Rachael

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

June 25, 2021

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.

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

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript:

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

[00:00:16] 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

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Ep: 234: Should I Write a Book Proposal?

June 25, 2021

Bonus mini-episode, brought to you by my mini-coached Patrons! Question include: Should I write a book proposal? What’s fictionalized memoir, anyway? And how can I learn to revise my book?

Books mentioned:

Moonglow, Michael Chabon – https://amzn.to/3dmmg3Z

How Should a Person Be, Sheila Heti – https://amzn.to/3dm81fH

Dept. of Speculation, Jenny Offill – https://amzn.to/3abGUlh

For revision:

Story Engineering, Larry Brooks – https://amzn.to/3gi8Rfc

Anatomy of Story, John Truby – https://amzn.to/3tq38HX

Intuitive Editing, Tiffani Yates Martin – https://amzn.to/3tntJoV

Novel Editing Workbook – https://amzn.to/3tA9DZ3

*Amazon affiliate links – please order local if you can!

Transcript:

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #234 of “How do you Write?” This as a bonus mini episode brought to you by my patrons at the $5 and up level, you get to ask me any question that you want and I’ll answer it here on the podcast. I usually collect them until I have a couple or three or four. And then I do a mini podcast. So here is the collection of what I’ve gotten so far. And these are some good questions. The first one comes from Thomas Langer. Hi, Rachael, here’s a mini coaching question. Is there such a thing as memoir fiction, analogous to what we call historical fiction? And what is your opinion of this approach? As I write a memoir, I have created some hybrid scenes and characters and some of them are so hybrid that I think it is straying into fiction. I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks. So I’m so glad that you asked there is a category it’s not easily shelvable. People do have problems shelving it, but it is called fictionalized memoir or less frequently I see the term auto fiction kind of like autobiography fiction. The important thing is, if you’re straying into something that feels like fiction and our guts always know, our guts know the difference between conflating time periods and pushing characters into one amalgam of a character and recreating dialogue, as best as we think the dialogue went on that day when the car crashed, that’s all acceptable in memoir, you get to do that. It’s just common practice. We know that memoirists are writing. They’re basically writing.

[00:01:59] A novel, like thing, bringing us into their world in a way that really no human can- most humans cannot remember things that well. So there’s a contract with the reader that says the memoirist gets to stretch what they believe the truth to be into things like dialogue action really concrete scenes. Writers do struggle with, is this fiction if I’m making it up, it is not fiction. If you follow Rachael’s 80% rule, which is if you’re 80% sure that it really happened this way, because you know these people involved and they probably said something like this, then you get to use it. If you just heard something in the background, that was my wife yelling at people on TikToK. So she’s not going to do that anymore. Real life. So you get to as a memoirist, do that. But when you start making up scenes that, you know didn’t happen, making up people that are not a composite amalgam of characters of people that you knew, but actually somebody new and fresh on the page. Then you do have to say that it’s fiction of some sort and you can call it fictionalized memoir. You can call it auto fiction. You can call it what you want, but naming it, I think is important. And it is kind of having a moment for maybe the last four or five years, people know what it is. They understand it. Michael Chabon’s book Moonglow did some historical stuff within what he imagined in his family that I thought was really well done. You may want to take a look at that also, Sheila Heti wrote, How Should A Person Be, which is obviously about her. And it is obviously also a novel at the same time.

[00:03:46] The Department of Speculation by Jenny Offill, I thought was a remarkable, remarkable book and it reads like a memoir and in some ways it is about the dissolution of her marriage, and in other ways, it isn’t. So check out some auto fiction, see what you think about it, see how you feel about it. And then you do, at some point, you don’t have to do this on a first draft. You have to make a decision on what it’s going to be. And now that I’ve said that it might be a good thing to decide while you’re doing a first draft, which is really a rare thing for me to say, but before you do make up a lot of stuff, if you’re later going to decide, you want to write a memoir, then you’re going to have to take all of that out. So I would say, decide. Do you want to write a novel? Do you run and write a memoir or do you want to write something that you will say to people this is fictionalized memoir and it’s really kind of a nice place to be because your readers cannot decide what is real and what is true is another business anyway, it also allows you to add things that you wish happened. Add things that you wish you had done or said, or that you imagine the people around you did and said in rooms where you weren’t. So if you choose that way, excuse me, I think it can be really, really fun and really interesting. So great question. Yes. Follow your gut on this one. All right.

[00:05:06] And this one is from Michelle. I’m just going to read the end of her question, but she was basically, she was asked to write a book proposal for a memoir for a competition that she did not enter. My question is, would it be helpful for me to do a book proposal for the competition and then use it in the future? I’ve never heard you talk about this before so I feel like it’s not necessary and would be a waste of money, but proposal seemed to be more geared towards non-fiction. Plus, I don’t want to do it. I have zero platform. I have zero plans as to how I will make money, et cetera, et cetera. I can make stuff up, but it feels fake. Thoughts? Oh, Michelle, I love this question. So yes, you’re right. Book proposals are more geared toward non-fiction and we kind of had these, we have these three buckets that we talk a lot about on the show. We have novels fictional, we have memoir and we have nonfiction. And this dovetails beautifully with Thomas’ question. Memoir is true, but memoir really fits in the novel category in terms of story, there is a story and it’s structured like a novel. So most people, most agents are not going to ask you for a book proposal for a memoir. It does happen. We do see it, especially nowadays when it’s competitive out there and agents want to know, can you pull together book proposal if I asked for one, but I’ve had people success, I’ve had students successfully get agents by only targeting the agents who didn’t want a book proposal for memoir. That is, it’s not a normal thing to request, although it is getting a little bit more seen. And your agent should be able to sell your memoir to a publisher without a book proposal, too. Memoirs are like novels they sell because of the story underneath it.

