(R.H. Herron)
EMMA BRODIE has worked in book publishing for a decade, most recently as an executive editor at Little, Brown’s Voracious imprint. She graduated from the Johns Hopkins University’s Writing Seminars program, and is a longtime contributor to HuffPost and a faculty member at Catapult. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their dog, Freddie Mercury. Songs in Ursa Major is her debut novel.
Tiffany Yates Martin has spent nearly thirty years as an editor in the publishing industry, working with major publishers and New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling and award-winning authors as well as indie and newer writers, and is the founder of FoxPrint Editorial and author of the bestseller Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing. She’s led workshops and seminars for conferences and writers’ groups across the country and is a frequent contributor to writers’ sites and publications. Under the pen name Phoebe Fox, she’s the author of six novels, including the upcoming The Way We Weren’t (Berkley). Visit her at www.foxprinteditorial.com or www.phoebefoxauthor.com.
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Rachael Herron: Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing. [00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #267 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. And I’m really pleased that you’re here today for so many reasons. Oh my God! So many reasons. The first is Tiffany Yates Martin. We had a chat. She’s the coolest. She is my friend now because we claimed each other as friends. And, you know, those moments when you find another friend and you claim them, or besties, even though we live very far apart now, farther apart than ever, but she’s amazing. And I love her approach to revision I have for a while now. And we really had a fantastic chat. So that’s coming up. [00:00:57] What’s going on around here? Well, if you’re watching on YouTube, I’m in my new room. In my house where I live in Wellington, there’s really not much to see. So if you’re just listening on the podcast, you’re not missing anything. There’s just a blank wall behind me, and a painting of a Fern behind me, because this is where I have set up my microphone. My microphone is set up again and y’all. Let me just tell you about the house. It is everything we dreamed about and more, it is incredible! The view from the windows is of the Wellington Harbor. Google Wellington Harbor if you haven’t seen those or go to my better yet, go to my Instagram, instagram.com/RachaelHerron and look at some of the views out the windows, from the kitchen dining room, Harbor. From Lala’s office, Harbor, from living room Harbor, from my office, it looks out into the little garden that is full of flowers. It is spring here and these flowers have just been growing on their own, just from the rain that have come. I went out earlier today and I picked flowers and I came back with an armful that will also be on Instagram. I will post that, including lilacs and my room right now, my office smells like lilacs and it is heaven, heaven. We’re up 48 steps on the side of a hill. [00:02:31] We changed everything around in the house, which was really, really fun. I mentioned that we are renting, but we bought all this stuff that Cassidy. Hello, Cassidy. If you’re listening, thank you! That Cassidy and Sam left behind because they moved to the states. So we bought everything and then we moved everything around. I was going to have the smaller, darker room for my office, and Lala was going to have this room here with a view onto the garden. And then we realized the smaller, darker room would hold the bed. Small dark rooms are great for sleeping in. So we both have these stunning big rooms with perfect views because I love a garden view. Honestly, if I had the harbor view, I would just be staring at boats all day and not get anything done. And I have a bed in my office, which I didn’t think I would like. It’s the spare bed and I love it. I put every pillow in the house and there were a lot of pillows. Thank you, Cassidy, on the bed. And it is now this big couch and I do my morning pages on it in the morning. I set up a monitor, which I have never had a monitor like this, that kind of faces at the foot of the bed. And I am currently doing romance author mastermind, which is a big conference and it goes all weekend. And so I’m just turning it on down there and cozying up in the pillows and taking notes on my iPad at this conference. And this house just feels wonderful. It feels like home, it feels like home. [00:04:06] We just got back from walking downtown to the Daiso, took about 45 minutes to walk there. And we took the bus home after we stopped at new world and got some groceries for dinner. And I have salmon cooking right now and my timer’s going to go off and just a couple of minutes so that we can eat dinner because we left the house on foot. We went shopping and we came back on the bus. I can’t even tell you. For so long, I have lived in a place. I loved Oakland with all my heart. I will always love Oakland. I’m an Oakland girl, but where we lived for the last 17 years, and for me last 19 years, we couldn’t walk anywhere. There was nowhere to walk. Even the liquor store had closed, and just walking with the dogs was really too dangerous in most of the parts, because a lot of blocks had off-leash dogs and it was just a hairy situation. There was nowhere to walk. So we would always drive about 20 minutes to go anywhere, to the grocery store to walk the dogs. Here you can’t drive 20 minutes. If you drive 20 minutes, you’re out of town. Driving downtown takes five minutes. It’s a big tiny city. [00:05:13] It’s a big city and it’s so tiny and wonderful. And I am just in love. I’m in love. I unpacked my suitcase yesterday. I haven’t packed both my stupid cases yesterday because I hadn’t done it yet. We’ve been here for a couple of days, but we’ve been just like organizing things. So everything I own is in the closet over there. It’s amazing. And, not unfortunately, but at some point, our boxes that we shipped over on the pallets on the ship will arrive there somewhere in Wellington. I don’t want them, I don’t want them. I have everything I need. I have all the clothes I need. I have, we have all the cooking things we need. How did we, why did we send these boxes over? I know most of mine are filled with books and journals and stuff like that, and I’ll find storage for them. But right now, I love looking at my bookcase and it’s got like nine books because I bought them here and I haven’t read them yet. [00:06:07] Oh, I’m just enjoying this feeling and really dreading all the boxes and we will hire somebody to bring them up those 48 steps. We have no furniture. I have one Cedar chest, that my mom gave me, but otherwise we have no furniture, just small boxes, but I’m not bringing them up. Oh, no, it was a chore just getting our big ass suitcases up those 48 steps. It’s heaven. I know it’s real life too. Now we’re going to live here and have a real life, and have troubles and heartaches and difficulties and irritations and all of those things. But right now, I’m not feeling any of it. I’m just giddy. I am giddy at being home for the first time in almost six months and able to relax for the first time since February, when we started doing all this and it is now November and it just feels really, really freaking good. So, now, I just get to shunt you into this interview that I had with Tiffany while I was locked down in Russell, up in the north wind of New Zealand. So in that beach house that I was in, and it’s a wonderful dock, so I hope you enjoy it. We’ll talk writing next week. You’re writing, right? If you’re not writing, get a little writing done. And I’ve been writing, I’ve been getting stuff done. It’s very strange. And now we’ll get more done because I have an office anyway, I’m going to quit waxing rhapsodic and let you listen to this interview with Tiffany. Enjoy, my friends. [00:07:30] Rachael Herron: Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show, Tiffany Yates Martin. Tiffany, hello! [00:07:37] Tiffany Yates Martin: Hello, Rachael Herron. I’m so pleased to be here with you. [00:07:41] Rachael Herron: We have been trying to get this particular interview done for a while and I am a fan girl of Tiffany and I want to tell you why. So let me give you a little bit of her bio first. Tiffany Yates Martin has spent nearly thirty