Rachael

Ep. 188: Elizabeth Kay on Taking Off Her Editor’s Hat to Write a Bestseller

September 14, 2020

Elizabeth Kay works in the publishing industry under a different name. She lives in London and has a first-class degree in English literature.

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

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript

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

[00:00:15] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode 188 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So thrilled you’re here with me today, as we are talking to Elizabeth Kay, who wrote a phenomenal novel called Seven Lies. And she, which I learned during our interview, is actually an editor and kind of came into writing from that standpoint, so it’s a fascinating interview. I think you’re really gonna enjoy it. Hope you, hope that you do, I’m sure that you will. And just a quick catch up on what’s going on around here, I am just revising again. I live in revision land. It’s wonderful. And it’s hard. And I think that I’m at the point with this book where I just want maybe to be writing a different book. We all get to that point where we’re like, Oh God, I don’t want to look at this scene even one more time and I need to, this is the fourth revision that I’m doing for my editor. And when I get to a scene, I’m like welcome friend, good grief! Back again. I will say something. I got pro writing aid, I had used Grammarly for a long time to kind of check to see, I am really, really bad at doubling words or leaving words out. I type very fast and my brain goes too fast and I usually like, one word every three sentences is left out and it’s often an important word. So Grammarly was helping me with that. However, I tried pro writing aid, which was cheaper to buy outright and have it forever than it was to have Grammarly. And I just tested it out this week with a Patreon essay. And it was very, very helpful.

[00:02:03] While I was looking at my revisions of my book yesterday, I tried putting in a chapter to use pro writing aid and it was overwhelming. It actually got me way too far into the minutiae of editing. And I’m not quite there yet. I’m still dealing with some character issues and some plot issues. So I need to back out. But I know that at the very last, the very last point, when I’m about to send it to my editor, I will run it through pro writing aid, which I like a lot more than Grammarly, especially for it pointing out unwieldy sentences and words or phrases that you have repeated too many times. I’ve got a pretty good ear for repeats now, it used to be terrible when I started this game, I would use the word bus, you know, twice in a paragraph or whatever. And I wouldn’t hear that you don’t want to use the same word two or three times close together on a page. It’s hard to see, that’s what editors see for you. So don’t worry about that if you can’t see it, but it is nice to also have a program that will point it out to you.

[00:03:06] So, that was fun! In other big news, it’s my birthday weekend, it’s the 4th of July weekend as I record this. And I did something really fun today for my birthday. I went out into open water and swam in the Bay. I got a wetsuit, I got it for my birthday, for myself, online and I put it on and a friend met me out there and kind of taught me how to sight as we swim, because it’s a different experience. You have to raise your head to sight where you’re going and to breathe. Combining the two moves when I am just used to, you know, breathing on the side and looking down at a lane marker, it’s very, very different. I got a little bit dizzy because it was choppy out on the Bay today and I loved every single second of it. I absolutely loved it. I am now an open water swimmer and so for my birthday, I am going out at 9:30 AM with a group and they swim every week in Berkeley. They swim three times a week. They just go out into the Bay and swim and it’s the Bay, it’s just there. It’s, it’s a little dirty and it’s a little, the ground is slimy, and it’s okay. It was so fun. I am such a water baby. I just want to have my body in water all the time. I always wanted to surf. Because I wanted just to sit on the surf board, I never wanted to actually surf or get in line or deal with other people who are waiting in line to catch the, the surfing wave. I also didn’t want a huge board that could hit me the head, none of that. And I realized recently that no, I just wanted to go out in the ocean and hang out and you can do that in a wetsuit. It’s a buoyant. You just kind of get tired of, of swimming, just kind of kick back and look up at the sky or roll around. It was so much fun. So I am a new convert and I’m kind of obsessed and I can’t wait to go for my second time. So that is what’s exciting around here, nothing to do with writing, but outside hobbies are fantastic for our writing. Right? I hope that you are getting some work done. Please come to wherever I am online and tell me about it. I really love to hear from you all. And now we’re just gonna jump right into the interview with Elizabeth Kay. Please enjoy and happy writing to you.

[00:05:26] 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: [00:05:44] Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show. Elizabeth Kay. Hello, Elizabeth!

Elizabeth Kay: [00:05:49] Hello! Thank you so much for having me.

Rachael Herron: [00:05:52] Oh, I’m thrilled. I loved your book, we’re going to talk about that. Just a little introduction, Elizabeth Kay works in the publishing industry under a different name. She lives in London and has a first class degree in English literature, and Elizabeth, your book Seven Lies as we record, it comes out tomorrow. Is that right?

Elizabeth Kay: [00:06:08] It does. Yes. It’s been out in the UK for a couple of months now, but out in the US tomorrow.

Rachael Herron: [00:06:13] Okay. That is so exciting. We were just talking off air a little bit. This is your debut novel and you are the, the really, the “it” girl right now. Does it feel like that?

Elizabeth Kay: [00:06:29] No, actually, maybe it’s partly locked down as well. I feel like I’m in a little bubble in the middle of nowhere, in a way. But the whole thing has been really exciting. I mean, I’m so thrilled to see it published here and I’m with you guys. So, it’s a whirlwind.

Rachael Herron: [00:06:46] It’s one of those that I, I get a lot offers from publicists on books and I don’t always have the time to read the books, but your book looks so compelling that I picked it up and I just could not put it down. It was one of those, you have a long list of people who blurbed it so beautifully and it’s worth every blurb. I just could not stop turning the pages, so,

Elizabeth Kay: [00:07:09] Oh, thank you so much.

Rachael Herron: [00:07:10] Have you always been drawn to the thriller genre?

Elizabeth Kay: [00:07:15] No. Well, no, actually the first thriller I really read was Gone Girl,

Rachael Herron: [00:07:19] Okay.

Elizabeth Kay: [00:07:20] So not that long ago

Rachael Herron: [00:07:20] Yeah

Elizabeth Kay: [00:07:21] when that came out, and but I mean, what a place to start

Rachael Herron: [00:07:24] Yes

Elizabeth Kay: [00:07:25] And since then I’ve been, it’s definitely what I read more than anything else, you know? And there’s been, I mean, there’ve been so many good novels in that space in the last few years. You’ll never short of it. That’s a great book if that’s your area.

Rachael Herron: [00:07:37] Never short and if you know, once you get a couple of friends who do the texting back and forth, Oh, I got another one. You got to read this one. And your book was one of those that I’ve been telling all of my tight thriller reader friends to read.

Elizabeth Kay: [00:07:49] Oh good.

Rachael Herron: [00:07:50] But let’s talk about your writing process, cause that’s what we do on this show. So what is, what is your writing process look like? How did you get this done? I’m assuming, do you have another job in the industry on the side?

Elizabeth Kay: [00:08:02] Yeah, so I work Monday to Friday, as an editor for payment random house in the UK. So this is very much a weekend project. This was a Saturday, Sundays, for about nine months, six to nine months as my first draft. And it was basically, I found that if I got dressed for the day, then I have to start the day. So as long as I stayed in my pajamas, it was easy to just pretend I was in kind of a weird limbo between night and day, where I would just sit down and write for a good few hours. So that was my process for getting the bulk of this novel, this novel done.

Rachael Herron: [00:08:36] That is so, so clever. I love that little hack and I, I didn’t realize that you were an editor there. What kind of literature do you edit at Penguin?

Elizabeth Kay: [00:08:46] I work quite a lot. I do keep you through this, but not very many, but some kind of book, club-fiction and lots of nonfiction as well. So a real mix.

Rachael Herron: [00:08:54] How did it feel coming to this book with your editor’s hat- were you able to take the editor’s hat off for the first draft?

Elizabeth Kay: [00:09:02] No, I’m terrible. I’m terrible at taking my editor hat off and I much prefer, once I’ve done the first draft, I’m much happier kind of fiddling and playing around and free working. I find the first bit of real slog. I’m trying to watch that word count, go up really slowly. And I had, I’d worked on a few novels before this, tried to write things and nothing had ever felt that exciting. So in a way, with this book, I wrote the first chapter and it’s in the voice of Jane whose main character, and once I had her, this felt so much easier. I actually, I would almost say I enjoyed the first draft with this one

Rachael Herron: [00:09:38] Oh my goodness.

Elizabeth Kay: [00:10:39] Which I really liked. I like being in her head. So that made it a lot easier but, says me, the editor in me was always having to make her be quiet.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:51] The, without giving any spoilers, of course, the end actually surprised me and I have a harder and harder time finding that in books as we, as we push envelopes, and as we write everything we possibly can, and I read all the thriller, everything and your ending surprised me both what it was and how it was done. Did you, this is just a curiosity on Rachael’s part question. Did you know the ending when you were writing toward it or did it come to you later?

Elizabeth Kay: [00:10:20] I knew from the very near the beginning where the ending was set, and sort of the bones of what was going to happen. The kind of the detail took a lot longer. I think that’s probably the bit that had the most drafts. I wrote, I would say probably at least 10, maybe 15 different versions of the ending with black, not huge changes, but different characters in different places, slightly different ways to twist it. And it was certainly the bit that I found most challenging. So I’m glad it was a surprise because I agree with you. That’s, you know, it’s hard to do something that does shock people, I think.

Rachael Herron: [00:10:56] Yeah. I think, I think it is. And you did something really creative with tents and at the very end where it was just, I had to like go back and check to see how you had done it. So good job ‘yo!

Elizabeth Kay: [00:11:05] Thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:06] What, what is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing?

Elizabeth Kay: [00:11:10] Certainly it, it’s the editor in me mostly, but, I had a baby at the beginning of the year. So now it’s time. I used to be able to, in a way I think, well, I’m just having to be stricter.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:21] Yeah

Elizabeth Kay: [00:11:22] If I have two hours, I write and I try and write fast. I don’t have time for the editor anymore, she’s gone. Get the words down.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:29] So, and is this your first baby?

Elizabeth Kay: [00:11:22] Yes.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:29] So how interesting to have this happen after you’d written all of this what, you know, maternal stuff?

Elizabeth Kay: [00:11:39] Yeah. So it’s kind of, I don’t, I haven’t read my book since I’ve had my son.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:43] Yeah

Elizabeth Kay: [00:11:44] I wonder if it would make me feel differently.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:46] I don’t know. It’s like-

Elizabeth Kay: [00:11:49] I might do it and see what I feel.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:51] What is your biggest joy when it comes to writing?

Elizabeth Kay: [00:11:53] Actually, for me, it’s been people saying, I thought it was kind of the editing bits and in a way it is, but it’s also people saying, Oh, you know, I’ve, I’ve told my mum she has to read it or I’ve suggested it to my book club. It’s really exciting to have people want to share it and want to talk. I think that’s the thing I love about reading when I finish a book and I want to say, you’ve got to read this cause I have to speak to someone

Rachael Herron: [00:12:15] Yes

Elizabeth Kay: [00:12:16] and for people to be doing that about my book, it’s just a real joy because that’s, those are the books that really like, I really love when I want to do that. I know it’s been a great read.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:25] That’s a- that’s a really beautiful way to show love I think too, between, you know, family members or friends who are doing that. I, my, my mom, it was always my best person that all got all of my books. And she sent me all the books that she loved the most and that, and that hole has never been quite filled. Like I have other people, well, this is my thriller person. This is my club person. But, but yeah, no, that’s beautiful. Can you share a craft tip of any sort with us?

Elizabeth Kay: [00:12:51] Well, in terms of silencing your inner editor, one of the things I did a lot last time, and I can see myself having to do again, working on a book 2, is turning the font to the color white as you’re typing. So you can’t see what you’re writing you just- as long as you can type fairly, fairly well, not too many typos. It’s a good way to kind of just write two or three pages. So everything I’m talking to myself, there’s no way I’m thinking it, stop going back and saying, no one would ever say that, or that would never happen. Well, that sounds really messy. Just keep going. And then once you’ve done a chunk, you can turn it back to a black font or whatever color you work with first and read through it

Rachael Herron: [00:13:26] That’s genius.

Elizabeth Kay: [00:13:27] and see if it works.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:29] I’ve heard so many other tips and tricks about, you know, make it too small, so your eye can’t see it or, or, you know, close your eyes, but the white just works and you can probably still see where the cursor is, right?

Elizabeth Kay: [00:13:40] Yes. And you can see the pages going,

Rachael Herron: [00:13:29] Right

Elizabeth Kay: [00:13:40] which is very satisfying.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:45] Satisfying and also I, I always worried that, like, if I couldn’t see it or close my eyes, I would worry that I’d clicked away and I’m not actually writing, you know, in the wrong window or something

Elizabeth Kay: [00:13:54] Yeah, you can see the cursor, you can see that there are red lines underneath every time you’ve made a typo, but you can’t read the words. And you can’t see

Rachael Herron: [00:14:05] That’s genius.

Elizabeth Kay: [00:13:54] The length of your paragraph, so any of your grammars, you have to ignore all of those bits and just think about the story for a few pages.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:12] I am loving that. Thank you. That just blew my mind and I can hear it blowing the minds of the listeners. So, thank you. That’s brilliant.

Elizabeth Kay: [00:14:20] You have to try

Rachael Herron: [00:14:21] Yes, absolutely. Oh my goodness. Okay. What thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way?

Elizabeth Kay: [00:14:29] I think probably, probably my mood. I find, there are some chap- sometimes I’ll be writing a chapter and I think I just can’t write this now, or I’ll be in a really bad mood or pretty cross about something. And I think I’m going to go write that, that chapter I know needs to come soon. It’s a really angry one. I’ll go do that now. I’m not very good at kind of silencing myself to put on a different pair of glasses or a different coat, and far better to follow where I’m at.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:56] So you use it, you use the mood to do what

Elizabeth Kay: [00:14:59] I tried to

Rachael Herron: [00:15:00] you need to do.

Elizabeth Kay: [00:15:01] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:15:02] That’s so clever, when I’m in a-

Elizabeth Kay: [00:15:03] I don’t think you can write a love scene if you’re in a really cross mood,

Rachael Herron: [00:14:06] No

Elizabeth Kay: [00:15:06] maybe other people can try, but I can’t.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:08] I’ve tried. I’ve tried. I cannot. It does not work. That’s so much smarter usually when I’m in a grumpy mood, I just stop things and avoid the page completely.

Elizabeth Kay: [00:15:17] Well, that works as well. Sometimes I have to walk away.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:20] It feels pretty good. I got to tell you, I just turned in a revision to my editor four days ago, so I’m still like, high on the fumes of being done, so

Elizabeth Kay: [00:15:31] And having a creative time where you’re like, it’s not my job anymore. It’s someone else’s job for a little bit.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:35] Unfortunately, my editor is, I don’t know about you, but she’s one of those people, she’ll get it back to me in a week.

Elizabeth Kay: [00:15:39] Oh so you got to make the most of it

Rachael Herron: [00:15:44] She’s horrible. So just know that as an editor, we love it when you say, Oh, I hope to get to it in the next six weeks. No, you can take eight. You can take twelve. I don’t care. Yeah. Okay. What is the best book that you’ve read recently? And why did you love it?

Elizabeth Kay: [00:15:58] I have just finished reading, Shari Lapena’s a new novel, Shari Lapena, Shari Lapina, which is called The End of Her. It’s out in the UK next month. I think it’s probably similar in the US. Which is another, if you’ve read The Couple Next Door or any of her other books, this is another brilliant suburb and thriller, great characters, love to hate most of them, lots of good twist, really fast paced. So it’s very much fun to look out for.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:25] Perfect. I really- she’s Canadian, right?

Elizabeth Kay: [00:16:27] Yeah, she is.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:28] Yeah. I’ve never heard the term suburban thriller. I’ve heard domestic thriller, but I really liked the term suburban thriller because that’s really what hers.

Elizabeth Kay: [00:16:36] And they’re always like mini – aren’t they?

Rachael Herron: [00:16:38] Yeah, absolutely.

Elizabeth Kay: [00:16:39] So neighbors, all of that.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:41] I love that. Thank you. And will you tell us a little bit like your elevator pitch of Seven Lies and tell us a little bit about it.

Elizabeth Kay: [00:16:50] Okay. So it is, it’s the story of two friends, Jane and Marnie, who’ve known each other since they were 11. It’s the seven lies that Jane tells to Marnie, which gets more and more sinister as the novel moves on and which results in a death near the middle of the novel. And far darker things further on.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:09] I loved, I talked to my students a lot about that context shifting midpoint. And when you use that midpoint of, we will not name who died, but somebody died, and I was like, yes, that’s a perfect place. Death is always a good thing to put in the midpoint.

Elizabeth Kay: [00:17:21] I think that you should start in the middle. That’s what I always say, it works out well, when what happens in the middle first?

Rachael Herron: [00:17:26] Yes. When I remember to do that, it works well. Usually I do not.

Elizabeth Kay: [00:17:30] I’m on my own. I’m always forgetting all the good advice that people telling me.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:35] So are you in the process right now of writing book two?

Elizabeth Kay: [00:17:38] I am writing a couple of book 2, it’s to see which one works best.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:42] Oh, good for you.

Elizabeth Kay: [00:17:44] See which one fit. And I’m kind of flashing out a few first chapter to see whether one of them feels strong enough.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:51] I love that. Yay! All right, and where can people find you?

Elizabeth Kay: [00:17:55] They can find me if they’d like to, I’d love to hear from anyone who reads the book, if people will enjoy it or have a question I’m at AnyOtherLizzy on Twitter and Instagram AnyOtherLizzy. So come find me there.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:06] Perfect. Thank you, thank you so very much for this interview and thanks for a book that puts spring in my step again, when I, when it comes to the thriller genre. So thank you.

Elizabeth Kay: [00:18:18] Thank you for having me.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:19] Welcome.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:20] Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patreon and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/

Now, go to your desk and create your own process and get to writing my friends.

Ep. 187: Eddie King on Why There’s No Right Way of Writing

August 3, 2020

Eddie King is an author, screenwriter, and television presenter. Born and raised in Hampstead, London, he spent many years working in the film industry as a producer and script consultant on large-budget Hollywood productions. He is a prominent ambassador of American country music across Europe and co-hosts a weekly primetime television series where he interviews some of Nashville’s biggest stars. Eddie has written five novels, all in the contemporary romance genre. His first book, ‘Spoilt For Choice’ earned him a Young Writers’ Award nomination and ‘Southern Girl: Daisy Dukes and Cowboy Boots’ has been adapted for screen. He currently splits his time between London, Los Angeles, and Nashville.

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript

[00:00:15] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #187 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So glad that you’re here with me today.

[00:00:25] Today, I am talking to the awesome Eddie King, who is doing something with his book. That I have never heard of being done. You want to stick around for how he is using social media and this new release of his, it’s completely fascinating. And he is a super sweetie, super genuine and willing to share. And he talks about there being no right way of writing. And I love that. I am constantly telling people how to write and always trying to remember to add onto the end of that. I’m right. Unless I’m wrong. In which case, you’re right. Do your own thing that is so true about writing, so I know you’re going to enjoy this really interesting and very different interview.

[00:01:15] And let’s see what’s going on around here. Well, I got my revision letter from my editor and it was so good. She, she spent a whole single spaced page. So we’re talking 500 words or so praising me. And you know, when you get a revision letter from your editor, usually often they say, you know, a few nice things, and then they jump into the meat of the revision letter, which is what you need to fix, which is the job, right? That’s the revision letters job, is to tell you what is broken and what needs fixing and so when you hear the compliments as a writer, all of our brains say something like, well, you know, she has to say that, you know, that’s her job. She’s supposed to build me up before she tears it apart. But these compliments were so specific that in my email, back to her, I wrote something like I actually believe you because this is the difference between somebody saying you look pretty. And somebody saying, oh my gosh, that color is divine. It brings out your eyes. And what skincare regimen are you using? Oh, I’d love to get the name of whatever product you’re using on your skin because you are glowing. That’s the difference? and that’s, that’s that latter one is the thing where I got the revision letter. So that’s great. So I am now going into my fourth, big revision. So I’m going to take moment to kind of break down right now what happens when you get a revision letter from an editor.