[00:06:58] Nonfiction, when we’re talking about like, you know, how to build your platform or how to create excellent house design. I don’t know. I’m spit balling here, but non-fiction is nonfiction. Memoir is a story and novels are a story. So therefore you shouldn’t need a book proposal. If you do need to write a book proposal, any of you, Google, you know how I feel about Reedsy, Google Reedsy, nonfiction book proposal, and they have an excellent guide to doing it step by step. But Michelle, you don’t need one unless the agent of your dreams requires one, and then in which case you may want to write one. But don’t bother with it now. Great question. Okay and then let’s see. Okay, May asks, so I’m going to start querying my book soonish. Yay! I remember somewhere that you mentioned that agents will spy around and look at your website. I don’t have one. I don’t have social media under my pen name either. I have been thinking of starting a Bookstagram for it, but I haven’t yet. How important is it to have those things when querying for an agent? I feel like as a millennial, I have kind of failed by not having them, but I always thought it was important to finish the book first. Yes. Finishing the book, finishing a great book, revising it, editing it, which I know that you’ve been doing is the most important thing of all. And here’s what I think about this. You could start a Bookstagram, attached to your pen name or, and this is something I don’t know what your answer is going to be.

[00:08:36] Are you going to query under your pen name or under your real name? A lot of people query under their real name so that they can be real with the agent. The agent knows who you are, and then with your agent, after you have accepted them, or, you know, you’re working together, then you could talk about your pen name, what they think about it whether you should do it under this pen name and you may already really, really be clear on the fact that you are going to write under this pen name and that’s fine, but your agent will need to know your real name. So do you have a social media presence under your real name? Which they will know. They will have to know, and then they will spy on you there. So think about that. Do you have social media? I know you’re on Twitter, but I think you’re under your pen name on Twitter, that’s true. So my answer is, look good on the internet to whatever availability, to whatever place you’re already occupying. Like under your real name, I know you’re not a dick, but you wouldn’t want to be a dick. Like you wouldn’t want them when they find out your real name to go look you up and find out that you’ve been trolling terribly, doing things or writing caustic messages on your blog about the terrible publishers who’ve done this to you. You’re in no danger of that May, I know you, but for everybody else, that’s something to keep in mind.

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Ep: 233: Why Your Writing Goals Don’t Matter That Much!

June 25, 2021

YES, you should have writing goals. But here’s why they don’t (actually) matter that much. And it’s going to blow your mind. Enjoy.

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript:

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #233 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. I am so happy you’re with me today. This is kind of going to be a bonus episode. No, it is a bonus episode. I am going to read to you an email that I wrote to my writer’s list. This is for two reasons, one big, one small. The small reason is if you’re not on my writer’s list, this is an example of the email that I send to you. You might like to be on my email list for writers. It really is a place that I put time and energy into and my job is to encourage you for free, just sign up and let me encourage you to do your writing. You can always get to that by going to RachaelHerron.com/Write. But the second reason I want to read this particular email to you is that I think it’s maybe one of the most important things I’ve ever said about writing, and our goals of writing. So we’re going to get into that in a moment, but, what’s going on around here? I want to thank new Patreon supporters.

[00:01:21] Thank you. Thank you so much. Donna Ryan, Jenny Clark, Vivian Tee, and Helen Conway. Thank you so much for being here with me, supporting me. It means the world. Thank you to all of my current Patreon subscribers as well. It really does make a huge difference in my life. So, how is the move going, Rachael? Well, the room is a little bit emptier, boxes around us. I’m glad we started when we did, we still have a bunch of really big things to get rid of, like my beautiful desk. I still have not managed to clean out this desk. It is not because I haven’t had time. It is because I love this desk so much. I don’t want it to go. I even got out of box and filled the box with all of the things that I will need on a daily basis to have on my desk for the next six months or so things like my planner and my favorite pens. And oh, what else is in there? My headphones, my favorite coaster. And put them all in the box so that I could empty the desk and then take a picture of it with all of the empty drawers as a roll top. It’s big, it’s old. It’s wonderful. If you’re in the bay area and you want it, let me know. You’d have to pick it up. And in the last five days, all of those things have just crept back onto my desk because I just don’t want to let it go.

[00:02:38] I want to hug it, hugging it here, virtually on the podcast. So someday, perhaps I’ll listen back to this and think, oh, remember that beautiful desk. Isn’t it amazing that I have a new, beautiful desk that I love? That will happen. So we have been alternating fits of panic and joy, but the panic is subsiding and the joy is setting in. We had an amazing conversation with our friends, Mona and Damian, who you may, you’ve heard me talk about Mona MacDermid before she is a poet and writer. I just adore her and she and her husband have moved to so mentee in so many places all around the world internationally. And they gave us a little pep talk about how to move and how to do it in a sane manner and a sensible, responsible, joyful manner. And here’s some of the talking points that I took away from our conversation. Have and do your good goodbyes. So we are making a list of things that we love, not just people, but the things like the restaurants and the places and the particular lawn where I like to eat an ice cream in San Francisco. It is Dolores park, by the way, buy right ice cream across the street. That’s on the list. I would not have thought about doing that.

[00:03:56] Of course, we’re going to be able to come back to the states every year or so and see things, but an intentional good goodbye makes so much sense to me. Number two, throw the party, throw yourself a party. I’m going to throw a party and invite all the locals that I love to come say goodbye. Hopefully they’ll be back as unaided. I don’t know where we’re going to throw it, because at some point we won’t have this house to throw a party in, and I want to throw it as late as possible but that’s going to happen. Number three, this is huge. Get excited about the destination. I have this strange brain tendency to try to put off joy. If I’m often, if I’m reading a book and it is incredible, I will put it down and walk away for a few hours a few days, sometimes a few weeks, never even finished lonesome dove for this reason. Because I want to prolong the joy. So, or like put it off because that feels delicious to me. It is something that pleases me, however, it’s okay just to like watch the movies, watch Wellington paranormal, read the travel guides, watch the vloggers on New Zealand and on this place, we’re going to go and get really excited about it.

[00:05:04] So that is something we’ve been doing, amazing. When we get there, they said these are two things I would not have thought of doing, present gifts to your new neighbors. Love that. I want them to love me. I want friends, I want my neighbors to know us and to wave at us and to chit chat on the street. Like we do here. We have an amazing little neighborhood community on our cul-de-sac in east Oakland and it is so great. So I’m going to bring like little gifts from home, Ghirardelli chocolate bars or something like that. And then this one, I love make yourself a regular somewhere. This is something I do when I travel. Normally, if I’m in a place for more than a couple or three days, I tend to try to do that, but being intentional about it, walking into this coffee shop, where we want to become regulars and saying, as someone I knew did, and as I did once in a coffee shop that I loved and it worked saying, Hey, I’m here. I’m Rachael, I’d like to know all of your names. We’re going to be here every day. And then it becomes friendship and it becomes awesome. So we’re going to do that. Thank you, Mona and Damien for taking that time. It was amazing. Also, thank you to Emma from Australia who made a move like this from the UK with her wife and Emma sent me this email that made me cry.