years as an editor in the publishing industry, working with major publishers and New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling and award-winning authors as well as indie and newer writers, and she is the founder of FoxPrint Editorial and the author of the bestseller, which is a book I love, Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing. She’s led workshops and seminars for conferences and writers’ groups across the country and is a frequent contributor to writers’ sites and publications. Under the pen name Phoebe Fox, she’s the author of six novels, including the upcoming The Way We Weren’t from Penguin Berkley. Wait, Berkeley is Penguin, right? Yeah. Okay, got that right. And so I looked at the cover of that, that comes out in November, depending on when this goes out, it might already be out. Congratulations on that. It’s a gorgeous cover and it looks like an amazing premise of, [00:08:43] Tiffany Yates Martin: Thank you. I love that cause it’s probably my favorite cover of my books. [00:08:46] Rachael Herron: It’s incredible. [00:08:48] Tiffany Yates Martin: Except Intuitive Editing. [00:08:49] Rachael Herron: Intuitive Editing has a wonderful, wonderful cover. And to be honest, like let’s back up to how we know each other. I know you because I love revision like that is my jam. We both agree, you know, puke out that first draft and then make it something good. And, but I spent, so I spent so many years looking for help with revision, looking for somebody that I could throw to students, somebody who kind of echoed a lot of my own sentiments about revision. And then I found Intuitive Editing. Can you tell us a little bit about that book and how it came to be? How do you come to revision? [00:09:26] Tiffany Yates Martin: This is like one of the reasons I really vibe with you is because everything you talk about on your show is so much, what you just said is everything I wrote the book for, because there’s so much out there about how to write. There’s so little out there about how to revise and edit your own work. [Read more…] about Ep. 267: Tiffany Yates Martin on the Secret to Writing a Good Book (Truly!)Sara Shepard is the author of over thirty novels, including the New York Times bestselling series Pretty Little Liars and the Lying Game, both of which were adapted for television on Freeform. Her latest novel is called Safe in My Arms. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA.
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Rachael Herron: Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing. [00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #266 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So glad that you’re with me today as I talked to the awesome Sarah Shepard, and we talked about what might your characters say at a cocktail party and how can you use that information to help you write deeper, better, stronger characters. So stick around for that, I know you will enjoy listening to her talk about her writing. [00:00:44] What’s going on around here? This is, again, going to be another short update. We are still in our last Wellington Airbnb and in four days, not eight, like I’m showing on camera, four days we move into our house, which is going to be great because then I’m going to have my own office. You won’t be able to hear my wife putting away the dishes as you can probably hear right now. And I just can’t wait. I can’t wait to be home. It has been five and a half months since we moved out of our house. And that is, that’s as long as I can make it, that’s it. We both have, my wife and I both have short timer’s syndrome now, and we are just ready to put something in a drawer and leave it there. On, this is a Thursday as I record. On Saturday, we go over and do the inspection with the landlord, and the people who live there now are going to show us how to work the funny stove and you know, how to run the dryer, those kinds of things. And then on Monday morning, we move in and, I would encourage you, if you don’t follow me on Instagram or, God forbid, Facebook, I do post pictures to Facebook from Instagram, but, I don’t like being there, but Instagram is a place I do like being, even though Facebook owns it, I will be putting pictures up there of what it looks like and what the harbor looks like from the dining room, and from the bedroom, from the yard. I know that you all know how excited I am. [00:02:11] What’s been going on around here? Work-wise, I have been kicking ass at cleaning up those three books that I needed to clean up in order to republish and have all five in this series self-published. I was racing to meet that BookBub deadline and I am making it. I’m finishing the very last of the edits in the next couple of hours and sending them to my amazing assistant, Ed, who will then put everything up and have it ready to go. And that is such a weight off my shoulders. And I think I said this last week, but that means that instead of spending three months doing this, like I could easily have done, I spent two weeks. It was two intense weeks, I will give you that I have done nothing but edit, when I’m not teaching, but then it’s off my plate and I can move on to the next thing. Instead of having this republication of this series weighing on me, it just got done because it had to get done. And that is the way I honestly prefer to live my life. [00:03:12] So that is fantastic. I think that’s really all that I have to update you on and it’s really echoe-y in here anyway. So let’s jump into the interview where it, hopefully will sound a little bit better. I can’t remember where I was when I recorded this with Sarah, but please enjoy the interview and next week when we catch up, I will tell you how it is to be living in a house that we don’t have to move out of in a week or two. So, that’s going to be great. Wherever you are, I hope that you were getting your writing done and we’ll talk soon, my friends. [00:03:47] Do you wonder why you’re not getting your creative work done? Do you make a plan to write and then fail to follow through again? Well, my sweet friend, maybe you’d get a lot out of my Patreon. Each month, I write an essay on living your creative life as a creative person, which is way different than living as a person who binges Netflix 20 hours a week and I have lived both of those ways, so I know. You can get each essay and access to the whole back catalog of them for just a dollar a month, which is an amount that really truly helps support me at this here, writing desk. If you pledge at the $3 level, you’ll get motivating texts from me that you can respond to, and if you pledge at the $5 a month level, you get to ask me questions about your creative life that I’ll answer in the mini episodes. So basically, I’m your mini coach. Go to patreon.com/Rachael R-A-C-H-A-E-L, to get these perks and more. And thank you so much! [00:04:46] Rachael Herron: Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to this so. Shit. I’m going to start all over again. Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show, Sara Shepard. Hello, Sara! [00:04:57] Sara Shepard: Hello! How are you? [00:04:59] Rachael Herron: So nice to see you, I’m fantastic. I’ve already told you, but I’ll tell everybody else. I’m in the bathroom. I’m in the bathroom recording studio of the hotel in Auckland, New Zealand. But I’m so thrilled to talk to you. Listeners have perhaps heard you before, because I did play on the podcast, our interview, that you chat, for when Hush Little Baby came out. So let me give you a bio, cause you are on the hot seat today. Sara Shepard is the author of over thirty novels, including the New York Times bestselling series Pretty Little Liars and the Lying Game, both of which were adapted for television on Freeform. Her latest novel is called Safe in My Arms. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA, and I got an early copy of Safe in My Arms and it was so fun and it kicks off of my boxes of, I just have such a soft spot for that particular kind of book and those particular kinds of women. So thank you for writing. [00:05:55] Sara Shepard: Oh, I’m glad you liked it. [00:05:57] Rachael Herron: My pleasure. It was awesome. So talk to us about. Let’s just start with your like, prolificness. You write a hell of a lot. [00:06:07] Sara Shepard: Yeah.[00:06:08] Rachael Herron: When and where and how do you get it all done? Because, I mean, what year did your first book come out?