[00:02:44] So I’m working with Hush Little Baby coming out next year. It, I did a terrible shitty first draft, which is the way I write, which is the way I believe most people should write, but there are no, there’s no right and wrong. I do accept that. And I did a massive, massive makes sense draft, which was then followed up by a couple of passes that clean things up and did a little bit of smaller things. So I would consider those my first and second draft. And then I sent it to my editor. Second draft doesn’t really cover what happened after the second draft, before I sent it to my editor where I do the smaller passes of looking for specific things. But you, kind of get the gist, the big, huge, heavy lifting of the second draft was done before I sent it to my editor, my editor at that point I’ve mentioned on the show, just called me it wasn’t- I, the book needed too much work even to get into a revision letter, honestly. I had to move so much stuff around in the book that it was just a conversation and she said less slow in the beginning, less stabbing at the end, get some more stabbing up front and some emotions in the back. So I rewrote the book in another very big, third draft, heavy lifting kind of thing. And that’s what she got a couple of weeks ago. And now I have the actual revision letter and this is what you get from your editor. You will have an editor, whether you get an agent to sell your work, and are traditionally published, or then your editor kind of works for you and they give you money. And then they edit you, which is a nice part of traditional publishing. If you choose to sell, publish, you have to hire your editor and you’ll get just as good an experience if you know what to look for and it’s marvelous to hire your own editor. I always recommend Reedsy.com, everybody there is vetted most have worked in the traditional publishing industry. I’ve never heard a bad thing about an editor that my students and coaching clients have used. So I recommend that if you’re going to the self-publishing route, no matter what you’re going to get what’s called a revision letter and a revision letter, for some reason, it was always single-spaced who this one was 6 pages long. I have heard of 20 and 30-page revision letters. I think my shortest was two pages and my longest was maybe 10. So this is about average 6 pages and, with the revision letter talks about is the broad stroke stuff this character needs to be expanded, this red herring doesn’t work. And here’s why this entire plot line can and should be lifted out.

[00:05:29] There were recommendations that you get to choose whether or not you take, I take all of them, because every editor I’ve ever worked with has been way more right about these things than I am. I can’t see the forest for the trees. They are right. So, what I do, this is my process. It is exactly the same process that I use in any other revision pass revision is something, I talk about it a lot that can be learned. It is a process. Once you learn it, you have it forever to use in every revision process. I’m doing it on that book of essays I talked about last week. You can listen in episode number 108 of like a, a breakdown of how I revise, but just real quickly for this one, for an editing letter, for a revision letter, from an editor, I do the same thing I always do. I print out a new and correct an up-to-date sentence outline, which just has a snippet of each scene. Not even a snippet, it has a few words that say what happens in each scene. So I can basically read my whole book in 30 seconds or so, 45 seconds of casting my eye over those. I leave a lot of space in between the scenes so I can scribble in there because this sentence outline will become my map for revision. So I print that out, and then I sit down with the revision letter and I get out my little two and a half by one inch post it’s, and for every idea, my editor gives me. I make a post it, and I stick it in my whatever journal I’m using at the time. Or you can put it on an eight and a half piece of paper by 11, or you could put it on the back of your sentence outline wherever you want. Just stick them somewhere. Every single idea that she gives you, write it down.

[00:07:15] Then, what I do that probably took me an hour and a half this morning, just doing those post- it’s. Then, you open the document that she sends you, she’ll send you your revised document in word with comments. And what I do, is I just hit that next comment button and I look at all of the comments. I would say 90-95% of the comments my editor this time has put in my document are small line edits, like this doesn’t make sense. What about what happened in the last scene? How does this fit? They’re small things. This editor tends to give me all the big ideas that I have to spend a lot of time thinking about in the revision letter, not inside the body of the document, which is fantastic, but in the past, what I’ve had, is editors who will leave the really big ideas as comments in your manuscript. Totally great. Just as long as they’re somewhere. So what I do before I start any work is I look at every comment and make sure she hasn’t snuck one in there that is, that is like, you know, get rid of this character, or get rid of this storyline. So I scanned my eye down those and make sure I don’t need to make any more post-its I think I only got two or three from that process this morning. And then you kind of sit down with these post-it’s, you sit down with your sentence outline, and that’s when you brainstorm that’s when you start to scribble all over the sentence outline, how can I make this post it happen? Where in the manuscript can I do that? How can I do that- for me, it’s always, when I’m writing thriller, apparently it’s always about increasing suspense because I like to hang out with emotions, not suspense. The suspense is not an emotion. So for me, it’s really about looking at that sentence outline. Where can I increase suspense and decrease relaxation, decrease the break intention. So that’s what I was doing today. And it’s so fun. It’s so fun. And then what you do is you just open your document and you start with revising and you go from there looking at your map, it’s all mapped out. You know, what’s going to happen in the next scene, what you need to fix, you’re going to have ideas on the way. Yay. More post-it’s. I should just call this the post it program. Honestly, you know that I have a problem. It’s such a good problem to have. Okay. So that’s enough about revision. I hope this has answered any questions you might have about getting a revision letter from an editor. It’s not scary. It’s a process. It can hurt. Definitely. This time, this revision letter didn’t hurt because I got the first revision letter verbally just saying, fix the mess you made, which I did.

[00:09:47] So, what else did I want to tell you? Oh, if you like these tips, you can always become a Patron, at patreon.com/Rachael, R, A, C, H, A, E, L, at the $5 level a month and up, you get to ask me any questions about writing and I will answer them on the podcast in a mini episode. Nobody asks this question about the revision and letter. So it was just in a regular podcast but I figured some of you might be wondering what you do when you get that dreaded, feared and awesome revision letter. I will be recording an episode next week, got a couple of questions. So if you have any, and you are one of the $5 and up Patrons, please leave me any of your writing questions or really, you know, any questions at all. I’m pretty much an open book.

[00:10:31] Thank you. Speaking of Patreon, to new patrons, Evan Oliver, who has already sent some questions, and Marie, thank you. And Lisa Lucky. I really appreciate your patronage. It means that what I am doing is important to you and I am so grateful to all of my patrons over at Patreon. It is, it’s literally the difference in me being able to afford the time to do this kind of thing, and to write those essays that I write for you and not doing them. So thank you from the bottom of my heart. I think that’s what I wanted to tell you before we get into this interview with Eddie King, please enjoy this innovative approach to publishing. He’s kind of pushing some old boundaries here, so I hope you enjoy it. And I wish you very, very, very happy writing my friends.

[00:11:24] 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: [00:12:06] Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show, Eddie King, all the way from Germany, Eddie, how are you?

Eddie King: [00:12:08] I’m good. Thank you very much for having me.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:10] I’m so excited to have you. You are a writer who is doing something I have not seen any other writer do. So we’re going to have time to talk about that towards the end of our time. Super exciting. And let me give a little bio for you. Eddie King is an author, screenwriter and television presenter. Born and raised in Hampstead, London. He spent many years working in the film industry as a producer and script consultant on large-budget Hollywood productions. He is a prominent ambassador of- this is so weird, Eddie, and I love it, of American country music across Europe and co-hosts a weekly primetime television series, where he interviews some of Nashville’s biggest stars. Eddie has written five novels on the contemporary romance genre, his first books, “Spoilt for Choice” earned him a Young Writers’ Award nomination, and “Southern Girl: Daisy Dukes and Cowboy Boots” has been adapted for screen. He currently splits his time between London, Los Angeles, and Nashville. I am a, I’m a huge country fan, but old country. I’m not so into the new country. And I was raised,

Eddie King: [00:13:17] the old country, the Johnny Cash.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:21] Yeah. Or even some of the stuff today that’s coming out but sounds a little bit older. I actually wrote out a romance trilogy about three countries, singing sisters, which remains probably my favorite romance I’ve ever written. And I was looking at the cover of Southern Girl and it looks like one of my books. It’s pretty awesome.

Eddie King: [00:13:41] Well I like to think country music is a love story, right? It’s a

Rachael Herron: [00:13:46] Exactly. And you can have an entire romance novel inside one song. Your bio does not say that you’re a song writer. Have you ever attempted that?

Eddie King: [00:13:56] No, not yet either I’m not very good musically. So,

Rachael Herron: [00:14:03] What drew you to this is not on our list of things to talk about, but what drew you to country music in the first place?

Eddie King: [00:14:08] I think just growing up, I always listened to sort of the, there’s always Johnny Cash playing around my house and a little bit of Rockabilly, and rock and roll and they got into it. And I started visiting Nashville and I fell in love with the new country as well. So,

Rachael Herron: [00:14:26] Yeah.

Eddie King: [00:14:27] A little bit of everything so, and it was weird because, you know, I’d come back to London and nobody knew about any of these stars and they were like huge in the US, right? So,

Rachael Herron: [00:14:39] Interesting.

Eddie King: [00:14:40] It was, yeah, it was. It was very interesting.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:43] Did you see that recent mashup video? I think it’s just called Country Music and it basically has all the stars in it? From Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, to all the new people. Have you seen that?

Eddie King: [00:14:55] Yes I have seen that.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:56] It’s so gorgeous. I don’t know how new it is. Maybe it come out months ago but I just thought the other day.

Eddie King: [00:15:02] It’s a really nice. It’s already a nice sort of community. I used to work and the film industry out in LA and that was, you know, it’s still in the entertainment genre. But when you move to work in country music out in Nashville, people are so different and so nice and so welcoming and yeah, and it was something new because, you know, you’re, we had like a big gap in country music, so it was nice, guys in the US and bring some of that back.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:28] That is so awesome. I was supposed to be in Nashville two months ago, but Covid got in the way and I still haven’t been, it’s definitely like a bucket list item for me to go to the Bluebird. Okay. Well, let’s talk about you and your books because you are a busy fella and you’re still getting books done. What is your writing process? What, how and where, and how much all of that.

Eddie King: [00:15:50] Well, it differs every time. Usually it’s kind of a, at a pub or a bar or maybe a coffee shop. I liked a bit of background noise. Some sort of distraction to get your mind off of it. And it really just matters. I know people say you should keep it of a 9 to 5 schedule and I base a week, but that just doesn’t work for me. So

Rachael Herron: [00:16:16] I don’t agree with the should’s. That’s why I like the show. We don’t, we don’t worry about the should’s.

Eddie King: [00:16:23] Yeah. So whenever I’m in the mood, I usually go around sort of 10:00 AM, 11:00 AM and I’ll sit there until I’m done. And that’s usually about sort of 5, 6:00 PM.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:37] How have things changed since Covid though, since you can’t go out?

Eddie King: [00:16:40] It’s been tough. Yeah. It’s I think that it’s been, it’s been a bit of both sort of, it’s nice where you can just sit in your pajamas all day and just write from your couch. I should be sitting up at my desk and writing, especially when there’s deadlines coming in, but, yeah, it’s a, but things over here, I’m out in Germany at the moment and everything’s back to normal pretty much.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:05] Really?

Eddie King: [00:17:06] Everything’s open.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:08] Can you, you actually go sit in the pub now?

Eddie King: [00:17:11] Yes, yes, yes. So I just take my laptop. The weather has been nice here and you can sit outside as well, so.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:19] That must be really nice. I miss, I miss things. Yeah. America, we’re not, we’re not handling this whole thing very well, so it’s going to be a bit longer. Okay. So what is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing?

Eddie King: [00:17:35] There’s so many and there’s new one every day. I think

Rachael Herron: [00:17:40] It’s the truth.

Eddie King: [00:17:42] Probably like everyone says the editing process. You send your book off and you’ve got your baby that you’ve been working on, comes back with so many revisions and every time I think, okay, they’re going to come back and say, it’s perfect. Don’t change anything. Yeah. But every time it’s like, all right, take this chapter out, take this character out. This doesn’t work. I spend a lot of time on that.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:05] You have no idea how hard I worked for that. And I love that you say that. I always think that, that this time I’m sending it away and I’ve nailed it.

Eddie King: [00:18:13] Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:14] I’m always thinking and then I’m supposed to get a revision back on Monday. And I now know like, Oh, it’s going to be bad again.

Eddie King: [00:18:21] And the bad thing is that they’re usually right, so.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:25] Yes, they are.

Eddie King: [00:18:26] That’s, that’s always the process to sort of, admit it, you have to say it, well.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:31] How long does it take you to realize that this particular editing letters right again?

Eddie King: [00:18:40] Again, it’s different, you know, with Southern Girl, I was convinced that you know, I wanted to release a sort of a writer’s cut version of it because I was not happy with, but sort of when the sales started coming in and I was like, okay, well maybe they were right.

Rachael Herron: [00:19:04] I’m going to steal that idea for my students. Like, if you really hate those editing ideas, just put your book aside into a writer’s cut. You can always share that later for lots of money

Eddie King: [00:19:13] Yeah. Nobody’s gonna read it, but you know, at least put it out.

Rachael Herron: [00:19:18] And psychologically you have it. And then they’ll see also, we all see after we do our edits, we’re like, oh yeah, the book is a lot better now.

Eddie King: [00:19:30] Yeah, I mean, I’ve got all types of ending for most on my books

Rachael Herron: [00:19:35] You know, that’s funny. I have alternative books for most of my books. I rewrite so much. What is your biggest joy?

Eddie King: [00:19:43] What’s the biggest what? Sorry.

Rachael Herron: [00:19:45] Oh, What’s your biggest joy when it comes to writing?

Eddie King: [00:19:48] I think when it all comes together, right, there’s always sort of points when you’re writing and you’re just, you think, Oh, actually this works, and sort of things that surprise you while you’re writing. So usually have a plan of what you wanted, where you want to take the story, but then something pops in your head, take it in that direction and it works. Yeah. And then when you sort of stopped connecting with characters that you were writing, I think that definitely whether you’d like them or hate them, if you have any feeling about the characters that you’re right. That’s always a nice feeling because you sort of, kind of, as a writer, you live in this world where there’s all these fictional characters around you. When you, kind of see that they’re real people in your head, that’s, that’s fun. That’s a good proper writing I would say.

Rachael Herron: [00:20:43] That’s such a delicious feeling to think of them as friends and to kind of miss them.

Eddie King: [00:20:48] The sad thing as well, but

Rachael Herron: [00:20:50] Yeah,

Eddie King: [00:20:51] The writers’ well

Rachael Herron: [00:20:53] Speaking of your plans moving as the characters take you, are you more of a planner? A plotter or are you more of a seat of your pants or something in between?

Eddie King: [00:21:04] I try to plan more and more and it does help. And I’ve been trying to get into this habit of, before I stopped having a solid plan, but I hardly ever stick to it or something to preach. And a lot of the stories are right at to current affairs as well. So you have to, dig in, just what’s happening around you. And I’m very impatient, so if I hear something or if I see a truth about character, I just want to get it in this book. I didn’t think about sort of two or three books. I tried just cram everything and

Rachael Herron: [00:21:40] I really believe in that. I really believe and if it wasn’t Annie Dillard said something like, Save nothing. Keep nothing back. And it was much, it was a beautiful, long quote, but you know, I’ll spend it all play it all. Because as soon as you spend it all and play it all, and put it in this book, you, you know, we all have that worry. Like, well, the next book won’t have anything, but it backfills with these new ideas. Yeah. I love that. Can you share a craft tip of any sort of as regards to writing?

Eddie King: [00:22:14] I would say. There’s no right way of doing anything. And I’ll explain that a little bit. I think a lot of people, starting out with writing, they, you know, they do all this research of how to write and even how to format stuff. And I try to break, I deliberately going to break the rules, but I think, you know, those rules are there to be sort of bent and you can play with English and you can, you can just do whatever you want. There’s no right way of doing it. And there’s no one way of doing it. And as great as all these sort of writing books are, and stuff, I think the advice I give to all sort of new writers and young writers is just go out there and just write and just start, just get pen to paper, just get words out there and you pick it up along the way. I mean, look at Shakespeare the greatest writer, you know, he just made words up the way he wanted to.

Rachael Herron: [00:23:16] He made a lot of words and he made a lot of them up. Yeah.

Eddie King: [00:23:19] Yeah. So I think you can play around sort of being a fiction writer, anyways, you can play around with words and sentence structure and a lot of, sort of the stuff I write kind of sentences border into poetry. And so I think, you know, there’s a lot of space there to do what you want and you should just be yourself and not try and imitate anyone else. Yeah. I think that would be it. There’s no rules with writing and just be yourself.

Rachael Herron: [00:23:50] That is such a huge tip that it is not one that we talk about a lot. We talk a lot about the specific ways to be better, be stronger. All of these things, you know, what books we should read. And we read all of the books and we listen to podcasts like this. But what we forget is that we’re all completely unique. But the one thing that we all share is that we learned how to do it by doing it.

Eddie King: [00:24:13] Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:24:14] None of us learned everything by reading all of the books, putting it together, perfectly in our brains and being able to sit down and do it. We all had to learn on the job.

Eddie King: [00:24:16] Exactly. And that’s the best way of doing it. Plus, get all your comments right.

Rachael Herron: [00:24:28] That is for someone else. I always think that is what a copy editor is for, they are not that expensive, you know? Yeah. Yeah. They can, every time I get copied edits back, I’m like, I am the world’s worst writer. Like I have no idea what a comma is, you know, I think I do. I don’t.

Eddie King: [00:24:43] Yeah, that’s so funny.

Rachael Herron: [00:24:40] Well, and then you have that frustrating thing where different copy editors do things differently. You’re like, I just learned how to do this, then you’re doing it differently. Yeah. What thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way?

Eddie King: [00:24:052 I think maybe well, unsurprisingly people I think just, I think people inspire me. I sort of, I’m one of those people that goes and sits down and just people watches and that’s how I get inspiration for actually writing. And then somebody might come into your life and they’re just sort of this, this force. And that sort of encourages me to write. I use people as muses all the time, whether they know it or not. Love again, you know, I’m one of those people that falls in love three or four times a day with people.

Rachael Herron: [00:25:35] Me too

Eddie King: [00:25:36] So that really encourages me to write and then probably more surprisingly music as well. I take a lot of inspiration from music. And I often have songs in my head while I’m writing and I sort of play them over and over again, and it could be anything from sort of a gangster, rap song to get me all pumped up to sort of some classical music to calm me down or a little bit of Taylor Swift, you know, just why not.

Rachael Herron: [00:26:09] I really liked her latest documentary. That was good.

Eddie King: [00:26:13] Yeah, and I think, again, she’s such a times at songwriter. And I think there’s so much talent in music and just the stories and they get to tell a story in such a short amount of time, so, yeah. Music, surprisingly, people not so surprising.

Rachael Herron: [00:26:31] It’s interesting. Would you agree that, and this is a thesis I’m just making right now, so I could be wrong, but would you agree that most writers have to be somehow in love with people? I think there are some legends, yeah, I think there are some, probably some curmudgeonly writers that aren’t, and perhaps they write because they kind of hate people. Maybe we fall into different camps, but I am one of those like you, I fall in love constantly with I’m in love with you right now, you know, you’re going to be inspiring something that I do later.

Eddie King: [00:27:05] But that’s the thing, even if you hate somebody, there is an element of love in it.

Rachael Herron: [00:27:12] Yes.

Eddie King: [00:27:13] Love is sort of a feeling of passion and

Rachael Herron: [00:27:16] Fascination

Eddie King: [00:27:17] So if you actively go out and hate everyone, there’s something loving about that in a weird way as well.

Rachael Herron: [00:27:26] Yes. In terms of intention, yeah.

Eddie King: [00:27:26] But yeah, I mean. I think you can’t- you can’t write characters and you can’t write about people without loving them or loving the idea of the diversity of the world really

Rachael Herron: [00:27:42] And loving them completely, including all the flaws that we have to build into our characters. We don’t write books with perfect people.

Eddie King: [00:27:50] Exactly. And, you know, there’s that old phrase that writers feel more, writers love more, writers hate more.

Rachael Herron: [00:27:59] I’ve never heard that. And I love it.

Eddie King: [00:28:02] Yeah. It’s kind of true. I think.

Rachael Herron: [00:28:04] Yeah

Eddie King: [00:28:005] all the time, so

Rachael Herron: [00:28:07] My wife calls that being a drama queen, but everything affection,

Eddie King: [00:28:14] I get told that as well, all the time.

Rachael Herron: [00:28:16] Maybe that’s what writers have in common. What is the best book you read recently? And why did you love it?

Eddie King: [00:28:26] I should be reading more. I, you know, that’s one thing is a, that’s one of my flaws. I just don’t read enough. But then when I do read, I sort of read everything from an author in one sitting.

Rachael Herron: [00:28:40] So you’re a binge reader

Eddie King: [00:28:41] Yeah. But sort of author wise. So I, recently re-read all of Fitzgerald’s, but yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:28:50] Oh really?

Eddie King: [00:28:52] Yeah. And there was a collection of short stories called Flappers and Philosophers.

Rachael Herron: [00:28:54] I just saw that the other day.

Eddie King: [00:28:58] Yeah. and so I read that recently. I really enjoyed it, but I had sort of mixed feelings as well after that. Cause I, I read it, I enjoyed it. And I thought, okay. That it’s been a while since I’ve read some of this, some of them I haven’t read, but then I saw a show like Amazon or Netflix show about Zelda Fitzgerald. And it’s sort of a mini documentary about Fitzgerald, he was, he didn’t come across as the nicest person in the sort of in the series. So it kind of put a bit of a sour taste.

Rachael Herron: [00:29:32] That’s difficult. Yeah. That’s difficult to put those. I hate it when a favorite author lets me down in some big way. Well, not over some other ones. Okay. So now is the time that we talk about you, and what you’re doing, where people can find you, but please tell us about this latest book that just came out this week as record- as we record, so it’ll be about two weeks when it goes out. And what is different about this book?