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Ep. 232: Sonya Lalli on Using Romance Beats in Mainstream Fiction

May 17, 2021

Sonya Lalli is a Canadian writer of Indian heritage. She studied law in her hometown of Saskatoon and at Columbia University in New York, and later completed an MA in creative writing and publishing at City, University of London. Sonya has a black belt in tae kwon do and loves travel, yoga, and cocktail bartending. She lives in Toronto with her husband.

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

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript:

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode # 232 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron and I am so glad that you’re here with me today, as I am talking to Sonya Lalli. And it was just such a joy to talk to her about her amazingly fun and wonderful book. So, I know that you’re going to enjoy that interview. What has been going on around here? It has been very busy, very real. We are just getting painting done of the outside of the house. Painting of the inside of the house will be coming, because we, my wife and I, live like college students. We moved into this house, that was a bright post-it yellow when we moved in. It was really the yellow of a post-it, which is just, oh, isn’t it the most gorgeous color you ever saw? And it is now kind of white and we really didn’t even notice. So that has been fun. We’re painting it, and by we, I mean, the person that we hired to do so, is painting it a light gray with white trim, which I think is the most boring thing I have ever seen in my whole entire goddamn life. But my realtor says, it’s the hot color right now. How is light gray with white, a hot color? But I have to admit it, does look sharp. No, you know what? That’s giving it too much credit. It looks clean.

[00:01:50] So, we’ve got that going on. What else? I feel like everything is really rolling forward. Yesterday, I printed out, and if you’re watching on YouTube, you can see it. I printed out a four-month calendar, that delineates, where we need to be at what time, what we need to do, in order to get on that plane in July to go move our whole lives to New Zealand. And here is the exciting part is that as I record this, it is April 8th, 2021. And I think we need to have basically ourselves out of this house in terms of all of our stuff by the end of April. So, in the next three weeks and one in two days, we need to have everything packed and sorted and put into a pod storage unit, which will then be put into a container ship we’re taking about, I think we’re going to take about, 60 cubic feet of stuff, which is about 40 or 50 boxes of things like books and some clothes and some pots and pans and that’s really all we’re taking. But meanwhile, our house is full. You will notice that I’m still sitting at the same eye level here because I’m still sitting at my beautiful roll top desk. Seriously, if anybody lives in the Bay area, San Francisco Bay area and wants a beautiful roll top desk that I love so much, I’m going to be getting rid of this. There are still these big things that we have to gear it up, our bed, our couch, our chairs, our dining table, the island in the kitchen that we jury rigged by buying old cabinets and putting a Formica table on top and I can tell you, it is very sturdy. It is a sturdy island. We made the Formica table hang over the edge of these cabinets so that we can sit at it with stools, we have been sitting at that thing in our kitchen for years and years and years and years. And it’s sturdy because we didn’t know how to attach it. So, we use duct tape and, what are those rubber band things called? I cannot think of the name for, bungee cords, bungee cords! We can’t give that to anybody. We can’t sell that to anybody. We can’t even give that to anybody, that just needs to go to the dump because those were dumped items in the beginning. So those kinds of things, getting them out of the house in order that we can have the guy put in some new carpet in order so that we could have people paint the inside of the house.

[00:04:27] I painted this when I moved in and I haven’t painted it since 15 years ago. So those kinds of things are rolling, but what I want to say about that is that something I’m looking forward to, is when the house hits the market. It’ll be staged, I think we’ll probably be living in it with the staging, which is going to be really strange. It’ll be nicer furniture than we’ve ever had, but we won’t have anything else to do. We won’t have anything, we don’t, we won’t have stuff. We will have the things that we keep with ourselves. I’m going to keep a couple of knitting projects, deck of cards, so I can play poker with Lala whenever I can talk her into it, and my Kindle and my computer. I will have a lot of time to do work, and that’s going to be great. I’m kind of looking forward to that. I’m not kind of looking forward. I’m really looking forward to that mental clarity where there’s nothing else I can do except wait for the house to sell and then get on the plane. All of our stuff is packed. We’re living out of suitcases. I have been struggling to write, I am writing. I am working on writing, but it is a struggle. Yesterday was supposed to be a writing day in the morning and it turned into hours of dealing with getting our stuff shipped. So that is something I’m really, really looking forward to is having that time and space.

[00:05:46] Speaking of time and space, I do want to take a moment and thank some new Patreon followers because y’all give me the time and space to write the essays that I love writing. And thank you Patreon followers who really liked that first essay, which is going to be the first part of my memoir on moving to New Zealand. I got so many good suggestions of titles for the New Zealand moving memoir, right now I really love, I think it was the newest Kiwi or the new New Zealanders. I love that. Thanks Mona for that. And so, thank you to the patreons who support me there and who get to read these essays well in advance of the book coming up, which you know, will happen someday. So first of all, thank you to Rebecca Wendt. Thank you, Ken Guidros, I hope I said that right. Miley Topliff, thanks, Miley. Rose Ketchering, thank you, thank you so much. Bill Aprens, Bill is just such a darling dear heart and he’s a student of mine and he’s supporting me in a generous level and thank you, Bill, that just made me happy and grateful. Cassandra Leach and Heather James, who is Bill’s pal. And, thank you all of you. Thank you all of you who do support on the Patreon patreon.com/Rachael or who have supported in the past. Thank you to the people who cancel their Patreon support because they can’t afford to. That’s totally welcome. You can do that at any, any time. I understand, finances come and go. And if a dollar a month is too dear, is too hard, I, and I, that sounds facetious when I say it. I mean it. There have been times in my life where I could not afford that extra buck or two a month. And, when you stop that I never have hard feelings, never, ever, ever my darlings.

