Rachael

Katie Forrest is the author of Time Management for Writers, a tried and tested system that introduces the Three Zones of Focus and the ADAPT Framework for Productivity. She is the author of 16 fiction books split across two pen names, and is a fan of cacti, curry and cuddles. She lives in England with her husband, daughter and puppy.

You can connect with Katie at katieforrest.com or join her Facebook group, Time Management for Writers with Katie Forrest.

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

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

[00:00:16] Well, hello writers! Welcome to episode #176 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. I could not be more pleased that you are here today. How are you? There’s no good answer for that. Now, one thing that I have actually enjoyed seeing is that people have given up saying, fine, good. There’s a little bit more honesty in the world, just like there are fewer showers. There is more honesty. Let’s face it. A lot of us are taking fewer showers. I know I am. You might be too, and a lot of us are saying to the question, how are you? A lot of us are saying, I don’t know. I actually can’t tell. Let me get back to you in a month or so.

[00:00:58] I’m so pleased that you’re here because today I am talking to Katie Forrest. I had already talked to Katie a while back on the show. She was a marvelous interviewee, marvelous guest, and she had this book come out a few months ago called Time Management for Writers, which I loved, and I’ve been meaning to get her on the show for forever and between Coronavirus and deadlines and her life and my life, we just kept missing each other, crossing. We would have plans and then one of us would get sick or the other one would get sick. So it was, but it was fortuitous because that means I had her talking about time management or writers during a global time of crisis. So if you have been struggling to get your writing done, struggling thinking about this, this episode is for you. So I hope you enjoy that. I know that you will. 

[00:01:53] What’s going on around here? This will be a very short intro because I am deep in revision. I did have to ask for an extra week, which I hate doing, but hey, your book is not late. If you have an extension and you meet the extension, you got to ask for it ahead of time. So I asked for a week, I got a week. That means it is due in 12 days from now, which is totally doable. What I really wanted to do was finish this revision and then have time for about four or five very small passes like a day long pass, looking at specific things in the book that I need to fix. And if any of you are interested in hearing what those passes look like, I can do a mini episode on that sometime, so let me know. So I’m deeply focused on that. I’m incredibly happy to be so deep in revision, you know, six to eight to ten hour days of revision leave me exhausted and overjoyed. And here’s why; Cheryl Strayed has a new podcast, can’t remember the name of it, but on her first episode, she talks to her friend and mentor George Saunders and he talks about writing as kind of this ultimate form of meditation, you’re super focused on what is in front of you. You’re taking the time to look at it very carefully, it’s very detailed and you’re paying attention. Your focus is not being broken, and if it is, you gently lead yourself back to the page. And when I am in revision, that is how I am. When I am in a first draft, I am very surface. I’m, I am distracted by everything in every, anything and everything. But when I’m in revision, I love it so much that I go very deep and therefore I come out of like a two hour or three hour writing session before I go back in for another one.

[00:03:40] I come out almost feeling like I have been meditating for that long, so it’s fantastic, can’t say enough about it. It’s great. The only other thing I do want to tell you about is that, I’m recording this on April 10th, 2020 and 90 Days to Done and 90-Day Revision have just opened last night. I let everybody who was on my, pre alert list know, and I let all my current students know that this is open. I have not yet sent this out to my email list. You guys come first. So if you are interested in writing your book in the next 90 days, we start on May 1st and we go through July 31st people get their books done whether it is your first or your 20th book. Write it in 90 days with me, you can go check out all the details on that at rachaelherron.com/90daystodone, 90 is a number, 90 Days to Done, and the 90-Day Revision course, which is kind of a masterclass of a masterclass. That’s when you take your book, whatever, in whatever horrible shape it’s in. Hopefully it’s horrible. Hopefully it was a crappy first draft and we get you to a revised makes sense draft by the end of those 90 days, you can look at that information at rachaelherron.com/revision. Those always sell out super-fast. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I have to be honest with you. It’s either going to sell out even faster than normal because of Covid-19 or no one will want to write in the next 90 days, so it won’t tell. I cannot tell you what will happen, I’m in the dark here, but if you are interested in it, go to rachaelherron.com/90daystodone or rachaelherron.com/revision. Yes, those are the links or you can always go to rachaelherron.com/write  I think I have both of the links from there, so that’s available. 

[00:05:36] I also wanted to thank really quickly, new patron, Ellen McCoy Beaty, it is a delight and I hope that you enjoy the essays that you’re going to get now at patreon.com/rachael. And, enough advertising, what you really are here for is to talk about time management for writer in the writers in the time of crisis, and I’ve had too much coffee and I’m talking too fast. Anyway, so enjoy the interview with Katie, I know you will. Let me know what you think of the show at howdoyouwrite.net or anywhere else I can be found on the internet. Take care of yourselves. Be kind to yourselves. Give yourselves forgiveness and love and care, this is a difficult time. We need kindness more than ever. So happy writing to you my friends. 

Rachael Herron: [00:06:27] Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome back to the show, Katie Forrest. Hi Katie! 

Katie Forrest: [00:06:25] Hi, thanks for having me.

Rachael Herron: [00:06:27] I’m just thrilled to have you. You could not be here at a more, at a better time and let me give you a little bit of a bio, which will speak to what we’re going to talk about today. Katie Forrest is the author of Time Management for Writers, a tried and tested system that introduces the Three Zones of Focus and the ADAPT Framework for Productivity. She is the author of 16 fiction books split across two pen names, and is a fan of cacti, curry and cuddles. She lives in England with her husband, daughter, and puppy. 

Welcome back to the show. So the last time we talked, we were really doing the normal, “how do you write?” format I asked you all the same questions that I ask everybody else and we are throwing that out the window today, because you wrote this wonderful book that I really loved reading, and I read it when you first sent it to me, which was about four or five, four months ago, something like that. 

Katie Forrest: [00:07:22] Yeah, yeah. Perfectly.

Rachael Herron: [00:07:23] So we’ve been trying to get together ever since, but I’m actually, this is what I was saying just off air a second ago. I’m so thrilled that you’re here now that we finally found the time to do this now, because I think never in the time of modern contemporary writers, have we had a time when it is more difficult for writing to get done. I’m currently teaching two 90 day classes and, I just keep saying to them like, distraction is always a real thing. It’s always a struggle. And life and grief and happenings are always a real struggle for writers. But add to that a global pandemic, like there’s so many of us just going, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to handle this. So I kind of wanted you to tell us first a little bit about the book and how you came to it because you and I are kind of time management junkies and then we’ll kind of dive into some of the tips that you might have for us right now. 

Katie Forrest: [00:08:19] Yeah, sure. Thank you. Yeah, so it’s exactly that, total time management junkie. I say in the book, I’ve never met a time management book, where I haven’t fallen in love with, I am just obsessed and I was quite prolific in my first year, especially ever writing fiction. So lots of people were asking me how I did it, and, and what I was finding was there are so many excellent time management books out there, but a lot of creatives tend to imagine that most books are for professionals and executives, so that they’re maybe not kind of jelling with the voice of some of those books that I love. And I thought maybe I could add another voice to the conversation and hopefully help some people with it.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:02] And let’s point out the other thing is that when you read those time management book for, you know, businesses or corporations or stuff like that. You are part of that. You’re also a practicing lawyer, right?

Katie Forrest: [00:09:15] Yes, yes. I have a law firm as well.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:18] Not even a lawyer, you have a law firm? Yeah.

Katie Forrest: [00:09:20] Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:21] And, and one child. So, and a puppy.

Katie Forrest: [00:09:25] Yes!

Rachael Herron: [00:09:26] So, this is, this is, this is my thing. I lead groups of and talk to a lot of I, I don’t think I have any dads right now. I have all mothers in these groups who are coming to me saying like, I have one writer who’s about to finish her book in the 90-day program and she has – no joke, three jobs, three teaching jobs, plus kids. Plus, she’s writing this book in 90 days and she’s really done it. But, but she keeps saying, how, how do I keep this up? How do people balancing those kinds of lives? Because I don’t have that, this is my first time, full time job and I don’t have kids, so I always feel particularly unqualified to speak to this? 

Katie Forrest: [00:10:07] Well, there’s the saying that if you want something done, ask a busy person. And I think there’s a lot of truth in that, but I think there’s also an element of danger in that because we are kind of worshiping busy-ness in our culture. And I think that’s something that we need to kind of take a stand against and say, actually, that isn’t necessarily something to aim for. So, yeah, it’s great if you’re somebody who likes to be busy and is energized by that and you can kind of handle lots of plates spinning. But you do also have to realize you can’t do everything. I really believe, like I say yes to a lot of things, but I say no to a lot more. There’s plenty of stuff I’m not doing. I’m not cleaning my own house. I’m not washing my own car. You know, various stacks of things that I’m not even trying to do. And I think that is the key. Rarely, like choose the things that are important to you, and you can have two or three or four or however many your number is, but you can’t do everything.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:06] So talk us about the zones of focus. I’m –

Katie Forrest: [00:11:10] Sure.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:11] I would love to hear about that again, because I actually liked that, it’s been a bit since I read it, because my brain is a sieve and I get to re-reapply all these things. 

Katie Forrest: [00:11:20] So the zones of focus, I say there are only three things that you should be doing, and they are things that fall within one of the zones of focus. So your mastery zone, your passions zone, or the essential drudgery zone, and, and they’re kind of fairly self-explanatory. The mastery zone is what are you the best out? So what can only you do? The passion zone is this is what lights me up. This is what I get so excited about, so I don’t want to hand this over to anybody else because this is the stuff that I get out of bed today and the essential drudgery is the boring, routine stuff that we’ve all got to do. But the key with essential drudgery is, it’s essential drudgery. So I talk a lot about if there are people who are keeping really, really perfect, impeccable homes, that’s not essential. So, you know, the essential drudgery is making sure you’ve got clean clothes, but do they really need to be ironed? So yeah, the book kind of brings down each category and takes you through a list of questions to find out what falls into each of your zones. 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:29] Could you, if you don’t mind going into the personal a little bit, which I really loved about your book, because you do go very personal in it, which I love. I love a mix of a how to plus a little bit of memoir. That’s just my favorite kind of book. Will you tell us a little bit about your mastery and passion zones and what falls in there? 

Katie Forrest: [00:12:47] Yes. Yeah, and thank you for that. One of my favorite reviews on the book to date is, and I don’t remember who, who wrote this, but somebody said there’s a lot of Katie in this book.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:58] Yes! That’s why I loved it. I get very bored with the very masculine CEO voice of the business and the corporation. I want to know the personal, so thank you for that. That’s a great review. 

Katie Forrest: [00:13:14] So, my master zone, I think what falls into my mastery zone is, is the words, because the words are my voice and if you’re choosing to go straight, then that’s absolutely fine. I’m not against that, but I think for most writers, the actual writing of new words is going to fall into either their mastery or their passions’ zone, or maybe both. So it’s definitely probably more in my mastery zone for my passion zone, because I find sitting down at a computer and writing most new words, a bit of a slog a lot of the time. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:48] Yeah, me too.

Katie Forrest: [00:13:49] Yeah, my passion zone, is probably engaging with readers and that’s one thing I would never outsource. I know you can get all of these people who will manage your Facebook groups and things, but I absolutely love being in there and connecting with people. I reply to reader emails, and again, you could get an assistant to do all that but I love that. So yeah, the kind of two of my big things.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:15] It’s so funny when I get emails, I just go on today that said, you know, you probably don’t read this email, but I wanted to write to you. I’m like, are you kidding? I would not let anyone else touch my email. And email is one of my, it’s part of my drudgery, most of it, the essential drudgery and I can’t outsource that, I have an amazing assistant, my friend Ed, and, he can do basically everything for me. But the email to me, the fact that fans connect with us or that readers connect with us is so incredible that we get to respond back. That makes email worth it for me.

Katie Forrest: [00:14:50] Absolutely. And it deepens relationships so much. I remember recently, I had an email from a company and I don’t remember who, and I wouldn’t name them anyway. But the CEO of this company emailed out, but they asked for a personal response. So they said, why are you using this product or service? Hit reply. So, so I can read this. So I did reply, and then I got a response from a different member of staff. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:16] No. I don’t care.

Katie Forrest: [00:15:17] And I replied to him and said, I was opening up to you as a named person, and you’ve actually broken some trust here now because of that. So yeah, I don’t have any issue with assistance of things being involved, but I do think you’ve got to be quite open about huge bonding 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:33] And you have to manage those expectations. If that CEO had said, please reply, one of my trusted staff will respond to you and get me everything that you say that is, you know, then you would have been 100% fine. But it’s managing those expectations. 

Katie Forrest: [00:15:47] Absolutely.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:48] So let’s go to the drudgery. Let’s talk about that in terms of writing, for me, 75% of my email is drudgery and 25% is really thrilling and wonderful, but I only, I can sort through that and see that. Are there any other tasks that you as a writer are able to outsource or not manage, because they are part of drudgery or are you very much a hands on person with your business? 

