaches American literature, US ethnic literatures, and creative writing at SUNY Plattsburgh. He holds a Ph.D. from University of Southern California and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University.

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Rachael Herron: 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 #262 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. I am so glad that you are here with me today as I talked to J.L. Torres on reading like a writer, and what that can do for our work, for our stories, for kind of our brains as writers doing this weird thing that we do, so I know that you’re going to enjoy the interview portion of today’s episode. What is going on around here? If you watch on the YouTube, you can see, I don’t know why this light makes my face bright red, but it is. I’m going for tomato Rachael in the house. I am in a co-working space in a very small town called Carterton. We are staying in a very small Airbnb and I needed to get out and also I needed a fast Wi-Fi. So I’m very glad that this place is here and that I get to use it. And I have been using it wisely. I finished the audio editing of the 10th anniversary re-release of A Life in Stitches. And I tell you what, I am going to look into perhaps saving some money to get someone to edit that next time. What happens, what I’m talking about when I’m talking about doing this editing is before we left the states, I lined my closet because it was empty. We’d moved everything out of it. And I thought this is a great time. And I needed to get it done, lined my closet with blankets and things to make it a soundproof or sound, what’s the word? Buffered. That’s not the right word, but you know what I mean, area to record in and I recorded it. 

[00:01:55] What you do when you’re recording an audio book is you do not, it’s just like writing a first draft, and even a second draft. You don’t make it perfect as you go, you read as carefully as you can, and then you stumble and then you stop and then you keep going. You pick it up where you left off and you just keep speaking. So there are just a lot of speak-o’s inside the file that you need to get rid of. Some days I could tell that I was a little bit more awake and smarter and brighter, and there would be whole, you know, like maybe 45 seconds that I would go without an error that I needed to redo and cut out the thing that I had messed up. And then sometimes it would be phrase by phrase. And stitching those pieces together so that you can’t tell that there’s been a break, it just takes hours and hours and hours. Probably I think it takes, well, let’s say, I think it takes me about an hour per chapter. 

[00:01:52] These were 2000 word chapters and there are 25 chapters, which really isn’t that bad. Right? You can’t do that in a week because you would burn out and exhaust yourself, but you also can’t do it the way that I was doing it, which was about one chapter a week. That would have stretched out to a lot of weeks, 25 weeks. It was something I didn’t want to spend on it. So when I made this decision like two weeks ago to go hard and focus on one project at a time, instead of trying to spread myself thin over all the projects, I always come back to this resolution and it works really well. And then suddenly two weeks later, I’m completely done with the editing, getting the book uploaded. I’m super excited to get it out there. I’m really proud of this 10th anniversary edition. I got to clean up the essays. I got to rearrange them. I got to add essays to kind of fill in what’s happened in the last 10 years. And I love the book so today, in fact, I’m concentrating on doing things like making the vellum proof for the interior of the print book and looking at cover choices. And that kind of stuff is so exciting to meet, no lie that I woke up at four o’clock this morning, I don’t remember why. But I laid there and thought about making these decisions for the next hour and 15 minutes.

[00:04:15] I love writing. I love having written and I really love revising. But, there’s a big part of me that just loves the business aspect too. And when you give me complete permission to sit down and think hard about the business and the uploading and the formatting and the marketing, I get really, really excited. And I love that I’m in this part of the process right now. So that is that’s super exciting. That is going forward a pace. Where are we in New Zealand? We are in, are we here last week? I don’t think we were. I, we are in the Wairarapa like I said, near Carterton. We’re staying on a farm, a cattle and sheep farm, and we’re staying at a place called The Good End of the Shed. And it really is a shed that they have made into a small Airbnb. It’s kind of more like Airbnb, which I’m not the most fond of, because the host is kind of right there. And, I- we kind of like a little bit more autonomy. However, this host brings us fresh milk from the cow and fresh bread and her homemade preserves. And so that kind of thing is divine. 

[00:05:26] One thing I wanted to mention is that if you follow me on social media, I love social media, please come follow me on all the places. I tend to post a lot of exciting, fun, beautiful pictures of what we are doing, what we are surrounded by. Every week, it’s a little bit different. Last week I was picturing, I was posting pictures of gorgeous Wellington. Right now, it’s these incredible green fields that we’re surrounded by. And I want to really state clearly, cause I, I have gotten a few comments that’s sound like people are saying, wow, it must be nice to be able to do that. Oh yes, it is! It was actually really nice to be able to do this. However, keep, just don’t ever forget that when you are watching people on social media, they have real lives. And I think that you and I, because you listen to this podcast, we have a special relationship. And, I can be very honest with you and tell you that it is also really hard. This move has not been easy, emotionally, physically, mentally. 