[00:07:39] So, thank you, thank you, thank you with all of my heart. Also, something I’m just going to say one more thing that I am excited about is that earlier today, I got an email from somebody who wants to adopt Waylon, who is, you can’t see him. If you’re watching on YouTube, he’s a black cat, sleeping on a black sweatshirt on the chair behind me, the darling of our heart, the brother of Willy who died last week. And, it has been the one thing that has been breaking my heart about this move. Like I’m sad about everything, about leaving my sisters and family and bothering our family and friends and my people and my place in the world. But Waylon has been breaking my heart the way he is so sad not to be around dogs and cats and people. And the people who say that they want to adopt him, have three kids and a cat. And I just can’t imagine a better place for Waylon than being around kids that he can go yell at and then get petted by. So we have an informational interview with that family tonight. So, wish us good things, because if I knew Waylon was well taken care of, oh, my heart would be so happy. So, I’ll keep you posted on that.

[00:08:50] None of these things are writing related. So, we will jump into the interview with Sonia, which is writing related, completely relevant to you as the writer that you are. I want to take just a second to remind you that you are in exactly the right place. You are doing exactly the right thing. If you’re not writing, you’re getting ready to write. If you are writing, congratulations, keep it up. We just move onward. We take one foot, put it in front of the other and we do it again tomorrow. We just need to write a little bit at a time to move our books and our stories and our memoirs and our plays forward. And I know that you can do it. I know it’s hard. We talk a lot about that on the show. It’s hard. And you have the power to do it. You don’t have to do a lot, just do a little and you’re moving in the right direction. Thank you, my friends for being here and we’ll talk soon.

[00:09:43] Hey, is resistance keeping you from writing? Are you looking for an actual writing community in which you can make a calls and be held accountable for them? Join RachaelSaysWrite, like twice weekly, two hour writing session on zoom. You can bop in and out of the writing room as your schedule needs, but for just $39 a month, you can write up to 4 hours a week. With our wonderful little community, in which you’ll actually get to know your writing peers. We write from 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM on Tuesdays and 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM on Thursdays and that’s US Pacific Standard Time. Go to RachaelHerron.com/Write to find out more.

Rachael Herron: [00:10:24] All right. Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show, Sonya Lalli. Hello, Sonya!

Sonya Lalli: [00:10:29] Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

Rachael Herron: [00:10:31] I’m so pleased to have you. I am enjoying your book so, so, so, so much. Let me give you a little introduction. Sonya Lalli is a Canadian writer of Indian heritage. She studied law in her hometown of Saskatoon and at Columbia University in New York, and later completed an MA in creative writing and publishing at City, University of London. Sonya has a black belt in taekwondo and loves travel, yoga, and cocktail bartending. She lives in Toronto with her husband. But right now, you said you’re with your family in central Canada. Is that right?

Sonya Lalli: [00:11:01] Yep.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:02] Is that like a holiday or?

Sonya Lalli: [00:11:03] No. I, for family reasons, yeah. But we’re, I’m from Saskatoon, so that’s where I am right now.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:08] Okay. Oh, nice. Is it freezing?

Sonya Lalli: [00:11:11] It was very, very cold. I’m thinking Celsius here, but it was like minus 40?

Rachael Herron: [00:11:17] Oh, no thank you.

Sonya Lalli: [00:11:18] 30 minus 40 for a few days. It was crazy. Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:23] I don’t even know how people do that

Sonya Lalli: [00:11:24] It’s gone, it’s gone now. The cold snap is gone now.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:26] Okay, thank goodness. Well, let’s talk about your lovely book, Serena Singh Flips the Script. I had not read you before. And then I noticed you just have a big catalog behind this, but it is so much fun.

Sonya Lalli: [00:11:38] Oh, thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:39] Your writing is so much fun to read and it reads as real and this particular book is about women’s friendships as well as romance, but you really get the women’s friendships front and center there. Is that what your books always have to do with or?

Sonya Lalli: [00:11:56] No. So when I first started writing, I didn’t think about it. I didn’t think about what genre I was writing. And it turned out that, and sort of was molded better into, a romance women’s fiction book. So, my first book, Matchmaker’s List, that was more on the romance side, Grown-up Pose, my second book, and Serena Singh Flips the Script is more on the women’s fiction side. But for the third book for me, I started out thinking about it as a romantic comedy about finding your new best friend. So, I thought about in that typical, the tropes and milestones of a romance, I just applied that to the friendship and the book.

[Read more…]

Ep. 231: Deanna Raybourn on Why Being a Writing Magpie is a Great Thing

May 17, 2021

New York Times and USA Today bestselling novelist Deanna Raybourn is a 6th-generation native Texan. She graduated with a double major in English and history from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Married to her college sweetheart and the mother of one, Raybourn makes her home in Virginia. Her novels have been nominated for numerous awards including five RITAs, two RT Reviewers’ Choice awards, the Agatha, two Dilys Winns, a Last Laugh, and three du Mauriers. An Unexpected Peril is her most recent novel.

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript:

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #231 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. I’m so pleased that you’re here with me today as we are talking to Deanna Raybourn on why being a magpie of sorts a collector is such a good thing as a writer. I know you will enjoy the interview with her. She’s just one of those people I’ve been meant to meet for a long time and it was a joy to speak to her. So that is coming up. What is going on around here? Oh my God. What isn’t going on around here? Tragically, we lost our cat Willy on Monday morning and I’m not even going to think deeply about it as I talk about it ‘cause I don’t feel like crying any more. But yes, that is two pets in one month that we have lost, our darling Clementine and our darling Willie, one of the two brother cats. But we have been trying to find an amazing rehoming space for, Willy was the one who has had sickness in the past. Wayland is fit as a fiddle, his brother, but Willy had had problems with kidney disease in the past and just got really attacked by a basically renal collapse. And there was no way we could save him and it was awful. It was just awful. I do feel like the hits have just been coming, you know, three months of being very, very sick and losing Clementine and losing Willy and some other stuff that I don’t need to go into or want to go into here and also moving, packing and moving, kind of pre-grieving the loss of leaving America and going to New Zealand, while I’m not really leaving grieving leaving America, honestly. But I am grieving leaving my family and my friends. Doing a little bit of pre-grieving about that.