Eddie King: [00:30:00] What isn’t different about this,

Rachael Herron: [00:30:03] First, tell us the title.

Eddie King: [00:30:01] Yeah, it’s called the Lost Romantics. So it’s about three friends, three wealthy friends from London that are trying to navigate sort of love, modern love and relationships in the digital world with sort of Tinder and Bumble, and instead of, and it’s, the concept is that these guys are tired of swiping. They’re tired of online dating. They’re tired of sort of not going out on real dates. So they’re coming together to bring romance back. To make romance cool again, as it was right again. But yeah, so I think there’s, sort of a lot of people I feel anyways, or they will be in this sort of early to mid-thirties that are kind of rebelling against social media and updating and online dating. And it’s been fun for a while and it’s been a new thing, but this is nostalgia factor that kicks in, and everyone’s sort of remembers the old times and, you know, going out and picking up a girl at her house for a date. Taking her, you know, having dinner and you know, it’s sounds like such a simple thing, but a lot of the time, these days it’s, they’ll meet at the bar, have a drink at lunchtime or something. You know, it’s a,

Rachael Herron: [00:31:30] Yeah

Eddie King: [00:31:32] I think those stories of romance are at risk. And you know, I’m not saying it’s a good thing or a bad thing. It’s just a different thing.

Rachael Herron: [00:31:42] Is this a, is this a trilogy or will all three friends end up in the end with love?

Eddie King: [00:31:48] Well, you’ll have to stay tuned.

Rachael Herron: [00:31:51] Okay. And how do we stay tuned?

Eddie King: [00:31:54] Yeah. Well, that’s a weird thing. I mean, this book is actually available for free, on Instagram if you follow @thelostromantics or you follow me @eddieleeking. I publish, I think, 10 to 15 pages a day at the moment. And it’s just the next chapters that keeping coming out, coming out.

Rachael Herron: [00:32:18] And it’s in the stories function.

Eddie King: [00:32:21] Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:32:22] So basically your, your most recent pictures on your feed, basically say how to go to the stories and you have this really clever thing. So a story, you know, a story only lasts for a few seconds. But you have that little heart to kind of show where a right handed person would put their thumb.

Eddie King: [00:32:40] Yeah, I’ve got all those people telling me, you know, I can’t read that fast cause you only get sort of 10 seconds.

Rachael Herron: [00:32:46] But you explain it clearly! They were not reading directions.

Eddie King: [00:32:50] So there’s a little heart in the corner where you put your thumb, you rest your thumb, and it holds the page. And you can read the whole book it’s in the highlights section story.

Rachael Herron: [00:33:01] Yeah. So you keep the highlights those are always there. We’ll, I just think it’s such a fascinating model. And what I really love about it is, the tension that you hold between these people wanting out of social media and swiping and everything like this but,

Eddie King: [00:33:14] Yeah I mean, that’s, the irony it’s not lost for me

Rachael Herron: [00:33:19] Well, I love it. I think it’s, it feels really intentional to make the reader think about what is going on in the book while they’re holding their phone. What will happen when all of the pages are in, will you then publish the book as well as a standalone or where you always have to go through Instagram?

Eddie King: [00:33:38] Yeah, I know. So this is kind of just for the release. So there’s three books at the moment and there’ll be released over Instagram, but I think the first book is available on Amazon.

Rachael Herron: [00:33:55] Oh, it is? okay.

Eddie King: [00:33:56] In a copy, I think in two weeks.

Rachael Herron: [00:33:58] Okay

Eddie King: [00:34:00] And then in bookstores, I should know this, but I think it’s around six weeks.

Rachael Herron: [00:34:08] Is this your idea to do this, or is it your publisher’s idea, or?

Eddie King: [00:34:13] It was actually my publishers and I, you know, I have to admit this was another thing I was totally against because I was like first of all, I was like, how are we going to give this book away for free? And then it was sort of, I’m a big fan of sort of paperbacks and hardbacks and actual physical books. And I’ve always thought that corner, or, you know, I don’t even like reading eBooks or audio books. I’ve never sort of got into it. So I was against the idea from the beginning. But then like everything, sort of they broke me down and it sort of kind of made sense. And I liked the fact that it is free, for people to go out there read because you know, times are tough, especially now with Covid and everything. Spending eight, nine pounds or $12 on a book, you know it’s a luxury sometimes, and it’s a whole new book as well.

Rachael Herron: [00:35:13] Think the thing, it’s a whole new audience and I think the thing that I hope that you find is that you’re, I’ve seen this with friends when they publish a book on their blog, like in pieces is people still buy the book.

Eddie King: [00:34:26] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:35:27] And these people, will be like, well, I kind of wanted to reread that chapter and I don’t want to go back through the stories, I’ll just buy the book. And they are going to be telling their friends and it’s such a fascinating model.

Eddie King: [00:35:37] Yeah and that’s the thing, you know a lot of sort of a, you know, when I write, I write for a certain audience and, you know, that’s completely the different audience that I get. But you know, people spend so much time on Instagram or on social media looking at sort of all sorts of rubbish. Yeah. This is sort of a way to say, well, actually I’m doing something good on my phone. I’m actually reading book.

Rachael Herron: [00:36:03] Yes

Eddie King: [00:36:04] and you know, it’s in the Instagram, you know, you’ve got all of your friends, things and vacation pictures and all sorts of things. So it’s nice to break it up a little bit with a story as well.

Rachael Herron: [00:36:17] And I get, I personally get really stuck in stories. I really, really like them. So, and in fact,

Eddie King: [00:36:23] It just keeps going on and on, right

Rachael Herron: [00:36:24] Yeah, exactly, they just keep turning. In fact, I’m going to try to remember today, and also when this comes out to put your first page in my stories so that people can see that that would be really cool. And that’s what a great way to share too. Like free book. Here you go.

Eddie King: [00:36:39] Oh yeah, that’s sort of the idea, and sort of a lot of brands, and a lot of influences and people are mentioned within the books, sort of from a mass view of point, they all share and it gets bigger in that way so

Rachael Herron: [00:36:51] And you can tag them on those pages when they’re shared.

Eddie King: [00:36:57] Exactly, so

Rachael Herron: [00:36:58] Oh my mind is blank. I’m never ever going to do this. This sounds like a nightmare to administer

Eddie King: [00:37:04] I mean yeah, the logistics items, I couldn’t even get it formatted. Yeah. Me trying to put a story together is a nightmare. So luckily, it goes that.

Rachael Herron: [00:37:13] The format is beautiful. The format is really well done. I think, it’s just

Eddie King: [00:37:17] I mean, you know, it’s not, it’s, on such a small screen, sometimes it well, it must be hard to read, but I think they’ve got the balance right, you know.

Rachael Herron: [00:37:26] They got the balance right. These are, these are 47-year-old eyes. And as soon as I see something that’s a little bit too small, I leave it. I’ll pick up a book in the bookstore and go, well, can’t read that. And yours was like, Oh, I’m in it. I’m reading. So, yeah. Fabulous. Okay. So tell us again where we can find you and all of these things.

Eddie King: [00:37:44] Yes. So Instagram is probably the best way to go. So the book’s called the Lost Romantics and the handle is @thelostromantics and me, you can find also an Instagram @eddieleeking. And the book is published on both places and you can find out information about like my previous books and upcoming books and all sorts of stuff. That’s probably the best way.

Rachael Herron: [00:38:08] Thank you for being here and for being so different.

Eddie King: [00:38:14] Thank you for having me. Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:38:17] Of course, I’ve never interviewed an author, an author just like you. And I enjoy that.

Eddie King: [00:38:24] That’s a good thing

Rachael Herron: [00:38:25] So it’s been a wonderful thing. I was really looking forward to this interview and you did not disappoint. So thank you so much for being here and happy writing and may it fly from the Instagram and also the paid for shelves.

Eddie King: [00:38:27] That’s so cool.

Rachael Herron: [00:38:40] Thanks, Eddie

Eddie King: [00:38:41] Alright. Take care.

Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patreon and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/Rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/

Now, go to your desk and create your own process and get to writing my friends.

Ep. 186: Ines Johnson on Wanting More After Finding Success

August 3, 2020

Lover of fairytales, folklore, and mythology, Ines Johnson spends her days reimagining the stories of old in a modern world. She writes books where damsels cause the distress, princesses wield swords, and moms save the world. Aside from being a full time author and professional reader, Ines Johnson is a seasoned educator. She’s taught college level courses and workshops in screenwriting, story development and plotting, and media history. A lifelong learner (read: academic addict), she holds a Bachelor’s in Communications, a Master’s in Instructional Design, and a Doctorate in Educational Technology. She is banned from getting the MFA in Creative Writing she so desperately wants until both her children are in college. That might be soon as she is the proud mother of a college sophomore and a rising high school senior. Ines lives just outside Washington, DC and can be found getting her words early in the morning at coffee shops. In the afternoons, she can be found on a park bench contemplating what she will do with her life once her kids have grown up.

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript

[00:00:15] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #186 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So pleased that you’re here with me today on a really exciting podcast day. Today, I am talking to Ines Johnson and she is phenomenal. She reached out to me because she joined my Patreon at the mini coaching level and had this really big question for me. And I wrote back to her and I’m like, please come on my podcast, let’s talk about this. It’s a major question. So Ines has hit total success. Six figures just from books and still there’s something else she wants. So we talk about that on the show and I think you’ll really enjoy it and her, and she’s just lovely and charming and hilarious. So stay tuned for that.

[00:01:06] Little update about what’s going on around here. I am waiting for the editing letter from my editor on this big draft re- revision that I did for her, it’ll probably still be a medium sized revision I’m hoping with a lot of line editing. Hopefully I don’t have to rip the whole book up again, but I’ll probably know by the next time I talked to you. So cross your fingers for me. Although, you know, I love revision. Speaking of revision, I had a silly thing happened to me earlier this week. So in 2017, three years ago, I was feeling very, very broken, very, very empty. I had just like run out, they’ll create a wellhead run out. It had been spent. I attributed this to overwork. and I embarked upon this 12-month challenge that I used Patreon for, I wrote an essay a month. The collection is called Replenish and every month, I challenged myself to do something different. One month I spent an hour outside every day. One month I put my body in water every day. One month I meditated every day. One month I let go of every other kind of distraction and only read no TV, no social media, no, nothing just reading. So that those were the things I was playing with, and the year of replenish truly did replenish me. It fixed me, however it fixed me because I, well, I don’t even know if it fixed me really. During that month, I mean, sorry, during that year, while I was looking for the solution, three months in, I realized that I had become an alcoholic and that is what fixed me, finding sobriety, fixed me.

[00:02:50] But at the meantime, I’m still doing this challenge. I’m still committed to doing it for the Patreon readers. And I also believe in it doing things that are good for us. Good for our souls. What can that do for our creativity? So I’ve had this collection of 12 essays. Roughly 65,000 words sitting around staring at me. I really, really, really want it to be a book. However, every single essay felt like a lie. None of it was a lie. Not one bit, but it was emitting the deepest truth, the deepest, darkest truth, because I didn’t want to write very much at all about sobriety during that fourth- first year. I just, I couldn’t handle it. I didn’t want to handle it. It was a really private thing. And even though I’m a memoir writer, and even though I display everything almost, there are some things that I keep very close to my chest for a while, and then I usually get around to sharing it. But I was just beating my head against this brick wall of these essays. And like, should I put, you know, should I write, you know, revise them and then put in some notes around them. And then I just realized sitting here at the desk, this is going to sound so obvious, but I realized that revision is my superpower and I could revise each one in total.

[00:04:03] And it was like realizing that you can breathe air, you’ve been holding your breath for a while, and then you can read there. I realized over revision will save me. I can make this into a book that is supported by the journey to and through sobriety. As I was sitting there looking at the different months, and what was happening in each month that I didn’t write about it actually has traditional story structure already. It has the inciting incident, the context shifting midpoint, the dark moment. It’s all there. I just need to bring it out and develop each. And this is a book, people. It wasn’t a book before. It was a collection of desperate essays. Each of which was a little bit too smug. I air a lot of times when I’m writing essays in the smug wrap up. I don’t do it on purpose, but I like the essay to feel complete and to feel whole, and in this book, nothing felt whole that that year and everything was incomplete as I was making these connections. So I’m super excited to be working on these revisions and it’s just delicious to dive into them.

[00:05:11] Another thing that happened that was funny, was that I was sitting there like, okay, now I got to revise this whole book. I don’t even know where to start. And another five minutes later, I was like, oh, Rachael, you know exactly where to start. This is what you teach. You haven’t- you have an entire system on how to revise and I did everything that I tell my students too. I didn’t print out my book because I prefer to read it on my Kindle, but I sent it to my Kindle. I started making a sentence outline. I got up my post-its, I’m making my map so that when I start the revision, when my fingers are actually inside the manuscript, moving things around, I have a map to refer to. So again, it was this great sense of relief, but also I wanted to share it with you because we all forget everything that we know, every book feels different and every book we come to it feeling like a beginner, even though we aren’t. Each book, I believe teaches us how to write this book. Unfortunately, no book teaches us how to write the next one. But we have this toolbox. We’re always adding to the toolbox and my toolbox has a lot of tools. And I just had to remember to go looking for the right tool instead of reinventing the wheel, which is basically like a sport to me. I’m an Olympian athlete at reinventing the wheel. And I’m trying to, trying to stop doing that. Everything else I’m struggling with sleep and headaches right now, I’m doing this, I’m sleep restriction, CBTI, insomnia therapy and it’s gone off the rails and I need to, I need to restrict my sleep, get a little bit less sleep in order to learn how to get more sleep so, and that’s been triggering headaches.

[00:06:53] So that’s not fun, but hey, self-care, being forgiving, understanding that we have really productive times. And right now, while I’m waiting for edits, I can be a little bit less productive. That is totally fine. I would like to thank new patrons and honestly, you guys, I have this amazing system. I star them in Gmail, when you all up a pledge or start pledging on Patreon, and then I forget to take the stars off. So I think some of these people, I may have thanked already, and it doesn’t matter because if you are a patron now, if you’ve been a patron for years, thank you. Thank you. Thank you to you. And also thank you perhaps again to these people, perhaps not. Sandra Mori, thank you. Ines Johnson, new patron, thank you. Thank you for this episode. Jen Tarell. It was great to talk to you this week, Jen. Thank you. T.B. Markinson. Thank you. Marco Neil. Thanks so much. Leah edited her pled up, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Leah. One thing that I never do on this show is talk about when people edit their pledges down. Holy cow. Whenever I see a pledge has been edited down, you know what I think, I think that person is prioritizing their family and their finances in the way that makes sense to them. It never hurts my feelings if you’d like to give me $10 a month, and then go down to $1 a month because you have to, I will send you all the love if you have to cancel entirely. Yes. Still get all my love for those times when you were supporting me. And this means the world to me. So thank you. And never feel like you’re doing anything wrong if you have to step down. But Leah, thank you for stepping up your pledge. That’s amazing. Lani Goebelletsah. See, that’s a name I remember saying before and, and crucifying before Lani Goebelletsah, thank you. Thank you very, very much. And Kathleen Fordyce. Thank you. Maddie Dalrymple, who runs the Indie Author podcast, which I am on pretty, shortly coming up. If I’m not already on there. Maddie is awesome. Thank you, Maddie. Kiran Fatima. Thank you. And Jody Terry, you darling. Thank you. Thank you to everyone who has been a past, present or potentially a future patron. It really, really does mean the world to me. So now, business is done. I want you to go jump over to the next segment, I don’t even know why I said jump over. All you gotta do is like remain in your car or keep the podcast running and listen to what Ines has to say, it’s truly, truly inspiring. Thank you all for being here. Thank you for listening. And I wish you very, very happy writing.

[00:09:32] 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: [00:10:13] Well, I could not be more pleased than- nor could my cat, way be more pleased to welcome, Ines Johnson to the show. Hello, Ines!

Ines Johnson: [00:10:21] Hi! I’m so excited to be here.

Rachael Herron: [00:10:24] Oh my gosh. Let me give you a little introduction and I am so excited to have you here this is going to be fabulous. Lover of fairytales for folklore and mythology. Ines Johnson spends her days reimagining the stories of old in a modern world. She writes books where damsels caused the distress, princesses wield swords, and moms save the world. Hell yeah. Aside from being a full time author and professional reader, Ines Johnson is a seasoned educator, she’s taught college level courses and workshops in screenwriting story development and plotting and media history. A lifelong learner (read: academic addict), she holds a Bachelor’s in Communications, a Master’s in Instructional Design, and a Doctorate in Educational Technology. That’s amazing. She is banned from getting the- the MFA in creative writing. She so desperately wants until both her children are in college. That might be soon as she is the proud mother of a college sophomore, and a rising high school senior. Ines lives just outside Washington, DC, and can be found getting her words early in the morning at the coffee shops. In the afternoons, she can be found on the park bench contemplating what she will do with her life once her kids have grown up. What are you doing, nowadays? I’ve so many questions to go with, but what are you doing nowadays that you can’t go to the coffee shop? Because that’s where I used to write too.

Ines Johnson: [00:11:40] It’s hard. It’s really hard because I get up and my body is still prime to get up at six in the morning. So like in, in that, and I’m in, I’m just over the bridge from DC in Northern Virginia. And so the sun is shining at like 5:58 in the morning, and so I’m up like bright eyed and I’m like, I can’t go to the coffee shop. Cause that’s my wake up. I get it. I grabbed my stuff, get in the car, go to the coffee shop. And as I have my cup of tea and sometimes my oatmeal, I’m waking up, I’m ready to write. That’s not happening.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:05] So, how did you change things for yourself?

Ines Johnson: [00:12:07] It’s- it’s been hard. I learned recently I took the Becca of science classes of every writer eventually,

Rachael Herron: [00:12:14] Oh great. Yes.

Ines Johnson: [00:12:16] and I learned that I’m high discipline, which I was shocked. I thought that I was going to be a woo person. I was like, why didn’t I get woo?

Rachael Herron: [00:12:23] Oh, I thought I was gonna blew the all woo. And woo was like five from the bottom for me,

Ines Johnson: [00:12:28] I was so offended that I didn’t get woo. My number one was high discipline though. And I, and I had some, some one on one time with Becca and I said, well, I don’t understand what my, why I keep trying to change my routines, because I totally see that I’m high, I’m high discipline because you see the Kanban board behind me. What you can’t see off to the side is three calendars and post it notes. And there’s three planners, you can’t see all of that, but it’s there. But I’m constantly looking for ways to change my process. And I was like, well, why do I do that? And she said, Oh, I got your number. She let me know that, because I’m high discipline, if one thing goes wrong in my day, I need to reorganize everything else. So,

Rachael Herron: [00:13:16] That is so true. I also have high discipline; I think is like my fourth or something. Yeah.

Ines Johnson: [00:13:21] That was good for me to know, because now I, I see that about myself and now, now I’m able to stop and say, okay, one thing went wrong, but that’s okay. You can still get everything because I love checking things off lists. You can still check everything off the list, even if it’s not at the right time that you put it there, they’re all nice and color coded and highlight it. You can still check it off.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:42] I am so glad you brought that up though. Cause I completely forgotten that she said that to me and that’s me like if the, if something doesn’t get done in the right order, I’m like, well, I can’t write today.

Ines Johnson: [00:13:21] And its us

Rachael Herron: [00:13:42] Oh, well yeah, totally false. Okay. Loving your stickies behind you. Loving, loving, loving. So I want to ask you a couple of the questions that I normally do, but we also have a bigger place to talk about, the bigger thing to talk about today. So let us get it right out there that you are full time writer, you are successful. You have two or three pen names?

Ines Johnson: [00:14:19] Three

Rachael Herron: [00:14:20] That’s what I’ve thought. So you have the paranormal over fantasy, you have the sweet Western and what’s the third one.

Ines Johnson: [00:14:28] Steamy, steamy, steamy stuff

Rachael Herron: [00:14:30] You really like cover all of the bases in terms of the heat levels and everything.

Ines Johnson: [00:14:34] But Rachael, I didn’t know that that was the wrong thing to do. They were all together to begin with

Rachael Herron: [00:14:41] Oh yeah. You will piss people off with that.

Ines Johnson: [00:14:44] Oh yeah. Lesson learned

Rachael Herron: [00:14:47] I even did. So I had these really steamy books. I mean, they’re just, they’re just contemporary romance, but they’re on the hot, hot level. And I was really getting tired of writing that level of heat. And I actually polled my readers to see who would mind. And it was like, who wants me to stay this steamy and who doesn’t mind if I back off a bit? And it was like 97% of the reader said, stay steamy. I could not even back off, like cause that’s what they want. They want us to have that level of heat

Ines Johnson: [00:15:12] That’s not what I’m expecting you’d say. Wow.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:14] I wasn’t either! I thought they were like, no, Rachael, we love your books. Just do whatever you want. No, they’re like, we want the hot sex. and you can’t let them down after that.