[00:06:31] We see amazing things and we’re having so much fun. I think one of the most fun things yesterday was driving with Lala on the country roads because she hadn’t spent any time driving on the left side of the road. I’ve been doing all of it, and it was nerve wracking, and a little bit terrifying. I kept thinking she was going to drift off the verge off the left-hand side of the road. Guess what? She didn’t. I was just being a control freak. But also, leaving everything we knew behind getting rid of most of our possessions selling our house, losing three animals in a year and having to leave the other two behind, having no friends in place in C2, yet. It’s been making me need to really take care of myself. And there was a week last week where I had two migraines and I never really know whether I have the migraines because I’m not doing well, or I’m not doing well because I have the migraines. It’s a chicken and egg kind of situation. But, there’s something that we talk about in 12 step groups, which is, pulling a geographic a lot of people move because they think there’ll be a new person, a different person when they get to the place that they land. Of course, that is always a fallacy. It is not true. It doesn’t happen. I am in this place and I am still me and me being me, I still need to do the healthy things that keep my brain healthy and that give me the energy pennies, like Becca Sime always talks about. 

[00:08:12] I have to spend energy pennies on a daily basis. We’re spending more energy pennies on daily basis in a pandemic. I’m spending extra right now because I’m always in a new place every week. I’m dealing with new things, new questions, new issues. And if I am not concentrate on making those energy pennies so that I have them to spend, I end up crashed out and depleted. And it’s just something I’ve been thinking a lot about. So I have been going back to basics and eating well and sleeping as much as I can, and exercising, taking these long walks. Well, one of the really cool things is that when you do long walks, when you’re traveling, it’s always new and incredible and fresh. So that is, that’s been really fun and generative, and I need to do yoga and I need to do my meditation and I need to fit all of that stuff in. Otherwise, I just turn into a grumpy person, feeling like I did when I was grumpy in California. 

[00:09:19] The thing about me and my wife is our happiness set point. They talk about, I think the happiness set point is worth about 40% of your happiness, I think is just kind of the way you were genetically born. Both of our genetic happiness points are pretty high. So even on our most worried days, when we were talking about moving, we would always come back to the thing well and say, well, we’re normally pretty content. We’re probably going to be pretty content there. And that is the way we have the feeling. But you may have been hearing it in my voice, in the episodes. I’m getting tired. We are here for another week because we didn’t want to move around too much. And then we moved to what will hopefully be our last Airbnb for three weeks in Wellington. And then hopefully we will get the house we are dreaming of to rent. None of that is a for sure. And I can admit right now that my heart would be broken if we don’t get the house. We’re so excited about it, so things are stressful, things are hard and things are still good and I’m still grateful every moment. And, I’m so happy that I have my work to cling to. Some of my roughest days recently have been the days I try to take off. Why is my hair sticking straight up like that? Just noticed on the video. 

[00:10:43] For me taking time off has to be pretty carefully planned so that I don’t end up in kind of a downward funk spiral, and allowing myself to do a little work on some of my days off, really does help sometimes. So that’s something I got to keep an eye on, but when I am working all day on the stuff that I love to do, like thinking about the metadata for this new 10th anniversary, re-released, I, it just feels so good. It feels so good to my brain. And, yeah, I’m saying this out loud, kind of as a reminder to myself, and maybe as a reminder to you. If you are not writing, kind of ask yourself about those energy pennies that you need to spend to sit down and start the work. I find I spend the most just to sit down and start the work, the first five minutes. Once the first five minutes are done, the rest of the day is so much easier. If you don’t have the energy pennies to sit down and do the work, how can you make them? 

[00:11:43] What very small change or a couple of changes can you make that will give you a little bit more? That has been pivotal to me during this incredible time of the last five months of being homeless and upheaval. Yeah, we’ve only been here for two months, but, a little bit more than two months, but, we’ve been homeless and living out of suitcases for about 5. Oh boy, mama’s done. Yeah, I’m done. Hopefully, hopefully soon we will find a place to rest and I can’t wait for it. Thank you for being with me here. As I kind of wander through what’s going on in my brain. I always, always appreciate that you are here and that what I say may spark something in your own mind or when I talk about with my guests, may spark an idea, may give you a little bit of a revelation about how to do your work a little bit more reliably, with more joy. So with that said, let’s go jump into the interview with J.L. and I wish you very happy writing my friends. I’ll talk to you soon. 

[00:12:53] 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 binges 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 at 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!

[00:13:53] Rachael Herron: Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show JL Torres. Hello, JL!

[00:13:59] J.L. Torres: Hi, Rachael, and thank you for inviting me. It’s a pleasure to be here. 