[00:06:15] Sara Shepard: The first one came out, I mean technically, I was a ghost writer of other people’s books before I was a writer with my own books so, but the first book that was under my name came out in 2006. [00:06:31] Rachael Herron: Since then, have you also been done ghost writing and your own name or did you just go right to your name? [00:06:36] Sara Shepard: I’ve done a little bit. I’ve done it from time to time. Sometimes, if it’s like an interesting project or sometimes it is a, if I get a strange request from like, you know, years ago, I got a, and I probably, I don’t know if I should like talk about who it was, but I got this very strange request, like, and they’re chewing on a wig. This is the wig that I do for, like cameos. That’s like a creepy, and my dogs are in- [00:07:10] Rachael Herron: If you can hear something in the background in [00:07:14] Sara Shepard: they’re dogs, they’re big and they have decided to come bother me. But yeah, I have done a little bit of ghost writing, but mostly it has been my own stuff since then. But how do I get it all done? Oh my gosh. [00:07:33] Rachael Herron: What is your process? What is on a day on a, this is it’s a writing day. What do you do on a writing day? [00:07:38] Sara Shepard: Yeah. You know, it definitely depends. I am one of those people and it started with me writing Pretty Little Liars and having to write those. So like, you know, I was on like a six month schedule writing those. [00:07:52] Rachael Herron: To write that. [00:07:53] Sara Shepard: Even before that, I, you know, I was used to doing like a lot of different things at once. I was working at a job. I was going to grad school. I was ghost writing novels. Like, I was always kind of used to doing a lot of things. So I am usually doing more than one thing. I sometimes look at authors who are only doing one project. Oh my gosh, these dogs. [00:08:16] Rachael Herron: They’re fine. They’re a 100% fine. [00:08:19] Sara Shepard: I sometimes look at others doing just one project. And I’m like, what does that feel like to devote all of your time to just one thing. So like, for example, today, I have a book that I, I’m about to give to my editor. It’s a first draft. It’s almost done. I have to do a little bit of the end, but I have decided to read through the whole thing to see what the appropriate endings should be. Cause I, that often sometimes happens where, and also, I mean, your listeners won’t see, but I like, print it out and then I have to edit myself on the page, which is completely different than just reading it on your screen and you’d get so much more out of it. So I did. And it’s like, it’s in some ways, my favourite part of the process and in some ways, so boring, because then you have to input all those edits and you’re just like, ugh, and it somehow takes forever. And it just, so that was like a good chunk of my day to day. But then I was also like, I’m kind of working on a ghost writing thing, for this podcast that is being developed into a novel. So some of that, so it was sort of outlining too. So, you know, my days are either working on a draft, working on an outline, or somewhere in between. I should probably spend more time promoting and doing social media and all that stuff, but that’s like my weak, my weakest link, probably. [Read more…] about Ep. 266: Sara Shepard on What Your Characters Might Say at a Cocktail PartyCecilia Gray writes about first love, second chances, and forever friendships. She has written over twenty young-adult and romance titles. That Was Then, a pandemic midlife reboot tale, is her first contemporary mainstream novel. Cecilia used the pandemic for a midlife reboot of her own and is currently slow traveling the world with her two cats. You can read more about her work at ceciliagray.com.
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Rachael Herron: Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing. [00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode # 265 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. Today, I’m talking with the marvelous Cecilia Gray, who is a friend of mine. She is a good friend of mine. And she is so awesome that I honestly based one of my main characters on her once, the main character of Cora’s Heart is based on her. I wonder if she remembers that, probably not. She’s unique, an individual, and a powerhouse, and a talent that is unstoppable. And it was so fun to talk to her about what it is like writing about a pandemic and some of you have come to me and ask this question. Should I be writing about this? Should I not be? So, it was really fun to talk to her about that. I know you’re going to enjoy. What has been going on around here, just work, honestly, just work. If you watch on the YouTube, you can still see that I am in the school house, still here until November 1st. I am recording this on October 22nd. So we’ve got about 10 more, I don’t, can’t do the math, nine more days and then we move into our home and that’s going to be really, really exciting. So I can’t wait for that. [00:01:27] But while I am waiting for that, I am just editing books one through three of the five book romance series that I got back the rights for, books four and five are already up. Books one through three, I am going over again and I tell you, it continues to be incredibly frustrating and also pretty fun because I had forgotten how fun these books are. There are some really fun bits. There are some bits that are just delightful to go through. And also it is very satisfying to bring sentences up to a level that I am happy with. They didn’t all suck, but some of them could be stronger. And so those have been fun to fix. I actually did find a proofer who’s going to go over them. Thank God. I was going to, as I said, last week, I was going to upload them in a hurry and then fix them with a copy edited version later, still going to do that. But I have a reader with an excellent eye who’s going to give them a once over proof before the copy edit, which is absolutely backwards and you shouldn’t do that, but that’s how I’m doing this, this time. So that’s making me feel a little bit better. What else has been happening? I have been working a lot on that a lot, a lot. It’s taking a lot of hours, but then it will be done. And it will be off my plate. And I think I mentioned this last week. That’s great because I could procrastinate the whole Parkinson’s law where things expand to fill the time allotted if I gave myself a month and I could take a month on each book. If I gave myself four days, which is basically what I’ve been giving myself, it can be done in four days. It’s just a lot of work. So I’m doing that. [00:03:36] My 90 days to-done and 90-day revision classes are brilliant. They are filled with the most wonderful people doing an intensely amazing job at writing their books or finishing and revising their books. And I am so proud of them and I’m just so pleased. I don’t talk about them very much because I feel like it’s kind of this secret wonderful, loveliness that is mine, that I get to do every week work with these people. It is my honor to do so. So that has been really, really fun. Also, I’ve just been trying to read a lot and I’m getting that done. I dodged a migraine. Well done me. I took a long, I’ve taken a couple of really long walks in the Wellington Hills, in the wind and have enjoyed myself so much. I find that I really, really love the feeling of the wind pushing against my body so hard, but it feels like I’m going to fall down and me pushing back. It is so incredibly satisfying. [00:04:10] That’s kind of all that’s going on around here, which isn’t too much in comparison to everything that has gone on. So, let’s jump into the interview. First of all, though, I do want to thank new patrons. I can’t remember if I thanked these