Katie Forrest: [00:16:19] Yeah, I don’t outsource that much, really with my writing business. I think you can pretty much outsource everything. I’ve, I’ve tried to outsource ad management because that is drudgery to me. But I’ve never really got the results, that have made it worthwhile. So I have stopped doing that, I do have an assistant and she helps me manage my reader group and she interacts in there, she manages my review team. So she’s brilliant at doing those kinds of things but she doesn’t replace me in the group. I’m still going in there and doing that. So yeah, I’m probably not outsourcing as much as I could.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:02] So let’s go to the difficult, difficult part. I have these mostly women saying, how do I get it done right now when I’m you know, everything has been brought in. Like I also don’t clean my house. I have a cleaner that does it and my cleaner can’t come right now. So, you know, these, these added things are kind of piled upon us. Plus, we have the weight of the world. Stress-wise you know, looking at social media or news. What would you say to the, to that person in particularly thinking of who has three jobs, kids and is writing her book for the first time? And she says, where do I find- how, she actually has said like, how do I balance sleep versus writing?

Katie Forrest: [00:17:45] So always choose sleep.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:48] I agree. No one says that so clearly, but yes. 

Katie Forrest: [00:17:53] Yeah. But I think also we are in a time of crisis at the moment and I define a crisis as being something that is usually unexpected and short term or temporary. So there is every towns that the lockdown situation will stop becoming a crisis because it won’t be short term, it will move on to medium term. But I think most people are still very much in the short term, responding a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety. And I’ve seen the means going around about how this is the time to learn a second language, and no, absolutely not. This is the time to honker down, make sure you feel safe and stop putting yourself under so much pressure. So that would be the first thing. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:35] So important to be said. Yes. 

Katie Forrest: [00:18:40] And then the second thing would be, again, you can’t do it all. So you haven’t gained extra hours in the day. I mean, I think some people have because we’re not working and they’re at home, but I’ve not gained extra hours in my day and I don’t think many people have, so there is no magic here. If you’re still going to choose writing, you’re going to have to say no to something else. And that might be really reducing expectations. So it might be plenty of screen time for children, it might be your house is going to be dirty, whatever it looks like, but you’ve got to kind of define what other priorities of this short term-medium term crisis situation and what do you have to give up to be able to meet that.

Rachael Herron: [00:19:24] Yeah. My house is actually dirty right now because I am on deadline as well. So I am doing that whole prioritization of what can stay and what can go. And right now, cleaning is not part of it. And I love my wife. She’s not the best cleaner in the whole world. She has every other strong, incredible point. 

Okay. So what about goal setting at this point? What about when people are looking to find the space in their days and say they can find, maybe they can find that 30 minutes that they need to do a little bit of writing. What do you think about planning days?

Katie Forrest: [00:20:05] I think it’s really good to see this as a window of time and try to decide what you want to get out of it. I’m thinking in my head versus probably going to be a six-month situation, which is based on nothing at all, but it helps my head. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:21] I kinda love that. 

Katie Forrest: [00:20:22] -Information I’m revealing

Rachael Herron: [00:20:25] Yeah, no, that’s great. 

Katie Forrest: [00:20:26] It helps my head if I can think, what is the time period here, because I’m a planner. So I need to know what is going to be the end date. So I’m thinking six months, what do I want to do if this carries on for six months and then hopefully I’m not going to get to the end of this period and have frittered it away because I was always expecting it to resolve next week. So maybe thinking this is a frame of block or a six-month block, and then deciding what to do with that time might be helpful. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:56] And right now we’re specifically speaking about your writing goals, what, what you have as your writing goals in the next three to six months, which is really a great thing to think about. And I like what you’re saying about instead of thinking that now is the time to do everything I’ve always wanted to do, perhaps now is the time to not try to write your next book in four weeks. Because you’re at home. And perhaps you’re one of the people who has a little bit more time. They’re all also people we have to mention that have lost jobs. So yes, they have, they have a lot more time and they have exponentially more stress. That’s not the best time to put any kind of pressure on yourself to be the creative genius you’ve always wanted to be. 

Katie Forrest: [00:21:37] No, absolutely. There is so much anxiety, I’m you know, relatively blessed personally, I’ve got the stress of having to pay for my team’s wages with a business that is not running yet, it’s normal. Healthy everybody I know is healthy. But everybody has got their certain levels of anxiety going on right now. So to imagine that you’re going to have those and yet be more productive than you were before, it’s not going to happen. Just don’t even expect it. You’re setting yourself up for failure and if somehow you turn out to be a person who just blooms in this situation, well that’s a bonus but don’t try to expect it.

Rachael Herron: [00:22:16] I really liked what you said about lowering your expectations. That is something that I talk a lot about in 90 Days to Done, is like the- every first draft, you should lower your expectations to the floor and dig a hole and lower them further. You know, it should be the worst infrastructure you’ve ever written or you’ve ever written of anything. But I think along with lowering expectations in this time, it might be a good time to also increase our, how do I say it? Self-compassion, just self-forgiveness. 

Katie Forrest: [00:22:47] Yeah. Absolutely I love that. 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:50] So how do you track your days? I think we might’ve talked about this on the- but you know, there’s something in the- are you a bullet journal-er? or are you a…

Katie Forrest: [00:23:00] So I, I’m the girl who’s tried every single planner and 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:03] Me too! The only one I haven’t tried is the passion planner because it’s so expensive. I keep saying, no, no, no. I’m not going to do that one.

Katie Forrest: [00:23:10] I’ve tried the passion planner. I think it was, was it a Kickstarter or something

Rachael Herron: [00:23:13] It was, yes.

Katie Forrest: [00:23:14] –it came out? Yeah. I think I supported, like the very first version of it and it didn’t quite meet my needs. But I’ve, I’ve got stacks of different planners. At the moment, I’m in Hobonichi, which is-

Rachael Herron: [00:23:28] I love Hobonichi

Katie Forrest: [00:23:29] So I’ve got a Hobonichi, and I’m absolutely hoping that it’s got really thin paper, so it’s page a day for the whole year and it’s not super bulky, so yeah. You have to order them from Japan or I do here in England. Anyway, I, I don’t know if you’ve got, you know, US stockists I feel like quite a geek, so I have to order my diary from Japan so, 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:52] You are!

Katie Forrest: [00:23:53] Even if I was like you know, a stockist in the city nearby, I wouldn’t go and get it from there because

Rachael Herron: [00:23:59] It’s very, very cool to have it come from Japan. I also use Japanese. I use the Midori Traveler’s Journal, and I have recently discovered the narrow, if anybody’s looking at the narrow one, this is just what’s the inside of mine looks like it’s. A page a week and then an empty page and you can buy them with, you know, like for the first half of the year and the second half of the year. But I found they have them as blank and you can fill in the dates. So I just buy a whole stack of them. And then I do a week, a week, a week. But if I go, you know, like, here’s where I was on a retreat and I was just journaling so you can use them kind of like a bullet journal, but it also doesn’t have very much room. So for me, one of the takeaways that I really got from your book time management for writers was not to over plan. And I know that if I can’t, if I can’t fit everything I want to do in this little space, I can’t do it anyway. 

Katie Forrest: [00:24:54] Yeah. Absolutely.

Rachael Herron: [00:24:56] So, what else would you like to add to this conversation that might help in today’s time or something that I might not have hit about the book.

Katie Forrest: [00:25:08] I think you’ve hit the important points really well. I think. Well, I would really like people to kind of come away from this conversation where there’s just kindness to themselves because this is just an a completely unprecedented time. So if you feel like you’re making it up every single day, you are and so is everyone else, and just do the best you can. Yeah, I think that’s the most important message. 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:35] The kindness to yourself. I, I realized the other night that I believe that everyone is doing the best they can most of the time, like 99.5% of the time. And I realized last night that I believed that, I believe that everyone is doing the best they can, especially if they think they’re not.

Katie Forrest: [00:25:52] Yeah. The ones who are worrying about that. Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:55] That means you’re already pushed up to your edge and give yourself that kindness. And I know that I’m a kind of person, I think, I don’t know if you don’t mind answering this, I think people who are obsessed with time management, we might be a little bit more rigid and beat ourselves up a little bit more for not getting everything done that we want to do. Would you say that’s true? 

Katie Forrest: [00:26:12] Yes, definitely.

Rachael Herron: [00:26:14] So then we deserve more kindness? So we have to really think about it as one of our jobs to give ourselves 

Katie Forrest: [00:26:19] Yes, definitely yeah. I’m saying like kindness for all of you guys but not me.

Rachael Herron: [00:26:24] Always, 

Katie Forrest: [00:26:25] Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:26] Always. Yeah. Oh, what a wonderful note to leave on. Okay, so tell us where Time Management for Writers can be found, and where you can be found. 

Katie Forrest: [00:26:34] So it’s exclusive on Amazon. So, it’s in Kindle unlimited, so you can grab a free copy if you’ve got a Kindle unlimited membership. 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:44] Oh, I didn’t know that, that’s great! 

Katie Forrest: [00:26:46] It’s out in paperback. The workbook, are coming, I’m going to record the audio book myself if I ever get a quiet house, which isn’t looking likely at the moment. But, so yeah, Amazon is the best place. I have a free Facebook group as well, which is Time Management for Writers by Katie Forrest. And I answer questions in there you can kind of, you know, come in there and make a post about your particular situation and the members will kind of give you some advice and I’ll give you some advice and we’ll try and work it all out together. Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:27:18] I am very excited about the audio book that will be coming because your voice is beautiful and I will order it immediately and then I will have your ears, your, your, your voice in my ears. And I love that. 

Katie Forrest: [00:27:26] Oh, thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:27:27] I love consuming nonfiction that way and I often like to, if I’ve loved a book, I often like to get the audio book to replay it.

Katie Forrest: [00:27:33] Me too, me too.

Rachael Herron: [00:27:35] Katie, it has been wonderful to talk to you and it couldn’t be more timely, so thank you, thank you so much.

Katie Forrest: [00:27:41] Oh, thank you, Rachael. 

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.

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

[00:00:15] Well, hello writers! Welcome to episode #175 of “How do you Write?” So glad that you’re here with me today. I’m sorry that I missed a week last week. It’s just been a rough time all around, hasn’t it? I’ve been fighting some brain stuff and some medical stuff. So I am here today to talk to you a little bit more about going easy on ourselves in these times. That does not mean letting go of creativity and I just wanted to reassure you that if you are feeling shell-shocked, if you are really having a hard time getting to the page, that is okay. You’re not doing anything wrong. I just sent out a Patreon essay, a couple of days ago and it was about using creativity in very small pieces where we can fit them into our lives to increase and better our, our mental health. I realized this a long time ago when I was battling some depression, the stories in the Patreon essay, one of the stories in there, and basically I ended up painting a small coffee table. I painted the top blue. I didn’t even paint the legs. I just painted the top blue. It was the very least I could do. And I- I did it because I can’t remember how I made myself do it really. But when I was doing it, as the paint was going onto the top of the table, I started feeling better and it was such a momentous occasion, me noticing that putting blue paint on a correctly thrift store table actually made me feel better for a little while, was something that affects my every day now. Putting blue paint on a crappy table is not going to fix depression. There are a lot of things that you have to do if you’re depressed and isn’t that the worst thing ever, that you have to do things while you’re depressed. That’s the hard part. 

[00:02:20] So of course, you know, being creative will not fix depression. We need to talk about therapy. We need to talk about perhaps medication. If you’re a person for whom that works, which I am, but being creative and bringing it into our lives and letting it out in really little ways, is helping me a great deal right now. And when I say little ways, I mean little ways. I don’t mean working on your Magnum Opus. I mean, preparing beans in a brand new way. Cooking that broccoli, a little bit differently. Getting out an old knitting project that you’ve neglected for years. Deciding to paint the garage, things that we can do at home, things that might only took, take a couple of minutes to do the increase. How we feel about the world around us in a really positive way. So if you’d like that essay for just a buck, you can go get that over at www.patreon.com/rachael R A C H A E L, that helped me to write because I have been looking to find my own inner creativity. In the essay I talk, I talk about picking up the guitar, which if you’re on the video, you can kind of see behind me.

[00:03:35] Writing books is my job, and I just do my job. I just go to work. But I really like to have creative outlets and that are not writing, that are not writing, that are total totally different from and feel different. So the guitar has been great for me right now that has been helping me. So I just wanna encourage you to think about little ways that you can help yourself by doing something maybe a tiny bit fun, even if it is just a 5-minute break for fun. Perhaps you were having a fantastic time, in your house. Doing all the things, and I hope that you are, but if you’re struggling just a little bit, try a little five minute, make something that didn’t exist before, or put things together in a way that only you can compile them, curate them, collage them. I don’t care, do something like that. 