[00:002:15] However, I did just write a Patreon essay yesterday that went out as I’m recording this. The March 2021 Patreon essay is how I’m starting the memoir on moving to New Zealand. And it is going to be really fun to write. I think this is exactly up my alley. I love writing about what I’m doing, what I’m feeling, how I’m changing. So, one of those is going to come out every month and I’ve gotten a really great reaction to it so far. So, thank you. If you are a Patreon supporter, thank you for responding and telling me what you think about it. It was really good to put out and it’s gonna to be raw and honest and funny and confused and excited. Just the way that I am right now. Just the way that my wife and I are around this move. So, strangely as we record this, it’s on Thursday and Willy died on Monday. It was awesome. Willy died and then I went home crying on the porch swing and my tooth broke in half and I have a dental phobia and required a crown that day. Luckily, I go to a dentist who number one could get me in and number two actually could make the crown on site and put it on so it was, a two-hour procedure, un-sedated no, I’m so phobic that I’d normally require some kind of medication, Valium or Halcyon even to get to the office. So, the two hours of pain and mental agony actually did distract me from the loss of Willy for a couple of hours, so I was grateful for that.

[00:03:54] But as I was saying, it’s Thursday now and I somehow feel okay today. For Clementine, her sickness was so drawn out for so long, it was very, very difficult. For Willy, it was sudden. Just a sudden complete collapse and we couldn’t save him. And the vet, it’s really comforting when the vet is like, no this cat is ready to go. This cat must go. We must help you with this. They don’t say we must help you with this. But when you say I want to put him down and they say, good, that’s what I hoped you would say, oh, that is- it’s so helpful. And I feel like I’m back on the upswing, I feel healthy and strong. And while I’m still really sad about Willy, I feel more positive than I have in a while. I think it’s because my body is getting just steadily, getting stronger. I’m doing a lot of swimming and it’s so wonderful. I love being in the pool and I feel more positive about everything and that is, that’s been really, really good.

[00:04:55] So, what I wanted to mention today is just something that really, really amuses me. Really amuses me. I had an interview, which you’ll hear in a few weeks with someone that I was very excited to talk to. Kind of a big name, she does a big podcast. And her name is Katherine Nicola. You can look forward to that. That’s coming up, I don’t need to make a secret of it, but off air, when I interviewed her the other day, she said, you know, I didn’t know who you were. And I looked up your podcast and I saw this review, this terrible review that just made me want to be on your podcast so bad. So I said, yes. And I was like, oh my gosh, yay! I love bad reviews. And I wanted to talk about that for a minute, because it was just talking about it with a friend the other day. Bad reviews for you as a writer will occur. And they will not be reviews that say, oh, you know what? It just wasn’t my style. Oh no! You’ll get so many reviews that will say that they hate your characters, they hate you as a person, they wish they could kill you. I don’t know if maybe more women get those kinds of reviews than men, but boy. And I have to say that learning to love the bad reviews and really leaning into them is kind of a superpower. I honest, hand to God, do not read my reviews. The only time I read my reviews is maybe in the first couple of weeks of a book coming out. I want to see if more people are liking it than are hating it, which has always been the case and I don’t know what I would do if the, if that weren’t the case, but then I let go of reviews altogether.

[00:06:39] The only ones I read are the one stars, because one stars amuse me so much. This is not, however, the way it always was. My first review, I don’t know if I’ve ever talked about it on the show, but my very first review was in a trade magazine, publishers, was it publisher marketplace or publishers weekly? I think it was publishers’ weekly. No, obviously it was publishers’ weekly. Marketplace doesn’t do reviews, I don’t think. And it was for my first book. It was my first review that had come out and it just was so blah. They said I stepped into formula, the writing was good, but nothing special to see here, people. And I went to bed for 24 hours. I called one of my best friends, crying hysterically. She thought someone had died. I lived and died for the reviews that came in when the book came out on Amazon, on Good Reads, on Martin’s Noble, on Coba, I would, on I-books, I would go check reviews like they mattered. Here’s the thing: They don’t matter. I don’t believe the five stars very much because they say, oh my god, I love this book. It’s the best book ever! It’s not the best book ever. It’s a good book. I don’t believe one stars because those are just hilarious. The truth lies for most of us, for I’m going to, I’m going to say for all of us, the truth lies between the four and the two stars.

[00:08:10] A very well thought out, well-articulated, well-argued three-star review of my book that is what can hurt me today, 11 years into this being published game, my first book came out in 2010. So, I really avoid a three-star. I don’t want to read a smart reader thinking critically about my book and talking about it in three-star ‘cause she might be right and her words can get in my head, but no other words can get in my head anymore, they can’t stick. So, I wanted to encourage you to maybe if you don’t have a book out yet, practice. Every book you read and love, like you should be reading pretty much only books that you love and you should be reading a lot of them. We do not have time in this life for finishing books that we don’t love. So you’re reading a book. You’re always reading a book. You’re passionate about it. It’s incredible. When you finish it, always go look at the reviews, read all of them, read the five stars, read the one stars, read the ones in between. See if you can find commonalities that they have, things that they share. If they all say that this hero wasn’t believable, perhaps there’s some truth in that, that kind of thing can be helpful for an author. And in the past, I have used reviews to help me get better as an author, but right now, I’m pretty comfortable with using my editors to tell me if this book is good or not and how to make it better.

[00:09:36] I’m, I really love it when I hear from readers who’ve read lots of my books that say, this is my favorite one, favorite one yet or when I get emails from new readers who love the book, that means a lot to me. So, I’m going to encourage you to practice reading those reviews. Practice imagining that those one-star reviews are yours because it does feel like death at first. And then I promise you, it starts to feel like nothing and indeed it becomes amusing. I have said this often, but a couple of friends of mine, whenever we get a really excellent one-star review, we will send it to the other ones, which then prompts the other ones to remember, to go look for one-star reviews on their, on their newer books. And it’s just this glorious competition that we have with each other who can have the worst. But with that said, I want to share with you, where did I put it on my computer screen? Here it is. The one-star review of a podcast you know well, How Do You Write, unless you’re new to the show, in which case, welcome and listen to a bad review. This is so good, you guys. Check it out. This came from August 30th, 2020. Could have been mildly useful. That’s the title, one-star. I wanted to like this podcast. Herron has a lovely voice, which is rare among female podcasters. But a few minutes into the show, she started talking about something she had said in a previous show. And I think her intention was to make nice with people she had burned, i.e. conservatives or republicans. I already knew Herron was a far-left character, but was willing to put up with that if the content was good enough, but somehow her make-nice-speech morphed into just more bashing. Not only was it hateful, it was based on nothing. She somehow thinks I’m assuming he’s saying. She knows what responsive from the White House would have prevented anyone from getting or dying of the Chinese virus. Nobody can know that because the end of this movie has not played yet. And to claim otherwise, especially with the vitriol that she was spewing is just dishonest and serves no purpose, but to vent against the other, if you can put up with this feeling, good for you, or maybe you agree with it, but I do not too- okay, predict and you guys can speak this line with me, too bad there is no way to award zero stars.