Ines Johnson: [00:15:25] No

Rachael Herron: [00:15:26] How do you juggle, doing the writing for three different pen names,

Ines Johnson: [00:15:30] Whoever is paying the bills gets the first detention. That’s the honest truth.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:39] So I, I, I don’t, you probably don’t want to share all your pen names unless you do and that’s fine.

Ines Johnson: [00:15:43] I don’t mind.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:44] Oh, okay, great. Will you tell us who’s paying the bills right now?

Ines Johnson: [00:15:54] Shanae. Which is my middle name. Shanae Johnson, the sweet, western romances, she pays the bills.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:01] Which is so surprising to me. I would have thought I would have thought it would’ve been the erotic stuff, the hotter stuff.

Ines Johnson: [00:16:07] Nope. Nope. The, the hottest stuff, which is my initials, N.S. Johnson. You see, there’s Shanae, there’s an S and then there’s N stuff. It’s so complicated.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:16] Oh I like that. Yeah.

Ines Johnson: [00:16:17] Oh sheesh, and as I told someone recently that she basically pays for my family to have a nice Japanese steakhouse dinner once a month. That’s, that’s all she handles. Yeah. So she, is last on the list.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:29] Shanae is just killing it,

Ines Johnson: [00:16:32] Killing it. Killing it.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:35] Sweet westerns. I had no idea. Also your covers are great.

Ines Johnson: [00:16:38] Thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:39] Do you hire those out or do you do them yourself?

Ines Johnson: [00:16:39] Not for the sweet stuff. I- you still have the degrees, I have, I have a lot of skills. I learned Photoshop like 2.0 when I was in school. So I know enough to be dangerous where I can make a more contemporary cover that doesn’t need a lot of photo manipulation, but no, my, my N.S., the paranormal and the urban fantasy no, I need help with those.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:02] Okay. Perfect. Oh, and I love that you’d know that about yourself. So when you’re looking at your workday, how does that workday breakdown?

Ines Johnson: [00:17:11] That’s really, that’s a really good question. Cause what, again, what I learned from, from being high discipline is that I don’t, I can’t schedule times. I can schedule in blocks and a block of checkoff, to check off a list. So I still get up really early. But now with COVID isolation, I just kind of lay in bed. I might turn on an audio book or I might turn on a podcast, Wednesday mornings. I always have breakfast with you and J. Thorn podcast, the Writers Well. And I’ll just either lay around in bed or I’ll get up and make myself a cup of tea and just not do any writing yet. Just kind of, cause I, I guess I needed that travel time and that’s kind of my travel time. So I get up and around 7:88 o’clock in the morning, then I’m like, okay, I’m ready. So I typically will do about two Shanae chapters, around breakfast time. Take a break.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:07] How long is a chapter for you?

Ines Johnson: [00:18:10] It depends on if I’m first drafting or if I’m revising, if I’m fast drafting, I’ll do, I can do a complete first draft of a chapter in a sprint and my sprints are about 20-ish, 25 minutes long.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:22] Oh, that’s awesome.

Ines Johnson: [00:18:23] Yeah. Chapters quotes or I’m using air quotes simple for me, because I plot out the beginning, middle and end, and that’s in a mixture of that. There’s some kind of a twist and I, and I can hold that in my head and I can get it all out from beginning, middle- end. It’s like telling the story so I can do that in about 20-ish minutes. Then when I’m revising though, I, I don’t- I take my time. It might take me another 20 minutes, or it might take me 60 minutes to revise cause I take quote unquote, take my 60 minute time when I’m revising.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:54] So you are a real planner then. Is that right?

Ines Johnson: [00:18:57] See, here’s the funny, the short answer is yes. The long answer is, I have so many plots in my head because I had to learn this. And when you’re in, when I went to school for media production, the main goal, the first thing that they tell you in class is, you will not watch television and films the same way that a normal person does. If we are successful in teaching you your craft. And I, and I don’t. So there’s so many plotting systems, so much craft stuff in my head that I don’t always have to write down the plot, but best believe I am a plotter through and through.

Rachael Herron: [00:19:36] So when you’re talking about writing that scene, that you’ve already broken into three. When do you do that breaking into three of the scene. Is it like the morning you sit down and you go, okay, it’s going to happen here. So I’m going to sketch that out or is that another time that you’ve done that to go on your outline?

Ines Johnson: [00:19:50] So it depends on how clearly I see the story. Sometimes I just, and I, and I could, because they come from television, I’m usually not thinking just one story at a time. I’m usually thinking in a season of stories. So I know a little bit about each of the characters in their- in their story arc, and know how to kind of like plant little seeds here and there, but I might not see character to or character in the book for, very well, but I know what they’re supposed to do. So usually in book one, it’s, it’s an outline. It’s a treatment that I have written. Your body-

Rachael Herron: [00:20:23] Cause you’re really learning their world at that point,

Ines Johnson: [00:20:25] Exactly,

Rachael Herron: [00:20:26] Yeah

Ines Johnson: [00:20:27] But I’ve, I’ve realized that every book too, I think I know what I’m doing every single time. I think I know what I’m doing. And everything. And I don’t really put that much. I’m like, I got this and I write, I write act one and I’m usually good with my act once. And then I get to act two and I’m like, okay, what are they supposed to be doing? Who is this character? What is, and I have to, it happens every single time like clockwork. It’s every time I see it, it’s going to be different, it never is. So in book ones, I, I plan. By book two it’s- it’s like a one sentence outline that always changes always gets revised. And then probably book three, I’ve learned my lesson and I outline again and then probably book four I’d do the same thing again. And I’m like, what? What’s happening

Rachael Herron: [00:21:12] Isn’t it funny that we just keep coming back around to the same problems about how long are your series normally?

Ines Johnson: [00:21:19] Depends. I told myself that I don’t like long series because again, I come from, I come from cable television

Rachael Herron: [00:21:25] Yeah

Ines Johnson: [00:21:26] Where you typically, you typically plan the whole se- the whole season. And you, you, you plan that maybe 6 to 12 episodes. And then you have to kind of leave it open, but close enough. So that’s how my brain thinks. So I usually thinking in multiples of 3, 3, 6 or 12, something like that. And then what I learned, and it took me a while to learn this, because I’m so used to the, the, the, the, the closed series or one of those short, like summer series, is that if some, if it’s a series of selling, do not for the love of God, stop writing books in those series because people want them.

Rachael Herron: [00:22:06] Yeah

Ines Johnson: [00:22:07] You who shouldn’t keep them waiting in the,

Rachael Herron: [00:22:09] Did you learn that the hard way?

Ines Johnson: [00:22:11] The very hard way? Not once. Maybe the steak, not once. Maybe three times, I made that mistake. I’m hard headed.

Rachael Herron: [00:22:21] I love that you have so much diverse background in terms of storytelling, really coming to it from the television world is fantastic because you’re talking about seeing a season in your head. I can barely see the two or three characters that I’m dealing with. Like let alone subplots, as soon as I throw a subplot, another couple of characters and I’m like, oh no, I don’t know what’s going on. So that is such a superpower that you have

Ines Johnson: [00:22:46] Thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:22:47] Oh my gosh. Okay. So what is, let’s see, can you share a craft tip with us of any sort.

Ines Johnson: [00:22:57] Oh craft tip. One of the things that, that people have been kind of listening to me about is, is this thing that we have in television, where we have twists and open doors. So when you, when you’re in television, we call them seen in sequel? Or hooks and sequels. There’s a whole bunch of terms. So in television, we have to compete with the commercial break. So you always think of when you’re coming to a commercial break, every six or so minutes. So you can’t, you have to make sure to leave the audience with such at the edge of their seats, that they don’t turn the channel, or if they get up to go and grab a snack and they come back and sit down, even though he’s really practiced scheduled television before. I know, I know. I was teaching a class once and I had a whole lesson plan on primetime TV, and I was going to the lesson like 20 minutes and someone finally raised her hand, like, what’s primetime?

Rachael Herron: [00:23:49] No

Ines Johnson: [00:23:50] I kid you not. Anyway. So that’s less than, yes, this is the age I live in. So I’m so used to thinking of what’s the twist, what’s the hook? How do I get them back at the end of the commercial break? Or how do I get them back at the end of the chapter to turn that page? But I not only take it to, okay, get into the end of the chapter, leave some type of a, a hook in there to turn the page. But I also think about that at the end of the book as well. I never end with the end. I always end the book with either the next character in the book, introducing their story problem or whatever the next series might be. I don’t write the end, hardly ever. Probably never.

Rachael Herron: [00:24:35] There’s always something left hanging. What did you call that? The turning in the open, what?

Ines Johnson: [00:24:40] Lots. Okay. So in, in film, a lot of times it’s called the open door ending. In television, we kind of call that when it’s coming out of a c-, when it’s going into a commercial break, we call it the hook. Cause literally you’re gonna hook them back in,

Rachael Herron: [00:24:55] Right.

Ines Johnson: [00:24:56] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:24:57] Okay.

Ines Johnson: [00:24:58] For some people when, when it’s a, when, when you’re coming off the back of a commercial, it’s called the sequel cause you gotta get them that

Rachael Herron: [00:25:04] That’s the scene in sequel. Okay. That’s, that’s a phrase I’ve heard. Is this something that you do organically as you’re writing your way through your books? Or is there something that comes in in revision? Cause for, for me, I write, I write chapters so that like you could close the book and never pick it up again. And then I always forget. And then, so in revision, that’s just one of the things it’s one of my passes I go through and look at, and usually it’s as simple as moving four paragraphs from that scene to the next chapter, you know? But is that something that you do naturally or is it something you do in revision?

Ines Johnson: [00:25:35] Similarly naturally, but I don’t, I’m not I’m, I’m far from perfect. So when I’m going back through in revision and I see, wait, did you just let them go to sleep at the end of this chapter? I will change it to make sure that they, that you turn the page

Rachael Herron: [00:25:54] And it’s such a good thing to be reminded of. Okay. I want to skip now to the comment that you left me on my Patreon. Cause this is, I was like, can you please be on my show? Alright. So if you don’t mind, may I read this?

Ines Johnson: [00:26:10] Yeah Go for it

Rachael Herron: [00:26:11] You say, you don’t know it, but I’ve been one of your biggest fans for years ever since I heard you on the rocking self-publishing podcast, talking to Simon Whistler about how you got your writing done during your shift working dispatcher. It was so long ago.

Ines Johnson: [00:26:24] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:26:25] I have breakfast with you every Wednesday morning while I listened to the Writer’s Well, and I feel like it’s a treat when, How Do You Write pops up on my podcast feed. Cause you know, I try for Fridays, but I don’t always make it. Okay. You go on to say, after 15 years in higher ed, as a digital media instructor, I broke through as a successful romance author and have been making a full time living for two years now, first of all, Yay. Yay. Yay. Freakin’ yay! Last year, about four months in, I realized that I was not cut out for the “dream” of being a full time author. Oh, I’m making six figures, the words continue to flow. Fans are amazing, but it hasn’t been enough. I’m not as happy as I felt I should have been. Something was missing. During COVID isolation I figured it out. I want to teach again. I want to teach writing and marketing and personal/professional development to other seasoned and aspiring romance novelist. I’m just unsure about how to go about it. This is what I’d like coaching on. Do I need to get my MFA first? I’m pretty sure I want to be at a college or university again, cause you’re addicted to learning or even at a writing center. Can I even get a position as someone who’s never had a trad deal? So let’s talk about this. Okay. First of all, have you, have you ever, I just realized my microphone is really far away from me. Sorry, people. Have you heard the way I feel about MFAs?

Ines Johnson: [00:27:49] I think I have. Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:27:51] Yeah. I have, I have this theory about MFA’s is that they’re awesome to have, if you can just afford to buy them and knock, put it on credit. Cause that’ll kill all of us.

Ines Johnson: [00:28:02] Okay.

Rachael Herron: [00:28:03] And if it’s, and if it’s something that you want for cache, like, I just wanted to have the letters. I just wanted a grad degree in writing and that, so that’s why I got it. But you are so far, like you’ve blown past most MFA, anything you’re going to learn. You learn in an MFA program, how to write, you already know how to write. So this would really be about getting the letters after your name. Right? And you already have so many letters.

Ines Johnson: [00:28:34] I do have it, but do I, is, is that the calling card for someone to even look my way to become a writing teacher?

Rachael Herron: [00:28:46] Right. Your- I’m scrolling here. Your doctorate is in Educational Technology. So I have a few things to say, number one, if you want a number cause you wanted MFA, then wait till the kids are growing, like you said, and then go get it. And no one can tell you not to. But with as much publishing as you’ve done and with your doctorate, I think even though this is indie pub, did not trad pub, I think that you could find a place within a college setting and you live in a great place for that. There’s a high volume of colleges and JC’s and universities all around where you live. So that is something that could be done. Let me ask you though, let me just ask you some questions. So what attracts you to teaching this?

Ines Johnson: [00:29:42] I, I have a hard time having conversations with people that don’t turn to writing. I can talk to you for about five minutes about nonsense. And then I am evidently going to turn some way, shape or form, to book stories, words, something. So, I need people to talk to. I want to, when I, when I was teaching media, one of the things that I always told my students is that I really believe that iron sharpens iron and I was at the top of my game as a television person, when I was teaching that craft, makes me sharp.

Rachael Herron: [00:30:24] Yes

Ines Johnson: [00:30:25] And that’s not necessarily the world that I want to be in anymore. I wholeheartedly want to be in the writing world. So I want to talk that craft. I want to talk that talk. I want to teach. I want to learn from people, that answers your question?

Rachael Herron: [00:30:43] Yes, it does. And it’s beautiful. And I already know that this is something you’re going to love doing. So for me, teaching other people writing, my superpower is that, cheerleading coaching personality. And I can already tell that you have that, but, plus all of the knowledge especially with the story stuff, that is insane. But what I am going to push back on just a little bit is, what would it look like to you if you started teaching from exactly where you are right now? Like with an email newsletter list or with a YouTube channel and kind of build up a following and some street credit for teaching writing, and then, maybe trying to parlay that into teaching at a university or a college. And the reason I say this is, that, oh colleges can be so snooty.

Ines Johnson: [00:31:56] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:31:57] They can be so snooty. I got, I got a gig teaching at Berkeley in the, in the extension program, because I was just like, you know, cheeky and pushed and knocked on doors and kept emailing and stuff. But I’d been doing that for Stan- at Stanford for years and years and years. Trying to teach anything at Stanford just to get my foot in the door there cause they paid so much better, obviously. And it wasn’t until I got the gig at Berkeley, I literally wrote to Stanford and said, I’m now teaching at Berkeley. May I teach for you? And they were like, yes. Now you can. That is exactly what happened because there’s such a rivalry between Stanford. So, I mean, and that is just ridiculous. That that would be the difference. So they can be snooty and to have already a body of work or body of comments or a following can be a really good thing. Cause when, when colleges do hire you, they also want you to bring your own students in and make them money, as one of their, one of their biggest hopes. The other reason I, the reason I kind of suggest doing this from your chair right now, starting it there, is that anything you do teach on your own is going to necessarily be more lucrative too, because you keep all the money. And I don’t think I can get in trouble for saying how much I make teaching a semester. I think I make two, maybe it’s like 17 or $1,800 at Berkeley for a semester. And it’s 6,000 at Stanford. So it’s literally three times. Stanford always pays three times what the Cal system pays, but then you have to like weigh your opportunity cost, of driving and all of this time. Have you, so have you thought about starting in your chair right now as the expert that you already are?

Ines Johnson: [00:33:51] I started a YouTube channel just because I haven’t been teaching for two years and I just started recording myself. Oh look, I’m making things again, this is how you do it.

Rachael Herron: [00:34:00] Oh, what a great idea. Yeah.

Ines Johnson: [00:34:01] Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:34:02] Perfect.

Ines Johnson: [00:34:03] Yeah. So marketing, I had started to do like write with me, with Stans where I was just so I’m right, I’m, I’m on a deadline. I need to write. So I’m going to write this chapter and I started explaining like, here’s the goal of this character. Here’s the motivation. And now, I’m going to make sure that I use this particular craft technique, which I don’t think Stans were interested in.

Rachael Herron: [00:34:20] I wouldn’t have to, but they love it?

Ines Johnson: [00:34:22] Well, I’m not so sure. I stopped doing it. And I, I, I stopped doing it for fans and I started to do it specifically talking to writers because again,

Rachael Herron: [00:34:29] Yeah

Ines Johnson: [00:34:30] Just like I just told you, if after five minutes, I’m going to start talking to you about craft. I cannot help myself. So I stopped talking to fans about that and I started talking my writer’s speak.

Rachael Herron: [00:34:40] And are you charging anything for that?

Ines Johnson: [00:34:44] I do, do some, I had started doing I’m like, you know, RWA does the email workshops. I’ve been doing that for, for a long time, just because I had all this- I write lesson plans, one of my degrees, and I made all these lesson plans and I just, I emailed them out and I just, it’s just something that I have. So I have that. I did not think that that would translate into potentially going to someplace in higher ed.

Rachael Herron: [00:35:13] For me, it was really that. I started the podcast before anything else. And after I started the podcast, I realized, Oh, I should have an email newsletter for writers so I can like segment them. I have, you know, here’s my readers, but here’s my writers. And the more I did with the podcast, the more I realized what I could be teaching and how I could be sharing that. And that’s why that particular newsletter became so important to me. And honestly, Berkeley picked me up because for one of the reasons was because I teach, you know, I have this, How Do You Write podcast? And I had taught at little at smaller conferences, but I was able to drop all those things into a CV that looked worthwhile. They are not going to check your CV for an MFA. They will -my cat is just talking. I apologize.

Ines Johnson: [00:36:06] He’s agreeing with you.

Rachael Herron: [00:36:07] He is. He is. They don’t look at they won’t look for an MFA. They’ll just look for a master’s or higher. That’s all you need to have to teach in a secondary, post-secondary level.

Ines Johnson: [00:36:19] Can I, can I ask you about that? So does it matter what the master’s is in?

Rachael Herron: [00:36:23] No.

Ines Johnson: [00:36:24] Are you serious?

Rachael Herron: [00:36:25] Yep. Yep. Also your sound so ready to go for anything. What was it again? Educational strategy?

Ines Johnson: [00:36:28] Educational Tech,

Rachael Herron: [00:36:30] Educational Technology. Yeah.

Ines Johnson: [00:36:31] Yeah. I just became interested in online learning in how my – and the school, when I was at a media college, they paid for it. School was right across the street. And I was like, I told you, I’m an addict, an academic addict. And they were like, Oh, did you know we have this program? I was like, really? I’m going to take some classes. I’m not kidding. I’m not kidding. People were looking at me like I was crazy. I was like, are you going to be a principal? No. What are you doing here? Learning.

Rachael Herron: [00:36:57] Oh, that’s wonder- no, you could teach anything, anything. And I mean, if you’re, if you’re doctorate was in Marine biology, you know, emphasis, whales, perhaps you wouldn’t be teaching like, you know, there’d be like creative writing, really? But the word educational, they’re not going to look anything past, have a freaking doctorate that is amazing. So that’s what I would think of doing in this time right now, while you’re waiting for the kids to grow up and deciding if you want an MFA, you obviously have this passion that you have to share with other people about what you know, and how to use it. Also, I wanted to point out that in your note to me, you said, I want to teach writing and marketing and personal professional development to other seasons and aspiring romance novelists. The whole thing about niching it to romance, novelist, two things. Number one, it makes it extremely awesome and useful and can be lucrative for you because romance writers want to know everything and they’re such an incredibly smart and savvy group of people, right?

Ines Johnson: [00:38:05] True that.

Rachael Herron: [00:38:06] And they know where to look for information and they know how to share information and your name will get around. But the, but the drawback to that is I have never been able to talk any place ever with an academic name to do anything with romance.

Ines Johnson: [00:38:21] That was another concern.

Rachael Herron: [00:38:22] And I keep trying.

Ines Johnson: [00:38:23] I only speak romance. I don’t speak thriller. I don’t speak mystery. I speak Romance.

Rachael Herron: [00:38:28] Yeah. The nice thing about you speaking romance is that, that that’s what you speak. That’s what you are really fluent in, but that also makes you fluent in all the other languages. Honestly. Like I, I truly believe that contemporary romance is the hardest genre to write. When you have two good people that you’re trying to keep apart from each other for really good reasons. Nobody understands how hard that is. So you are an expert in all of these other things too, and you could teach to all of them, but your passion seems to be for romance and for romance writers.