[00:04:25] Moving forward, today’s episode is a little mini episode because honestly, I have been too busy on deadline. And when I’m not busy on deadline I’m busy in my bed watching Real Housewives, cause it’s, it’s hard out there, to even go out and get podcast guests. I have a couple in the can for the later when their books come out. But this is just going to be a mini episode and a reminder of what a mini episode is. It is me answering questions that you all have sent to me. If you are a Patron at the level of $5 or more, you get to ask me absolutely anything you want. I am at the end of my questions here, people. So I am going to read my last one in the can right now and that’s from Alex W. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Next week I will either have a guest or we’ll do something from one of my books, but I want to encourage you, if you have questions about any part of creativity or writing or really anything else, I’m very qualified to speak about, cadre pre-mix. Little bit qualified to talk about Tarot. I’m quite qualified to talk about how cute my dogs are. So just, you know, ask me anything and that’s what we’ll do. 

[00:05:41] But let’s get to Alex’s excellent question right now that has been sitting here for a long time. Sorry, Alex. But it was, it’s a nice big long one. So I wanted to spend time on it. Alex says, “I’m plotting a story out, and I had a question about romance series in particular; How to extend the story beyond one book and still keep it in the romance genre? I know that it can be done successfully by starting in one book with two characters and then with the next book, making two supporting characters into the main characters of that book. So the romance series might follow the romances of a family of siblings, all the firefighters in a firehouse, et cetera. But what if you want to stick with this same main characters through a trilogy or longer, can the first book end in a happily for now, they’re dating, yay. And then the second book increases the commitment, they’re getting married, and then the third book increases the intimacy. Perhaps they’re having a baby adopting a kid or building a house together. Would that satisfy reader expectations for the genre or would it be out on a limb? Are there other ways of doing it? I’ve seen several examples of series with romance subplots that extend the romantic tension, particularly a romantic triangle over several books, but I’m not familiar with any books or movies with romance main plot that do this successfully. Is this a thing in romance? Are there any success examples of successful romance? Main plot series that keeps the focus on the two or three main characters.”

[00:07:09] This is such a great answer- a question. I wish that I had a great answer for you. It is not something that we generally see on a regular basis within romance itself as a category. It does exist. I’m not that well educated about it and I’m hoping that listeners will come over to www.howdoyouwrite.net and maybe leave you a few better answers at, as to where you could find that one great way to find more of that would be writing to the ripped bodice. If you look up their website. I bet they would be happy to answer that and perhaps sell you, one or two of those kinds of books in which they exist. The ones that are coming to mind for me, really aren’t romance, they are more mystery/suspense. They are the JD Robb, In Death Series. There’s a lot of, that couple staying together. Even Eve and Roarke, I believe his name is. It’s been 15 years since I read one of those, but those are great. She’s still going with that couple. But there is other tension they are solving things in the future, right? So, they’ve got other bad guys. Romance itself is hard to write because our really powerful love interests need to be each other’s antagonists in a very real way, but still be good enough to, for your reader to believe that they can be forever together. So, it’s a lot easier when you have an exterior antagonist. What’s her name? The funny, funny one. Oh, you know, Stephanie Plum, the Stephanie Plum books. She has a romantic triangle like you mentioned, and she’s always trying to figure out which guys who’s gonna go forward at the end of the book, and it changes from book to book. I kind of thought that got a little old in my way. I actually preferred the even workbooks where we are following one couple through this kind of intensifying relationship and it happens just like you’re talking about. It gets more intense. The thing to think about with trilogies or more is you’re doing exactly the right thing when you talked about upping the stakes as a book goes on, oftentimes in fantasy or science fiction, the first book is about the character learning about herself and really saving herself. The second book is about her helping to save her community. And the third book in a trilogy is often hers helping to save the world that’s simplified, but it is a trope that we see over series. So what would that look like in a romance for you? How do our main characters save themselves with each other’s help? Probably. In the next book, how do they move apart but still save their community, perhaps and then in the third book, they might not be saving the world if this is a contemporary romance, but what else, can really, really push them apart really far apart. I like your ideas of having a kid, adopting a kid, building a house. Those things would push people really far apart. How do you bring them back together? The challenge in romance is always to have that bringing back together, be new and unique. You don’t want them to solve each other’s heartaches and burdens the same way every time, which to be honest, is what people in long-term relationships do a lot. I have been married 14 years as of yesterday, and, I kind of know the process of helping my wife through her hard times and she knows the process of helping me through hard times. God knows something could change tomorrow and we’ll have to help each other out as something that we have no idea how to handle. But when we break apart, we break apart in a really- our, our way, and we know that way, and then we get to gather again in our way. So I find that really interesting, but to deepen it and broaden it and make it bigger, for your books as they go on, will be a challenge. And also, I think you can absolutely do it and it can be riveting.

[00:11:26] So I would encourage people who know more about some books that do this than I do, come over to www.howdoyouwrite.net leave Alex a comment. Alex, I also wanted to mention the, don’t laugh. The Ethan Hawke slash what’s her name? Vehicles before sunrise, before sunset, and before midnight, I think is the last one. If you have not seen those, if any listener has not seen those basically two kids meet in Europe, they’re my age. They’re super gen X, so I really love these movies. But they meet in, you know, while they’re traveling, backpacking around Europe. And the first movie is about them talking until dawn and kind of falling in love, and then we see them again 10 years later in the next movie, and again, 10 years after that – ish, in the third movie, and it’s always the same two characters, and it’s still their relationship that these stories are about what- I’m getting goosebumps I want to watch all three of them all over again. I think they’re beautiful and they’re beautifully, beautifully done. And they look at relationships from totally different angles as people are becoming themselves and changing. So I would recommend that. I hope that helps. 

[00:12:37] Please, people who are in the Patreon group, $5 and above send me questions to answer. I really love doing these little mini episodes and thanks for forgiving me for not being around last week ‘cause I was not around for anybody. I was struggling with migraine and some tummy stuff and some body stuff and definitely some mental can’t-get-out-of-bed stuff. So the world’s going to hell, which is, you know, a phase, and it goes away an hour later, we’re riding these waves. I saw somebody call it the dip, earlier this week where she’s writing, writing, writing, doing her work, doing her work. Everything’s okay. She’s holding it together, and then she hits the dip and the dip means everything is bad, everything is wrong, we’re all doomed. And just knowing that that’s part of the dip and then getting out of it and doing what we do every day, taking care of our families and loving each other the best we can and being as kind as humanly possible, sharing resources and information and excitement and hope and joy, and also sharing our fears and anxieties. All of that stuff are these waves that we are riding right now. So, welcome to your surfing lesson, you’ll be surfing with me. Definitely a person who is not good at surfing, but when this is a little bit lessened, when we can go out again and do things, I’m going to take surfing lessons because I’ve always said I would, I learned how to swim in order to take surfing lessons and it’s ticking me off right now that I can’t just go and learn.

[00:14:17] So, yeah, that’s my, that’s my goal for when things calm down a bit in this world.  I would like to thank really quickly new Patrons, Clarence Chroma. Hello, Clarence! I know why you signed up. You were in a class of mine, and I told you to, you didn’t need to pay. You can always unpay now, but, thank you. So nice that you’re there. Sasha White. Hello, Sasha. May Marrow, pretty name and Leah Stevenson. Hi, Leah! So, thanks to those new patrons. Thank you to everyone who supports me on www.patreon.com/rachael.  Right now, that is giving me some peace of mind. I know that I have Patreon as a buffer, we’re all really scared about finances as we move forward. Most of us are, a lot of us are. Perhaps you weren’t, and I hope you’re not. But those of us who live as a freelance writer’s, definitely, definitely worried, so Patreon is something that really helps me sleep better at night, and I thank all of you for that. So I hope that you will get a little bit of writing done, and if it’s not writing, that feeds your creative soul right now, I hope you do something else that feeds you, even if it’s just for a few minutes and makes your brain relax and remember, “Oh yes, I am a person” To whom creation is important, and I believe that you are that person. So please do something for your creative soul. It can help save your life. I do not think I overstate this at this time. So, take care of yourself. Take care of your lovies. Stay warm and healthy, and we will talk to you next week. Bye.

[00:15:59] 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. 174: Rachael on Getting Your Writing Done When Life is Distracting

Crazy times call for crazy (or totally sensible, whatever) solutions.

The Roost laptop holder (way more expensive than I remembered, but still worth it): https://amzn.to/2J2af3K

Transcript

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

Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #174 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron.

[00:00:20] I am so pleased that you are with me today in these end of days, also known as The epoch of time when women stopped wearing bras. Cause we never have to again cause we’re never leaving the house. But honestly, this podcast is not about Coronavirus ‘cause you know what? Everybody else is talking about it and you’re tired of hearing about it. I know I am. So today we’re going to talk about writing and we are specifically going to talk about how to get it done. When times or your life might be a little bit rough for whatever reason, there’s a lot of people going through rough things that have nothing to do with a virus. And we are creators, we are still writers no matter what is going on in our life. And we have to have tools to be able to get our work done. 

[00:01:11] So we’re going to talk about that today. No guests, just me. So getting into that, but before we do that, I just want a little bit of a catch up of what’s going on around here. I am still on, incredible deadline. Boy, it is not going to be easy to finish this book in time. The good thing is, I don’t think my editor listens to the podcast and I bet I could get an extension if I wanted one. However, I don’t want one unless I get one at the very, very last minute. I have never turned a book in late because I believe that if you ask for and receive an extension, it is therefore not late. But I hate asking for extensions. I’ve only done it a couple of times, but if I asked for one today when my book is still three and a half weeks away from being due. If I asked for like a week extension, then I would somehow fritter away a week. I know I would do it. I know myself that well, and I know that in a week I would be three and a half weeks away from getting the book done and still in the exact same position. So if I am going to ask for an extension, it will be at the very last minute. So I will keep you updated on how I do. But honestly, work has been going great.  I have been writing a lot. I have been really diligent about getting the words done and yes, I’m on deadline and that helps me a lot. However, I have had to come up with some focusing tools because I have never been able to write first drafts in my home. Probably, I don’t think I’ve written a first draft in my home for 10 years. I’ve always written the first draft outside of my house, any part of it, and a lot of their revision usually I do most of the revision out of the house too. That’s always been either a coffee shop or mills library. I got a co-working space just a few weeks ago, which I have now cancelled for the time being anyway, because I can’t use it. So I’m really back in the house and I have to be doing this dedicated writing time that I’ve never done in my home. I’m very comfortable doing everything else in my home. All the business stuff, but not the first drafting and usually not the revising either. So I’ve had to figure out some hacks and workarounds to get me to a place where I can do that ‘cause I don’t have a choice right now, and I wanted to share those with you, so that’s been going awesome. I will share those things with you. 

[00:03:35] What else has been happening around here? Well, that’s kind of about it. I do have a new Patreon supporter, Michelle White. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining the Patreon, you can always look at that @ patreon.com/rachael. She is now going to get all of the essays that I write and don’t go anywhere- they don’t go anywhere else. They will eventually all be published in books, and I have never done that with any of them. So there’s more than 30 essays. There’s more than 150,000 words that is some of my best work I’ve ever done, over in the Patreon file that you could get, you could technically get for $1 for one month, read them all, and then unpledged but that’s just a dollar worth of 150,000 words of, non-creative nonfiction that I’ve thought really deeply about a lot of memoir pieces, including me talking about my relapse a month and a half ago that I’m really not talking about anywhere else. So, I just reread that essay actually, and I’m proud of it. So that’s over there. If you’d like to join, you can. I actually suckered her into it. She wrote me an email and said that she read my book, A Letters to an Aspiring Author. I think that’s what it’s called. My amazing assistant Ed, talked me into changing the title of that book. So I think it’s called Letters to an Aspiring Author, and she read that, and then she got, she told me in an email that she got suckered into joining my Patreon. So yes! So you should go get letters. There is a free preview available on all platforms right now. The free preview is available for letters You can download that to any device, and if you click on the paperback version of the book itself, it shows a jacket. I think we finally got it fixed, but on Kindle, everything was right except for the picture of the book, which showed a rain jacket. And I have to say that this is not the first time that our rain jacket has shown on the paperback version of my book. It happened on another book. It was a romance, a couple of years ago. Amazon didn’t understand it this time and they didn’t understand it then. So, my books don’t just have jackets. They have rain jackets is what I’m going to say from here on out. 