[00:14:02] Rachael Herron: I am thrilled to have you, let me give you a short introduction here for people who might not know you. J.L. Torres is the author of The Family Terrorist and Other Stories, the novel The Accidental Native, and the poetry collection Boricua Passport. His short story collection Migrations won the inaugural Tomás Rivera Book Prize and was just released from LARB Libros. Born in Puerto Rico and raised in the South Bronx, he now lives in Plattsburgh, New York and teaches American literature, US ethnic cultures, oh sorry, ethnic literatures, and creative writing at SUNY Plattsburgh. He holds a Ph.D. from University of Southern California and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. Welcome and congratulations on Migrations.

[00:14:44] J.L. Torres: Oh, thank you so much.

[00:14:45] Rachael Herron: I was lucky enough to be given a copy and it’s just, it’s beautiful writing. It’s incredible writing. So I am so happy to have you on the show to talk about your writing process with our listeners. Maybe you can start out by telling us how does being born in Puerto Rico inform you as a writer because it informs everything about you as a writer, I think.

[00:15:11] J.L. Torres: Right. Well, I mean, if you start from the premise that you write what you know. What I know about a lot about is really the experience of being a Puerto Rican, diasporigan, living in the United States, and a lot of my writing really focuses on that experience.

[00:15:26] Rachael Herron: Yeah. What is your writing practice look like today with all of these other things that you’re doing with the teaching and the, how does your writing fit into your life?

 [00:15:36] J.L. Torres: All right. So that’s a good question. I mean you know, being an academic, we only have these little spurts of time that we can actually write. So I’ve always been able to schedule, you know, my writing projects during that time. Otherwise it’s very difficult. I mean, I, you know, I think a lot of people don’t realize how busy and academic can be. Besides the classroom teaching, you also have meetings and you have all these other stuff that you have to do. So I just try to manage that time. Now I’m retiring. So actually,

[00:16:09] Rachael Herron: Oh, congratulations.

[00:16:10] J.L. Torres: After 40 years. So now, for the first time in my life, I find that I’m actually a full-time writer. 

[00:16:16] Rachael Herron: Oh. So now have you already retired or are you just like right in the process of doing it?

[00:16:20] J.L. Torres: In the process, you know, September will be the first, it will be the official.

[00:16:25] Rachael Herron: I wonder how things will change for you? 

[00:16:29] J.L. Torres: Well, besides more time to travel and when the pandemic madness ends, more time to write. And that means that I can really, I have several projects that have kept, you know, kind of at a distance because I would take more time. With more time, I think I can, I’ve never had problems when I have the time to write. I’ve never really experienced a writer’s block or anything like that. It’s just when I have the time, I’m very productive, but it’s very difficult when you know, schedule, when you have to navigate, you know, all this stuff, besides teaching and grading. I grade a lot because I teach a lot of writing and besides, you know, all that and then social life and family life.

[Read more…] about Ep. 262: J.L. Torres on How to Read Like a Writer

Ep. 261: Dr. Saumya Dave on 200 Rejections Before Success

Dr. Saumya Dave is a writer, resident psychiatrist, and co-founder of thisisforHER. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times, Huffington Post, Refinery29, and others.What a Happy Family is her most recent novel.

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Rachael Herron: 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 #261 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. And I’m so pleased that you were here today, we are talking to Saumya Dave and we’re talking about her overnight success, which took 10 years to occur her 10-year path to publication. And she was at the light. You are going to love the episode. I know that’s predictable when I say that but luckily, I only put people on the show who I like. So, if I ever did have a disastrous interview, you wouldn’t hear it, so it’s pretty, so yes, I do say those words over and over again, and I am always delighted to know that it’s going to be a good interview and you’re gonna enjoy it. That’s fun. 

[00:01:02] What’s, where am I? Where’s Rachael today? I am not using the good mic, so I apologize if the sound quality is not as good as you’re used to. I am on the 31st floor of the preliminary tower in Wellington, New Zealand. And I have to my right over here, an incredible view of Wellington. We are so happy to be here. We checked in on Sunday. Today is, I don’t know Thursday. So we’ve been here for here for a few days. And again, Wellington is just the town that we love. It just embraces us. We are both city girls and we love the energy here. It’s a beautiful and honestly, very small town. It’s a big city with a very small town feel kind of like if San Francisco was one eighth the size, and I’m just making that up. It must be much, much smaller than that. I’m not sure what the numbers are, but it kind of has that feeling and it just feels good. We got to tour on Tuesday night, the house that we are really hoping to be able to rent. We are meeting with the landlord, not until the 11th. So another three weeks or so. And at that point, I will be able to tell you whether or not we have it. But it is an amazing place.