Ines Johnson: [00:38:58] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:38:59] So before attaching your, your star to the college, that probably won’t pay you very well to teach people that they don’t care about, i.e., romance novelist. Pointing yourself to a place where you can help them the best you can and charge well for that, because you have this knowledge. I think you’re really excited and then you could also add to teaching at a college, if you wanted to. Am I depressing you, am I letting you down?

Ines Johnson: [00:39:31] Not at all. You’re giving us discipline people, are getting, I’m getting a game plan. I’m making, a checklist is forming in my head now.

Rachael Herron: [00:39:41] Yeah.

Ines Johnson: [00:39:45] Okay.

Rachael Herron: [00:39:46] What do you, what do you like best in these ideas? And what do you randomly reject?

Ines Johnson: [00:39:51] That was one of my fear that because I speak romance and I’m, I speak it unabashedly, unashamedly.

Rachael Herron: [00:39:57] Yeah. As you should.

Ines Johnson: [00:39:58] I don’t understand people who are like… romance. I’m like, Oh, you poor thing

Rachael Herron: [00:40:03] It’s like that about women in general.

Ines Johnson: [00:40:06] Right? So I’m, I’m, I’m pretty unabashed about that. And that’s, I’m hearing that there will be either a conflict or there will be the door won’t open for that. And that was, that, that’s sad. That’s sad to me.

Rachael Herron: [00:40:24] It’s really sad to me. And I actually had and this is even sadder, I think, but Berkeley allowed me to put on a one-day course, that was like, how to write romance or something like that. It was going to be a really broad overview cause I’ve been pushing and pushing and pushing for it. And we had to cancel it for lack of signups, I think.

Ines Johnson: [00:40:43] No!

Rachael Herron: [00:40:44] In the Bay area,

Ines Johnson: [00:40:47] It makes me so sad.

Rachael Herron: [00:40:48] It made me so sad. I could not get it done. And that was a few years ago. That was probably five years ago, four years ago. But, but still so. I see you. You have this that you have to share and the most important part of your, your message to me, was that just, just being a full time, six figure successful-

Ines Johnson: [00:41:16] I felt so…

Rachael Herron: [00:41:17] novelists. No, that’s brilliant. No, I love it. That knowing that that is what you have and it’s still not enough. That is exactly. I think that’s why I wanted you on this show so much, because that’s what I identify with.

Ines Johnson: [00:41:28] Yeah, I’d said this to my, my, my writing, my weekly writing mastermind. And I felt so awful. Well, those, those are my long-term friends, but I still felt so awful saying even typing it out to you, it felt so awful cause this is the dream. Like, this is what people dream of. And I was like, I should be, it’s like someone who married the wrong person. I was like, I should be happy. Why am I not happy? And I wasn’t,

Rachael Herron: [00:41:50] But you labeled it. You figured it out what it is that will make you happier. And I really truly believe that I have this, this whole thing about like how service does make us happier people. You’re serving somebody that needs help in this. And I’m also, I’m enough of a capita- capitalist, although burn it all down that I will accept people’s money for helping for me helping them, because I know I’m good at it. And, and when you combine something you really, really love and you get paid for it too, is there any better? And then you’d have two of these things happening to you, the writing and the teaching.

Ines Johnson: [00:42:37] Okay. So I think what I going to do is start to double down on what I can do right now to, to fill this need. And, and I think, as you said, the most immediate things were where the YouTube, which I just enjoy doing the YouTube. I enjoy doing the YouTube. I enjoy doing the RWA classes, that are just online to, to writers, maybe look at more writing centers and put that online degree that online doctorate to use.

Rachael Herron: [00:43:06] Yes, actually, that’s something that I hadn’t thought about is that you could teach it any of the online colleges and there are some that are coming up with commercial MFA programs. So any of the commercial MFA programs, the ones who major in commercial fiction and genre fiction, they’re going to be looking for romance people like you.

Ines Johnson: [00:43:30] Okay

Rachael Herron: [00:43:31] Like the one that springs to mind is Seton Hill, but there’s another one I want to say, North Carolina has a genre, focus, which again, you don’t need that MFA to teach that, you will just teach there and because you have the online strength, you could do that. What was I going to say? Oh, if you’re doing the YouTube channel, how do you, how do you feel about doing a podcast? Want to do a podcast?

Ines Johnson: [00:43:58] I’m not sure. Because I, I’m honestly not sure. I’m a very visual person, television, so I’m not sure that just my voice can tell the story. Like I liked the reason that I liked doing the YouTube, cause I’m like, cool, look here, I’m going to show you, like, I’m writing this thing. Look, I’m going to show you how, and that’s very interesting to me. But just a podcast with just my voice, that seems hard? Hard. And I do listen to you and J. and all the millions of podcasts that you guys start talking about how much work it is.

Rachael Herron: [00:44:36] Oh, it’s not much work, especially if you’re already, if you’re already doing the reason I say it is, if you’re already doing a YouTube, you just export the audio from it and upload it.

Ines Johnson: [00:44:46] I’m going to put that on my think about list.

Rachael Herron: [00:44:49] Think about it.

Ines Johnson: [00:44:50] Think about this.

Rachael Herron: [00:44:49] Love it that you have to think about this. And that might be something that you would actually hire out and, you know, hire somebody, hire somebody else to upload it every week. Once the YouTube is up there, they know to go in and get it and upload it as a podcast. just because podcasts still, even in the days of Covid they’ll have set, I get such a higher, like almost all of my listen, come on Podcatchers and not on the YouTube, even though I put it up on YouTube every week. That could be saying something about me as a, as a media person.

Ines Johnson: [00:45:25] I didn’t know you had a YouTube channel. Now, I’m gonna look that up. Cause you’re in that you’re in my phone.

Rachael Herron: [00:45:30] It’s not very good. And it’s just like this. You could just look in the back of me and see my cluttered office. It’s not great. Yeah, so that, but that I do just because it’s, it’s almost easy, just as easy to do it as well. I’m just hitting both because I, because you can,

Ines Johnson: [00:45:48] Okay.

Rachael Herron: [00:45:49] What has this conversation jelled for you?

Ines Johnson: [00:45:55] None of- well, I’ll tell you this, you, you are in agreement with my mastermind, my writing mastermind. When I said this, they have the same reaction that you did about MFAs. Like – they have the same concerns about knowing that I am an academic addict and I like being on a college. And they, they, they all said the same thing. It’s not the, not the podcast, but they all said, well, why don’t you, you already do in all these RWA classes, just keep that up. You have your interest; you start a YouTube channel. So they said that. So I, I guess I just I’d like the idea. And that was the other part. This is, they did get this out of me too. We, we realized that I’m, I want it for the social aspect too. Cause I’m in this room so much time, especially during Covid. And even when I go out to the coffee shops, I’m in a booth by myself, earphones in and I’m typing for hours.

Rachael Herron: [00:46:49] Yeah. Yeah

Ines Johnson: [00:46:51] And when I was teaching, even though I started to get more and more miserable, because I didn’t want to really talk about media anymore. I wanted to talk specifically about writing. It was still that interaction. I still got to see somebody, one of my students’ eyes light up when I explained something to them and they got it. And I was missing that too. So I am still missing that. I don’t, I don’t know where to, where to take that sentence, but I, that is something that I do recognize that I am still missing that, missing that social aspect.

Rachael Herron: [00:47:21] What do you, what do you prefer talking to a group of people or talking to somebody one-on-one?

Ines Johnson: [00:47:27] Group

Rachael Herron: [00:47:28] Okay. Yeah. I also really, really enjoyed the group I’ve done. I’ve done a lot of coaching. But there’s nothing like leading a group through them, helping each other,

Ines Johnson: [00:47:39] Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:47:40] Like watching the class gel and hold each other up. So, okay. So I think it’s just time to start making some lists of what to do, get that writer’s email list going, offer them something free to sign up. Do you already have a place for writers on your website?

Ines Johnson: [00:47:58] No. I just had a place for people who want me to teach online. Like the, again, the email courses, I have a place for them. But not for- for, Hey, sign up for this.

Rachael Herron: [00:48:09] Yeah. You need a tab for writers, offer a couple of free things, immediately like, and it could be like a PDF of something or here’s a YouTube that you can’t find anywhere else that’s, you know, private or whatever. And, and you get this for joining my list. Yeah.

Ines Johnson: [00:48:34] Okay, I have, I have a, I have a page of to do list.

Rachael Herron: [00:48:40] I’m just so happy and proud of you for knowing this about yourself for knowing that this is important and that you need that connection. For me, it is and this is why I wanted to talk about it. Cause I’m so grateful for it. It’s like I love writing. It’s my whole heart, but I also hate it more than anything else do. Right? Like it’s, but working with students is there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just perfection. It is 1% less than the way I love writing. And some days it threatens to take it over and I won’t let it, you know, I’m like, no, no, no. It’s gotta be the writing. It’s gotta be the writing first, but they’re so close and it does, it just feeds your heart.

Ines Johnson: [00:49:18] Yeah. It makes me feel like you don’t really hear from the fans. You, you see the downloads, you might see the dollar signs,

Rachael Herron: [00:49:25] right.

Ines Johnson: [00:49:26] But a fan is, wants to talk to you about the character. They don’t want to talk to you about the crap. Their eyes are going to light up because they learned a technique from you.

Rachael Herron: [00:49:35] Yeah. And that is one thing I’ve always said about writers, is that no matter what, if we’re having a conversation about anything else? The back of our mind is thinking about writing. In the back of our mind is waiting to see if we can turn it towards writing, which is why when you go to conferences, right? You love going to a conference because all you do from morning till night is you talk about writing and it never gets, never gets old.

Ines Johnson: [00:49:55] Yes. Never.

Rachael Herron: [00:49:56] It’s the best. Yes, you need to be, you need to be doing this.

Ines Johnson: [00:49:55] Okay, I got homework.

Rachael Herron: [00:50:05] How can I help you in the future?

Ines Johnson: [00:50:08] You know, as I start to think about approaching, conferences approaching online schools or, or, or on campus schools. I would love, cause I know you do, you help with getting agents. I wonder if you would help with me writing that cover letter.

Rachael Herron: [00:50:31] Absolutely. I would love to. I would love to write a cover letter for your CV. Just your academic, like learning, is a full CV right there

Ines Johnson: [00:50:44] Yeah. Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:50:45] You know; this is so cool. I’m so excited for you. I wish that I had had somebody talk to you when I first started to think about these things, you know. There’s so much noise in my neighborhood today. I’m sorry. There’s dogs and beeps and car horns.

Ines Johnson: [00:51:00] It’s okay, it’s okay.

Rachael Herron: [00:51:02] Okay. Well, I am so pleased to know you. And so

Ines Johnson: [00:51:06] I’ve known you for a year or so,

Rachael Herron: [00:51:09] But now I know you, you,

Ines Johnson: [00:51:10] Yes!

Rachael Herron: [00:51:11] And, I want you to come back on to after things are going and, and, and if you set up a place, when you set up a place for your email newsletter to be collected, let me know the address and I’ll put it on the show notes for this. So, because everybody needs to be following you cause you’re killing it. You’re killing it.

Ines Johnson: [00:51:32] Thank you. Thank you, Rachael.

Rachael Herron: [00:51:36] Thank you for being on the show today.

Ines Johnson: [00:51:37] Thank you for all for all my homework. Thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:51:41] Your welcome.

Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patreon and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/

Now, go to your desk and create your own process and get to writing my friends.

Ep. 185: Should I Look for an Agent for my Debut or Self-Publish It? (Bonus! How To Be an Anti-Racist)

August 3, 2020

Ep. 185: Should I Look for an Agent for my Debut or Self-Publish It? (Bonus! How To Be an Anti-Racist)

Rachael answers Tuomas’s question about what to do when you want to be a hybrid author, with a foot in both camps – trad- and self-publishing.

Also – if you’re white, what you can do to be anti-racist AS A WRITER! This goes beyond allyship (centering BIPOC voices) and activism (protesting, donating to BIPOC-led organizations) Anti-racism is the act of opposing ALL white supremacy including the racism inside you and within the system you live in.

Transcript

Rachael Herron: Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron, and this is a bonus episode brought to you directly by my $5 Patreons. If you’d like me to be your mini coach for less than a large mocha Frappuccino, you can join too at www.patreon.com/rachael

[00:00:14] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #185 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. I’m so glad you’re here with me on this mini episode, which might not be so many when I’m done with it. We’ll see what happens. Let me look at my notes here. But in news of what’s going on around here, the book is done. I’m sorry that I wasn’t with you last Friday. I got up to about Thursday night and thought, huh? There’s not going to be a podcast tomorrow. That’s okay. Next week, we’ll go back to having a normal interview section. But honestly, I haven’t interviewed anybody in a couple of weeks because of the revisions I was doing on the thriller, Hush Little Baby. And I am so excited that I got it done. It ended up, so basically I wrote the book, I did my big revisions myself, send it to my editor and she sent back the big revision, which wasn’t even a manuscript that she had marked up. Then the revisions I needed to do were bigger than that. They were harder than that. It was a verbal conversation in which I took notes on what she wanted me to change to the book.

[00:01:22] Everything that she wanted me to change made the book a better book. It did mean that I took out about 38,000 words and added I think 42,000 words. I keep forgetting the numbers. I have them written down somewhere. So now the book is 97,000 words long, and there are 93,000 words in the trash. So I’ve written two books to get this one book out. It is the book I plotted more than any other book I’ve ever plotted that a full synopsis, just this, the synopsis was broken and none of us saw it. I didn’t see it. My agent didn’t see it. My editor didn’t see it. I was trying to get away with something. I didn’t know I was trying to get away with something, but I was doing some hand-waving when I turned in that synopsis, like I wrote some good sentences and I promised to pull off something that I don’t think anybody could have done. But my language was good enough that they bought it and I bought it and I couldn’t write it. So that is why this book has been a little bit extreme but I got it done this Monday, 10 minutes until New York close, which was my deadline was Monday. So cut it in in time. It is truly astonishing to me how I can put something off till, it’s like this timer pops up in my brain. It’s this panic timer. And it says, okay, you have screwed off enough. You don’t have another second to waste screwing off anything. So that’s when you know, 14, 15, I think 15 days in a row without stopping all day, every day, I’d had four weeks to do the revision and I did it in the last two weeks because that’s what my body knows I can pull off. The exciting thing about that is it, at the very last minute, I came up with a framing device that I had not thought of. So in the last three days, I’m trying to pull off this framing device. I think it worked great, but it was one of those things that reminded me that we never really know what our books are meant to be.

[00:03:25] There is a possibility that my editor is reading my book right this very minute and she’s thinking, oh no, this isn’t what I wanted either. This isn’t a good book yet. And I might have to do this all over again. But I’m pretty confident that the next round of edits will just be lying in it. And that will be such a joy. In the meantime, I’ve got a couple of weeks off while she reads that. And I have been thinking about the next book, which is a large revision of a collection of essays that I have been trying to figure out how to make into an actual memoir. And yesterday I was writing with the Rachael Says Write Group and it was awesome. It was so good to be there, not working on my revision of the novel, but working on this problem. And suddenly it occurred to me and I, it was one of those moments of revelation where everything fit together. All of a sudden I saw the structure that was behind this collection of essays. Which I just hadn’t seen because I had forgotten the cardinal rule, which is I can revise anything. And these essays will need revision in order to pull off this structure. But it will end those essays will end up being more true. They will reflect a more, a bigger, and deeper truth of my life. And I know I’m kind of being vague about this, but the working title for that now, it has been replenished, it was a collection of 12 essays over the course of the year that I tried to figure out what was wrong with me. Basically, this was a couple of years ago and the working title now is, Replenish How Fixing Creative Burnout Accidentally Saved My Life. Don’t you want to pick that up? I want to pick that up. And I remembered, oh yeah, I could read by these essays to show what was really happening while I was writing them. Ooh, it’s exciting.

[00:05:19] I also just, this afternoon, got a very strange and interesting offer from somebody that might change the course of my publishing career. I don’t know yet. I’m so overwhelmed by the thought of it that I don’t know what to do with it. So you know what I’m doing? I’m doing nothing with it. I said, thank you for the offer. I will think about it and I will get back to you. And sometimes that’s all you can do. So that is exciting. And again, I wish I could tell you more, but I can’t, but if it happens, if it becomes something, you will know.

[00:05:55] We are going to get to a question from Thoumas, who is one of the $5 patrons who is using me as a mini coach. I don’t have too many other questions right now. So you $5 patrons, please send me all your questions. I’m your mini coach. Let me mini coach you. But before we get to Thoumas’s question, I want to lay something on you that I have been laying on my classes for the last week or two. I have not communicated with you in a couple of weeks because I’ve been on deadline.

[00:06:24] The other reason is because the world exploded in a big, huge necessary way. And it can be very hard when things are upside down to get our work done. We were already struggling with that with COVID-19, and now that the world has shifted in a big, important way, it can be even harder to consider why is my work important? Why am I spending the time doing this? I am writing a, you know, sweet Amish. Let’s make it a sweet, Amish fantasy novel with dragons. So you’re writing that. Oh my God. I hope somebody is writing that. Those, those authors are coming to me saying, what, what does it matter? How am I helping change the world? If I’m writing a sweet, Amish fantasy romance about dragon is number one, obviously, you’re going to make people happy by reading- writing that but, but honestly, it’s in these moments that we have to remember that we are artists for a reason. You are a writer because you can’t not be a writer. You are a writer who was the kind of person who listens to podcasts in their time off of writing and the rest of their lives, because you want to fill your brain with writing things. It’s the thing you can’t get enough of. You are called to be a writer because you are called to communicate. And I truly believe that with every word that we write as writers, with every sentence that we get better and stronger at our craft, those words are changing us as human beings and they are emboldening us and bolstering us and making us better humans and they are making us stronger in the fight that we must fight. It does not matter what the hell you are writing. I am writing a silly thriller about a pregnant woman who another woman tries to steal her baby. This is not going to change the world. My last thriller was about police brutality. Hey, Hey. So that one, I feel a little bit differently about it. I’m like, Oh, I hope it changes some people’s minds. This one is not it’s, it’s an escape for people.

[00:08:55] And the thing is escape is really, really, really important. You provide the service of giving a piece of art to someone and it can get them through their darkest night. It can get them through the hospital stay, or when they’re waiting at the hospital for their loved one to come out of surgery, you have done something incredibly important. You have changed somebody with your words, even more than that insanely awesome thing. You, as an artist, as a writer, have this power and almost unfortunately, this responsibility to share your truth with other people. Every word you write in your fiction makes you better at doing that. Every word you write in your nonfiction makes you better at doing that. I am not advocating that you are the one. You’re the one who should go on Facebook and fix your racist uncle Frank, because you can’t fix racist uncle Frank, you can’t change him. Our words are not used that way. We cannot build a battalion of words that can win that particular war. It just doesn’t happen like that. What our words do, and what we as writers do, is to inspire other people to be a little bit braver than they were before they heard you or before they read you. That is the power of word. You bring your idea to somebody and by doing so you empower them to say something to someone else to change a little bit in their world. And that is incredible.

[00:10:41] And so at this point in this podcast, I want to speak to my fellow white people who have been really, really shaken up by some of this. I have been working in the anti-racist arena for a little while now. This is not new to me, however, I am talking to a lot of people right now for whom words like white privilege, white fragility. They are big, hurtful, scary words. And the first time you screw something up, when you are talking about systemic racism, oh my gosh, it hurts the first time that you, as a white person, I’m speaking just to you, white people right now. The first time you were hit with that white fragility stick, it hurts. You go into a cave and you rant and you rave and you say to everyone, I’m not a racist. I’m not a racist. This is look at me. I’m good, I’m a good person. This is when I just talked to you about the four stages of becoming anti-racist because it’s not enough just to be not a racist. P.S., we’re all racists. Like all of us white people are racist. That’s very hard to hear at the beginning. I know that I just lost some of you by switching it up, but just stick around for a minute because I’m going to answer Thoumas’ question about hybrid publishing. Don’t you want to hear that? Yes, you do. The first stage though, is awareness. The awareness that we live in a racist society. Merriam Webster just changed their definition this week. I didn’t look it up before the show. But it talks about racism being a system. Because you are white, doesn’t mean that you had an easy life. It doesn’t mean that you weren’t raised poor with an abusive family and had to fight for every single thing in your life. It doesn’t mean that. It only means that your life wasn’t harder because your skin color was darker than white. That is white privilege. And when you first become aware of that, when first, somebody first told you that, you definitely want to go into a shell. And if you’re just starting to kind of peek your way out of that shell, if anti-racism is new to you, welcome. It’s awesome out here working to dismantle that and it’s hard and it’s scary, but awareness is where it starts. And when you start realizing that racism is a problem that needs to be fixed. And it’s you who are going to do something to help dismantle that you can no longer be a bystander in this.