two last week, but Dorothy John’s daughter, welcome. Thank you and Melinda Findley, hello, welcome. Thank you. And Mara Macntyre and Zoe, thank you so much, Zoe joins at the mini coach level. So don’t forget, you can ask me questions at the mini coach level. I think I have an episode about, was it with almost enough questions to make an episode four. So if you are a patron at the $5 and up level per month, don’t forget you get the essays plus you get to ask me any questions about writing that you want. Please utilize me for that because I really enjoy doing it. [00:04:59] Today, instead of doing the interim little break where I usually announced something, my email list or my book or whatever, I’m going to tell you about Stolen Things. I’m going to give you a little read from the blurb on the book itself because my publisher Dutton Penguin got a BookBub on it. So it’s only 2.99 right now. And that is super, super cool because it’s normally a 13.99 e-book, which just between you and me, I think it’s a lot. I don’t like to pay $13 for an e-book. I really don’t. But I don’t set the prices, we don’t get to, authors don’t get to set the prices when we are talking about traditionally published books. So I say, if you’re interested, go grab it now for 2.99. Let me give you the blurb. It is called Stolen Things. [00:05:45] With one call, her daughter’s life is on the line. It’s always so funny to read these. Writers write everything, but they don’t usually write these. I did not write this. Laurie Amadi has worked as a 911 police dispatcher in her quiet Northern California town for almost two decades, but nothing in her 20 years of experience could prepare her for the worst call of her career. Her teenage daughter, Jojo, is on the other end of the line. She is drugged, disoriented, and in pain. And even though the whole police department springs into action, there’s nothing Laurie can do to help. Jojo, who has been sexually assaulted, doesn’t remember how she ended up at the home of Kevin Leeds, a pro football player, famous for his work with the citizens against police brutality movement. Though she insists he would never hurt her, and she has no idea where her best friend Harper, who was with her the earlier in the evening could be. As Jojo and Laurie began digging into Harper’s private messages on social media to look for clues to her whereabouts, they uncover a conspiracy far bigger than they ever could have imagined. With Kevin’s freedom on the line and the chances of finding Harper unharmed slipping away, plus a dead body that is actually not in this blurb and I think should be. Jojo and Laurie begin to realize that they can’t trust anyone to find Harper except themselves, not even the police department, they’ve long considered family and time is running out. [00:07:11] Let’s see, Iris Johansen, who is a New York Times bestselling author that I don’t know, and therefore this blurb, this is quote is very precious to me. She says, exciting storytelling and great characters make Stolen Things a powerhouse read. The writing is superb, and I can’t wait for her next book. And Crime Reads says, Herron has worked as a 911 dispatcher for many years, and her debut is infused with both the emotional truths and daily details of her life’s work, a textbook study of tension and secrets in small town, America. And Library Journal says, Herron treats us to a thriller that slowly peels back the layers of dirty secrets kept by all the people involved. An intense read, perfect for fans of Karen Slaughter or Lisa Scottellini. So, yeah, it’s, let’s go back to that word that Crime Reads used. I’ve talked about it on the show before, but because they renamed me, because my publisher renamed me R.H. Herron, which is also my name, Rachael Holly Heron. They’re allowed to call me a debut as a thriller writer. I don’t love it because I’m not a debut by any stretch of the imagination, but that is a thing that sells books and bookstores really like it. So that is what they do. Not a debut, but it was a debut for R.H. Herron. This came out last year, year and a half ago, it’s called Stolen Things and it’s $2 and 99 cents. It’ll probably be that way for at least another week, or it could remain that price for a little bit longer. So even if you hear this later, go check it out. That is great price to buy a book for, I’m telling you. And if you did grab it for that super low price, boy would I appreciate a review? [00:08:45] Don’t forget that reviews are the best gift you can give to an author. I don’t care what rating you give me. It is the fact that there is a review that pushes the algorithm. So that is deeply appreciated and do consider it when you’re reading any book. Leave some kind of review if you enjoyed it. I only leave four and five star reviews myself. That’s very easy for me to do. It’s never a lie because if it was a one, two or a three-star book, I would never finish reading it. I don’t have time for that. I only read books that are mostly five stars, because as soon as it turns into like a 3.5 slash 4star book, I just stopped reading it, I abandon it. And I don’t read it. That’s how I work. Not how you work. But do consider leaving reviews for all the books you read. It is so helpful. Okay. I feel like I’ve said a lot and let us move into the interview with Cecilia. She’s so awesome. I know you’re going to love her. Okay. Here we go. And happy writing, my friends. Please don’t forget that you’re a writer and you should be doing a little bit of it too. Okay, here we go. [00:09:45] Rachael Herron: All right. Well, I could not be more excited today to welcome to the show, my friend Cecilia Gray. Hello, Cecilia! [00:09:53] Cecilia Gray: Hello, Rachael! [00:09:54] Rachael Herron: I’m so happy to have you. We have known each other for forever, but let me give a little bio for you for the people who don’t know who you are yet. Cecilia Gray writes about first love, second chances, and forever friendships. She has written over twenty young-adult and romance titles. That Was Then, a pandemic midlife reboot tale, is her first contemporary mainstream novel. Cecilia used the pandemic for a midlife reboot of her own and is currently slow traveling the world with her two cats. You can read more about her work at ceciliagray.com. So congratulations on this new book, which I haven’t read yet, but I am going to, because I love your writing. [00:10:33] Cecilia Gray: Thank you. [00:10:34] Rachael Herron: So I sent you the list of questions and if we get to them, that’s great. If we don’t, we don’t. But talk to me about writing about the pandemic. Because that is something that people are struggling with considering doing. [00:10:50] Cecilia Gray: So I actually wrote about the pandemic during the pandemic in real time. What had sort of happened, I mean, you know, me, you know that I am naturally a plotter like of spreadsheets on spreadsheets on spreadsheets and spreadsheets for character traits. I have spreadsheets for the timeline. They all link up. They all change and you know, there’s lots of formulas involved, and I actually had a book all plotted out. And then when the pandemic happened, I think, I don’t know if you felt this, like a lot of people, I just felt like I couldn’t write the story that I had planned on writing. Like I just felt like, you know, I couldn’t do anything that I had planned on doing. And so I thought, okay, well I have to write something cause, you know if you’re, are you a writer if you’re not writing sure. But you need to be writing something. And so, I think like something happened, I can’t even remember the first scene I wrote, but something happened that hit the news and I thought, well, I’m just gonna write my characters, reacting to this scene. That’s what I’m going to do. [00:11:50] Rachael Herron: So you were already ready writing these