[00:11:58] Do you know how much I love this review? This review makes my life. I put it on Twitter, I told everybody about it. Just to be clear, I was never making a make-nice-speech, to Trumpians. Trumpians just really don’t belong listening to my show because I am a far-left character. I wasn’t making nice. I probably was bashing them. And if this earns me a few more reviews like that, honestly, that helps me because then people like Catherine Nickel, I will say yes to coming on my show, in a few weeks, you’ll hear that one. And it’s fantastic! This is just, I don’t, if you watch on YouTube, I’m just grinning, this makes me so happy. Also, that I was wondering like, ‘cause I haven’t looked at reviews in months and months and months and months, maybe more, so I brought up the one stars on Stolen Things, my most recent book, there are only four of them. Yay. But this is my favorite one. Here it is: Okay, one star read something else. This, I just do not agree with this first two lines. Audio version was terrible in my opinion. I did not enjoy Exisan’s voice or how she tells this story. Aside from me to you, Exisans is such a brilliant narrator. She works for some of the biggest names because she is incredible and she also happens to have become a friend of mine through an author friend of mine. And she’s incredible and the fact that Penguin allows me to say, I want her, and then they can actually book her, and get her when she’s doing Kristin Hagans and other huge, huge names is incredible.

[00:13:41] So, this person is just bananas about that. But let’s go back into the more interesting part. I cannot stand how often the author uses the F-bomb. Everything about this book is controversial. It’s just too much. Racial issues, half Caucasian, half ‘cocatiyon’?, half Iranian daughter, rape, sex trafficking, police brutality, prostitution of a minor, LGBT, and probably more, but I probably couldn’t, but I just couldn’t read the whole thing. I literally hated this story and gave up on it halfway through. I will not read this author again. The story was way too far-fetched and I prefer to read stuff that is a little closer to reality. I love it so much. Oh, it just gave me like butterflies of happiness. I don’t know if it is like a reverse in your face reaction that I have, but it is literal delight to read these words. Even if they say something like Rachael Herron couldn’t write her way out of a paper bag, she’s the worst writer I’ve ever read, she can’t put two sentences together. It’s delightful because we know it’s not true. Reviews just aren’t true. They are just opinions that people have. Something that is very fun and I just heard this tip on a podcast and I can’t remember which one it was. But this was posted, the one I just read was posted by LOL doll question mark? So, LOL doll, you go to her reviews, which are always visible on Amazon. You can go to any reviewers, all their other reviews. She particularly hated my books.

[00:15:11] She very much prefers romance and I wonder if that’s where she came to me from, I’m not sure. But the book she loves the most, of all of the books she’s ever reviewed, she really loves Curly Girl, The Handbook, which is a handbook for people with curly hair. It’s a manifesto, it’s a curly hair manifesto and, LOL doll loves it the best and that just makes me feel great too, I don’t know. It’s just so fun. So honestly, with this conversation about reviews, I just hope you get some really good one-star reviews and that you get to enjoy them and you get to go dig into the reviewer’s other favorite things on the, I wish I could remember the podcast I was listening to might’ve been Tim Ferris but, the person who had looked at some of his bad reviews and then went to see the other people’s reviews of things, they went too far. They picked a really beautiful five star that someone had left them. And then they went and looked at that reviewer’s profile and they were aghast to find that they had reviewed really stupid products too. So, what did that mean about the five-star? Reviews don’t mean anything, people. They’re nice to have. I just noticed that, still I didn’t, I had no idea that Stolen Things, do I still have it up? I don’t. Stolen Things had maybe like 240 reviews, which is a good number for an expensive trad-published book and I was thrilled about that. I’m thrilled that it has, I didn’t even, I wish I could tell you how many stars it has on average. I want to say it was like 4.4, 4.5, which is fantastic. I love that. Anything above a four on Amazon makes me happy. So, it’s good for that.

[00:16:54] I do look at that every once in a while, how many reviews does it have and how, what’s the average star rating. So, that’s what I’m gonna encourage you to look forward to those reviews. I promise they will stop hurting after a while. I really, really promise. It is really interesting though how thick the author’s skin becomes over time. And it will happen to you. I know that it will. So I think that’s all that I wanted to tell you about today. Let’s jump into this fantastic interview with Deanna Raybourn, who has amazing reviews and I didn’t actually bother to look at any because she’s such a good writer. I don’t care what other people say. I just love her writing. So please enjoy this and happy writing to you.

[00:00:16] Hey, you’re a writer. Did you know that I send out a free weekly email of writing encouragement? Go sign up for it at www.rachaelherron.com/write and you’ll also get my Stop Stalling and Write PDF with helpful tips you can use today to get some of your own writing done. Okay, now onto the interview.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:57] Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show, Deanna Raybourn. Hi, Deanna!

Deanna Raybourn: [00:18:01] Hi, Rachael, how are you?

Rachael Herron: [00:18:03] I just had to interrupt our chatter to push the record button because we were just going to chatter for the rest of the afternoon.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:18:10] It probably would have, it’s like a virtual slumber party around here.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:13] It’s and also, what I love about doing the show and you probably love about doing this podcast as your book is coming out. It’s kind of like the water cooler, you know, we were just gossiping about people that we know and how

Deanna Raybourn: [00:18:24] Exactly!

Rachael Herron: [00:18:26] It is nice. I need that.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:18:27] Exchanging war stories.