[00:05:53] So I don’t think I’m going to do any kind of middle promo to stick in the middle between me doing the catch up and me doing the talking portion. So we’ll just jump right into it. So the things that have helped me honestly, something that has really helped me the most recently is to let go of my incredible, aspirational morning routine, which looks like a lot of meditation. It looks like a bunch of yoga; it has eating good foods. It has getting up very early. It often has going to a recovery meeting, can’t go to any recovery meetings, they’re all canceled. So, all of that is kind of out the window and I am kind of looking at myself as a new person and what, what does work for my body? I’ve always said that I’m a very, very early person, early riser, but I’m not naturally, like when my alarm goes off at 5 or 5:30 or 4:30 on Tuesdays. I am not happy. It’s not an easy feeling, and I wake up feeling out of sorts. So recently I’ve been letting myself sleep until I need to, which has been more like around 8:00 AM, which is kind of great. If I would like to eventually narrow my work window to – from 9 to 5, I would like to work from 9 to 5, without a lunch break ‘cause I never take a break but no more than that. Usually I’m working something like 7:30 or 8 until 6 or 7 at night, and I want to narrow that to 9 to 5. So why shouldn’t I get up at eight o’clock? So my routine has changed from self-flagellation trying to do all the things and be the perfect human being to these simple steps, which I stole from my friend Jay Wells. Because they’re simple and they’re doable. I drink a glass of water. Because I’m dehydrated, when I wake up, everybody is, I drink one glass of water, I’ll make a cup of tea. I take it into my office and I sit down and this has been key for me. I have gotten back into doing morning meditation every morning and I sit down. And I meditate for 20 minutes. You, if you’re going to try this, you might want to try it for 5 minutes or 10 minutes. 20 is kind of long, I think 30’s heck a long 45 is crazy, but 20 for me is a really nice amount of time and if you are listening to this and saying, I don’t meditate, I can’t meditate, my brain is too busy. I’ve never been able to do that. Welcome to the rest of us. We all feel that way. Our brains are all too busy to meditate. There’s no such thing as finding calm in the brain. Well, there is a little bit, but- but there’s no such thing as quieting your brain in sitting down and being able to quiet it. That’s not what happens. 

[00:08:42] Here is my breakdown, I’ve done it on the podcast before, but I’ll do it again. My very quick three-step breakdown of meditation. You sit or you lie down in whatever position is comfortable to you. That’s step number one. Step two, you focus on something. A lot of people like to focus on the feeling of the breath because it’s always there, it’s always accessible. When I think about my breath, I usually think about it right about the solar plexus and just kind of feel my, the upper part of my abdomen moving in and out and just kind of, just kind of think about what that feels like. Other people concentrate on what the breath feels like at the tip of their nose, or the back of their throat. Sometimes mind moves around. Oftentimes I will count it to 10 and then start over. So I have something kind of to hang on to. But you focus on something, you can focus on a candle, you can focus on the way your butt feels, where you’re sitting.  Just focus on one thing. That’s step two, focus on one thing. And step three is get distracted. Step three, normally happens within about a quarter of a second for a lot of my meditation, I will focus on my breath. Then a quarter of a second later, I’m out again. I’m thinking about something else that is part of meditation, that getting distracted. The real magic of meditation is the place between getting distracted and coming back to your focus. That realization that you have become distracted, and the moment of focusing on your focal point, that is meditation. The memory of coming back. And what that does, it is mental gymnastics. It doesn’t have to be spiritual, it doesn’t have to be anything other than agnostic mental, pushups. You are getting stronger at being able to stay at your desk, writing for longer periods of time without getting distracted. So I’ve been doing that. 

[00:10:32] But the other thing I’ve really been doing that has been working so well, and it’s so obvious, a 27th book, I should know these things by heart. Eliminating distractions is something I have to do, and apparently, oh my God, it’s so obvious, so obvious. This is what I’ve been doing. But this is what I’ve been doing when I go to cafes or mills, I am eliminating distractions, not always visual distractions, because I like being at cafes and being able to see people or look out the window at mills and see people walking by. I enjoy that kind of distraction. But at my house, I never really understood how many distractions there were, really, especially the animals. We have two dogs and two cats and the cats basically just go in a round Robin of jump on my lap, jump off, jump on my lap, jump off. The dogs are always wanting to come in and out and managing those distractions- Oh my God, if you have kids, Jesus, especially if they’re home right now. Wow! Managing distraction is our number one job when it comes to getting our words done. And guess what? I am in the privileged position of owning a door. If you’re watching it on YouTube, it’s right behind me. That door does not shut. It never has, never been, you know, level with the house or something. I can’t shut it and the animals let themselves in and out at well. So this week, I have just taken to shoving this piece of wood that I don’t even need to explain. It’s like a balanced board. I shove it under the door and I lock out all the animals and it has been a life changer. If you do not have a room with a door, to do your writing is, guess what? You have a bathroom. And if it takes putting your kids in front of the television with extra TV time and lying to your husband and saying, honey, I’m going to go watch an episode of Vander Puff Rules in the tub, actually I don’t advocate lying. I can’t even lie well, so- but some of you might have to going to the bathroom and closing the door and getting 15 minutes of writing done, 30 minutes of writing done as fast as your little fingers can type. That works too. I think we have to be behind a door. I’ve always thought and said that I think I can work well being distracted and I just can’t because this week I have been at home. I have been closing the door. 

[00:13:00] Another thing that keeps me away, keeps distraction away from me, is the sound that I put into my ears. And I use a Mac and I use an app called White Noise, and I’ve talked about this before too, but I’ll bring it up again. I like it because I can play it through my headphones at the same time and playing other things. So I use the pink noise, mixed with rain, which is a really pleasant sound. So that’s always going at a low drone when I’m writing and not when I’m doing anything else. As soon as I start to do email, if I’m done writing, as soon as I start to do email and make sure I pull my headphones out and I’m not listening to these sounds, I want these sounds to be associated with my writing and that only I have been listening. Also at the same time to Spotify, I’m making a playlist out of songs for me, they have no words. And what I’ll do is, I’ll find a song that I love. I’ll make a song radio out of it. And then I listened to it when I’m writing and the moment I realized that a new song has started that I hate and it’s taken me out of the moment, it’s kind of like meditation. I go back to the song right before it, I play it again and make sure it’s one of those songs that I can just go really deep and focus while it’s on, and I drag it over to the permanent playlist for that book. The permanent playlist for the book I’m working on right now only has four songs, and I can loop those songs over and over and over and over again. And I don’t get tired of them because I’m not listening to them. They are songs that have proven themselves to be a place where I get lost, so I put it in my pink/rain noise and that particular four song playlist that works for this book in this book only. And now I have locked out any sound from the rest of the house with the dog barks, or if my wife walks by the door grumbling. She doesn’t actually grumble. I’m the grumbler in the family. I have to say that. I don’t hear it; those distractions have been blocked out. 

[00:14:57] And another woo-woo thing, is just straight up woo-woo y’all, that I’ve been doing, is I’ve been making sure to light a candle. I have a friend who makes these incredible, I like the tall votive candle. She, this is, if we’re watching on YouTube, it’s covered with angels, has gotten glitter inside, and I just light it only when I’m writing. If I take a half an hour break or an hour break between writing sessions, I blow it out, I snuff it out. And then I light it again when I start writing again. And I only do that when I’m writing or revising. And I literally light it and say, Hello muse, ‘cause I do believe in creative energy and allowing it to come to us. And I know that’s woo-woo! It’s okay though.  I’m not praying to any kind of goddess to come visit me because I believe that the muse is always with us when we’re working. For me, all of my inspiration and ideas and great sentences only happen when I’m writing. I don’t get good ideas when I’m just sitting around hoping to get good ideas. I get them when I’m doing the work and I’m failing and flailing at doing the work. Ideas start to come that will later help me fix this book. So I now have a closed door. I have a candle burning. I have the music in my ears. I have done my meditation. So I am centered and kind of calm and ready to do exactly what I do in meditation, which is I think about the words, I may get a little distracted for a second and then I think about the words, because my brain has been practicing, getting distracted and coming back to the focal point, which while I’m writing is doing the writing itself. And this has been working so, so, so well for me. 

[00:16:49] One other thing that is on my list here that I wanted to make sure I talked about is that my desk, I said at this roll top desk. It’s fabulous for doing all my work and my podcasting and everything else like that. It is absolutely wrong though, for doing the writing work. It’s good for the business work. It’s not good for the writing work. It’s completely ergonomically incorrect. And so I have just been manipulating that because I have to, right now, there’s nothing else I can do. So yesterday I sat on three pillows and put pillows on the floor so that my feet were supported underneath me. That’s what I’ve been doing. This week and part of last week. Today though, my wife found this little laptop desk thing that is from Amazon, I think. And you can kind of pull it onto the chair where you are. And I have a perfect place in my office for it, and it is low enough that. All of a sudden, I’m completely ergonomically correct and I was starting to get wrist pain from writing on at the wrong level, and that’s just taken it away. Plus, I get to look out the window while I’m writing, which is something I very, very much like to do. Like I said, for me, that is not a distraction. If it is a distraction for you, then face a blank wall, but make sure that your elbows are at that 90-degree position. I have a real cheap, well, such wasn’t cheap, maybe $30 or so, this folding collapsible umbrella of a laptop lifter. I will try to remember to put the link for it in the show notes because it’s fabulous. It folds up and I, I fit into my tiny little backpack that I take with my tiny little computer, and that’s my whole office, but that’s why it’s raised right now because I’m always using, a detachable keyboard and mouse to work on my laptop, which is raised perfectly. My dog is chewing on something behind me. 

[00:18:36] So getting the ergo right, wherever you’re writing is really important too. And getting those things dialed is part of your getting your work done. You have to get these things dialed and 24/7 books later, I am still always trying to get things in the right way to make them work for me. But these have been working for me, so if you try any of these things, let me know. And remember, I didn’t even say this, but it’s probably the number one thing. Definitely just click your Wi-Fi off when you start to write, if you are of strong- if you’re just used to doing this work, you don’t have to. I don’t have to anymore ‘cause I do not look at E-mail or Facebook or Twitter or whatever else I could look at. I’m trained not to, but if you accidentally click over and see something, turn off the Wi-Fi just for the time you’re writing. You do not need to look up anything when you’re writing. You can look it up later when you’re done with this thousand words or these 500 words or whatever it is your work writing at that moment.

[00:19:37] So try these things out and let me know how it’s going, where you are, where you are finding yourself writing, because a lot of you might be having to write at home, in a place you haven’t written in a while, or you might be struggling to write around your entire family who is suddenly home with you. So I would love to know how that is working out for you and what some of your hacks might be. You can hit me over www.howdoyouwrite.net and if you go into this particular show, which will be the latest one, I will put the holding keyboard holder, sorry, holding laptop folder that I love so, so, so much and I wish you all very happy writing and very good health and happiness and I hope that you are getting some of your work done and that you’ll come and tell me about it. Okay, my friends. Bye. 

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

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

Chanel Cleeton is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick Next Year in Havana and When We Left Cuba. Originally from Florida, Chanel grew up on stories of her family’s exodus from Cuba following the events of the Cuban Revolution. Her passion for politics and history continued during her years spent studying in England where she earned a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Richmond, The American International University in London and a master’s degree in Global Politics from the London School of Economics & Political Science. Chanel also received her Juris Doctor from the University of South Carolina School of Law. She loves to travel and has lived in the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia. 

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

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.

Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode 173 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron and I’m so pleased that you’re here with me today. 

Today we are talking to the awesome Chanel Cleeton and she was wonderful. I loved her book Next Year in Havana, which you might’ve read. It’s pretty big book and I really enjoyed how she talked about planning her life, but maybe not her writing. So I know that you are going to enjoy listening to that. This will be a very short intro because, I have so much to do. I’m a little bit behind in everything and the news is big. The news is bad. The news is scary. So I want to remind you to get your writing done. Writing is a very true and real place where we can lose ourselves and kind of walk away from what the world is shouting. I urge you to put down the phone, stop reading the headlines. Take some really deep breaths, maybe do a little bit of meditation sink into that book that you have been putting off reading. That is what I’m doing right now, and it’s been marvelous and honor yourself as a writer. Maybe read one of those writing books that you have up there on the shelf.

As we are practicing social distancing, yeah, that’s a great time to be purchasing. Reading and telling other people about books. So we are going to continue to do that on this show. I’m going to tell you about a book right now that you might not know is out there because I’m very bad at self-promotion. It is called Letters to A New Author, and basically it’s a compilation of a lot of my emails that I have sent encouraging writers, and right now you can get a free preview of it just to see what it’s like I think it’s probably the first 30 pages or so of those letters, and it’s a great thing to do. To read if you are social distancing, which for me is hard to pronounce, social distancing, you can get a- it free, by going to www.rachaelherron.com/letters, totally free. Or you can just go to any of your favorite E-book tailors and look for Rachael Herron letters to a new author. And I hope you enjoy that. 