characters? [00:11:54] Cecilia Gray: I had the characters in mind, I had who they were and who they were supposed to become in terms of the three best friends that live in San Francisco together, and originally worked together and I was going to have a book for each one. So I thought, well, I’ll just write a scene of them, reacting to the pandemic together. And then that sort of, and then the next time something happened in the news, I was like, well, I will write another scene of them reacting to the pandemics together. And after enough time, I was like, I have enough scenes that this is a book. This is a book now. And I was like, this must be what pantsing is. [00:12:29] Rachael Herron: That’s what I was gonna say about. You’re literally pantsing. You were pantsing in those moments. How did it feel to do? [00:12:35] Cecilia Gray: Oh, it gave me a lot of anxiety. I think, I don’t think you realize how terrible pantsing is to a plotter because you don’t know that it’s, you can’t get, first of all, the pandemic itself was anxiety provoking. And then to put the pressure of your book on top of that was just an extra layer that I wasn’t ready for, but it’s what I had to do. So I, you know, When George Floyd happened, that made it into the book. When the Capitol riots happened, that had to make it into the book. I didn’t know who was going to win when the rest of that didn’t make it in the book and everything that sort of happens in the book had to just happen because of the happened and in a way, it was good, and that it forced me to do a type of character development I’ve never done before, like an organic character development, which I think almost ends up feeling a little more real than when you force character development through these like big plot points that happen. Like then you realize like, actually a lot of character change does happen through small everyday life. And it was trying to find a way to like, capture that it was, but please never, again, [Read more…] about Ep. 265: Cecilia Gray on How To Write About the PandemicAmber McBride is an English professor at the University of Virginia and holds an MFA in poetry from Emerson College. Her poetry has been published in several literary magazines including Ploughshares and The Rumpus. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia with her dog, Shiloh. Me (Moth) is her young adult debut.
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Rachael Herron: Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing. [00:00:15] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #264 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. And I’m so glad that you are here with me today, as I talked to the author of a book that I loved. I absolutely loved this and I filmed this recording way back because I’m quite ahead in schedule, which is an awesome problem to have. And I have been dying to tell you about it. It’s called Me Moth and I could not put it down. I could not put it down. It was incredible. It was gorgeous. And it is different. It is structured differently than any book I’ve read in a long time. It is a novel wrote in poem form and it works. It is magical. So you’re going to love the conversation that I have with Amber. [00:01:11] What’s going on around here? I’ll make it quick because I know I’m already late in uploading this podcast this week, because I was real tired yesterday. The biggest thing, well, I guess there’s one big work thing and one big life thing. Let’s do the life thing first because that’s really, really big. We got the house. We got the three-bedroom house to rent as the upper, as the upper floor of a large house on the side of a hill in Wellington that looks over the harbor. There are Harbor views from the living room, from the kitchen, from the dining room and from the bedroom. The main bedroom and the other two bedrooms don’t have views and that’s great. There’ll be offices. And it has a garden, a very neglected garden, which I will be able to plant flowers and vegetables, hearty things that can stand up to the wind of being on a Wellington hillside. So I’m going to learn about that. But, we move in, it is as I record this the 16th of October, 2021, and we will move in on November 1st. So just about two weeks from now, we will be able to unpack our things for the first time in five months. We will be able to put things in drawers and leave them there. We will be able to buy things. [00:02:35] My consumer tendency has really been quelled and that has felt pretty good. We haven’t bought anything except food because we have had no place to put it. Literally no place. I couldn’t have fit an extra playing card into my luggage that we’ve been carting around. That is a total lie. Now that I say it out loud, because if I turned my head to the right here, I can look up 12 books that I’ve bought. I think that’s all the books I bought since we’ve gotten here. Oh, that can’t be true. It’s got to be, but no, I can think of where a couple more. I am an inveterate book buyer and I will never stop and those just get shoved in the car, where they fit, that will fit in there somewhere, but otherwise we have not been buying anything. [00:03:17] So I’m moving into this house. We really won’t have to buy big stuff, honestly. I think I mentioned it, but this house comes furnished because the people that were taking the lease over from are moving out of the country and they had to get rid of everything. And instead of getting rid of everything one by one, we offered to buy it all because we have nothing. So we bought all their furniture, their outdoor furniture, their barbecue, their kitchen appliances. And it’s feeling like this really exciting grab bag that we have bought. We’re going to go on November 1st and we’re going to start opening drawers and find out what we own. We’re going to say, oh, this is what our towels look like. Oh, these are our sheets. Oh, this is where the couch is comfortable and where it is uncomfortable. And that is so exciting. It’s so exciting. Also exciting is the news that we have, apparently our stuff is in Wellington somewhere. Out of customs, these are the 70 or so small boxes that we shipped over. I don’t, I’m having a real hard time thinking about them. [00:04:20] I don’t need a thing. I have everything I need right here, except most of my boxes, hold unread books. So that’ll be good. I’ll have a little library coming. But I know that I shipped over a bunch of clothes that I don’t need. I have enough clothes right now for about 10 to 12 days without doing laundry. And every place we’ve stayed has had laundry. So you do laundry once a week. I don’t need any extra clothes. I love my clothes. I have t-shirts when I’m writing, t-shirts and yoga pants. And if I leave the house, I wear linen and that’s, that’s it. That’s all I need. The layers have been adequate for the low temperatures and the warmer temperatures that we’re moving into as we move through spring here. We have just entered peony season and if you’re watching on the YouTube, I will just do you a favor. Look, this is as big as my head, you guys. You should really come over. This is, it’s a peony. It’s incredible. It’s pink and huge and as big as my head, open right now, it’s anyway, loving spring, loving Wellington, super excited. [00:05:26] In terms of what’s going on with work, my assistant, Ed, he’s in episode 200 if you want to go hear him speak. He’s the most amazing. He’s also really good at getting Book Bubs. And so he got me a Book bub ad for the fourth book and the Cypress Hollow series. It’s called Cora’s heart. I have not owned the first three books in that series. So whenever we would get a BookBub for Cora’s Heart, we would try to push them on into another series, or to the fifth book in the series and then to another series. A Book bub ad is basically when you