[00:13:21] The second stage of being coming an- four stages of becoming an anti-racist, after you’re aware that maybe you could be one, the second stage is just education and I want to pull up this week’s New York times list. It came out a Wednesday. Number one on the list is White Fragility, which is an amazing book, which if you haven’t read, you should read it as by Robin DiAngelo. Number one, apparently they’ve sold out of these books all over the country. Traditional publishing is scrambling to republish these books, but you know what, you can get out on your e-book or from your library. The second one is, So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo, which is also fantastic. And then the third one is How to Be An Anti-Racist, which I would, it’s my favorite that’s the one I would recommend is by you from Ibram X Kendi. But all three of them are incredible. And that’s just your next job just to get a little bit of education so that you can learn what you don’t know. We don’t know what we don’t know until we find out. So your job is to be looking to the bi- BiPAP community, which stands for black indigenous and people of color. Watching what they have done watching the documentaries, where they are speaking, reading the books in which they tell you things. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. People have been doing this work for a long time. Welcome in, see where you can join up, a but, number- but the first half to be comment, a little bit educated, I’ll try to put a link in the show notes for a Google doc that was circulating last week on where you can start. If you just have 5 minutes a day or 10 minutes a day. 10 minutes a day to ask us to be uncomfortable is insignificant. When it comes to people of color and what, how they are inconvenienced and made uncomfortable all day, every day in the society.

[00:15:26] So the third stage is self-interrogation. And this is where you take what you’ve learned and you start to interrogate the ways in which you work in the world. You ask yourself the hard questions. This is also where yes, screw up. I had a, had a doozy earlier this week. I was in a class and a woman was talking about, and I don’t want to get too personal with this. I can’t give details, but she is now living a life where discrimination is going to happen to her in a big way for the rest of her life. And we were talking about that discomfort and I said something to her. I said, well, you know, there comes a time in our lives when we don’t, when we, when we get comfortable with living without discrimination. And the fact that you are now the focus of discrimination, is one of those things, which is making your life so difficult right now in which is making your book so difficult to write about it. And an awesome student of mine put her hand up and said, Rachael, I need to disagree with you. I, as a black woman face this discrimination every day of my life. It is not something that will go away or that will get easier you just learn how to say fuck off. And that was a place in which I was talking to a white woman, white woman to white woman. And I forgot that my experience is not mirrored by her experience. We tend to as white people, because this is what we have been trained to do by our entire society. We tend to center ourselves and make ourselves the most important person in the room forgetting that we are not, and our experiences need to be de-centered so that we can make room for the people who have not been heard for so long, to listen to them and we are going to screw this up and it’s gonna hurt. And in that instance, I got to say, well, I’m sorry. That is, I was just absolutely being a person full of white privilege thinking in my head that I knew everything and that’s complete baloney. Let’s just call it bullshit. And I think white person to white person here, I’m talking to only my white listeners right now.

[00:17:46] This is the point at which when you’re in this stage of self-interrogation of learning about where you are on the anti-racist spectrum, is where you need to get comfortable with screwing up and apologizing clearly and trying to do better next time. This is never a place for a rationalization, but I thought it was being, but I thought I was, no there’s none of that. Just I screwed up. I’m sorry. I try to do better next time.

[00:18:13] And the fourth stage, the final stage is community action. And I believe that as an anti-racist, I only have one job in community action, and that is to help encourage other white people to begin their own journey of becoming an anti-racist. This is what I should do now, which is why I’m talking to you, fellow white person, perhaps it’s time for you to start your journey of anti-racism. I got all of this from a, a starter kit online, which I will also link in the show notes. This is a fantastic time to start learning, and this is a fantastic time to be a writer and you may be really feeling moved to use your words, to fight right now, from the coziness and the safety of your home, where you are sheltering in place. These are things to keep in mind and be aware of, as we work for a better future. We have already really screwed it up in the United States and I truly believe that we can’t put band aids on anymore. We can’t do those easy fixes. This is the time to actually do the difficult work. And I am pleased that I can speak to you about this and I want to, I want you just to think about who you can speak to, in your community.

[00:19:48] And let’s talk about books. Okay, Thoumas says my long term goal is to be a hybrid author. I like the idea of having full control over my books, but I also like the idea of being traditionally published with this in mind, assuming I’m good enough to be traditionally published, which I have no idea if I am. Do you think it would be better to self-publish my debut book or to look for an agent? Such a common question Thoumas, and I’m going to respond to it in a way in which I have heard other people say that they do not like. But I’m going to say it anyway. I like to use and I like to encourage people to use agent querying agents as kind of a test for your book. So if you would like to be traditionally published because it’ll make you feel good because it is a cache that you particularly want. You want to see your book on a shelf in Barnes and Noble, if they exist in the future. That’s totally, totally fine. You can want that just for the sake of wanting it. You never have to justify that to anybody. Give yourself a number of rejections that you will accept before you start to question this book a little bit more. This can be done at any stage in your journey to publication after your, of course your book is written and revised as, as good as you can make it. I don’t believe you need to get an editor to help you fix your book before you go on the agent search, because agents often act as that first editor. There, they’re often happy to do that. They’re not always happy to do that, but they’re often happy to do that.

[00:21:32] That is not to say that you can’t hire an editor before you start an agent search. That is also often done and can be very advantageous. I always recommend Reedsy.com, if you want to go there and look for an editor before you go to print agent. But after you’re good and set your query letters set in stone, it’s beautiful. Perhaps you’ve sent it to me for my query service. Just go to RachaelHerron.com/query. I am glad that I stuck that in there. Then ask yourself, how many rejections do you want before you start reevaluating this book? Is it 25? Is it 50? Perhaps if you get 25 form rejections or just a no answer, which counts as a rejection, either your query letter is not working, well, if it’s form and you’ve not been asked for a partial or a full manuscript, there’s something wrong with your query letter. Or the idea behind your book. If it is an idea that has been, you know, if nobody’s buying a vampire book right now and I’m actually not sure if that’s true or not, I have no idea where vampires are right now, but it could be that you are querying a vampire book in the time when all of agents, agent has said, I’m not going to pick up a vampire, but because none of the publishers are buying vampire books. Then that is not a reflection on your query. But in, in other cases you want to see, is my query letter are actually good enough. If they’re asking for full and partial manuscripts, then my query letter is good enough. And if they don’t want to talk to me after they’ve seen that, then is my book good enough.

[00:23:07] Having no responses or negative responses on these can help you try to figure that out. But, on a bigger scarier level, right now, publishing is reeling from COVID-19. They are selling, they’re having a hard time selling books to editors because editors at big traditional publishers are having hard times knowing whether they will continue to exist. I have heard a couple of different things. I know that McMillan itself is shrinking. They laid off a bunch of editors. I have also heard through the rumor mill that Harper Collins is gangbusters that they’re doing really well. So because of COVID, because more people are reading and because they also own Harlequin, which Harlequin suddenly is an incredible business model. Shipping out books on a subscription service who knew that that would come back. Right. But it’s back. So Harper Collins is doing well.

[00:24:10] But buying books right now and selling books is hard for agents to do. So, again, there is nothing, this is a very long winded way Thoumas, of answering this, that if you would like to look for an agent and then self-publish, if that falls through, I think that that’s a valuable route to go. Other people, I have heard them scream and rail against this and say, no, if you can’t get an agent, then your book is obviously not good enough. And you shouldn’t fail a bad book over into being self-published. I just don’t think that’s true. I think that a hundred agents could look at this book, fail to see its worth. And it could do really well being self-published because it is super niche perhaps, or because it is language that the agents didn’t respond to, but your readers well and if you want to be both, then why not give that book a chance to be traditionally published? And if it fails, and you either rethink it and edit it, change it and try to get an agent after you do that, or you, or you self-publish it, or you do both. That is not a simple answer. That is not a yes or no answer. But I think moving a book that failed to get an agent over into self-publishing is something that can be very good to do. And you’re going to be learning from that whole process and the whole time that you are querying, you’re writing your next book anyway, that book is done. You’re not thinking about it right now and you’re- hello, kitty. And you’re writing your next book. So there’s really, you’re not losing in this. That is what I would recommend to do. If that sounds good to you Thoumas, you should let me know and, and tell me if that resonates with you.

[00:25:56] Everybody else, I appreciate- I appreciate you being with me here today. I hope that you are hanging on and that you are wailing along with your kitties like I do. I know it’s very sad, and that you are getting your work done, and I hope that you come tell me about it and send me an email, send me a Twitter. Let me know how you are doing in these difficult times and tell me what you are struggling with right now. You can also tell me that I’m full of shit and I shouldn’t have- sorry kitty, I shouldn’t have recorded this podcast, but I won’t care because I was speaking my truth to help inspire people like me, who are trying to be brave as well. And that is exactly what I was trying to prove in that middle point of this podcast. So, yes. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being part of my community. It means the world to me.

Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patreon and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/

Now, go to your desk and create your own process and get to writing my friends.

Ep. 184: Should You Build a Mailing List While Still Writing Your First Book?

August 3, 2020

Should you build a mailing list or reader following while you’re still working on your first book? How do you find a community of writers? (Hint, join my Slack channel, link below!) And how should you write transitions between scenes? All this and more, in this episode with Rachael Herron!

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.

Transcript

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #184 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. Thrilled that you’re here with me on this mini episode, if you are one of those people who hears numbers and remembers them, just please know, I have been dreadfully confused, verbally about what number episode I’m on. I think I’ve been telling you I’ve been on 186, 187. I’m actually on 184, the numbers are right in your Podcatcher. If you hear me in the past, say something you’re like, where did I miss three episodes, 4 episodes, maybe 10 episodes, I don’t know. I was just getting it wrong so you can disregard that.

[00:00:52] Welcome. Welcome. I’ve got some questions to answer. These are from the $5 patrons and thank you, patrons as always for supporting me in this mini coaching way. I really like to collect them and go through them. I’m going to try to get through 3 today. You can always check out that patron level at patreon.com/rachael. I think I say that in the opening of the mini episodes, but yeah, no, there it is again. Very quick catch up for you on what’s going on around here. I am, I think I mentioned this last week under the gun again for revision. This is my editor’s revision due a week from today. And my friends, I may not make this deadline. I don’t know, I’m going to work my hardest. I have just been such a fractured writer person. I’m using all of my tools. I have a very big toolbox of things to use when I’m having a hard time focusing. That’s why I do this podcast is to give you better tools for your toolbox. And I am constantly having to remind myself. So if you’re struggling with this too, you’re not alone. I’m constantly reminding myself what those tools are, where to find them, how to use them, how to remember to use them. After I post this podcast, I’m going to remember to move my computer. It’s literally a shift of 45 degrees instead of facing this way. I’m going to face that way out the window. That is my writing revision spot that I’ve set up during quarantine. Usually my writing revision spot is not in my house, but that is this tiny little space that I managed to clear out of my office to do the actual writing and revising. This particular revision is taking some extra first d- quite a bit of first drafting. Which is then followed by revision of that first draft and then another revision so that it kind of smooths to match the rest of the book in any case I’ve been forgetting to use that space and I’ve- yesterday, all day I struggled because I was sitting in my work spot. This is where I do my busy work. This is where I do my email and my podcasts and my marketing. What little I do. I forgot to go to my writing space and all day I had this girl brain. So I just forgot that tool.

[00:03:21] Speaking of tools, I would like to, before we get into questions, tell you about something really special that’s being offered by my friend, and cohost of the podcast, the Writer’s Well, J. Thorn, he is offering something really cool. He is kind of the master of the scene as a tool using each scene and making it as strong as it can be. I have actually signed up for this free course. It’s completely free. It’s a 5-day writing challenge called Supercharge Your Scene, and I can’t recommend anybody more to teach this. So it’s at superchargeyourscene.com You just sign up, it’s free, then you are in it. You’re going to do prep work. Talk about why you must write a scene, how to frame it, how to ignite the motivations of your protagonist and your antagonist. How to guarantee that your scene or article explodes on the page. That’s what I need cause my people talk a lot. How to create a difficult, complicated decision for your protagonist, that readers can’t possibly ignore, and don’t forget when I say protagonist, I also mean you, you are the protagonist if you’re writing your memoir. None of this doesn’t apply to you. You must supercharge each scene, whether it’s fiction or memoir. And decide how, or no you learn how to utilize the protagonist consequence when you start the next scene. I have no idea what that means. J. is smarter than I am about scenes, so go to superchargeyourscene.com. Sign up for that. It is running June 15th through 19th, 2020, depending on when you’re listening to this, I hope you get a chance to sign up. I’m going to be in there. Totally free. And also I was supposed to announce that each time I’ve been co-hosting over at the Writer’s Well with new people, J’s been off for three weeks and I keep forgetting. So I wanted to make sure I, I told people about that here.

[00:05:19] Okay. Let’s get into some cool questions. This is from Leftie. Leftie, I’ve been hanging on to this one for a while so I apologize for the delay. Leftie says, I thought I heard you say in your mini episode about draft passes, and that was brilliant by the way, it’s such a great technique. Thank you. That you were low on questions for your mini episodes and I happen to have one, of course you sent one and then it sat there because I had others. I, she goes on to say, I’ve finished the first draft of the horror novel about a mother and her baby that I told you about. Yes. So happy. Congratulations for you Leftie. It’s the first novel I ever planned before writing the first draft and it made such a difference. I have a much stronger draft and now I’m revising and now I share your love of revisions. Yay! My question is this, “How do you handle transitions in your novels?” By transition, I mean, a paragraph or two that tells the reader that time has passed and what the characters did during this period of time, without it being a fully formed scene, how do you keep them interesting? How do you know when you’ve got too much of them or when you should add one? I feel like minor weak at the moment, and I don’t know what to do about it. Thank you so much.

[00:06:28] Leftie, this is such a good question and I want to point out that this is something I do very badly in a first draft. I do not worry about it at all. A lot of times I’ll put in just a note to myself in my first draft. This is seven days later. This is three days later. This is a month later or a little bit worse, but this is actually what I do more is I don’t put anything in, I forget to do anything. And timeline is one of my big things that I’m thinking about in my big, make sense draft. I actually, if you’re watching on the video, I usually print out a 3-month blank grid, a blank calendar, and it’s the same calendar that I use to block out my writing time. It’s this, but this one is unique for this book and I put the things that happen on this calendar, is a physical timeline, I do it in pencil during that revision so I can erase things and move them around. When I’m in revision is when I’m deciding how much time has passed between things. Your question is specifically, how do you make that transition from a scene, to a scene where time has passed in between. And the answer is, do it as simply and as quickly as possible. It’s one of those invisible things that the reader’s brain needs, but isn’t interested in. So in order to do it in a non, you can do it in a boring way. You can say nine days later, comma, she, open the door to the grocery store. That’s pretty boring, but it gets the job done and is basically invisible to the reader. It’s like he said, she said they convey information that the back of their reader’s mind picks up on and stores but isn’t going to slow them down. A little bit more interesting of a way to do it, I can hear my cats fighting in the background, is to give it a sentence or two something like three grocery deliveries. Let’s see. Three grocery deliveries, 47 emails and 117 for getting to shut the cabinet drawers, Lacy walked back into the grocery store. You know what I mean? So it’s a, it’s giving a capsule snapshot of what has happened before this next scene. The thing to avoid is really boring ness. Like on Tuesday, Lacy stayed in bed. On Wednesday, Lacy answered the phone seven times and managed to work for two hours. On Thursday, wherever we are in the week. You don’t need to fill the reader in on everything that has happened between the time, what you do need to mention or gloss over is anything that applies to their, your plot or that is kind of a better more lyrical way to get there. It doesn’t have to be very lyrical. Like I said, again, it’s just got to convey the impression that time has passed and readers don’t really care how you do it. So my really short answer, is do them as quick as you can, and as simply as you can. It’s- I can never find this quote, but if anybody wants to look it up for me I’ve been looking for it. Somebody famous said something like, sometimes you just have to get your character to open the door. Open parentheses, he opened the door, close the parentheses there, the door is open. Sometimes you just have to say, you have to tell something and you just do it. Flatly it’s done. You can move on to the interesting part of the book.

[00:10:17] So, Mae Merrill says recently RWA is going through let’s hope it’s a temporary cluster-fuck. And until they figure out their shit is not an organization, I want to be part of. Same, that being said, I want to find a place where I do belong and can be part of a community of writers. This is especially difficult since I’m living in Korea for the next few years, and I am not on a base or anything like that. Are there places that offer that sense of community and maybe resources that can help writers preferably of all genres and levels? I do not know, Mae. This is such a difficult question. RWA was such a good thing, but it had this underlying systemic racism that is the – or the underpinnings of American society. It was just baked into its very DNA. So untangling that is going to be a big job. And I am not going to be part of that as I have made clear on the show. Don’t hold much hope for RWA, really changing, although I have heard that they’re doing some things that might could help. I don’t know. I’m just keeping an eye on that. In terms of an organization that kind of includes everybody, there isn’t one and I am not meaning to you’ve actually, you’re, you’re helping me to do this. I am not doing this to toot my own personal horn or whatever phrase you want to use for that, but I do have a free slack community. There are about 400 of us in there. It goes from absolutely no participation, like no one’s interacting in there to really, really busy. It is user driven. I am trying to be more active in there. I just put a sprint channel into our community. So, as soon as I did, somebody said, I’m going in in 10 minutes, who wants to join me? So I’m going in at 10:00 AM Pacific standard time this morning, which isn’t about an hour and seven minutes. And I posted that in there. So you can see where, when I am working and you can work alongside me. If you want, you can work alongside other people. In one of my classes, the other day, there was a sprint discussion that had 184 comments on just this one sprint. As people came in, did their work said, okay, I’m going back, I’m going to do some more. I got an 800 words and they would just type back to each other back and forth. It was so freaking inspiring. So we’re going to do that over in my Slack channel in order to find my Slack channel, please come to howdoyouwrite.net Look at the show notes for this episode. The link is always in the show notes for my podcast. I try to keep it the most recently that hasn’t expired and it seems to be working, this link doesn’t expire. It’s totally free. It’s always going to be free. It’s a place to come and talk about writing. Talk about your difficulties, there’s a whining section, there’s a celebration section. I would love, love, love to have you there if you’re not in it already. And I know that you are probably, isn’t that creepy? When my dogs walk in my room and my door creeks like that, I was genuinely a little bit scared.

[00:13:40] May I know that you were listening, you were hoping that I would tell you about some awesome resource that is out there that doesn’t really exist. As far as I know again, if somebody is listening to this and they’re like, Oh, I know what that community is. It’s all genres, all levels, everyone is welcome. Please come put that in the comments at howdoyouwrite.net because I would really love to know if there is something. But in the meantime, if you want to join my Slack community of writers, please do. It’s an awesome, awesome place.

[00:14:08] Okay. And the last question is from Thoumas. Hello, Thoumas he says, how early should I start building my reader base mailing list, et cetera. I’m in the early stages of revising my first book and I have no online presence as a writer since my life is so hectic, I can only write about an hour a day and I’m not keen on diverting my writing time to trying to build a following while I’m still working on the manuscript. But do you think it would be worth it at this point? Even if it will dramatically slow down finishing the book? I’m so excited to answer this one because the answer is no. Do not try to build up a fan base mailing list, anything of the sort while you’re writing, revising, polishing, getting editor revisions, anything else on a first book. The exception to this is if you want to be traditionally published, and you want to get an agent, and you want to impress them and the editor, she will sell it to you, then definitely get an online presence and get a hundred thousand followers that will impress an agent or an editor. Anything under a hundred thousand followers, they don’t care about. I have been on social media forever, and I have a good following. I probably have, I don’t even know how many I have I think maybe 6,000 on Facebook over both professional and personal pages. I’m looking at Twitter, which is probably my preferred online presence. I have 4,800 people let me glance at Instagram and I will tell you basically what I’m proving to you is that I have been working on this for a long time, trying to build up a following. I have less than 3000 followers on Instagram. There’s no way you’re going to get to a hundred thousand followers unless you’re like some kind of like internet, YouTube superstar kind of thing. So for us mere mortals, they don’t care, knowing that you have 25 people on your mailing list or even 2,500 does not matter to an agent or an editor. So, there’s no reason to do it besides the whole point is, and I think this is what a lot of people get frustrated about, is that how are you supposed to get somebody on your mailing list as a writer, if they can’t read anything by you and they don’t know, they want to read anything by you. So what’s important is when that first book goes out, whether it is self-published or traditionally published, you make sure that you have a way to capture those fans in any way that they come to you. You want, the ideal way, is the number one way, like ignore everything else. The number one way is to get their email somehow that might require, you know, writing a short story that’s a lead in a prequel to your book that they can opt in when they read or offering them a short story when they read your first book and say, here’s a short story that follows the character in the next few months of their lives. Opt in for that, opt into my mailing list to receive that for free. If it’s a memoir, you can offer to tell them another story that didn’t fit in the book that they might want to know about this, either funny or dramatic or poignant. Get them on your mailing list that way. The reason a mailing list is the most important thing you can have, is that they are your subscribers. You can move them around from different platforms that you keep them on. A lot of people start with MailChimp because it’s a good place to start. It’s free up to X number of, I think a couple thousand subscribers you can move them if you don’t like MailChimp, you can go somewhere else. You own that list. You don’t own anything else, you don’t own Instagram, you don’t own Twitter, you don’t own Facebook, and those can change at any point, you cannot rely on followers on those kinds of places. The thing about a mailing list is you never, ever, no matter who you are, and no matter how much you love someone, you never subscribe a family member or a friend, even a close writing friend to your email list without having them opt in. That’s the way to keep your mailing list clean when you get it don’t put your 25 best friends on it. Ask them to opt in and always allow them by using a service to have an unsubscribed button, unsubscribe button. Unsubscribes happen, they are good. They’re self-selecting themselves out of your range because they’re not your reader anymore. If they unsubscribed. Fantastic. We’d love that, but it is not anything you need to worry about now until the first book is. If not out there, it is going out there and you put the link in, or the URL if it’s a print book where they can type in and find you get on your mailing list, that’s the most important thing. So yes, don’t worry your head about it at all until later there’s no reason to.