[00:02:24] It’s kind of rickety and ramshackle and three bedrooms and up on the hill with an incredible view. And it would be perfect for us. It would just be perfect. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this on the show, but the people who are living the house, it’s a Kiwi and his American wife and they are moving to the states and they have to get rid of their all of their possessions in order to do it. Just like we just did. We have no possessions. We could actually buy their possessions and just move our suitcases in. And then we would be home. We’d have furniture and kitchen appliances that are the right voltage. There’s a KitchenAid and a carpet cleaner and a washer and a dryer and a bed and a really comfortable couch all in place. A beautiful yard, beautiful view from the yard, space for a garden. I mean, seriously, I think both Lala and I are scared to hope very hard sometimes for something to really, really want something. Neither of us really believed that we’d even get on the plane to New Zealand. We were always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

[00:03:32] So if the other shoe drops and we don’t get the house, it’ll be okay. And it’ll be for a reason. And that’ll be fine, but both of us are very hopeful that we get it. We do have some things on a ship coming to us not very much stuff, but stuff like, you know, boxes of books, boxes of journals, Lala’s art supplies, instruments, some kitchen stuff that aren’t electric and that we have just found out it’s coming in this weekend. We have no place to put it. Going to have to find a storage unit. I really thought, we thought, they thought that it would take another month or two, especially with all the shipping delays right now. No, no, right here. It’s right here right now. So we’re going to be dealing with that in the next week or so. And, in the meantime I got a wicked, wicked migraine on Tuesday, I guess it was, had to cancel everything that day. And I always feel crappy when that happens, but it had been looming for a while. So hopefully, usually when I get a migraine, it kind of clears everything out and I don’t get another one for four to six weeks.

[00:04:37] So fingers crossed on that front, but that was pretty miserable. And now I’m up, my brain is almost it. Fighting fit again, almost at full capacity. So I have been working, I am almost done with audio book edits for Life and Stitches since I decided to focus on just that until it is done and I should finish that this week and be able to get it off my plate and I’m getting further a little bit further engineered because I personally have had problems in the past taking audacity products, projects, and putting them in the exact right parameters that ACX, which is the audible platform through Amazon will accept. You know, you have to have your noise gates at a certain level and your floors at a certain. And in the past, I’ve just paid somebody to do that last little finishing up. So I’ll do that and then it’ll get uploaded and then it’ll take a long time to become available. But that’s almost here. So that’s exciting. That’s the work I’ve been doing. And we move again on Sunday to a new place about an hour north of Wellington for about a week and a half.

[00:05:47] So that should be fun. Being in a new place next week. Yeah. Yeah. We’re getting a little tired of moving every week. It was pretty awesome to be locked down. I do not want to be locked down again at all ever again. But moving every seven days, packing up everything we own and doing it again, it is so cool. And we’re also ready to stay in one spot for a while. So It feels like it’s working perfectly. We have this amazing rental happening in Wellington in about two weeks and we’re going to be able to stay there for three weeks and it’s an old school house. So I am excited to show that to you if you ever watch on the YouTubes and I think that’s everything that is going on around here.

[00:06:33] I would like to thank new patrons, Rachel Walsh. Thank you, Rachel and Dina Mason. Hello, Dina. Thank you so much everyone for your patronage. It is the way that I support doing the show, support the time that goes into it. It’s cheap for you to listen, but it is not free to provide, so you patrons are so, so, so appreciated by me. You can always go to patreon.com/Rachael, and look at that. But now without further ado, let us jump into the interview with Saumya Dave. I know you’re going to enjoy it, and I wish you very happy writing. Be very kind to yourselves, my friends, get a little writing done and be kind to yourself. That’s part of the writer’s job. Okay, let’s go!

[00:07:21] Hey, you’re a writer. Did you know that I send out a free weekly email of writing encouragement? Go sign up for it at www.rachaelherron.com/write  and you’ll also get my Stop Stalling and Write PDF with helpful tips you can use today to get some of your own writing done. Okay, now onto the interview. 

[00:07:47] Rachael Herron: Okay. Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show Dr. Saumya Dave. Hello there! 

[00:07:46] Dr. Saumya Dave: Hi, so great to be here. 

[00:07:47] Rachael Herron: It’s an honor to have you, I can’t wait to talk to you about your book and about your writing process, which is what we talk about on this show. But let me give you a little bit of an introduction before we go. Saumya Dave is a writer, resident, psychiatrist, and co-founder of thisisforHER. Her writing has been featured in the New York Times. Huffington Post, Refinery29, and others. What a Happy Family is her most recent novel. And by the time this airs, because I’m a little bit backed up with episodes, it will have been out. So, but while we’re talking right now, it’s not out yet. How are you feeling about the release? This is your second novel, right? 