All else as well around here, I’m working at home, which makes it very hard to write my words. I’m just such a terrible first draft writer at home and I just have to suck it up and do it. Just like you do, just like writers have to do. It’s part of our job to get it done when it’s hard. So I’m experimenting with different places in the house for me to try writing. My next spot is going to be the corner of the kitchen table. I mean the dining room table, which I’ve never sat at before. So that can also be really helpful to just change perspective a little bit. I am also, oh, I’m teaching a class at Berkeley this weekend. It is now switched to zoom, so I must kind of change my teaching outline, which I need to do right after this. I’m very much looking forward to teaching that one though. It’s one of my favorites on preparing to publish. What do you need to know about traditional publishing versus a- indie slash self-publishing, and how do you decide which way to go? So I’m going to be working on that, and I hope that you are getting some of your own writing done and I hope that you are finding some peace. Somewhere from all of the noise. It’s important. Take care of you. That is what I’m going to urge you to do right now, today and tomorrow and the next day. Take care of yourself so that we can take care of everyone else. It’s really important. So I send love and hope and fun and get some writing done, and then find me wherever I am on the internet and tell me how it went, okay? I’ll talk to you soon, my friend. 

Hey, how’s your writing going? Do you swing from word to word like the sentence monkey you are in the enchanted book jungle? or is writing a slog? Maybe you’re not even writing. Let me suggest this: The stronger your resistance is to doing something, the more important it is for you to do. You need a community, and I have one for you. Join my ongoing Tuesday morning writing group from 5:00 to 7:00 AM Pacific standard time. We get together and we write together each week for two hours, and we spend most of that time really writing. Yes, that’s hella early for you, west coast Americans much easier for you, Europeans. But you can do it. You write with company, you get to talk to your peers about what you’re working on, and having that kind of support is invaluable. Go to www.rachaelherron.com/Tuesday  for more information. 

Rachael Herron: [00:05:12] Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show Chanel Cleeton. Hi Chanel!

Chanel Cleeton: [00:05:18] Hi!

Rachael Herron: [00:05:19] I am thrilled, thrilled to talk to you. I loved the Next Year in Havana, and I just was like. that was one of the brilliant things about doing the show is I get to bring on writers that I love. So, fantastic. Let me give you a little bit of an introduction here. Chanel Cleeton is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick Next Year in Havana and When We Left Cuba. Originally from Florida, Chanel grew up on stories of her family’s exodus from Cuba following the events of the Cuban Revolution. Her passion for politics and history continued during her years spent in England where she earned a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Richmond, The American International University in London, and a master’s degree in Global Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. That is very fancy sounding. Chanel also received her Juris Doctorate from the University of Southern South Carolina School of Law. She loves to travel and has lived in the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia. Well, welcome. 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:06:19] Thank you

Rachael Herron: [00:06:20] So tell me a little bit about what your life looks like right now. Are you writing full time or are you, yeah?

Chanel Cleeton: [00:06:28] I do. Yes. So I’m writing full time, I’ve been writing full time for a while which- which kind of helps, keep up with everything, so, 

Rachael Herron: [00:06:36] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we had to push this episode because illness has been going around in, and you’ve got at least one child. 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:06:45] I do. Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:06:46] Yeah. So that’s, I love talking to mothers cause I do not know how you do it. So, and that’s why we’re going to be talking about process, which is my favorite thing to chat about. How do you get it done? What is your personal writing process?

Chanel Cleeton: [00:06:59] It really varies by book and I will say, you know, it changes in terms of all the other obligations. I think that’s one of the things I didn’t really realize when I started writing is how much time goes into marketing and publicity and social media and everything else. So really it just depends on the book and kind of where I am in my life. If I have a release coming up, I kind of know that I’m not writing very much cause I spend quite a bit of time promoting the released or if I’m an edits, you know, sometimes they’ll push the book, that I’m drafting to just focus on editing, the one that, that I’m working on with my editor. So it’s really, I think kind of about flexibility, you know, working with the schedule, working with what your publisher needs, and also what’s above needs. I mean, every bump is very different for me. Sometimes I really front load my research, other times I kind of research as I go. It really just depends on, how much kind of background information I have on the story and, the time period or how much I really have to kind of get myself up to speed.

Rachael Herron: [00:07:58] And where and when do you do all that work? Are you a morning person? Are you a fit it in while the kids at school kind of person, or?

Chanel Cleeton: [00:08:06] I just kind of write as I need to, it really depends. You know, I was on, traveling and so my editor needed something and so I was late at night kind of working, getting up early the next morning. Sometimes I work during the day. I mean, it, it really just depends on kind of where I am. So it wasn’t really consistent with my writing process, I would say, I write in Scrivener, which I find really helpful and that’s, that’s probably the biggest thing I would say that kind of carries me through the different thoughts. But beyond that, it changes quite a bit. 

Rachael Herron: [00:08:41] What is your favorite thing about Scrivener? And I also use it and love it. 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:08:45] Yeah, I think for historical fiction it’s really helpful. I like that I can have all of my research there, so it’s easily accessible. I liked that I can kind of shift POV use, I do a lot of dual timelines or multiple POVs in my books and I like it you can kind of keep the scenes and then move things around quite easily when you’re going through the revision process. And I just feel like I really get a very comprehensive kind of macro look at the book I’m using Scrivener cause it’s all right there. You know, you can drop all of your research links in, and so everything is very easily accessible. Microsoft word, I use when I edit with my editor, but I feel like I don’t get as much as the high level view of the book when I’m in that. That’s really more what I’m kind of city and on the little details. 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:31] Yeah, I totally agree. I color code my points of view characters. That is the best trick! 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:09:37] It helps so much. Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:09:39] Because you’re like, oh! I’ve been in her point of view for five scenes and not in our point of view for, you know, forever until we had one, 10,000 pages ago, you know, or 10,000 words I go, not 10,000 pages. That would be too much. 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:09:51] Yeah. No, it really does make a huge difference, to kind of have that, that ability and – and it does I think, give you like you’re saying, that idea of okay, this isn’t balanced here, I need to kind of balance this out. 

Rachael Herron: [00:10:03] Exactly. And you could color code, like the things you have to keep an eye on. I have a color coded empty scene right now that says, change plot completely to here. And then I started writing forward with what I knew the book was going to be. And I know that everything behind that, you know, before that red line is that that’s going to be a lot of revision. Yeah.

Chanel Cleeton: [00:10:28] Yes.

Rachael Herron: [00:10:29] What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing? 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:10:31] I think all the other stuff you juggle. Definitely, like I said before, you know, when I started writing, I just didn’t appreciate how many different hats you kind of wear as an author. You can be a graphic designer, you can be accountant, you know, bookkeeper. It kind of goes all these different gamuts and a lot of times it’s stuff that you might not have a background in, so you really have to kind of get yourself up to speed. So I think it’s just juggling the time commitment of where do I invest my time? How do I kind of keep balance? And when you kind of get those last minute things that come on, you know, how do you shift that with the deadline you’re working on.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:06] How does that feel to you to juggle things like that? Because I find myself very resentful. When I’m like, Oh God, I actually have to spend time on these copy edits. You know, I really- I just, I, I forget over and over and over again that, okay, copy edits, you’ll get all these things coming in. How did, how do your emotions handle that?

Chanel Cleeton: [00:11:24] I think I’ve gotten pretty used to it now. And I think it’s just kind of figuring out, like I’ve learned that when I get copy edits, I cannot do two projects at once. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:34] I know. I hate that.

Chanel Cleeton: [00:11:35] So I know some people that will try to draft

Rachael Herron: [00:11:36] I can’t do it.

Chanel Cleeton: [00:11:37] My brain doesn’t work that way, so I have to basically clear my schedule, push through the deadline, and then I can go back to whatever I was working on. So little things like that have helped, my editor is really amazing at communicating and I think earlier in my career, I was very much like a people pleaser and I always wanted to be like, oh no problem, I can do that. You know? But I’ve kind of learned now they really want you to turn it in your best book. So if there’s something going on, I’ll just be like, Hey, you know, I need an extra few days and they’re really great about working with me, or, you know, I think I have a better handle of what time I actually need and my process for copy edits. So I can look at my schedule and be like, okay, this is a little tight, but I know I can do it cause I’ve done it before. So I think it just kind of is more about getting comfortable with it. I’m a really big planner person. I have a day planner, I like the paper planner. And so I really just am very careful about scheduling and I always kind of leave, probably about a month, I would say, in my drafting process that I know it’s kind of free days there are, are free days. Because I know I probably get proof, so I’m going to get copy, it’s on the book before it, and so I can kind of build in that time so I’m not scrambling. So I think it’s little things like that that helped 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:50] You are much more logical than I am always scrambling at the last minute. 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:12:56] Well, it’s not always perfect. So every day it sounds great. Sometimes life happens, but you know you could do it. But yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:03] Yeah. Are you with Penguin? Is that what I’m remembering 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:13:05] I do. Yes. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:05] Which in print?

Chanel Cleeton: [00:13:07] Berkeley.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:07] Who’s your editor? 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:13:09] Kate Seaver. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:10] Oh my gosh. Okay. Here’s something that I’ll admit because I know she’ll never hear it. But I have been wanting to work with Kate for so long. She almost bought a book of mine a long time ago. I was with Danielle Perez when I was at Berkeley. Yeah. I love Danielle. I love, I love all my editors, but Kate Seaver is my dream- dream editor. Someday. 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:13:29] I have to say, she’s like one of my favorite people. Like she’d just been amazing. And I’ve been with her for five years now. We’ve been, no, I guess six, almost six. So she’s just like so supportive, really wonderful to work with. And I think it’s so nice as a writer when you kind of get into sync with an editor, 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:46] Yes.

Chanel Cleeton: [00:13:47] You know, you have that kind of history and you know how each other works and it just helps a lot. So, yeah, she’s, she’s amazing. I, I highly recommend her. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:55] That’s awesome. What is your biggest joy when it comes to writing?

Chanel Cleeton: [00:14:00] I love the everyday really feels like an adventure. I mean, I’m, I’m not at all a plotter. I really start with like the shell of an idea 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:07] So you’re a planner. You love planning like life, but not-

Chanel Cleeton: [00:14:11] Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:14:12] Okay, that’s really interesting. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of the combination. 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:14:15] Yeah. It’s really odd with my personality and it’s kind of funny cause like on the business side, like I’ll come to my publisher with like spreadsheets with, you know, ideas for promotional plans and stuff. But on the writing side, I’ll give them like a paragraph and Kate’s really wonderful. She’ll just, she’ll be like, yep, yeah, she knows how I work and she knows I’ll figure it out as I go. But yeah, there’s something about my brain when I write. It’s kind of making my only like real creative outlet. Like I’m not artistic or musical or anything like that. So it’s like the one place I kind of, get to be a little bit free. And so, yeah, I think I just loved the adventure and kind of the unknown. I mean, my characters really surprised me and, and take me on journeys. So that’s, that’s really definitely the interesting part of it.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:56] That is beautiful, I love that. Can you share a craft tip of any sort with us?

Chanel Cleeton: [00:15:02] So I think because I don’t do as much planning on the front end, I’m a really big reviser. I love the revision process. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:10] Me too.

Chanel Cleeton: [00:15:11] Yeah. It’s, I feel like that’s really when I get to just polish the story and probably where I try to step back and not be as free and be really critical of myself. Then try to kind of think of what would a reader pick apart? I really liked the print out my drafts. So I usually do, I do a lot of revision rounds. My first round I do on the computer and that’s kind of like a high level of, you know, really cleaning stuff up. And then I do a round where I printed out and I added my hand with like a red pen. And I find that you really find, new and different things when you look at your book in a different medium. So that’s really helpful. And then I also like to read it on an e-reader cause I feel like that kind of gives ’em another different perspective and I really do catch different things. I’ve heard other people do like text to speech. So I think really kind of changing up the way you look at your book, whatever works for you definitely helps because it gives you kind of a fresh eye, which is hard when you’re so deep in your revisions.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:09] I love that. And I have this day right before I ever send a draft to my actual editor, not my agent or anybody else, but, my, my revised first draft -ish, and then my, the last time I’m going to touch it, I reward myself with like five or six hours in bed on the Kindle, just reading it as a human being –

Chanel Cleeton: [00:16:29] I love that. Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:16:30] – reading a book and it’s so fun. And you’re also using the highlight feature of Kindle to like mark everything that you would change, 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:16:35] Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:16:36] But it’s just a fun to lie in bed and read your own book for the first time, you know, front book, you know, so, yeah, I love that. What thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way?

Chanel Cleeton: [00:16:41] You know, I think, and I kind of mentioned this, but I just think writing is, I’ve been really fortunate that I kind of wall it off as like my little haven. So I do feel like it kind of is imperishable to my life. No matter what chaos is going on, 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:01] That’s awesome.