[Read more…]

Ep. 230: Erika Robuck on the Magic of YouTube Research

May 17, 2021

Erika Robuck is the national bestselling author of Hemingway’s Girl, Call Me Zelda, Fallen Beauty, The House of Hawthorne, and Receive Me Falling. She is a contributor to the anthology Grand Central: Postwar Stories of Love and Reunion, and to the Writer’s Digest Essay Collection, Author in Progress. She writes satire (#Hockeystrong) as E. Robuck.

Her latest novel, The Invisible Woman, is about real-life superwoman of WWII, OSS/SOE agent Virginia Hall.

In 2014, Robuck was named Annapolis’ Author of the Year, and she resides there with her husband, three sons, and a spunky miniature schnauzer.

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Transcript:

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #230 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So pleased that you are with me today, as I talked to Erika Robuck on the magic of doing research, including some of the more virtual research, like research on YouTube, for example. We had a great chat and I know that you are going to enjoy listening to her, impart some wisdom on us. So before we get to that, what’s going on around here? Moving, moving is going on around here. We are deep in the middle of it. I’m pretty much done with my office. And my office holds everything that I own except for my desk. I’m still sitting at my desk. I have this gorgeous antique roll top desk. Seriously, if any of you in the Bay area, want to roll top desk, hit me up. I’m going to put it on Craigslist soon, but it’s got, it’s must have 25 or 30 little drawers and there’s things in all the drawers. So I need to go through and make myself a desk kit. It’s going to be one box of stuff that I’ll put in the shipping container, the shipping box that we’re shipping to ourselves. So I’ll get that in four or five months after we move and that’ll hold mostly post-its. You know that. I’m not throwing out my post-its. I know I can get them in New Zealand, but I already have them, so I’m shipping them. But then when I’m really excited about is to make a little container of desk now, the things that I use on a daily basis, the things that I reach for which include post-its and pencils and my tarot cards, and you know, my glasses wipes, those kinds of things. I’m going to have to bring, of course my podcasting mic, but then after I get rid of all of the other stuff that I can sell the desk, and that’s really the last big piece of furniture in this room, apart from a very small sofa, which, honestly, just going to get tossed at the end because I’ve been using it for so long and we have pets and it’s scratched up.

[00:02:22] So other than that, I’m pretty much packed. That is not to say the house is in any way packed. We have both been focusing on our own offices since in our offices, we keep our clothes, we keep all of our things are, our bedroom is just for sleeping. There’s really not much in there, but the rest of the house has things like, you know, the kayaks in the, in that one closet. And, so that’s- oh, the kitchen! Oh my God, the kitchen. That’s going to be fun. But right now, outside, I hope you don’t hear it, but we have somebody fixing stuff up and power washing. We’re going to get house painted outside and in it’s just all really sinking in we’re spending real money now to get things done. So now, it’s just been terrifying. I know I keep talking about how terrifying and scary this is. But it is, it really is. It’s also exhilarating and exciting, and I can’t wait to make this move to New Zealand, but one of my students shared this with us last week and the phrase is just “Do It Scared.” And I have that on a post-it on my desk right now. Where am I going to put my post-its? I don’t know, but Do It Scared is my motto right now. We do it. We do it scared. We do this with our books, with our writing. We don’t know what we’re doing. We don’t know how to do it. We don’t know if we will ever succeed. We don’t know if we’re good enough. In fact, we think we’re not, and we do it anyway. We do it with this pit of fear in the bottom place of our soul. And we show up and we take the steps to get these things done.

[00:04:04] Yeah, writers are brave. Writers are courageous. We have to be, we have to be hopeful and courageous to, in order to do this really wild thing that nobody else wants to do. So if you’re feeling scared about what you’re doing with your writing, good. That means you’re exactly in the right place. There’s this beautiful David Bowie quote that I slaughter every time I try it, I should just memorize it. But he basically says, “Write when you feel like your feet can’t touch the bottom of the swimming pool, that’s when you’re in the right place.” I feel that so often in my own writing, and I know you probably do too, and I definitely feel like that in my life right now. So that’s going on. I had some health stuff crop up over the week that kind of knocked me out for a few days that sucked, but I’m up in better now and I’m still doing fine on the health stuff, no diagnosis. And I believe I’m not going to have a diagnosis. I believe whatever sickness I had for those almost three months, I don’t think they’re ever going to figure it out. And I’m becoming okay with that. The more exploratory tests they do unable to find things really the happier I am. It’s frustrating, but it’s really also very, very awesome. But last week, I did get the shot. I got the vaccine, I got the one dose Johnson & Johnson. My hyperactive immune system really kicked up a storm and I got real sick. And also that was, you know, thank you, immune system, making those antibodies. Yeah, because of one of my medical conditions, I was on the list to get it and I got it. Lala does not have it yet. My wife does not have it. She’ll hopefully get it within the next month or two. And, but it does feel nice to have, it’s anticlimactic. I just want everybody to have it, but that’s all. I just want everybody to have the vaccine and that will be really, really great but that’s, that’s coming.

[00:06:00] What else is going on? I’m gearing up for the launch of Hush Little Baby. I got some artistic assets as they call them today. And they’re just really cute images that you can put on Instagram or Pinterest or whatever of your book. And the nice thing is when you’re with a traditional publisher, if you decide to go that route, that’s one of those things they do for you. They give you the artistic assets and thank God for that, because I like to use Canva for the stuff that I do, myself, my self-published books. But it’s nice to have somebody else send that to you. So they’re doing things like giveaways and so that is starting. I’m trying to be present for that, trying to show up at the desk, even though life is literally in disarray, in several different arenas. I still got to show up at the desk and write. I still have to show up to the desk and think about marketing. I still have to show up. I get to show up at the desk and teach that’s, I love doing that. Life just doesn’t stop spinning because we get busy, we just get busier and that is fine. Do it scared. Do it scared. I’m trying to go a little bit easy on myself. I hope that you are exploring some of that too. I’m thinking a lot about the seasons of writing, and I have more than a few students right now in my classes who are really hitting a wall.