set your book to very cheap or free in order to give it away as a lost leader to get people interested in you to read a whole series. What’s really exciting is that I got the rights back for all three, all five of the books in America. I only owned two of them in America and all five of the books in the series from Australia who owned them all, Harper-Collins did, I think, or Random House. I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. I have all the rights back now. However, Harper-Collins in the states, when I got my rights back, they were super proactive. And they pulled down their eBooks, as they should have. [00:06:36] So right now on, also on November 1st, there’s going to be a BookBub for Cora’s Heart, which is book four in a series and books one through three do not currently exist. So suddenly, I am pulling up those old books, making new covers, choosing new titles, uploading them with Ed’s help, who is doing all the heavy lifting. But here’s the big problem. Books one through three were copy edited in the stone ages. I know I mentioned this in a previous episode. They would mail you the pages and you would mail them back when you were done. They were hard copy, copy edits. So I do not own them. I never got the final file. That was not a thing that they gave to authors. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they kept, you know, if they purposely didn’t give that copy edited file to the authors. So what I’m having to do is to go through the books, through these three books, superfast, bring them up to, I’m a better writer now. And so make them a little bit better and make them a little bit cleaner, which has been really fun, but I have to go fast and I will not have time to get them professionally copy edited before I need to put them up. To have them available for people to buy when they want to read books one through three, which they will. Readers fly through series. So I want this up there. This is an advanced dance move and I do not recommend it. I am not happy with this choice that I am making, but it is the choice that I need to make in order to publish these books quickly. [00:08:13] What will happen then is, so the first book, let’s talk about Cypress Hollow one. I have done my edit of it. I am now going to send it to my copy editor. My copy editor will have it for whatever amount of time she needs and then she’ll send it back to me. I’ll accept her changes. And then I will hire a proofer, who will go over it because tiny errors even slipped through a copy edit. So then you hire a proofer and then you can feel pretty comfortable. You can put it up online. It’s good. I’m skipping that at first. I have done my own edit/revision on it. I’m not doing a proof. I put it instead through pro writing aid, which is a tool I really like, and it catches a lot of typos and it does not catch all of them by any means. In doing the revision, I’m sure I have added some typos. And, but after that, that is the, that’s the file we’re going to upload and that’s the file people will buy. [00:09:09] Hopefully, there aren’t too many typos. Hopefully, I don’t get bad reviews immediately that say this is badly edited, typo written. But, I’m not going to trip on it too hard because it still will be copyedited, it still would be proofed. I will be able to re-upload the file because I am self-publishing it, which is so cool. And I can change the file at any time. And then every book moving forward, after I get those done, it’ll be a good, strong, mostly typo-free book, all books have a typo or two. But it’ll be mostly typo-free, by the time I re-upload it. If, for example, I got a hundred reviews, one star reviews says, this is the worst edited book I’ve ever read in my whole life, I will take down that book and I will re-upload it with a new ISBN, and start from scratch. [00:10:01] I’m starting from scratch anyway, with zero reviews, et cetera. So, if that happens, I hope it doesn’t. I hope it’s clean enough. I hope these books are clean enough to pass muster. I write pretty clean anyway, but there are errors. But if that happens, I’ll take them down and restart. So, I’m having to move very, very quickly for the next two weeks, which is super fun for me anyway. And also, it’s good because I think I could have taken probably a couple of months to go through three, these three books and do all the work. And this is forcing me to do it fast. Just like, I just rereleased A Life in Stitches, the 10 year anniversary edition. I don’t want you to go run out and buy it because the audio book is not out yet. And you should probably get the audio book because I read it myself. But if you are interested in reading it with your eyeballs, it is out there. And I had to rush to do that because a knitting retreat wanted 120 copies of it and it needed to get in the mail. So I needed to finish all the uploading. So these books that I have gotten the rights back on, I am being pushed to do them fast. And that is good because I could take forever. [00:11:10] Speaking of that, I just did a little video which you might like, and I will make sure this is, this video is live by the time this podcast is live, go to rachaelherron.com/felt, F-E-L-T as in, I felt silly. And I just recorded four minutes of me doing a lightning round through an old manuscript when I still used words like felt and realized, those words, there’s a bunch of them. But for me, I kind of, my crutch words are felt and realized, especially in the old days, in my early writing. Now they just don’t come out. I don’t write felt or realized for the most part. What felt does, and what realized does is it gives a layer of distance from the character. And when you remove those words, you make the sentences they are in less passive and more active and more voicey. So if you want to see an example of me doing that and kind of talking my way through it, go to rachaelherron.com/felt. This is a micro revision. I will just warn you. This is something that you do at the very last minute, literally before you send it off to your agent or your editor, or right before or before you send it to your copy editor. But it can be a strong change to make. So if that’s something that’s fun for you, come check that video out. That’ll be up on the YouTubes. [00:12:41] Otherwise, let’s jump into the interview with Amber McBride. It was so awesome to talk to her, so exciting and, you should get the book because it is incredible. All right, my friends, happy writing, and we’ll talk soon! [00:12:57] This episode is brought to you by my book, Fast Draft Your Memoir, write your life story in 45 hours, which is by the way, totally doable. And I tell you how. It’s the same class I teach in the continuing studies program at Stanford each year. And I’ll let you in on a secret, even if you have no interest in writing a memoir yet, the book has everything I’ve ever learned about the process of writing and of revision and of story structure, and of just doing this thing that’s so hard and yet all we want to do. Pick it up today. [00:13:30] Rachael Herron: Okay. Well, I could not be more pleased to have on the show, Amber McBride. Hello, Amber! Welcome. [00:13:35] Amber McBride: Hi! How are you? [00:13:36] Rachael Herron: I am so excited to talk to you because I loved, loved your book. Let me give you a little bit of a bio here. Amber McBride is an English professor at the University of Virginia and holds an MFA in poetry from Emerson College. Her poetry has been published in several literary magazines including Ploughshares and The Rumpus. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia with her dog, Shiloh. Me (Moth) is her young adult debut. So we are recording this way in the past. We’re recording this on June 24th and it probably won’t come out for a while because I’m pretty backed up and podcast episodes. When does the book come out? [00:14:13] Amber McBride: It comes out on August 17th. [00:14:15] Rachael Herron: Okay. So it’ll be after. We have time. How, but let’s talk about real quick right now. How are you feeling about leading up to the launch of this book? [00:14:25] Amber McBride: I, it’s amazing. It’s overwhelming. I think every writer says that their first book is, it’s surreal. Like you’re experiencing all the steps, but you’re like, is this real? I’ve dreamt of this, but is it? So I feel like I have a lot of those moments. When Moth was part of Indies introduced, I really was like, I don’t even know. Cause I would always look at the Indies introduced titles. So like it’s just been surreal and amazing and the amount of support with everyone, specifically because of the times we’re living in right now, for so many, 2020 and 2021 debuts has just been so great within the writing community. And it just like was very heartening to like, everyone’s just supporting each other. So it’s just been a wonderful experience. [00:15:09] Rachael Herron: And you are coming into it. Are you going to be able to have an in-person launch? [00:15:13] Amber McBride: As of right now, no. [00:15:16] Rachael Herron: It’s still all virtual? Yeah. [00:15:18] Amber McBride: It’s going to be virtual. I do think some, I’m going to have something at a local bookshop, but it’s not going to be my launch-launch, but I’m still excited. [00:15:25] Rachael Herron: I’m convinced that virtual launches now are the way to go. I had one from my last book a couple months ago and it is so awesome because people can come from anywhere. [00:15:33] Amber McBride: Exactly. And that’s the thing is like one thing, one wonderful thing is we’ve all started using technology more. And the fact that, like you said, anybody can come, it’s nice to have a local one where your, all your friends are there, but they have like that access for like the world. It’s amazing! It’s amazing. [Read more…] about Ep. 264: Amber McBride on How to Write a Novel in VerseBella Mahaya Carter is a creative writing teacher, empowerment coach, speaker, and author of an award-winning memoir, Raw: My Journey from Anxiety to Joy, and Secrets of My Sex, a collection of narrative poems. She has worked with hundreds of writers since 2008 and has degrees in literature, film, and spiritual psychology. Her poetry, essays, fiction, and interviews have appeared in Mind, Body, Green; The Sun; Lilith; Fearless Soul; Writer’s Bone; Women Writers, Women’s Books; Chic Vegan; Bad Yogi magazine; Jane Friedman’s blog; Pick the Brain; the Spiritual Media blog; Literary Mama; several anthologies; and elsewhere. Where Do You Hang Your Hammock? Finding Peace of Mind While You Write, Publish, and Promote Your Book is her most recent book.
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Rachael Herron: Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing. [00:00:15] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #263 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. And today I am talking to Bella Mahaya Carter and it’s one of those interviews, you’ve heard me do it before and you’ll hear me do it again, where I make friends with the person I am talking to. She was a total treat to talk to, and we talk about slowing down. It’s something I’m really, really bad at. So, I know that you will enjoy the interview when we get there. What’s going on around here? Again, I apologize for the sound, which is not up to my normal sound quality, but I am still in a co-working space, in a little town called Carterton. And, I just can’t attach my big microphone here, plus it’s pretty boomy in here so if you hear other voices, that’s because people are walking around doing things, doing their work. It’s a small town, but it’s, I’m really kind of falling for it. There was a fire overnight and burn down the grocery on the corner. And I was just so upset. It was as if it was my own little grocery and, this just such a small town, good small town feel. And, but tomorrow we go, no, wait, I’m sorry. Today, this afternoon, we get to drive to Wellington where we have a three-week stay in an old school house. I’m looking forward to exploring that. I really hope it has good Wi-Fi because I need it. Something that will support zoom, so I won’t have to be in a co-working space, that would be ideal. So fingers crossed on that. [00:01:56] Interestingly, when I was writing earlier, I was just doing my morning pages, which is three pages, longhand, a la Julia Cameron, and absentmindedly, I wrote, this afternoon, we’re going home. Going home to Wellington, going home to the place we hope will be our home. We hope we get that house. We will probably know by the time, next time I do an update on this show, hopefully we will have signed a lease. Everything crossed, if not, we will look for another place and that will be fine. But I’m pretty excited about home. Last night, actually last Sunday, we met up with friends of friends in a town called Palmerston North, a couple hours north of here, and had a lovely meal with new friends. And last night, our Airbnb hosts, Anna and Ross, they had us for dinner. They’ve never had any of their guests for dinner. So we felt very special and it was so lovely to be sitting at a dining table with them and their grandson, Dexter and their friend, Fiona. And we just laughed and ate chicken and gossiped and talked about politics in a really intelligent way, because all New Zealanders are so well apprised on everything that happens in world politics, including American politics. They know more than I do. [00:03:31] And, oh my goodness, Anna made a trifle for dessert. Lala has never had a trifle. And actually, we were just talking about that with the other people on Sunday when we were having lunch. And how delicious trifle is? And I thought in my mind, well, I love trifle. I was raised on trifle for dessert, which is kind of a, it’s a spongy cake soaked in liquor and topped with cream and berries throughout often flowers on the top of your very fancy, like my mother was and like Anna is, and I thought to myself, well, I’ll never have one of those because it’s soaked with Sherry, I think usually, and I don’t drink so. She made a trifle and it had come up in conversation that I don’t drink, and she made a separate trifle for me that was not alcoholic. And yes, I did have some for breakfast this morning and it was delicious. Trifle is always better the next day cause all the cream is soaked into the cake. Ugh. It’s just a delightful. [00:04:30] Anyway, it just felt so good to be with people who could be friends. You could be friends. I am ready for friends. I am gasping for friends. As soon as we put boots down in Wellington, I am going to start going to more 12-step meetings. I’ve heard about a queer stitch and bitch group. I have, I want to get involved with all of the writers, all of the knitters. I need people. I need people since March of 2020, it’s mostly been me and Lala and for the last five months of moving and nine weeks of being here in New Zealand, it has been only me and Lala, and I love her and I am ready for an expanded repertoire of friends as well. This might be something I say every single damn week and I apologize for that. But as writers let’s bring it back to you as a writer, as a writer, you need a life. You cannot write all the time and you can’t wish that you were writing all the time, which is a lot of times what writing looks like. You have to have a life. You have to have an expanded network of people who supports you. So I hope that you have that. Even better than that is to have an expanded network of writers who get what you are going through. I do have a free slack channel. If you have nothing else, come join that. It’s always at the bottom of my podcast show notes. So you can always join