Chanel Cleeton: [00:17:02] It was really nice for me that I can like disappear into a book and, and that’s just really helpful. I think it writing has definitely been like a sanctuary. If, you know, I’m stressed about something or I’m busy, you know, I can just kind of zone into my manuscripts. So I would say it’s almost the opposite that like it kind of is it affected by things, which has been definitely nice.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:23] I think you’re a novelist in that. Cause most writers I talked to their life is what gets in the way and freaks them out and then they can concentrate on your book, on their books. So you being able to do that I think is kind of a superpower. 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:17:35] Well, and I think what I find too, that, and so maybe I should rephrase a little bit. I think that when there are things going on in the world that I have a reaction to, I’ve really been able to put that into my books, and I don’t know, just been kind of serendipitous that it’s lined up with the book I’m writing at the time, tends to be something that kind of lines up with something I feel strongly about. So it really can kind of come through in the writing. And I think I get to kind of use it almost cathartic leads to, yeah, talk about my feelings through my characters and have them kind of look at similar situations. So I think that part too, I mean, I wouldn’t say it kind of affects it in a negative way, but it definitely kind of opens up. For me to express myself, I think. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:16] Do you work at home or do you go out to write? 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:18:20] It really depends. I, I will say my productivity is usually better when I’m not at home. Like if I go to a coffee shop, I tend to do a little bit better. Honestly, though, then it gets into like, I’m at a coffee shop ordering lots of coffee and, you know, it gets expensive. So I don’t do that often, but if I’m at a, like a, a crunch time where like I have to finish the books, sometimes I’ll just go sit somewhere for like 12 hours and write. So yeah, I really take it up. I mean, I was, I meant to know about prep and I was editing at the park, like I printed out my book and I was just like editing as I went, I was like, okay, this is good you know, well, we were like on vacation and I was in an arcade editing. Like it’s just, you know, you kind of do what you have to do. So it’s not always a pretty, like. Yeah, a vision I think I had of what being a writer was. It’s often just kind of messy and you have to, and

Rachael Herron: [00:19:12] Yeah, in an arcade, that is definitely the first time I’ve ever heard that.

Chanel Cleeton: [00:19:16] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:19:17] It’s kind of amazing.

Chanel Cleeton: [00:19:18] It was actually, not that. I mean, I was like, there could be worse. So yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:19:25] Okay, great. What is the best book that you’ve read recently? Why did you love it? 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:19:30] So I always have a lot of books I have a read. So I’m going to give a few, I just finished Long Bright River by Liz Moore, and it’s amazing. It was a thriller- it was kind of a mystery thriller, but set, against kind of the backdrop of the opioid epidemic. And it was just a really interesting angle that I hadn’t seen being done. She’s kind of a very literary mystery writer, so it was really lyrical and beautiful. Reminded me a lot of ton of friends who’s a favorite of mine. So just really, and it really made me think about a lot of different things. So really enjoyed that, that was really surprising. And then one that’s coming out on March 10th is, And They Called it Camelot by Stephanie Marie Thornton. And that’s a historical fiction about Jackie Kennedy. And I read it as an arc. It’s this phenomenal. I’m really excited for her. I think readers are really gonna love that book. That one’s out on the 10th. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:22] Oh, that is very exciting. Thank you. I’m going to put both of those on my TBR pile. Speaking of TBR piles, can you tell us about your most recent work where they should put on their TBR pile. 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:20:34] Oh, thank you. So I have, my next book is coming out June 16^th and it’s called The Last Train to Key West, and it’s set in Florida in the 1930s and it’s Labor day weekends, and one of the deadliest, the most powerful storms in US history hit the Keys then and destroyed Henry Flagler’s railroad and kind of reef a lot of habits. There were a lot of world war one veterans who were down in the region working on, building a highway. And unfortunately, they perished, due to kind of insufficient mornings and they were supposed to be evacuated then there were issues. So it’s this really kind of a tumultuous time in US history. And I didn’t know that much about. And so it was really interesting to kind of research it. And I have three heroines that were down there. One of them is related to my friends’ family from, Next Year in Havana and When We Left Cuba and their lives sort of intersect, as the storm is coming.

Rachael Herron: [00:21:26] That is amazing and it addresses something I really, really love about historical fiction, is real events that I know you’re from Florida, so perhaps you’d heard of that. But I am from California. I’ve never heard of that storm and never heard about those men who perished. And that is fascinating to me.

Chanel Cleeton: [00:21:43] Yes. Yeah, I mean, I even being from Florida, I really hadn’t heard about it, and it was just hurricane season. I came across an article that mentioned it, and you just get that kind of spidey sense of like, I need to know more about this and that’s what I love about historical fiction. I’m constantly learning, and constantly exploring periods of history that I’m surprised I don’t know more about but it’s fascinating to learn about them. 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:05] I cannot wait to read that one. I really looking forward to that. I love your writing. Tell us where listeners can find you.

Chanel Cleeton: [00:22:14] I’m on Instagram, @chanelcleeton. My website is www.chanelcleeton.com, and then I’m on Twitter, with my name and Facebook as well. (ChanelCleeton)

Rachael Herron: [00:22:24] Thank you. Thank you so much for doing this and I am just so thrilled to talk to you. Thanks for inspiring my listeners. So 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:22:32] Oh, thank you so much for having me. This is absolutely wonderful. 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:34] Yeah. Take care. Bye. 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:22:37] Bye. 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:35] 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.

Tara East has four degrees in communications and is currently completing her doctorate in Creative Writing. She is the author of a time-travelling novella, When Bell Met Bowie, and a mystery novel, Every Time He Dies (currently holding a solid 4.83 stars on goodreads!). She also has a blog, a YouTube channel, and a podcast because TV is boring. (The exceptions being Outlander and Fargo). 

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

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.

Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode 172 of “How do you Write?”

Today, I am joined by the delightful Tara East, and we have a fantastic conversation. She is adorable, and she’s sitting on this beautiful wraparound porch in Australia, so you might want to look at it on YouTube. And I just had a really good time talking to her about all things writing, including how interviewing people about the stuff you’re writing about can actually be a super power of being a writer. Really, really enjoyable to talk to her. I know that you’re going to enjoy that. 

What is going on around here? Still, I am very much enjoying my co- working space. This is actually the official podcast booth, and they have a blue yeti mic right here, so I don’t even need to carry my microphone back and forth. It is amazing, and this is a little bit better padded, so hopefully not as echo-y, although I will try to master that out when I am mixing the podcast together, and what else is going on? I’m writing, I’m writing a lot because I’m on deadline.  I’ve got about six weeks to finish this book and revise it. So I’m panicking a little bit, but that’s okay because panic to me means words every day and the co-working spaces really working for that. I love showing up, turning off my internet, and I have nothing else to do. There’s nowhere to go. There’s nothing to clean up. I loved working in the Mills library, but it wasn’t as comfortable. I didn’t have a refrigerator. I didn’t have couches I could move to when I wanted to. It’s like being at home with none of being at home. It’s just magnificent. So, I can’t say enough about this co-working space. I really, really love it. If you are interested, if you’re local, and if you are of the female persuasion, it is called The Sphere and its downtown Oakland, so it’s pretty darn great. 

That is going on. I’m really enjoying doing the writing. I just wrote the, kind of moment where everything has turned upside down and our main character is in severe jeopardy, so it’s great. I was really enjoying writing that today, that was fun. I wanted to tell you all about something that I wrote about in my Patreon essay for February, so it just went out about a week ago. I write a patreon and say every month it’s usually about something that is happening to me, it is something about my life, my creativity. Oftentimes, it’s very, very personal, and I wrote about a relapse that I had in the beginning of February and I’m not going to go into it. I’m kind of teasing you a little bit to go get the patreon essay but those of you who are patrons, I have had just the most beautiful, wonderful reaction to that the short story is that I wasn’t prepared when somebody offered me weed. Then I smoked it. I had been sober for almost two years, and for about six days. I tried to tell myself that I was, I had still been sober since weed was never really a big problem of mine. It was always about alcohol. But I wasn’t sober for two or three hours. So I reset my sobriety date. And that patreon essay is about that. And I just wanted to say a very, very full hearted, thank you, to you, patrons who wrote in, who responded to the essay itself, who emailed me separately, privately. It’s been really wonderful sharing that part of my heart with you and thank you for listening to that and for sharing with me what you go through when you’re with your struggles of any kind of addiction, whatever that looks like in your life.

Speaking of Patreon pledges, I would like to thank some new patrons. Thanks for coming over. I think I already thanked Tammy Brightwise, Hello Tammy! I might’ve already thanked Zooey Lee but if I haven’t, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And now new patrons, Kristen Harrell and Sandra Schnackenberg, that’s an awesome last name. I’m sure I mangled it. Thank you for being new patrons and first showing up here. Thank you, new and old patrons. If you ever want to check out what I offer, mostly it’s very personal essays that people seem to like. That’s over at www.patreon.com/rachael R, A, C, H, A, E, L so you can always check that up.

I’m just going to jump right into the interview now with Tara and not keep you in suspense anymore, but I will say again, thank you to people who reach out to me. I’ve had more than the normal amount of people reach out to me recently and say, thanks for what you do. Thanks for this particular podcast. Thanks for this episode. Thanks for something you said, and I have to say, it means a lot to me. If I can ever provide anything of use to you. This is not a podcast for me just to whine on about how I am doing or am not doing my writing. This podcast is meant to be helpful to you, which is why I interview these people and which is why I gave some of my own tips on the mini podcasts. So thank you for reaching out. It really, really makes a difference in this Podcaster’s life. Now, I hope you enjoy the interview with Tara, and I hope that you are getting some of your own writing done. Please come and tell me how it’s going. I love to hear from you. 

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: [00:06:03] Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show today, Tara East. Tara is it pronounced Tara or Tara?

Tara East: [00:06:09] Tara, 

Rachael Herron: [00:06:10] Tara. Okay, perfect. It’s so good to have you on the show all the way from Australia, so

Tara East: [00:06:16] Thank you very much.

Rachael Herron: [00:06:17] And we get to listen to your gorgeous accent. I’ll give you a little bit of a bio. Tara East has four degrees. Not one, not two, not three, but four degrees in communications and is currently completing her doctorate in Creative Writing. She is the author of a time-traveling novella, When Bell Met Bowie, and a mystery novel, Every Time He Dies, which is currently holding a solid 4.83 stars on goodreads, which I have to say is like a miracle for goodreads. Tara also has a blog, a YouTube channel, and a podcast because TV is boring. The exceptions being Outlander and Fargo. You know, I haven’t seen the out- the Fargo show.

Tara East: [00:06:53] It’s so good. All of the seasons consistently good. 

Rachael Herron: [00:06:56] Ooh, okay

Tara East: [00:06:57] And even though there’s a different cast every time. 

Rachael Herron: [00:06:59] Good. I need to- I need a new like series to binge. So fabulous, thank you for that. Well, welcome to the show. As you know, we were just talking off air a little bit that the things we talk about on this particular show are things that always bear repeating. We always want to talk about writing and what it is like. So I would love to know how writing fits into your life. What is your personal writing process?

Tara East: [00:07:24] Well for a very long time, it was quite a rigid process and I would always write in the morning from 7:00 AM to 10:00 AM with the goal of hitting 2000 words. But lately the routine has had to change as it does with life. And I do still try to write every day if I can. And I tried to write in the morning if I can, but I’ve allowed myself that flexibility that I can write in the early afternoon or late afternoon if need be. But I’ve also had to realize that I can’t always write every day anymore, and I’ve had to make that change where now maybe you have your dedicated writing days just to take that pressure off. Especially when life changes and it becomes more complicated to allow to give yourself permission for that routine to change, even though it may not be optimal at this time, it might have to change. But-

Rachael Herron: [00:08:17] How does that make you feel emotionally? Because I get really stuck and rigid about these kinds of things, and I get very frustrated when things don’t go my way, which they often do not do. How do you feel about it? 

Tara East: [00:08:29] Oh, it’s incredibly frustrating because the writing for me, it’s always one of my top priorities. Even when other responsibilities come in and as you know, there are these optimal writing times, like I’m an early person. The other day I had the luxury of waking up at 5:00 AM and starting to write at about six or seven and the writing was so much easier because that is my optimal time. So it is disappointing and frustrating when life changes and it’s no longer feasible to work at that time, or you would have to change so many things or inconvenient so many other people to swap the routine around. But, yeah, it’s, there’s sort of like no easy solution to it other than just having to like accept that this is the new routine for now and maybe trying to work back towards the old routine if you can.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:25] Yeah. 

Tara East: [00:09:26] That’s the space I’m in right now and hopefully it can go back to how it used to be.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:30] You are actively working this practice right now, yes. What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing?

Tara East: [00:09:37] Well, there’s two things. One, in terms of specifically craft setting is so hard for me 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:45] Me too!

Tara East: [00:09:46] Yeah, and it’s so funny because setting can add so much to a novel, and setting isn’t just about naming the town or the place where the story is happening. Like some of my favorite novels aware the setting is really informing, the story can add so much richness to it. But certainly when I go to write, it is so focused on relationship and moving the plot forward and almost, it’s almost floating in the air like there is no setting and I have to really go back and build that.