[00:07:25] And I think it has to do, I’m guessing this is my guess. I think it has something to do with his year of the pandemic, it’s really slapping us all in the face that we’ve lost an entire year to this in so many ways. And the smallest thing we could lose from this is a year. So many of us have lost so much more than just a year. And this particular stress as is just accumulated to the point where, for a lot of people, it is hard to write right now. And I want to remind you that there are seasons, there are seasons of writing. I love to teach these 90 day classes because 90 days is a great season. You can go hard, you can work hard. You can bond with this community and work your ass off and have something to show for it at the end, you can’t do 90 days to blast through everything. Every 90 days you have to recuperate. Winter Will Come, my last Patreon essay that I wrote was about the book wintering, which I highly recommend and about my type of wintering and how we have to remember that tree’s like really- a really good hardworking tree outside. I may have said this on the podcast, I apologize if I have, but are very hardworking tree. Your favorite tree out on the sidewalk. If it is a tree that normally loses its leaves in the fall, it doesn’t get to decide just to try really hard and work harder and produce the leaves all through the winter. It doesn’t get that choice. It has to winter. We all have to winter at some points. And right now, even though we’re going into spring in this hemisphere, I feel people are wintering, are needing to winter. If you have been working your ass off, it might be time for a goddamn break. It is what I’m telling you my friends, it’s different than not wanting to write, not wanting to write, hating, writing, hating what you’re writing. That’s just- that’s any day of any season, but hitting a wall and needing to take care of yourself more than needing to get to the page, that’s normal. That’s part of the writer’s life. So if you’re there, you’re not doing it wrong. You’re living this part of the writer’s life and wintering is included in that you must winter sometimes. So, take heart. Take care of yourself. Write when you can and when you do, come find me on the internet and tell me about it. I really love hearing about your writing. Okay. My friends enjoy this interview. I know you will, and we will talk soon.

[00:10:12] Do you wonder why you’re not getting your creative work done? Do you make a plan to write and then fail to follow through? Again? Well, my sweet friend, maybe you’d get a lot out of my Patreon. Each month, I write an essay on living your creative life as a creative person, which is way different than living as a person who’ve been just Netflix 20 hours a week and I have lived both of those ways, so I know. You can get each essay and access to the whole back catalog of them for just a dollar a month. Which is an amount that really truly helps support me at this here writing desk. If you pledge the $3 level, you’ll get motivating texts for me that you can respond to. And if you pledge at the $5 a month level, you get to ask me questions about your creative life, that I’ll answer in the mini episodes. So basically I’m your mini coach. Go to patreon.com/Rachael (R A C H A E L) to get these perks and more and thank you so much.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:12] Okay. Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show, Erica Robuck. Hello, Erica!

Erika Robuck: [00:11:17] Hello. I’m so happy to be here.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:19] I’m so happy to have you. I am not done with your book yet, but I have not been able to put it down since I picked it up yesterday. So it is just so fantastic! And I can’t wait to talk to you about it. Let me give you a little intro, Erica Robuck is the national best-selling author of Hemingway’s Girl, Call Me Zelda, Fallen Beauty, The House of Hawthorne, and Receive Me Falling. She is a contributor to the anthology Grand Central: Postwar Stories of Love and Reunion, and to the Writer’s Digest Essay Collection, Author in Progress. She writes satire, hashtag #Hockeystrong as E. Robuck. Her latest novel, The Invisible Woman, the one I’m reading is about real-life superwoman of WWII, OSS/SOE agent Virginia Hall. In 2014, Robuck was named Annapolis’ Author of the Year and she resides there with her husband, three sons and a spunky miniature schnauzer. So I’m just so glad to have you on the show. One of my favorite genres to read are these historical novels that are based in truth. And just before we get into writing, which is what this podcast is all about. How did you find out about her? How did you fall in love with her?

Erika Robuck: [00:12:30] Well, I was going through trying to find people that were from Maryland, who were important to me. And I’ve written books about women in the shadows of men. So I’ve written Mrs. Fitzgerald, and an editor had said to me, find a woman who’s special in her own right. Who’s not in a man’s shadow, but remarkable. And around that time, I found Virginia Hall from Baltimore. I live in Maryland, who grew up where I did. And I don’t, I didn’t know how I’d never heard of her before, because her story is so extraordinary. If I’d made it up, you just wouldn’t believe it.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:04] Yes.

Erika Robuck: [00:13:06] So the day that I found her, I just, I’m so thankful that I did.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:08] And she just like took over your life and your imagination and

Erika Robuck: [00:13:11] Absolutely

Rachael Herron: [00:13:13] You write her with such beauty that she is just so three-dimensional and I could just feel everything that she’s feeling. And I appreciate that from you. Can you tell us a little bit, so you’re wildly prolific, obviously, what is your writing process like? What, how do you get it done?

Erika Robuck: [00:13:28] Yeah, my now and my son is a little older, I try to work while they’re either in virtual school or online or at school. They’re in a hybrid situation right now. So I pretty much work 9 to 1 every day is my writing time. And then I come out of the office blinking and see to food and exercise and domestic activities and interacting with children. But that’s the time I try to carve out every morning and it’s really important that I keep that. So that’s Monday through Friday. And then, you know, I have like a whole setup. I have classical music. I have a candle; this whole desk is kind of like an altar. So you know, I have my, I hypnotize myself and then I set my alarm so I do remember to go pick people up from school because I definitely missed that before, when you’re in the past, it’s hard to come out, back to the present.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:17] Yes. I use my echo device for that. You know, people feel different ways about having those in their house. And I don’t like to have it in my house, but my wife insisted on it, but now I use it for everything for, and especially for writing, I set it to set the alarm because you don’t have to think very hard. You just say it and then she’ll yell at you when you need to go run the errand that you have to do.

Erika Robuck: [00:14:36] Yeah. I do have, on my little, on my watch here, it buzzes and won’t let you stop. So

Rachael Herron: [00:14:40] Otherwise I don’t know how we would get anything done. Yeah, exactly. What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing?

Erika Robuck: [00:14:47] Well, when I’m in the drafting process, I really have to crawl into the skin of the characters. And, you know, as a writer, when that process is very different from revising or editing.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:57] Yes

Erika Robuck: [00:14:58] And it’s hard for me to go into that world, to go into world war II, occupied France, Virginia Hall, and then to come out and to go to the carpool line and interact with human beings in the grocery store. So that’s the biggest challenge for me is in the drafting phase when it’s almost I wouldn’t don’t say method acting, but you know, you’re just not in your own head as much as in someone else’s. So that’s a real challenge to balance that.

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