[00:18:48] Let’s see a follow up question. When a writer is looking for an agent, how much- I guess I should’ve have read the questions again before I started talking about them. When a writer is looking for an agent, how much weight did the agents put on writers’ existing reader base and literary presence? Zero. If you have a blog though, I will say this, they will find it and they will read it. And they will use it to judge whether they want to work with you. So if you’ve had a blog in the old days or a live journal that pops up when you Google your name, definitely go over and read it and make sure that it is the presence you want to be presenting to an agent. Agents Google, they need to do a social media search or the people that they’re going to work with. They don’t want to find out that you are flaming people online. They’re not going to work with you. My agent picked me up because she liked my book, but she loved my voice on my blog. She loved that person that she saw on the blog. That was actually she’s told me that that was more valuable to her than my book it’s by itself. So the fact that I had a, you know, a 12-year old blog at that point, it was something. Don’t start a blog if you’re looking for an agent or representation that’s, that’s not useful. They don’t care. They really don’t care. You are a newbie, you’re a debut author, and that brings with it its own awesomeness. Publishers really love debut authors. There’s a reason that they presented Stolen Things, my first novel under RH Herron as a debut author. I was talking about it on the draft to digital spotlight the other day, but that really bothers me. I feel like it is mine, but it is legally allowable and it is what publishers want. Target wants to have debut authors in their store, things that are new and shiny, appeal to customers.

[00:20:37] So yeah, you’re, it’s just a, it’s just a bonus that you’re a debut and that you don’t have any of this thing behind you. Let’s see number three, I am a Finnish immigrant and I have been considering coming up with an author name that is easier for readers since my main target audience will be Americans. It’s a toss-up though, because foreign names do have a certain flair in at least some people’s minds. My American wife always says my first name to almost sounds weird to Americans. Thoumas you know, I’ve never thought that, so the author name could be as simple as just changing my first name to Thomas and keeping my last name. Your last name, which I know and you haven’t said it here, so I won’t say it, is easy to pronounce and easy to spell phonetically. The other thing is your last name is unique. It is not, you’re not Thomas Brown, you’re not Thomas Smith or Jones. So I kind of, while I disagree with your wife, Thoumas is almost said, like it’s spelled and it is spelled phonetically, anybody could spell that. It is not a bad idea to think about using Thomas and your last name, because the combination of two unique names is sometimes problematic. So it’s, I would say it’s not a bad idea to consider Thomas plus your last name, that said, if you love your name and want to keep it, do it, it is author’s choice. You get to do that. Yours is not like a check name with 17 consonants and a bunch of phonetic combinations that we don’t normally see, it is not difficult. So you get to, you get to make that decision.

[00:22:18] Yeah. So that is the total of the questions. I’ve got another one here but actually I might be answering that in a different way in an episode upcoming. So to my $5 patrons to whom I am your mini coach, I’m ready for some more questions, please. You can send them to me in email or through Patreon or on Twitter or wherever you can find me. So I’ve got to get back to this revision now. I hope that you all are hanging in there through the pandemic and that you’re healthy, that you’re safe and that hopefully you are writing. Oh, and you should come join my Slack. If you haven’t already, I would love to see you there let’s form a community, a real community. It’s already there. So come join it. All right my friends, happy writing.

Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patreon and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/

Now, go to your desk and create your own process and get to writing my friends.

Ep. 183: Jennie Nash on Harnessing the Power of Jealousy

August 3, 2020

Jennie Nash is the founder of Author Accelerator, a business that has trained more than 50 book coaches to support writers through the entire creative process of completing a book. Jennie started her career on staff at Random House and has spent 30 years on all sides of the publishing industry. In her time as a book coach, her clients have landed top New York agents and book deals with houses such as Scribner, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette. Jennie is the author of 9 books, 5 of which were published by Big 5 publishers. She has taught for 12 years in the UCLA Extension Writer’s Program and spoken at writing conferences all over the country. Her guest posts have appeared on popular writing sites including The Write Life, Writers Helping Writers, and The Book Designer.

Show link: Go visit Jennie for the free goodies at https://www.authoraccelerator.com/rachael

Transcript

Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #183 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron.

[00:00:22] So pleased that you’re here with me today. Today, I have a super exciting and vibrant conversation with my new best friend, Jennie Nash, who is a force in the publishing industry. She’s a force as a writer. She’s a force as a book coach. And also, we just found out that while we were talking, we were basically the same person in different bodies in different locations. And, it was- sometimes I run into people like that. I’m like, oh no, that’s no, but with her, I was just delighted to see perhaps some of my best qualities are reflected back at me. Instead of those people that you meet, where you’re like, “Oh God, I am like that. Ah, crap.” Jennie is not that. Jennie is gorgeous, wonderful, awesome. You’re gonna love listening to her.

[00:01:11] So we’ll get into that in a moment, a little bit of a catch up around here. I am far behind. I’m not- yeah, I’m pretty far behind. I got my revision letter back, I told you that. And then I have just proceeded to screw off. I, I am so talented at knowing at a very visceral subconscious level, the very last moment I can have before hitting a point where I won’t make that deadline if I don’t work hard. And for some reason I always walk right up to it, even when I am trying not to, even when I’m trying to get all the words done ahead of time, I still can push a deadline to its max. So I think I’ve got like 15 more days for this editor’s revision, and this is the big one. This is, you know, the take it apart again and put it back together in a different way. I am making it less emotional and more stabby, more tension, more thriller. So I keep forgetting that I keep having them have these beautiful, emotional, poignant moments between the women in this story. And then I’m like, no, it’s gotta be scary. It’s gotta be scary externally, not just deep and scary inside the heart, it’s gotta be both. So I’m trying to get all of that done and it’s not easy, but I’m trying. Everything else is going very well. It just, I just, I’m still liking this staying at home thing and I, I do admit it. I really like it. I just had a thought today that if and when the world goes, it’ll never go back to normal, but when it opens up more and we are able to see people, I think I’m going to restrict myself to seeing people once a week, that will make me choose very carefully, who I see. And when I see them back in the old days, I would usually have four to seven gatherings of some sort. I have a lot of friends and I really love them. But I can get a lot of that socializing through email, through texts, through phone calls, through Markopolos. Markopolos is an app I really like, and I don’t always need in person. I really like this expansive time to stay at home and work and work in the garden and read books. And I’m, I don’t know, that might be a rule I put down. I want to see people, but I want to keep it more limited than I was. I want more boundaries when we come out of this, I want more ability to say no to the things that don’t matter as much and always saying yes to the things that matter most, that is my goal. I don’t know how that’s going to shake out, but that’s, that’s my goal.

[00:04:09] Another thing that has hit me is another book, another book has hit me over the head. I have been trying to figure out how to tell the story about recovery from addiction. Everybody’s got a story about recovery from addiction, you know that. So I want this one to be a little bit different and I think I may, last night, have kind of cracked the spine of it, figured out what I want it to be. Which is more than just about addiction. It’s really about living genuinely and with full acceptance of who you are at this moment without trying to change because I really do believe that I am everything I need to be right now. I believe that you are everything you need to be right now. Any of us having more of things is not going to change who we are and it’s not going to change our happiness level. Probably there’s definitely exceptions to all of this if you’re living at or below the poverty line. Yeah. Having more money will help, but we all know that study that if you make more than $73,000 a year or something like that, you can’t get happier with money. Money will not make you any happier. It’s, yeah. So this one I’m thinking about a new book somewhere around those ideas. So I’m playing with that, and I don’t know where it will fit into my life. I still want to write that women’s fiction next. I just kind of feel very much like writing all the time, right now. That’s something that quarantine has given me. I haven’t felt this way in a really long time that every spare moment I want to be writing that is not like me. I have started journaling again in a really big, deep way and I realized that I usually only journal really deeply journal when I’m traveling and, and we’re traveling right now. This is a unique experience for everybody on the globe. And it does feel like some kind of a journey and I’m very, very drawn to capturing what’s going on around me. Not for any reason, not to package up and sell, just because I need to get these words out of my mind and onto the page. So I was actually talking to Jeff Adams of Jeff and Will, the other day. He’s going to be guest hosting with me on the Writers’ Well, next week. And he showed me his record book that is not as dirty as it came out of my mouth but do you have a record book? I want to know. I ordered one, they’re like $30 and it’s, you can save your digital handwriting. I really liked journaling and then I’m always like, I’m never gonna see this book again, but if it’s online as well, that’s like a double backup. Not like anybody ever wants to read my journal, even myself, but I do like thinking about it being backed up. So I ordered a record book and that should be fun to play with.

[00:07:08] Wow. I am just going kind of all over the place today. What other all over the place should I tell you about? I think that’s about it. I would love to say thanks some new patrons, because it has been a while since I remembered to do this. So this is going back like more than month. Thomas Makanen, it is always wonderful to have you as a patron. That’s awesome. Amanda, thank you. Oh, maybe I have to thank these people. Cause I remember thanking Amanda. Amanda, you’re the best. Janine Gurman for editing your pledge up. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Everybody who is supposed to get those texts from me, I am over the limit for the text service and I’m trying to find a different service. So if you’re not getting that, don’t worry. I’m trying to fix it. A new patron, Megan Kroll and Jennifer Harris and Jill and Naomi Stenberg. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much to all of you. It really is and makes the difference in my being able to write those essays from which come these book ideas and whole books.

[00:08:15] So if you would like to check out any of those essays on living the creative life, you can always go to patreon.com/rachael R, A, C, H, A, E, L, and check those out. And I really, really, really appreciate you. That’s caught up. My desk is covered in Tootsie roll pops because apparently this revision is taking Tootsie roll pops. If Tootsie roll pop is not in my mouth, I am not revising. And that’s the way it’s going to be. And I like it. And yes, let’s jump into the interview now with Jennie Nash. I know you’re going to enjoy it. Please, please get some of your own writing done and find me anywhere online and tell me about it. I love hearing about it and I believe in you. Okay, happy writing.

[00:09:04] Hey, do you want to do more writing? on Zoom with a group of people that you like? Well, you should join rachaelsayswrite. We write together on Tuesday mornings from 5:00 to 7:00 AM Pacific standard time, 8:00 to 10:00 AM Eastern standard time. This one works for you, Europeans. And on Thursdays from 4:00 to 6:00 PM Pacific standard time, 7:00 to 9:00 Eastern standard time, New Zealand and Australia, this one’s for you. And for just $39 a month, you can write with us in Zoom. It’s like 16 hours for a month, it’s like $2 an hour to sit in a Zoom room with really cool people and spy on them while they’re writing and let them spy on you while you’re writing, they’ll get to see your true writer space and there is nothing more intimate than that. Honestly, you guys, it’s such a good time. Go to rachaelherron.com/write or rachaelsayswrite to find out more about joining.

Rachael Herron: [00:10:03] Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show, Jennie Nash. Hi Jennie! How are you?

Jennie Nash: [00:10:09] I’m so happy to be here. I’m well, thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:10:12] Good. Let me give you a little introduction so we can talk about all the things you do. Jennie Nash is the founder of Author Accelerator, a business that has trained more than 50 book coaches to support writers through the entire creative process of completing a book. Jennie started her career on staff at Random House and has spent 30 years on all sides of the publishing industry. In her time as a book coach, her clients have landed top New York agents and book deals with houses such as Scribner, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette. Jennie is the author of 9 books, 5 of which were published by Big 5 publishers. She has taught for 12 years in the UCLA Extension Writer’s Program and spoken at writing conferences all over the country. Her guest posts have appeared on popular writing sites including The Write Life, Writers Helping Writers, and The Book Designer. And just before we got on there, we were kind of telling each other how nice it is to talk to somebody else who does all of the things. You do all of the things-

Jennie Nash: [00:11:10] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:11:11] like I do. I teach at the Accenture programs at Berkeley and Stanford and what else was I gonna say? Oh, I was looking at your book roster. You write all the genres, you write women’s fiction and memoir and nonfiction about writing that and I’ve heard your name for so long in the publishing industry, which is why I’m so excited to have you on the show because they do get people who want to be on the show because they have written a book about writing, but they have no other books, you know,

Jennie Nash: [00:11:39] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:11:40] When you run into those people and you are this book coach among, you know, you’re the book coach of the book coaches, because you know how to write, because you’ve done all this stuff, which is why I’m so happy to have you on the show about process, how let’s just open it way up. How do you do it all? You have children, you have family. I just have a wife and no kids. So how do you do it?

Jennie Nash: [00:12:02] Well, my kids are grown, so it doesn’t count. I mean, I just kind of work like a dog. That’s the honest truth of it. I just do I work all the time. I-I, people sometimes say like, are you, do you have super powers? And it’s like, no, I just work all the time. And that, you know, there’s upsides to that and downsides to that, which we could talk about. But I, I just kind of refuse to give up anything. I want to do all the things I’m just greedy.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:30] I might just take this and we’ve got the questions I always ask. But I might wanna go a little freeform with this too. What do you give up when you have to give something up?

Jennie Nash: [00:12:41] I mean the honest truth is I will give up my health. I will, I will give up myself too. I get migraines and I will hurt myself

Rachael Herron: [00:12:51] Me too!

Jennie Nash: [00:12:52] Stop it!

Rachael Herron: [00:12:53] I know that I am working too hard when a migraine knocks me all the way to that’s how I go out. I work until a migraine knocks me to the ground. Yeah.

Jennie Nash: [00:13:00] Okay. So you know what I’m talking about? Like a migraine is not just, I’m going to take some Advil

Rachael Herron: [00:13:06] Oh no

Jennie Nash: [00:13:07] and feel better. Migraine is like, yeah. It’s like, you have to get under the covers in darkness and not have anyone speak to you and you can’t eat and you can’t

Rachael Herron: [00:13:17] Yep

Jennie Nash: [00:13:18] listen to anything and you’re out. And yeah. So I tell my body’s dead and it’s not something I recommend

Rachael Herron: [00:13:26] strangely enough.

Jennie Nash: [00:13:30] But that’s the truth of it. And, and I’m trying, I mean, I’ve had them for 28 years. So when I say I’m trying, it’s not a new thing, but it’s, it’s, I love to work. I like to card, I don’t want to give up, like you said, what do you give up? And I say the trainers all the time, what are you going to give up? Because you can’t have a clean house and, you know, make perfect meals and do all the things and have time to write. And so I’m constantly helping them make those choices. And then I don’t actually make them my own self. I just try to do it all.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:03] I think you may be my new favorite person and my, my, my twin and soul, because that is what I do. I tell everybody to give up something and I don’t give up anything. And that does come at the expense of my own health and snapping at my wife, for example, you know, she’ll get the short end of the stick right there. Yeah,

Jennie Nash: [00:14:24] Yeah, yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:26] Yeah. She, she adores that when I’m like on deadline and starting through classes like I was last week, so. Well,

Jennie Nash: [00:14:28] That’s interesting so that’s the thing you give up is like peace in your home. And I would do the same thing. I would yell and snap at the people I love. And, and-

Rachael Herron: [00:14:36] And then I would-

Jennie Nash: [00:14:37] Yeah, it’s not okay.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:39] It’s not okay. And then I blame it on how busy I am. And she always says, whose fault is that? And she’s

Jennie Nash: [00:14:47] Oh my gosh. My, my daughter who’s teaching seventh grade is living with me right now in this shutdown. And we have a little snippy fight recently because she was like, I just, I just gotta get to June 15th. Cause then they have summer teachers have summer and look, teachers work so hard. I’m not even kidding how hard she works. It’s relentless, like every day and it’s just, you’re in it and you’re in it and it’s horrible. And, but she said summer, and I said something like, well, at least you get it. And, and she just looked at me and she said, you could have a summer if you wanted mom as like, you know, like, I can’t like, I don’t- a rules don’t apply to me. I’ve could, I could work a straight that I’m in charge of my own destiny, but I don’t

Rachael Herron: [00:15:35] Not, not that I buy into any of this stuff, but what is your star sign? What is your astrological?

Jennie Nash: [00:15:40] Oh, Gemini.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:41] Oh, okay. I’m a cancer. All right. At least we don’t have that, at least we can’t blame it all on something other worldly. So, so when you are writing your own books and when you’re not coaching, what is your writing process? What does that look like?

Jennie Nash: [00:15:51] So I don’t have a habitual practice, I write in bursts and I write in fits and starts. And I kind of, it’s almost like fever, fever writing. So I, it’s hard for me to say exactly when I do it, or, but I love writing at night. I love writing late at night and I love writing like Saturday morning is the dream when nobody’s going to email or text or call or knock on my door or ask me anything. So I like to get up early and write and like to stay up late and write. And it’s all about just avoiding the, the wave of demands.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:32] I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody say that so concretely, but Saturday morning is a delight to work. That is so, so true.

Jennie Nash: [00:16:40] Right?

Rachael Herron: [00:16:41] Yeah. I hadn’t actually, I usually try not to, but yeah.

Jennie Nash: [00:16:45] Well, I love, another thing I always tell my writers that I don’t do, is I’m saying there’s no cabin in the woods. And by that, I mean, you’re not going to get the fellowship where they bring you lunch in a basket and you go off the grid for three months. And you get to write your book and, and you do it in three months. Like that’s not happening for you, that you have to make your own time in your own life and your own way. I’m always saying that and talking about that. And yet the way I write best is when I get those kind of clearings, you know, this kind of like white space on the calendar, I’ll, I’ll be like, Ooh, and I can dive in and, and write it. But I, I’m really bad at actually blocking that time. And I, and I like would like to be better,

Rachael Herron: [00:17:35] But the thing is, I’m going to push back on that just a little bit, is that your process works and you’re getting books done

Jennie Nash: [00:17:41] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:17:42] and you are making, you would like a cabin in the woods when we all, and you make that in the white space on your calendar. Whereas for white space, for me, doesn’t work personally, because then I go watch Netflix or garden or something. I do anything, but write. So it works for you. Your method has worked.

Jennie Nash: [00:17:56] It does, it does work for me. And I’ve actually really deeply loved the shutdown because I- oh you have?

Rachael Herron: [00:18:05] I’m passionate about it. I don’t ever want it to change. I hate it for how bad it is. I hate everything about it for medically and all that. But yeah,

Jennie Nash: [00:18:14] I- I’m sad we have to go back because what I realized is that the, the energy, the calendar energy, I call it. So like, are you free on Saturday night? Can you come at 6? Should we do it at 7? I don’t know. Maybe we should do it Sunday night. Like that, just that energy or, Ooh, the person I want to hear in concert is coming. How much are the tickets should we do with the balcony? Or should we do the thing? And should we go like. I love that all being out of my life. And I’m

Jennie Nash: [00:18:41] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:18:42] And I – Right? That’s social energy. I mean, I love my friends and my family and, and all of it, but I, and what I find is that I am so eager to work that I’m like, if I get to an evening and there’s nothing to, that we have to go do, or that we’re plan to go do, I just want to work. So I, I it’s weird how much I like it.

Rachael Herron: [00:19:11] I like most of my parts of my job, except for first drafts. I really, I struggled with the first draft or are you a first drafter or are you more of a reviser? Are you in all things?

Jennie Nash: [00:19:21] I like all the things. I mean, I, I like all of the things I, I draft really quickly. I, I revise really intentionally. I like, I like all the, I like all the things I do. I do.

Rachael Herron: [00:19:37] and that makes you a perfect book coach of book coaches. What is, what is your biggest challenge then when it comes to writing?