Rachael Herron: [00:10:20] So is that something you do in a revision pass? 

Tara East: [00:10:25] Oh, absolutely. And it, and it has to be quite intentional, when I do revise, our revise focusing on a specific thing, I sort of don’t go through revising, trying to fix all of the problems at once. I’ll go through and be like, okay, during this round, I’m just focusing on setting. During this round, I’m just focusing on character or plot holes, that sort of thing, and yet it has to be very intentional and a lot of work goes into it because it doesn’t come naturally or intuitively to me as I’m writing. 

Rachael Herron: [00:10:57] So let me ask you, because I’ve been curious about this, and I’ve asked a couple of other people, do you see your scenes as you write them? Because I don’t, I, I see the words, but I don’t actually get an image in my mind. And I’ve wondered if that’s why I can’t do setting. Do you see scenes play out in front of your eyes?

Tara East: [00:11:16] That’s so interesting. I actually do see the scenes quite often playing out in my mind’s eye and it freaks my partner out a little bit, but often I don’t even look at the computer screen. I’m like looking out the window while I talk, and then that helps reduce eyestrain, tip. But then it also, 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:39] That’s great. 

Tara East: [00:11:40] I don’t know about you, but sometimes I get so sick of looking at computers all day, 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:43] Yes

Tara East: [00:11:44] But, yeah, and by looking away from the monitor, I think in a way it’s almost like daydreaming and it’s that much easier to lose myself in the story compared to when I am looking directly at the word document and not focusing on the words. Though admittedly, it might be easier because I’m a touch typist. If that isn’t a skill you have, that could be quite difficult to do, but that is, it certainly helps me get into the story so that it feels more like creation rather than, oh, sorry, so it feels more like dictation rather than creation.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:19] Oh, that’s great. Yeah. And I also do like to look away from the computer as just doing it. I was looking down on the street and there was a construction crew, and I was just kind of watching them and not thinking about them when I was writing, but my eyes were on them and it was kind of a relaxing feeling. Yeah. 

Tara East: [00:12:33] They sort of just glaze over. Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:35] Yeah. And yeah, exactly. What is your biggest joy in writing? 

Tara East: [00:12:40] Two again, one of the biggest joys which is actually not directly related to the writing per se, but it was during the research process of my latest novel. I got to interview detectives and embalmers about their work processes, and I was able to have face to face interviews with them. And those are just not really conversations you get to have with everyday people, especially with something like embalming, it’s very sensitive topic.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:10] Yes

Tara East: [00:13:12] Absolutely. Like if you, if you met someone like that at a cocktail party, if they even told you that that was their job, if they did say that, then you’re not exactly going to feel the permission to ask them a lot of fairly invasive questions about their work and their work life and all of that. So that was incredibly rewarding. And I think that was something I definitely picked up from journalism is that as soon as you stick the name tag on you, I’m a writer, suddenly you have this permission to go up to complete strangers.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:43] Yeah.

Tara East: [00:13:43] And ask them questions. So 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:45] Yeah it’s, it’s really amazing. 

Tara East: [00:13:48] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:13:48] And, and I, I have been into like mortuaries and back by where the, the crematorium is and I’ve gotten to touch those things and look at those things. Did you get to look at a body? They probably wouldn’t let you do that. 

Tara East: [00:14:01] No, they, that was the one thing I didn’t get to look at. And it was so fascinating because I got to get that granular detail that you can’t find on Google. I was able to smell the chemicals

Rachael Herron: [00:14:14] Yes

Tara East: [00:14:15] that they use, like not taking big waves, obviously, just like little snip. And being able to describe that and describe the workplace and what, what even the workplace actually feels like when you’re there, let alone how it looks and that daily routine of what everybody gets up to, like that exposure to these worlds, these real worlds that you would never get to step into. And then you get to bring all of that juicy information back and put it in your story. I mean, it’s just as definitely a highlight. 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:48] It’s priceless. It really, that kind of research really is priceless. 

Tara East: [00:14:51] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:14:52] when I was in the crematorium, there was this smell of burn. Like there’s this smoky smell and I’m, you know, and to realize that those are bodies, sorry, squeamish listeners and then I learned that they have a double, they have a double burner. They need to burn the body, but then they need to have a machine that burns the smoke. Because they do- they can’t really smoke into the air or all of the community would be like, there’s, there’s dead bodies in the air. So they have to have a smoke, they have to have a burner that burns the air and releases it as basically clean.

Tara East: [00:15:24] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:15:25] Like who would know that?

Tara East: [00:15:26] I know. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:27] It’s so fascinating. So fascinating. 

Tara East: [00:15:29] It is. It’s all those like, 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:30] But you said you had, you had two things, though, yeah. 

Tara East: [00:15:31] And the other thing that I love about writing is just those moments when you nail a sentence or an exchange of dialogue and you either feel really proud of what you’ve created or you feel really moved, like when you can move yourself to tears, that’s pretty amazing. And that is so rewarding in itself. And also when you somehow, are writing a scene and you completely by accident, loop it back to this like offhand comment that happened in like chapter two or three and you’re writing chapter eight, that is just like, you just feel like the stars have aligned in the cosmos is like totally on your side. It’s fantastic, those moments. 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:19] I wish it happened more often, but yes, I agree. Totally. Okay, can you share a craft tip of any sort with us? 

Tara East: [00:16:26] Oh yeah. The best craft tip I ever got was actually from an editor who I got to work with it and she was my mentor for a while and regardless of genre. But especially if you write crime or mystery, I highly- or thriller, i highly recommend that you create a timeline for your events and for the chapters’ scenes. All of that because so often where writing in random chunks and we might not sit down and complete a whole scene in the day. We come back to it either the next day or even a week later, and you and timelines become muddled up. Now, I wouldn’t really worry about the timeline during the drafting phase, unless you’re a hardcore outliner, then by all means go for it. But if you’re a bit more of a pantser, just do that first draft, create a timeline based off that first draft and see where those inconsistencies and problems are, and then you can go through, create a new timeline and use that as your guide when you start doing your revision. It, it saves me so many problems in writing my mystery novel where it is time is so important in those kinds of genres, but even if you’re writing romance, they’re still in credible value. You still need to make sure that it’s a believable and consistent timeline.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:49] Something that I learned definitely the hard way. Like I, I would turn in books and then I wouldn’t know if the last time they saw each other was three weeks ago or 42 hours ago, I would have no idea. And that changes how characters respond to each other. So yeah, that’s an incredibly good and valuable tip for people to know. And I also don’t do it in the first draft. I do it on that big second, make sense draft. Yeah.

Tara East: [00:18:13] Absolutely. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:14] What thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way? 

Tara East: [00:18:20] One of the biggest comments I’ve gotten from my work short story or longer length, such as a novel novella, is that the dialogue is so strong and I believe why that is, is because I had private speech and drama lessons from the age of 4 to 14 and then I continued on –

Rachael Herron: [00:18:40] Oh my goodness.

Tara East: [00:18:41] Yeah. And then I continued on independently until I was 22 and I have a really rich background in theater, acting, poetry, all of that. And I believe it was that initial learning of how to tell a story through dialogue that has actually really impacted my writing. When I was first getting into fiction writing, my early drafts were almost entirely dialogue with very spaz pros. And then I had to teach myself, how do you write pros? What happens in between the dialogue? And that was a skill I had to build. So I do believe that that background and acting really helped me develop this skill track really good dialogue. And I, I think the thing about acting is that it is a novel brought to life. So there is this really nice bridge between them, even though of course they are their own forms of art, but that was just absolutely a happy accident. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:39] That’s wonderful. And I’ve never heard anyone say that before. Do you have any yen to write a screenplay? 

Tara East: [00:19:46] I have thought about it now just because of the feedback that I’ve received on, my recent novel. So I had definitely thought about it, but I am yet to do any education on it because I do know that that is its own whole structure and process, but it’s something I’ve definitely got my eye on for the future. I think. I suspect that I could be good at that just with having that natural tendency towards dialogue. But yeah, nothing is happening yet in that respect. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:21] What a wonderful talent to have to bring to this different art, and you can kind of tell by the way you are speaking and your beautiful use of language. I have this terrible fault, which all of my listeners know, which is, I don’t really ever end a sentence. I have ands and buts and commas. And I go back and, you know, start over sentences without ever pausing. But you have that beautiful extemporaneous, I’m going to say a sentence beautifully, and then I’m going to begin another one. In the meantime, this is all in one sentence for me, but that’s something they talk about.

Tara East: [00:20:55] If we were to translate our written speech, you wouldn’t even understand it because we do, we don’t speak standard written English. We speak in these broken mixed up. We stay half a sentence and then we swap and change. Like that is real life dialogue when you’re talking. So yeah. We got all of that-

Rachael Herron: [00:21:14] And the trick is to make it sound like that on the page. It’s not exactly what we hear. So, you’re obviously excellent at that, and I love that. That’s great. What is the best book you’ve read recently and why did you love it?

Tara East: [00:21:28] So it’s this book that was written in 1963 and it’s called The Wall by Marlene Crucifer. And that’s H, A, U S, H, O, F, E, R, and it was written during the cold war. So you have to think that we’re still in this sort of, we’re still in the eminence of world war II and in the novel, this woman goes out to the woods and we never learn her name. And she goes out with some companions and they leave to go to town. She stays on this farm, and when she wakes up in the morning, a glass dome has come over the farm and the surrounding fields, and she is trapped inside the dome with the farm animals, which are a cat, a dog, and a cow. And the entire novel is about her domestic survival. So learning how to crop, learning how to chalk wood, how to take care of the animals, how to help the cow give birth. And it is not about her trying to figure out how the wall came down or trying to escape. She’s actually just trying to survive in the wall. And very quickly, it just becomes this gorgeous story about a woman’s need to survive and to connect with animals and animal human kinship. And it is so beautiful and the writing is so elegant. There’s these human animal exchanges where she’ll look at one of the animals and she’ll have this knowing of what they are thinking about, and yes, there are elements of anthropomorphism, but she’ll describe these beautiful exchanges in a single sentence. And then she just like leaves it and then moves onto the next thing and then it’s up to you to unpack it. And it’s just beautiful. And it’s got this like quiet tension throughout the whole novel to like pull you through because it’s written as one long journal entry as she explained her survival over the years. And there’s, she keeps hinting at this disaster that’s going to happen and it’s not an environmental disaster, but this thing that’s going to happen. And that just keeps pulling you through and you’re just like, what’s going to happen? What’s going to happen? And you – 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:41] Don’t- don’t tell us ‘cause I want to –

Tara East: [00:23:43] Oh no, I wouldn’t 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:44] read that stuff cause it’s amazing

Tara East: [00:23:45] But you don’t find out until the final pages and it’s, yeah, it’s fantastic. I highly-

Rachael Herron: [00:23:52] And it’s called the wall?

Tara East: [00:23:53] The wall. Yeah. And it was made into a movie as well, but I haven’t seen the movie. 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:59] And is it, is it recent or it’s just set in the cold war? 

Tara East: [00:24:03] It was released; it was published in 1963 so it’s actually 70 years old.

Rachael Herron: [00:24:10] So it sounds like she was really ahead of her time and

Tara East: [00:24:12] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:24:13] Oh, that sounds wonderful.

Tara East: [00:24:15] Yeah. It, it reads like it could have been published last week, it’s very, it has a very contemporary feel. 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:25] Thank you for sharing that. That is absolutely going on my TBR path. I have two comments. Number one, you just made every American swooned by saying, Heytch, which is just one of our things that we love so much so that, thank you for that. Number two, before we go into like where we can find you and about your books, where if people are watching on YouTube, where are you sitting? It’s beautiful. I will describe it to listeners. It looks like she’s on a white covered porch with these beautiful white windows and white curtains behind her, and she’s wearing an orange blouse. So it’s, you’re very, you’re very beautiful. And where are you? 

Tara East: [00:25:02] So my office is on a veranda that has been closed and I’ve changed the veranda into a sunroom and it’s gorgeous. The house is like 120 years old, which is very old for Australia because we’re such a –

Rachael Herron: [00:25:18] -it’s very old for America too. Yeah. Especially for California. Yeah. 

Tara East: [00:25:22] There you go. So it’s like-

Rachael Herron: [00:25:23] It’s gorgeous. And I heard your clock chiming at one point. 

Tara East: [00:25:26] Yep. Got a grandfather. 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:30] It’s like, it’s so heavenly. Okay, good. We’ve answered those questions. Excellent. Okay. What would you like to tell us about now? Tell us about your latest book. Tell us where we can find you. All of those things. 

Tara East: [00:25:40] Excellent. So in November last year, I published my first full length novel, and it’s called Every Time He Dies, 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:49] And this is the most beautiful cover. 

Tara East: [00:25:53] Thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:25:54] Absolutely incredible. 