[00:08:21] Dr. Saumya Dave: This is and second novel to release during a pandemic. So it’s been quite a surreal time. I think for everyone, no matter what’s been going on, but then I don’t think it’s fully set in yet.

[00:08:31] Rachael Herron: You’re the first author I’ve talked to, who has had two books released during the pandemic. So you are like, you’re like old hat. You’ve got it dialed. I had a book come out a couple of weeks ago and it was my first book since the pandemic. And I have to say, I love a virtual launch party. 

[00:08:47] Dr. Saumya Dave: That’s a good point.

[00:08:50] Rachael Herron: It was the best. I didn’t have to worry about getting people to the bookstore, making sure the bookstore wasn’t disappointed, you know, so that was awesome. 

[00:08:58] Dr. Saumya Dave: No that’s true. There are a lot of benefits and I think I’ve been able to meet a lot more people, a lot more readers, writers, so many other people because of the virtual events. So I agree with you 

[00:09:06] Rachael Herron: Yes!  Because they get to come and where do you live again?

[00:09:08] Dr. Saumya Dave: I live in Brooklyn, how about you?

[00:09:11] Rachael Herron: I’m in Oakland. So I’m in exactly the same city, just on the other side of the country. So we, and we’re lucky to have amazing bookstores and all of these to support, but it is just also nice to stay at home and wear pajama bottoms if we want to 

[00:09:28] Dr. Saumya Dave: Of course, 

[00:09:29] Rachael Herron: Exactly. I’m actually wearing jeans today for the first time in weeks and it doesn’t feel right. 

[00:09:34] Dr. Saumya Dave: I haven’t gotten there yet, but you’re inspiring me to think about it 

[00:09:37] Rachael Herron: Well I had to buy a new pair to do it. I will admit, yes. Well, let’s talk about writing and your writing process. So when the pandemic started then, where you all writing? Were you already writing book number two then? It must’ve been

[00:09:57] Dr. Saumya Dave: I was. So I was writing book number two. I actually finished my first draft right before I went into labor with my son and then spent the pandemic year promoting book one. And then also writing the other drafts of book two. So it was, again, I think an adventurous year for everyone, but I definitely dealt with a lot of different things. 

[Read more…] about Ep. 261: Dr. Saumya Dave on 200 Rejections Before Success

Ep. 260: Lexie Elliott on How to Make Your Main Character Feel Authentic

Lexie Elliott graduated from Oxford University, where she obtained a doctorate in theoretical physics. A keen sportswoman, she swam and played waterpolo at university, and later swam the English Channel solo. She works in fund management in London, where she lives with her husband and two sons. How to Kill Your Best Friend is her most recent release. 

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Rachael Herron: 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 #260 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. And I’m so excited that you’re here with me today, as I talk to Lexie Elliott, who was so cool to talk to. I absolutely loved her thriller, How to Kill Your Best Friend. Couldn’t put it down. It was about swimming and you know I’m kind of passionate about swimming and we talk about using authenticity in your main character and also how threading in clues might be easier than you think a thing that we have talked about here recently on the show. 

[00:00:52] So you will enjoy this delightful interview with her. In the meantime, what’s going on around here? Well, I am coming at you from a brand new office, which is a very, very small bedroom in an apartment in Mount Montgomery, which is a beach town just outside Tauranga and North island of New Zealand. We are here for one week. It is bucketing down rain. Hopefully you can’t hear that right now but I have been going for walks every day. However, it’s pouring so much that today might not be a walking day. Honestly, it is that rainy. Our first full day here, we climbed the Mount, which was intense. I don’t know if I’ve ever walked up something that was that steep for that long, but we made it. And that was something I’m very proud of because I am very strong, but neither my wife nor I are that physically fit. We’re always trying to do a little bit more, but that was a challenge, but I did not want to come to a place known as the Mount and not to climb the Mount, and we did it. And the view was incredible from the top. 

[00:02:05] We went up one side and came down the other water surrounding us, ships moving, it’s kind of this wonderful mix of beach and industry, which is something I really like coming from Oakland as we look out our windows, we can see the same kind of cranes every once in a while we will look out and there’s an entire huge building moving past, but it is a container ship. So that is really cool. And yeah, after this we are going to be moving down toward Wellington this weekend because we are going to go look at the house that we might rent. So, that would be the end of October that would be happening. So that is an exciting move to make. And after that, I have no idea where we’re going. We have one week booked in Wellington and then nothing in the future. So, because I’m scared, I’m scared that at any moment, a community case of COVID could be found outside Auckland and the country would shut down again and we would not be able to move Airbnb at all. So we’re really trying to take it as one day at a time as we can, and still live our lives at the moment, we are currently still in level two, which means that everything happens except you wear masks indoors unless you’re eating or exercising.