Jennie Nash: [00:19:48] Gosh. Really it’s just finding the time. I mean, I mean, with the writing itself, I- I’ve taught writing so much and I help people so much. I think I’ve internalized a lot of the things that, you know, it’s like the things I help other people with that they don’t do well is putting boundaries around your idea, really defining what that idea is going to be. Maybe saving that for another book or maybe saving that taken out subplot out cause it doesn’t fit, or like the structural decision-making and the shape, the shape of things. I have so many of those conversations all the time. I think I’ve internalized internalize those. So when I sit down to write, I tend to, I tend to just be, know what to do.

Rachael Herron: [00:20:36] That’s a good feeling.

Jennie Nash: [00:20:39] It’s such a good feeling.

Rachael Herron: [00:20:40] Yeah.

Jennie Nash: [00:20:41] It’s, it’s such a good feeling. I find such enormous peace in the writing process. I feel like, feel like I recognize my voice that’s been with me my whole life and it felt like coming home and it, it just feels like, Oh, here, here I am. You know, and that’s my favorite part of it. So the challenge is that part of it is so strong that the challenge has almost don’t matter cause I want to get to that feeling

Rachael Herron: [00:21:12] That is gorgeous. What is your biggest joy when it comes to writing then? It sounds like you have a lot of joys to choose from

Jennie Nash: [00:21:20] I mean, it’s that, it’s that. It’s that coming home. It’s like, here I am. This is me. I’m, I’m, I’m in it. And even if I have 10 minutes to write something I can get into that space and it feels wholly my own. I mean that, that’s the thing about writing, right? We’re in charge. We were the ones or the boss.

Rachael Herron: [00:21:42] Is there a genre that you feel more at home? And for me, I sink into my bones, even in first drafts I love being inside my body when I’m writing a memoir or creative nonfiction of any sort. Fiction, I struggle more with first drafts, but is there a genre that you feel most at home in?

Jennie Nash: [00:21:59] I would say that it is memoir as well. And I- I’ve had an interesting experience with my newsletter, I, for a long time doing it for a long time. And I have a pretty nice following and I used to be super craft-based as I can, all the craft lessons and all the how to’s and you know, strategy. And, and then I started paying attention to what people liked, imagine that, and every time I would write something. It was usually when I was laid on my deadline as, and I just had to whip something out and I just write some dumb thing in my mind about whatever, what I made for dinner or one of my kids or, you know, something people love them. And so more and more, I’ve just done that for that weekly thing. And it’s, it’s just- it’s, it’s just, there’s nothing like it. It’s so fun. Just writing about my own self and what I think.

Rachael Herron: [00:22:59] Right? It’s-

Jennie Nash: [00:23:02] Don’t you think?

Rachael Herron: [00:23:03] I really do. And I don’t know if you’re like me though, but honestly, you know we’re j- we’re joking about it, but, but I don’t really know what I think about things, until I put them on the page and explored them and written around them. And gotten to what I know. And I don’t know, I usually don’t know when I sit down, when I start writing about something, you know, I wrote something last night in my journal that has freaked me out and I’m like, Oh God, am I going to have to like, go there? Now do I have to go there? That I’ve said it. You know.

Jennie Nash: [00:23:32] Oh, see, that’s amazing. And, and yeah, I agree with that. That they’re it’s regulatory, but it’s also, you, you own it. There’s this authority like it’s so just you it’s a whole it’s, it’s yeah, I, I really it’s easy for me. All the other writing is harder. Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:23:54] Oh, that’s so cool. Okay. So what oh, no. First of all, can you share a craft tip? Speaking of craft, with our listeners?

Jennie Nash: [00:24:04] Yeah. I’m going to talk about revision,

Rachael Herron: [00:24:06] Yey!

Jennie Nash: [00:24:07] By thinking love revision. Do you like revision?

Rachael Herron: [00:24:11] The best. I, the only reason I write is to get back into revision because I can write, I can revise 12 hours a day. I’m in heaven. I can’t stop.

Jennie Nash: [00:24:18] Right? It’s so much fun. And it’s where the thing because becomes what it wants to be.

Rachael Herron: [00:24:24] Yes

Jennie Nash: [00:24:25] And so I love revision and I know a lot of people don’t like to talk about revision. And the thing the tip- the tip I would have to be, don’t revise in the same way you wrote. You have to do it in a different mind space, and that can be, you can do that physically, like you could do it in a different place than you write. You could, even just changing the font on your, on your main script or printing it out in a different font, and it falls on the page differently. Can put your- can make you just shift how you’re looking at it. And the whole thing that an editor does, you know, the joy of being edited is somebody else’s eyes around on your work and they’re bringing a different perspective to your work. So if you can do that for yourself, like get out of your head you wrote in, and look at it in a, just a different angle, a different way, a different viewpoint, you know, really trying to get a 360 view point on it. That’s the trick; is don’t just go to- the mistake I see so many people make is they think revision, well, there’s two things. I think revision is mine editing.

Rachael Herron: [00:25:32] Yeah

Jennie Nash: [00:25:33] They think it’s fiddly little word- wordsmithing, and it, it’s not, it’s heavy lifting earth moving, you know? And then the second mistake they make is they just fall into that same rhythm or pattern that they did when they were writing. And then they, I’m sure you do this. I, this always cracks me up when I’m, when I’m reading my own stuff and you get into that thing, you’re like, Oh, this is good. Right? You’re just doing what you do when you write. Cause when you’re writing and you think that you don’t have to work on that.

Rachael Herron: [00:26:09] Exactly

Jennie Nash: [00:26:10] So then you work on the next revision. So,

Rachael Herron: [00:26:12] Yeah I love that feeling, but that is one of the warning signs for me, in like a second draft or a third draft. If I’m really loving it, I have to pull back out of it. Like there’s something I might not be seeing yet in a fourth draft or a fifth draft, you might let yourself, you know, enjoy that little bit.

Jennie Nash: [00:26:28] Yeah, it’s take your writer’s hat off. Like literally I’m not a writer right now. I’m, I’m an editor I’m trying to be in my readers’ shoes. I’m trying to look at this from the outside. I’m trying to be analytic instead of, you know, creative just different perspective will make your revision process so much better.

Rachael Herron: [00:26:50] I love that. Thank you so, so much. And thank you for being on my side for revision. It’s magic, literally the magic of writing. So what thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way?

Jennie Nash: [00:27:04] Oh, my gosh, I love this question so much because I have to answer the real thing and the real first thought I’m like,

Rachael Herron: [00:27:10] Oh good. Good.

Jennie Nash: [00:27:04] When I first thought of it, I’m like oh, I don’t have to actually really answer it. The surprising thing that I find really motivating is jealousy.

Rachael Herron: [00:27:24] Oh! Tell me more.

Jennie Nash: [00:27:26] I get so jealous. I get so jealous of everyone and everything for every reason you could possibly name. And I, and it’s not just a little jealous, it’s like rage. I’m like, I’m like rage jealous and it can just be like, if I read something I love and I’m just like, Oh, so good. And, and then I think I wish I had that idea

Rachael Herron: [00:27:51] Yes

Jennie Nash: [00:27:52] Like as if you could just take someone else’s idea or, you know, if somebody has a big success and, or some big lucky break, and I’ll think I could do that if I just had a lucky Bree, you know, like but I’ll, I’ll I think I even get jealous of my students that I teach. Like if they’re doing really well, I’ll get jealous of them. It’s bizarre. But I find it super motivating.

Rachael Herron: [00:28:22] I love that. I love that you’re talking about it because people don’t talk about it. It is one of those guilty things to be hidden away. Like we shouldn’t have jealousies. I just ranked low on the jealousy scale as a human being anyway. But the places where I find jealousy the most painful is when I am reading something that I know I couldn’t write because I’m not that writer. And I’m just so mad at myself

Jennie Nash: [00:28:48] Or like or I’m not that good.

Rachael Herron: [00:28:51] I’m not that good at that. Oh yeah. I have it

Jennie Nash: [00:28:53] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:28:54] all the time.

Jennie Nash: [00:28:56] Like I’m not that smart.

Rachael Herron: [00:28:57] Yeah

Jennie Nash: [00:28:58] I’m not that smart. I couldn’t have pulled that off.

Rachael Herron: [00:29:00] That’s actually one of my biggest ones, is I’m not that smart. Like

Jennie Nash: [00:28:04] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:29:05] I’m working on finishing up a thriller right now. But I’m letting myself read thrillers, which is not a good idea. And all of the twists that are coming on, I’m like, I can’t do that. I can’t do my twists are stupid.

Jennie Nash: [00:29:13] Right. Right.

Rachael Herron: [00:29:16] Yeah.

Jennie Nash: [00:29:17] They’re all those, right. Yeah. Yeah. I feel that I feel that a lot that I’m, I’m not that smarter. I’m not that- it’s strange. It’s just a strange thing that I feel like I have no outside reason, external reason, no demonstrable reason that I should feel jealous. And I do well at what I do. And I’m successful in all things, but I, that’s what I feel.

Rachael Herron: [00:29:47] And instead of using it, instead of turning it into an opportunity for self-pity and getting into bed and pulling the covers over her head, which I’m also good at, you said you use it to motivate yourself. How, what does that look like? Does it mean, I’m just going to work that much harder?

Jennie Nash: [00:30:01] I mean, sadly, yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:30:02] Yeah, that’s great!

Jennie Nash: [00:30:04] I think that’s part of what drives, what the drive is, comes from is I’ll get angry or mad or jealous or needy or whatever the jealousy feels like. And, and then I’ll say, well I’ll show them or paying any attention to me, right. Or like, yeah. Like I’ll, I’m going to just work that much harder or apply myself that much more. So it, it gets me like that’s fire fuel for the fire.

Rachael Herron: [00:30:32] You’re harnessing it. You’re not just letting it be a distracting emotion and you’re actually harnessing it. And I really, really

Jennie Nash: [00:30:39] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:30:40] love hearing that. Oh, my gosh. I think,

Jennie Nash: [00:30:42] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:30:43] I think I could talk to you all day about everything and I’m immediately signing up for your email newsletter, by the way. I know that

Jennie Nash: [00:30:50] Oh no. Now you’re gonna be like, wow, she just chit-chats about her

Rachael Herron: [00:30:54] That’s all I do. And that’s what people love the best is when they talk, when people love talking about their real lives and fantastic. Okay. So what is the best book that you’ve read recently? And why did you love it?

Jennie Nash: [00:31:07] So I tend to be behind everybody else because I read all day and I work with words all day. So I read very, very slowly. I love to read, but I, I’m always way behind. And I’ll say to people all the time, like, Oh, did you read whatever? And they look at me like, yeah, before the movie came out and I’m like, Oh, there was.

Rachael Herron: [00:31:27] I did that the other day. And they’re like the one that won the Pulitzer? Yeah. I read that five years ago. Exactly what happened,

Jennie Nash: [00:31:37] Well I would just thread it like the way my mind was Daisy Jones in the sixth. Oh my gosh you don’t –

Rachael Herron: [00:31:45] I read it. I think I have on my list, but what did you love about it?

Jennie Nash: [00:31:49] Okay, it is just the most mind blowing thing. It’s Taylor Jenkins read and she basically recreated the story of Fleetwood Mac.

Rachael Herron: [00:31:58] Okay, so you’re saying, some kind of musician, right?

Jennie Nash: [00:32:02] Rock and roll, opera kind of thing. But the thing that just was extraordinary about it was he chose the structure that is the band members are telling an oral history of the band. So it’s a fake band and they’re telling fake oral history of the band. So that each band member it’s like six or seven or eight or 10, there’s a lot of characters. And there, they’re speaking to a, invisible host basically. I’m like a,

Rachael Herron: [00:32:31] like a reporter?

Jennie Nash: [00:32:32] Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:32:33] Oh okay

Jennie Nash: [00:32:34] And so there, there’s this weird perspective that talking at you, but you’re not who they’re talking to, but they- that’s the thing that I’m just like, I could never pull this off. Like it’s just extraordinary. And each voice is super distinct, but what’s just amazing about it is that they all contradict each other all the time. It’s like, it’s like, Oh, remember that show in Oslo where whatever happened? Oh no, that wasn’t Oslo. That was Berlin. Oh yeah. Remember in Mexico. And that happened and they’re telling the same thing and they’ve all got it wrong. And you’re just it’s so it’s like this. Edit page truth, that there is no truth and there is no memory, it’s just extraordinary and

Rachael Herron: [00:33:19] That sounds gorgeous.

Jennie Nash: [00:33:21] It’s beautiful. And that you think, you know what it’s about because it’s, it’s like this Stevie Nicks characters at the center. And, and you think, you know, it’s like a rise and fall to fame, you think, okay, I got this, but it turns out really not to be that, it’s about something else. And that’s something else that emerges while the story unfolds. And he kind of begins to tickle in the back of your mind. And then it comes super clear at the end, what it, what it was really about and like a twist to it. And it- it’s just, it’s just masterful. I just cannot, I’m just obsessed with it.

Rachael Herron: [00:33:53] I am going to read it cause it’s either in this stack right here, or it’s on my Kindle in my TBR pile. But I will confess to you since we are being so open and honest with each other while you were talking about it, I felt an identified a twinge of, Oh, that’s a great framing device. I could never have thought of that framing device, you know?

Jennie Nash: [00:34:13] Right. That’s exactly it. And, and people underestimate the power of structure

Rachael Herron: [00:34:20] Yes

Jennie Nash: [00:34:21] of how you’re going to paint this material. So here’s this idea like I, and I, and after I read it, I do this one I’m obsessed with something. I go read everything about it. Like all the interviews. And all the things and, and Reese Witherspoon actually did buy the movie, right?

Rachael Herron: [00:34:35] Of course she did. Cause she’s so buying the best stuff.

Jennie Nash: [00:34:41] Right, and somebody is gonna write the music that’s fake music for this fake band, which like, do you love that?

Rachael Herron: [00:34:46] I’m actually in a yacht rock band called Sausalito. So I sing a lot of Fleetwood masks. So I’m definitely on board for this entire entirely.

Jennie Nash: [00:34:55] Wait, I only recently learned what yacht rock was, and I was like, rock is the music of my life. And I didn’t even know it –

Rachael Herron: [00:35:05] It’s more, it is, I will say it’s more of a recent term that people have coined for that time, late seventies, like maybe into the early eighties, but it’s so good. And it’s so fun. So this book is absolutely something I must read like tonight,

Jennie Nash: [00:35:17] Right? You have to. I mean, if you can, if you can do it, if this is your jive I would recommend the audio book. Because it’s just a tour to force. It’s just amazing.

Rachael Herron: [00:35:29] Is it read by different characters or is it one narrator?

Jennie Nash: [00:35:34] You know what’s weird, I can’t even tell you. I can’t even tell you. I think it must be different. It has to be different.

Rachael Herron: [00:35:41] Interesting.

Jennie Nash: [00:35:42] Yeah. I love it.

Rachael Herron: [00:35:43] I have audio credits.

Jennie Nash: [00:35:45] And it was that thing you and I talked about, the whole time I was reading it it’s like you’re holding in his head, in your head, these two things at the same time, I, I love this so much and I just cannot get enough of it. It’s so great. And the experience of being in it is so amazing. And then on the other side, is that like, I could never do that. I could not have thought of that. I wouldn’t, I would have just written it straight, like straight thing. And how’d she even be so bold as to rewrite the fleet with max or like that’s pretty ballsy. Like it, there’s that chatter the whole time of, you know, underneath. Underneath it all.

Rachael Herron: [00:36:19] What I really love about this conversation right now, is that other people who have less experience will be listening to this. And my students are always saying, I can’t believe that you have imposter syndrome or that you feel this way about your, you know, the revision letter that you just got and, you know, it’s good for everyone to know that this doesn’t go away and we use it to serve our art and to get back into try harder and never rest on those proverbial laurels. Right?

Jennie Nash: [00:36:45] Yeah. Well, there’s a, I think there’s a lot, a lot of people believe that when they get to where you are and you know, you’ve made it in their mind because they’re just trying to get to the first rung of the ladder and you’re way up the ladder. And, but there’s really not that big difference between what you do and what they’re doing, but it just, it feels like it’s going to be different for, they think it’s going to be different when they get to where you are.

Rachael Herron: [00:37:09] Yeah

Jennie Nash: [00:37:10] And I think there’s a lot of disappointment from people who are published as when a writer first gets published, as they realize like, Oh, it didn’t change my life.

Rachael Herron: [00:37:20] Yeah

Jennie Nash: [00:37:21] I still am who I am. My rating is still what it is. I still feel doubt when I sit down, I still.

Rachael Herron: [00:37:28] There’s still dishes in the sink. There’s still, you know, the whole world, like 99.9999999% of the world still hasn’t heard of you, you know?

Jennie Nash: [00:37:37] Right, right.

Rachael Herron: [00:37:39] Yeah

Jennie Nash: [00:37:40] Yeah. It definitely changed your life. I mean, the kind of life changing thing, you know, like a JK Rowling or seeing King, you know, that’s like the 0.01 of the.01%

Rachael Herron: [00:37:53] Yeah. Yep. And the rest of us though, get to do this and we love what we do and we get to chat to each other about it like this, which is amazing. And now I would love to turn this over to you. What would you like to tell us about, I know you have a recent book, right?

Jennie Nash: [00:38:08] I do. I do

Rachael Herron: [00:38:09] And tell us about Author Accelerator. Tell us where to find you. Tell us all the things.

Jennie Nash: [00:38:15] Author Accelerator is a company on a mission to train book coaches. So we train book coaches to help writers and I’m really trying to raise the bar on this industry. Kind of what we were talking about earlier that it’s, this is hard work and it’s long, you need to commit yourself to it. And having someone in it with you by your side is, is sometimes the best way to get it done. If you’re not finding you can get it done yourself. And I’m, I sort of stand in opposition to the write fast, write a best seller overnight. You know, you can do it, you know, in 90-days kind of thing. I just, you can draft something in 90 days, a 100% and you can get an idea down whatever, but like to get from beginning to end, that’s not happening.

Rachael Herron: [00:39:01] No. And I have students who are like, I wrote a draft and I’m going to put it on Amazon now. And I mean, you can. Go for it.

Jennie Nash: [00:39:06] Yes.

Rachael Herron: [00:39:08] It’s not going to go well for you, but, okay. Yeah.

Jennie Nash: [00:39:11] So that’s, I’m really trying to acknowledge and respect how hard the work is and train people to help people do that hard, hard work. So you can find us, we’ll put some special stuff for your listeners at Author Accelerator. I have to decide what it’s going to be like, your whole name, just your first name, Rachael

Rachael Herron: [00:39:30] Oh let’s just use, Rachael. Yeah. But it’s spelled, R A C H A E L. So,

Jennie Nash: [00:39:36] So we’ll go https://www.authoraccelerator.com/rachael. Perfect. And I can put some stuff on there and some resources and things for people to, to find. And the book I just wrote is called, I laugh at the title, Read Books All Day and Get Paid For It.

Rachael Herron: [00:39:53] It’s the best title ever. I, when I saw it, I was just like, that is one click right there. One click.

Jennie Nash: [00:40:04] Read this all day and get paid for it. That’s what we do. And this is a really nuts and bolts book about how to run a business, how to run a book coaching business. And there’s a lot in there about how to value this work because a lot of people are giving this work away for free. They’re like the most amazing critique partners on the planet. They’re the friend that everybody gives their pages to, they’re the one running the book club and they’re, they’re giving this work away for free. And I’m trying to say that work is usually valuable and you should put a price on it and you could have a side gig or a whole, whole career at that.

Rachael Herron: [00:40:42] I love that you have done that. I have actually seen some friends, like I am not an idea- idea, generator. I’m just not, but one of my best friends, Adrian Bell, she, you say, what should I do with this idea? And she, she helps you. She’s got that 30,000 footview, view, but she’s able to bring to this kind of thing and she’s monetizing it now with her plot MD and just seeing people use their skills and the fact that you’re giving this book to people who can then use their skills to get paid, for having

Jennie Nash: [00:41:13] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:40:14] good sense when it comes to story structure.

Jennie Nash: [00:41:16] And the sad reality is that it’s a creative business and it’s a very, a lot of women are in this business. And those two things together, our culture tends to devalue and it, so I’m just fighting against that, that we need to value that work that. I mean all creative work, but people who are helping creators and people who have that skill and that’s, that’s what I’m on my soap box about. And this book is a good start.

Rachael Herron: [00:41:45] I love it. Oh my gosh. I have enjoyed this conversation so much, Jenny. I would like to sign up to be your next friend when you need one. So I’ll be there. Put me on your waiting list. I won’t, I don’t even know where you live, so I won’t bother you, but I think you’re fantastic and I really enjoy you and I loved talking to you.

Jennie Nash: [00:42:06] Thanks a lot.

Rachael Herron: [00:42:09] Well, happy writing to you.

Jennie Nash: [00:42:10] Thank you.

Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patreon and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/

Now, go to your desk and create your own process and get to writing my friends.