Tara East: [00:25:55] I’ve had so many compliments on the cover, which was –

Rachael Herron: [00:25:59] I would pick it up in a heartbeat from just the cover 

Tara East: [00:26:01] Good because like, I don’t know about you, but naming a novel and trying to come up with a design, I had no idea what cover to, to help to design for the book cover. I hired a designer, but we obviously collaborated and work together. But, yeah, I’ve received such positive feedback on it. And you could say it’s a mystery novel. If you wanted to get super granular, you could say that it’s a self-coiled crime novel with paranormal elements. But basically it’s about a woman who finds a watch that is haunted by a ghost with amnesia. And while she’s trying to uncover his identity and how he died, she becomes involved in her estranged father’s homicide investigation. 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:50] Oh, that’s great.

Tara East: [00:26:51] Yeah, so it’s about grief, time, family, loyalty. It’s full of psychics, bikeys a dry leading lady and a ghost suffering from an identity crisis. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:08] And it’s called Every Time He Dies 

Tara East: [00:27:10] Yes. Every Time He Dies.

Rachael Herron: [00:27:11] And the, and the cover is, can you describe it? It’s like an upside down skeleton, but it looks  

Tara East: [00:27:17] Yes, so it’s an upside down skeleton and the rib cage is full of flowers. And the reason why the skeleton is upside down, is because my main character is an embalmer. So it’s supposed to be mirroring you pull out the cold tray. Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:33] Yes

Tara East: [00:27:34] So it’s, basically the pulling out the tray in a morgue. And that’s the body. So, but obviously you can

Rachael Herron: [00:27:40] Did you hire the art too? Is it unique art or is it stock? 

Tara East: [00:27:45] It actually stock art, which is amazing

Rachael Herron: [00:27:47] Wow

Tara East: [00:27:48] Considering it’s this, you know, why it like looks so good, but 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:52] It looks so amazing. That is just gorgeous. 

Tara East: [00:27:55] Oh, actually I’ll plug the designer cause she does have her own place. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:58] Oh please.

Tara East: [00:27:59] Yeah. Her name is Jessica Bell and she’s Australian, but lives in Greece and I believe her website is www.jessicabelldesign.com And she’s fantastic. And she has a range of different packages. 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:12] It’s truly one of the best book covers I’ve ever seen, trad self, anywhere. That is incredible. So, and it is also on my TBR pile. I’ve already purchased it. 

Tara East: [00:28:23] Oh, thank you!

Rachael Herron: [00:28:24] You’re welcome. It’s on, it’s one of many books waiting for me on my Kindle. So thank you for being on the show. Tell us where people can find you.

Tara East: [00:28:31] Absolutely. So my website is probably the best place, and that’s taraeast.com I have a weekly writing advice blog that goes up every Thursday, Australian time. And I also have a writing advice YouTube channel as well. And I’m of course, also on Instagram and both of those pages, authortaraeast 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:55] Author Tara East. That’s perfect. Oh, thank you, I’m going to check that out too. It has been such a treat to talk to you in your beautiful space there, and I’m just so glad that we’ve connected. 

Tara East: [00:29:06] Absolutely. It was such a lovely conversation. Thank you, Rachael. 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:09] Thank you so much, and I wish you had very happy writing. 

Tara East: [00:29:13] You too. 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:14] Okay, bye. 

Tara East: [00:29:15] Bye!

Rachael Herron: [00:29:11] 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. 171: What To Do With a Revision Letter (and where are the memoirists?) Bonus Mini-Episode!

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

Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode 171 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So pleased that you’re here with me today as I come to you from the co-working space, which I mentioned in the last episode. I love it so much that it actually hurts. So this is a mini episode, and I’ve got some questions that have been backing up here that I want to answer. So let’s jump right into it. Hopefully I’ll get through at least two, maybe three. 

[00:00:45] Okay, first is from Mel Kleimo. Where do memoirs hang out? Do you have any recommendations for where I can start looking online for this tribe? I do have a great group of romance writers locally and nationally, New Zealand. Whoo. But while they stray into thrillers and fantasy sci-fi, I am clearly not hanging out in the right places to find memoir writers. And I’m too far away to come to a university courses. I wish you could know. I have a travel memoir drafted. And I’m keen to find some like-minded critique partners to swap with and get building my memoir muscles. 

[00:00:21] Okay. So that is a really interesting and tricky question, which is why I am enjoying answering it right now. There used to be a, an association, which I think is still around in the United States, which I believe is open for everyone called the National Association of Memoir Writers. I just Google that, and if you go to any of their pages, it looks like they have lost their URL, and now there’s somebody trying to tell you to download things that you shouldn’t download. So, that’s no good. But they do still have a Facebook group. Let me glance at it really quick. I pulled it up. It has 3000 people in it, and if you Google National Association of Memoir Writers, join the Facebook group. It looks like it’s pretty healthy. They have monthly round tables, there are different talks that you can get into teleseminars and the reason I recommend that is just because it is nice to play it, have a place to start connecting. Being in these kinds of groups is great. But finding your peers is better. So what I recommend is that you find a Facebook group like this or some other kind of group, and start to get to know the players inside. If you find some memoirs that you love, follow them on social media. Start leaving them comments. I know this sounds like a lot of work, but it actually works and is a form of networking. 

Marion Roach Smith has a podcast now it’s called Qwerty. The like the keyboard letters, a Q, W, E, R, T, Y, Qwerty, and she interviews incredible Mel Morris and get to know them, follow them around, see where they are hanging out, see what they’re posting online. You can actually really become pals with people just online. By following them around like Mel, I feel like I know you because you and I have been around each other. Oh wow. Now, so that is a good way to do it. I don’t really find any other memoir groups easily available. And I’m not sure why that is.

So if anybody listening to this has something that they know about, please come to www.howdoyouwrite.net and drop us a comment. Now, I’ll be sure to pass that on to you. But other than that memoir are so, we’re hard to find. We hide, we hide in plain sight and write all of our truths down. So, yeah, that’s what I’ve got for you right now. If I hear more, I will let you know. So good question.

[00:04:04] Let’s see, Maggie! Hello Maggie! Maggie says, have officially hired an editor for the first time, first book, who will get the manuscript in mid-February and get back to me in mid-March with an editorial assessment after reading all the, yeah, so it was, this is, this sounds like it’s a structural edit. Some questions for you in the, how do you write community, when you’re working progress is off being edited, do you suggest you keep working on it? Or put it away and jump into something else. Do you have tips or suggestions of how to get the most out of your experience? Down the line when you get into needing a line edit? Do writers usually hire the same editor again for consistency, slash relationship or go with someone different to get another set of professional eyes on it? As you are essentially paying someone to tell you what’s wrong with. And hopefully write with it. Is there a way to prepare yourself to sit with constructive criticism of your first novel that wanting to quit?

[00:05:02] Okay. I know that is a rhetorical, not answerable, but definitely a big fear of mine. I have loved everyone’s questions on the new bonus episodes. Thank you for offering them. You are very welcome, Maggie, and I really wanted to get to your question because I know that time has been running out as you’re reading for your editorial letter to come back in the mail or in the virtual mail as it probably is coming. So you’ve got a bunch of questions in here. People who are listening and wondering about these different kinds of edits, the biggest, and I consider one of the most important, they’re all important, but what the most important is that developmental edit is also known as a structural edit. It is also known as a, Oh, what’s the word? Content edit. Because writers have a million different words for a million different things. There’s no reason to why we did that. We just call things differently. So that’s the, that’s the thing. It is, the 30,000-foot view of your book, the, the editor looks at how it works if all of your, it’s looking for plot problem, this looking for character arc problems, this particular edit is looking for, does this book make sense? Does it have a theme? Does it have a point? What is that point and how effectively is that point being given? So it’s a really, really big and very important edit. And Maggie, I’m going to skip around in your question. When you say how do you prepare yourself to sit with constructive criticism on this first book without wanting to quit? First of all, I think most people feel this way. When you get that revision letter, that first big revision letter, you’ll want to quit. It’s hard because this editor is someone that you’re either working with at a traditional publisher and they’ve bought your book and they’re working with you on it, or there’s somebody you hired. In either case, this person is important and their opinion matters in a way, that your friend’s opinion don’t matter, that your husband’s opinion does not matter. This is an authority figure who will be coming to you to tell you how your book is broken. And that is because that’s what we need them to do. A structural, a structural or content edit will never come back to you and say, great job. Nailed it. And we should not believe it if they do. Every once in a while, editors will say little, you know, leave little smiley faces or a little ha-ha’s.

[00:07:37] But I’ve had editors who never leave any positive feedback, just negative feedback, because that is what they’re paid to do. That is their job. So, yeah, you’ll want to quit. Everybody wants to quit when they get that first revision letter. I still want to quit when I get revision letters. And knowing that, I think for me is the biggest part of the battle, your very first revision letter, I have heard it described as like hearing a nuclear explosion being in the impact range of a nuclear explosion. You will not be able to hear for three or four days. There will just be a ringing in your ears as you try to figure out can all of this negative input into my book be true. None of this can be true, can it? I am not a failure. I didn’t write a completely failed book. And the truth is, no, you didn’t. There’s a lot of your book that works, but again, your editor, her job is to point out what doesn’t work. And it is this explosion. It’s, it’s hard to imagine how difficult it is, and I say that with a laugh in my voice because it gets better. And I’ll tell you that too. That’s another good thing to expect. Give yourself two, three, four days to sit on the letter. Don’t start working. Don’t do anything in the manuscript. Just sit with it. Amazingly, three or four days later, usually I start to think, well, you know, that whole letter is crap, except maybe for that first point she raised, maybe I could make that a little bit better.

[00:09:10] And then the next day I think, Oh, maybe her second point isn’t that terrible. It’s not that off. And this keeps happening. The revision letter keeps getting better and better. Shockingly, the more you think about it, because here’s the thing, editors know what they’re doing. They are experts. My editors have been right about what they tell me to do approximately 95% of the time, which to me sounds like a hundred percent of the time. When they tell me to do it, I generally always do it, and I am generally always very pleased that I did, even if I didn’t like it going into it, your mileage may vary. The word stet is very important. When you’re getting edited, you can always step something, which means let it stand. The way it is, the way I wrote it, the author always wins in a discussion with an editor. Author always wins. However, I believe that in a discussion, a disagreement of opinion between an author and an editor, the editor is generally right. Not always. Of course, you may have had a terrible editor in your time, but they’re generally amazing and awesome and right. So give yourself permission to feel shell-shocked to hide in your bed, to comfort read your favorite book for the 35th time, and then go slowly through that revision letter. And, and it’ll, it’ll be okay.

[00:10:38] It’ll be okay. It’s awesome. It’s really the most wonderful thing cause it’s making your book better, which is incredible. So let me go back and fish out these other questions in here. Duh, duh, duh. So when it’s being edited, do you suggest keeping working on it or put it away and jump into something else? I generally put it away and start something else. Unless I’m lying around and I think, Oh God, I did not see that plot hole, I’m going to fix that right now. You can start working on it because you can pretty sure that your editor will come back to you and tell you about it anyway, so you know, do it, do what you want. I’m not a big deal. Not a big deal either way. The time to start a stop poking at it is when you send it off for copy edits. So the line edit phase, depending on your structural edit that you got, is often included in the structural edit. Not always. It sounds like perhaps yours wasn’t, align edit can also be included in a copy edit phase. So perhaps you’ll be able to combine those two. And the difference between the two is in line edit is looking at the grammatical construction and of your sentences and their relative ease of reading. Do they make sense or are you being confusing on a sentence level? That’s what line edits are. Copy edits, on the other hand, are things like typos, missing words, improper punctuation. Getting my copy edits always makes me feel like the worst writer in the world who has never heard of the correct usage of a quotation mark or a possessive “S” Like, I don’t know. The old copy edits are the worst. But so you may be looking at possibly folding a line edit into a copy edit round, which is something that you discussed with the editor.

[00:12:25] And yes, I would always use somebody else for the next round of edits because you do want that fresh eye. Your primary structural content editor will have already seen the book, really thought through it, and she will miss stuff next time. Just because she’s already familiar with it. So you generally want to hire somebody else after your copy edits, after all those typos are taken care of. You do also want to get a proofer or two or beta readers because typos will always look past a copy editor as well, which is very frustrating. But there it is. 

[00:12:59] Let’s see. I think that’s all the questions in there. Those were really great questions. Thank you. Thank you very, very much, and I just want to say, Alex, I have not forgotten your question about romance. I’m going to get that back to that in the next mini episode, but I just wanted to thank you Patreons who send in questions are really fun to answer. It’s really fun to talk to you guys mostly about craft kind of things.

[00:13:22] So, that’s great. And I wanted to thank you so happy writing to all of you. Come over, drop me a line at www.howdoyouwrite.net or email me or Tweet or whatever way you want to get a hold of me. And thank you for listening.

[00:13:40] 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.