[00:03:24] So it’s quite awesome. We’re going to go to a mall later today because there are some things we need that we haven’t been able to buy and it’s going to be really exciting. That’s our big outing for today. And but Auckland, poor Auckland still remains in level four, not leaving the house. Seeing no one, nothing open, no restaurants, no nothing because they’re still having 10 or 15 cases a day report. So they’ve still got it locked down. No one out, no one in, it was very exciting going through Auckland. The government had told me that we could, however, I think I said last time that it had been reported that- or not, perhaps you won’t get through. So at the border, when we’re talking to the police who are there, I showed them my permission from the government because we are moving residences. We don’t have a permanent resident, so this isn’t like vacation for us. This is we’re moving around, leaving with all of our belongings. So he let us in to the level four zone which is very much like entering a zombie land there had been traffic up until then. And then when we entered Auckland region, there’s just nothing moving, nothing moving. We were driving through quietly and it only struck me when we were inside the perimeter that, oh my gosh! I’ve been worried about getting in.

[00:04:47] I should have been more worried about getting out because now I’m in the infection zone. And they’re not going to want to let us out. So we needed to not stop. Obviously we’re not going to stop. It was illegal for us to stop even for gas or a bathroom but Google maps kept trying to reroute us around the roadblocks. And I didn’t understand that for a while. It’s just like I was following Google maps, blindly, and it kept putting us on side roads and what are we doing? And we’re also killing time. They’re tracking our license plate as we move through so they’ll know if it, if we’ve got an extra half hour not accounted for what we’ll redoing. Were we making out with strangers in the streets and they’re not going to let us out now. So we finally managed to get to the border and the man let us out. And then we were free back in level two, but it was a very, very strange, strange experience, strange feeling. So we are here. I am writing. I am really trying right now.

[00:05:47] Don’t laugh at me cause I’m changing my process again, but I’m trying to focus on one thing at a time instead of the two or three things that I’m usually focusing on. I read 4,000 weeks, over the last couple of days by Oliver – can’t remember his last name, but it’s going to pop right up if you Google it 4,000 weeks. Absolutely the best time management book I have ever read. And it’s really on how time management sucks. And how we should just let it go. And from that book, I am focusing on one thing at a time. So right now I am just trying to finish the edit of Life and Stitches audio book. So that can be done. And instead of taking the next six to eight weeks, I can have it to Ed, my assistant hopefully next week. And then I can get back into 90 Days to Done, the book and work on one damn thing at a time. I do get distracted. I love shiny objects as many writers do. 

[00:06:36] Okay. Quickly, let us thank a new patrons Jillian Pryce, thank you. Karina, my cousin who lives in the North Island. Thank you, Karina! Karen Pryce and Dalia Hamza Constantine. What great names that we have. Oh, and Tracy Devlin. Oh, and Sandy Miranda. I may have said some of these names before. Sorry about that if I did. Welcome to all of you, anyone who is interested can support this show, which runs on your donations. You may have noticed that I don’t do ads. I don’t take ads from other companies. You support me in doing this work. And writing those essays of my heart. So thank you very much. That’s over at patreon.com/Rachael, and that means you want me to continue doing this and I want to continue doing this. So now let’s jump into the interview with Lexie Elliott. I know you’re going to enjoy it, and we will talk soon my writing friends, get a little writing done. Come tell me about it. Alright, here we go. 

[00:07:36] This episode is brought to you by my book, Fast Draft Your Memoir, write your life story in 45 hours, which is by the way, totally doable. And I tell you how. It’s the same class I teach in the continuing studies program at Stanford each year. And I’ll let you in on a secret, even if you have no interest in writing a memoir yet, the book has everything I’ve ever learned about the process of writing and of revision and of story structure, and of just doing this thing that’s so hard and yet all we want to do. Pick it up today. 

[00:08:09] Rachael Herron: Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show, Lexie Elliott. Hello, Lexie!

[00:08:13] Lexie Elliott: Hello! Thank you very much for having me. 

[00:08:16] Rachael Herron: It’s wonderful to talk to you. I loved your book. Let me give you a little bit of an introduction here, and then we’re going to talk about all things writing. Elliott graduated from Oxford University, where she obtained a doctorate in theoretical physics. A keen sportswoman, she swam and played waterpolo at university, and later swam the English Channel solo. She works in fund management in London where, I said fund management, but it does sound like fun management too, where she lives with her husband and two sons. “How to Kill Your Best Friend” is her most recent release. And I have to say, it was such a fun read with a title like that, how could I resist? Can I ask, so the title is How to Kill Your Best Friend. Did you, was that a working title or is that one you came up with later? 

[00:09:03] Lexie Elliott: Yeah, I pretty much came up with a title and then had to find a novel to fit it. To be honest.

[00:09:09] Rachael Herron: It’s kind of obvious because it’s such a good title. You have to have that

[00:09:15] Lexie Elliott: Yeah. Once I had that, I was just like, ‘a-huh!’ that’s interesting. And then you pull on the thread, like, why would you even want to do that? What situation would make you want to kill your best friend and then suddenly it all started to unfold for me? 

[00:09:27] Rachael Herron: Yes. And also the swimming was so, I don’t think I’ve ever read a thriller with swimming as a pivotal plot point. And I’m a really big swimmer. I mean, I’m not a really big swimmer. I’ve never swam anything like a channel, but I do love open water swimming and it was so fun to read. In the beginning it’s, you know, it’s just there as part of who they are, but at the end it’d be really becomes plot dependent. How was that to write all this swimming? 

[00:09:55] Lexie Elliot: Well, it was fun. I mean, it helps that, you know, it’s an environment that I’m so familiar with and to really know your setting as a writer, as you must know it really, really helps, so I could sort of just immerse myself in it and think about situations I’d been in and what it felt to swim and daytime, or to night time swimming with your friends and so on. So, yeah that actually was one of the more fun bits of it to write and it come up with the idea when I was, on holiday back when, you know, you remember that when we, 

[00:10:30] Rachael Herron: Yeah, when we used to do that?

[00:10:33] Lexie Elliot: Yeah. So we were on holiday somewhere and it was at this you know, rather exotic chem eco resort. And I remember thinking, wow! This is actually, this could be quite freaky if you were, you know, if all the staff disappeared and you were on your own, this could be quite a scary environment, and it all sort of started to kind of come together in my mind, this group of friends in this, you know, resort environment. And then of course you’ve got the water, and it with my background, I think it presented itself very obviously to me, 

[00:11:08] Rachael Herron: It was so, so realistic in terms of like, being in the water and fighting the water and the water as this extra antagonist at times, and then also this extra protagonist at times. So I just, I really, really, really enjoyed it. I could not put it down. So thank you for it. Let’s talk a little bit about your writing process. So you’re obviously very busy. You don’t have a full-time job. You’ve got kids, plus you’re writing books. When do you do it? How do you get the writing done? 

[00:11:38] Lexie Elliott: Well, I mean, I’m actually in a bit of a point of change in my life where I have in fact resigned from my city job. So, I

[00:11:47] Rachael Herron: Congratulations!

[00:11:49] Lexie Elliott: Yes! So, yeah, I’ve taken that decision to focus a bit more on the writing, but typically what I was doing was actually three days in the city, the rest of the time at home writing and obviously family things, and it was very difficult. I mean, I had to take vacation to finish books, which isn’t really what you want to be doing with your vacation. I want to be spending it with your family, and that’s, you know, part of the decision process that I’ve gone through to focus fully on the books. And typically pre-COVID, I would I would go and write in a cafe, actually, the cafe, a local leisure center that we’re members of was my favorite place to write because I could just sit there and not be distracted by anything around the house. They do really good coffee. Nobody really bothered me. The food was healthy, if you were going to stay for lunch as well. And was the ideal place  

[Read more…] about Ep. 260: Lexie Elliott on How to Make Your Main Character Feel Authentic

Ep. 259: How Do You Actually Fast-Draft a Novel? Bonus MiniEpisode

In this bonus mini-episode, Rachael talks about how to actually break free from your outline and get down to the good stuff: actually fast-drafting. How do you start? What does skeletoning your work look like? When do you know you’re ready? Don’t miss this episode, brought to you by Rachael’s awesome patrons. 

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Rachael Herron: 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 #259, this is a bonus mini episode answering your questions. If you are at the Patreon level of $5 and up a month, you can ask me any questions you want. I’m only got one today, so it’s going to be a short episode, but it’s a good one. And it’s going back to my roots of what I really love to talk about. So let’s get into it. This is from Kate.

[00:00:41] Hello again, Kate. All right. She says related to her previous question which was the last mini episode, as I shared, I’m having a problem finishing drafts and hence, I’m working on my outline with story bits and mystery bits to hopefully finish my next draft for real. But I think I’m having another problem, which is that because a previous draft that didn’t work and I abandoned, I think I’m afraid to move beyond the outline and into the story. I’ve been trying to outline for weeks and I’ve run out of ideas, but I’m afraid to write because lost my place because I think I need to beef up my outline still more. How do I know when I have outlined enough? I think that fast drafting or skeleton drafting might help me, but I’ve never tried that before. My previous attempts at writing were fully fleshed out as best I could do with character dialogue et cetera. I would like to try a first draft in an effort to make my story and mystery mechanics work as quick as possible, then put the meat on it, but I’m feeling at a loss as to how to really do this. I think my perfectionism might be getting in the way and making me resist sketching something versus writing it fully.

[00:01:50] I purchased your book on fast drafting your memoir and I look forward to reading this for more info, but could you comment on this in regards to doing a mystery story? How does one go about fast drafting? Thanks so much. You’re the best!  No, you are the best, Kate. Thank you so much for asking this marvelous question. What I love about this question? In fact, I believe you said it straight up. Where did you say this? I think I’m afraid to move beyond the outline and into the story. I want to tell you that that is normal. We, many of us feel this way. Some people are just born pantsers and they would never consider an outline, no matter what they’re still doing, they’re still going to end up with good story structure.

[00:02:41] If they end up with a good book, the story structure happens without them making an outline. They’re just able to do that. I’m kind of in the middle. I like a very loose outline of the major plot points. And then I discovery write my way there to flesh out a story. However, I have done really carefully, very well plotted outlines and here’s the thing, no matter what, when you leap into writing the story, no matter how completely you think you have outlined, the story will always take over. Always, always, always, if you talk to the outliner who outlines every scene down to blocking and exactly, who’s going to say what basically they have their whole book written still, the book will jump out of the outline because as we write a story, we learn what the story wants to be. The story, the book is teaching us what it wants to be. And I mean that very literally what I mean by that is that you cannot outline enough. You will never be able to figure out an outline clearly enough and get the inspiration that you need to fill in the outline to perfection. Because you’re not writing the story. 

[00:03:59] Once you’re writing the story, the inspiration comes, the muse when you are actually writing, not outlining, but when you’re actually writing your terrible crappy first draft of any of these scenes, that’s when the muse shows up and that’s when your brain and sometimes the saying, oh, this is so terrible. But if you stick around and you ask that editor’s voice to shut it down for a minute and sit, the editor can sit in the room with you, but the editor can’t touch the keyboard. That’s just for you. That’s just for first drafting and the muse then is able to whisper something in your ear that she never would have given to you. When you were doing the outline, you’re not smart enough. We are- and I’m not talking about you Kate. I’m talking about we as writers. We are not smart enough when we are doing outlines to know what the book really wants to be. So your deep question here is how do you fast draft? How do you do that? For me, it comes, it always comes down to quantity and you can measure one of two, one or two things.

[00:05:04] For a first draft, many writers, I’m going to say almost most writers, I would say that most writers are aiming toward a word count. So if you tell yourself, when you look at your calendar, you figure out how many days you have to write this book and you want it to be done by X date. How many days does that leave you? How long has this book want to be? How much of your already written, how much is left, do some basic math and you find out that, okay, this is a good pace. If I want to be done on November 3rd, whatever your date is, I need to write 1500 words a day on my writing days. Fantastic. What happens is that you have to make yourself just sit down and write 1500 terrible words.

[00:05:45] It does not matter what the words are. Your story will progress. You already have an outline. So you are ahead of many people who want an outline, and this is important: You don’t feel like your outline is done because your outline is not done. And your outline is not going to get done until the book tells you a little bit more about what it wants to be. So you have to pick a word count and head toward it. It usually most people’s word counts are somewhere between 500 words a day and 2000 words a day. I can generally do up to 3000 words a day, although that’s pushing it for me personally, I have done up to 4 and 5,000 words a day on a regular basis. And that wears me down. For me I’m really in the 2000 words a day range. And that’s generally what I tried to do. The story we’ll keep chugging along because you keep showing up and putting words into it. Even if you don’t know what’s going to happen when you stand up and walk away from your computer.

[00:06:43] What I like to do when I’m fast drafting is always make a note of where I am when I stopped for the day. Maybe make a post-it carry it around where you can see it, put it next to the bed and ask yourself as you go to sleep. Okay. You know, she’s at the dump right now, dumping trash, which is what I did earlier today. Took the recycling to the transfer station. She’s at the transfer station. Something has to happen. And then I know she’s going to be in the diner. What’s going to happen between there and just kind of ask your brain that, you don’t have to think too hard about it. Just ask it once and then go to sleep. Your brain is going to be working on it at night. When you sit back down at your computer the next day, that’s when I take usually 5 to 10 minutes to brainstorm out kind of pre-outline my work for the day. Just for the day. 5 minutes maybe I break down what is going to happen in the scene a lot. Most days I have a better idea than I have the day before cause I’m fresh again. And my brain has been working on it overnight. I’ve got a couple ideas. And then I write 1500 words, 2000 words, very, very bad words, but they’re getting me closer and closer to where I want to be. And like clockwork, the muse always shows up and throws another idea at me. 

[Read more…] about Ep. 259: How Do You Actually Fast-Draft a Novel? Bonus MiniEpisode