that slack from there. Come say, hi, it’s not as active as I would like it to be. And I know that that’s on me cause I’m not as active as I would like to be over there. So let’s shake it up. Let’s have fun over in that slack channel. If you are interested in that, please come join us. [00:06:11] What’s going on in with work? This week, I started editing my very first novel, the one that I wrote in 2006. It became my first novel sold in 2008. It came out in 2010. It’s called How to Knit a Love Song. I got the rights back for the first five. Oh, the all- the whole series of five novels, plus a novella that’s attached. I got the rights back from my publisher in America and my Australian publisher, which was cool. So now I’m republishing those, however, I want to say how difficult this is. So I wrote that for the first, the first draft, of course, I’m not looking at the first draft, but I wrote it for the first time in 2006, that was 15 years ago. I am a much better writer now. For most of all of my most recent books, I normally have somewhere in my email, the copy edited version, because the editor will just kind of send it to you as a common courtesy. Here’s the final draft that we’re going to send before proofing. You don’t usually get the proof file, but you get the copy edited file. Back in the dark ages, 2008-2009, your copy edits would occur on paper. Blue pencil, paper, and then they would have put them in the mail, they would put this precious manuscript that has been slaved over for hours and hours and hours by a copywriter, in the mail to you, you know, signed delivery, you would get it, you would go through them and you would accept or reject on the page and then you would put that back in the mail and it would go to them. So for it, I gonna guess for at least three or four of these five books, I don’t have the copy edited version, which means that all of the gorgeous clean-up that my copy editor did, not just for typos, because that’s more of a proofing job, but for copy edits, you know, making the sentences more readable, checking for echoes and duplications of words when you’re, when you’re overusing a word. None of that is there. [00:08:10] So I’m having to do it. And I always have this idea that this kind of thing goes quickly. It does not. It goes slowly. I slaved over it for hours of the day and I got 30 pages and it’s a 420-page book. And it’s due to my copy editor on Monday. It is Thursday as I record this. So we will see. Katrina, I hope I get it to you on time. Katrina is a freelance copy editor. And she’s been on my show, Katrina Turner. She’s fantastic. And when we have freelance editors, we honor that deadline because this is how they feed their families too. This is not just somebody working at a publishing house. Who’s going to get a bill, who’s going to get a paycheck, no matter what I do. No. I’m going to hit that deadline somehow. But what I am doing, I actually moved the whole thing into pro writing aid, which is a, an app that I really like. I think I’ve, am I paying yearly? I can’t remember. I may have just paid outright for this particular app. I think that’s what I did and it kind of copy edits on the way. I only have it turned on for typos, duplicated words, that kind of thing. And then I’m editing inside that because it will export it to a clean document and then I will send it to my copy editor and she’ll find a million more things. And that is what I am paying her to do, but it is, I always think it’s going to go fast. It just doesn’t go quickly. It is a special kind of agony to I’m super grateful that I get to do this. I’m super grateful that I get to bring some of the language into a better alignment that makes my soul happier. [00:09:47] I don’t have time to re-do every sentence. And honestly, I don’t need to, this is a beloved book. It is not my favorite book I ever wrote, but it is the favorite of many of my readers, I think because it has some big tropes that people really liked to read that kind of strokes that, oh, I want that juicy, delicious, terrible stalker guy plus hot rancher, plus wish fulfillment in a, the quest from a will, so all of that kind of fun stuff, people really liked this book. I don’t need to stress myself out over it so much, and I am enjoying it. And I’m trying to enjoy the process rather than get lost in every sentence that I couldn’t make better. I need to remember the 80% rule. I’m going to do 80% of my best. I can’t do a 100% of my best. I could labor over this 15-year-old book for months and I absolutely refuse to do so. I’m going to try to do it in four days. [00:10:50] That is what I am up to this week. I will get back to you next week on how it went. So, I hope that you are getting some writing done in some format. 15 minutes before you go to work in the morning is enough to make you a writer. A writer writes. That’s all. That’s all. Are you writing? You’re a writer. Are you not writing? That doesn’t make you not a writer, you’re still a writer. You’re listening to writing podcasts. You know you’re a writer in your heart. Just claim that a little bit. Find me online, where I live. Tell me how it’s going. I’d love to hear about that. And let’s jump into the interview. I wish you happy writing. Next week I hope I have some good news about our rental. Okay, bye ya’ll! [00:11:36] Hey, you’re a writer. Did you know that I send out a free weekly email of writing encouragement? Go sign up for it at www.rachaelherron.com/write and you’ll also get my Stop Stalling and Write PDF with helpful tips you can use today to get some of your own writing done. Okay, now onto the interview. [00:11:53] Rachael Herron: Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show today, Bella Mahaya Carter. Hello, Bella! [00:11:59] Bella Mahaya Carter: Hello, Rachael. Thank you for having me. I’m delighted to be with you today. [00:12:03] Rachael Herron: It’s a thrill to talk to you. And a lot of times, what I love happens is when you make the connection before the show, which we have already done. So now we’re just like rolling full steam into the interview, having already enjoyed each other’s presence. But let me give you a little bio for those who might not know you. Bella Mahaya Carter is a creative writing teacher, empowerment coach, speaker, and author of an award-winning memoir, Raw: My Journey from Anxiety to Joy, and Secrets of My Sex, a collection of narrative poems. She has worked with hundreds of writers since 2008 and has degrees in literature, film, and spiritual psychology. Her poetry, essays, fiction, and interviews have appeared in Mind, Body, Green; The Sun; Lilith; Fearless Soul; Writer’s Bone; Women Writers, Women’s Books; Chic Vegan; Bad Yogi magazine; Jane Friedman’s blog; Pick the Brain; the Spiritual Media blog; Literary Mama; several anthologies; and elsewhere. Where Do You Hang Your Hammock? Finding Peace of Mind While You Write, Publish, and Promote Your Book is her most recent book. So welcome! [00:13:10] Bella Mahaya Carter: Thank you, Rachel. [00:13:11] Rachael Herron: We’re going to talk all things writing today, but, so I’m a little bit backed up in episodes right now. So your podcasts won’t be coming out for a little while, but as you and I are speaking, it just came out last week. Is that right? [00:13:22] Bella Mahaya Carter: It came out last Tuesday, June 1st and June 3rd was my virtual launch and it was so much fun. [00:13:28] Rachael Herron: How did the virtual launch go? [00:13:30] Bella Mahaya Carter: It was fabulous! I was, you know, I really got to benefit from the people who, the authors, who I published with. She writes press, and we have this Facebook community of women authors. It’s fabulous. And we pick each other’s brains. And when I was completing this book, I knew that I had to include a chapter on the virtual launch because it was 2020, and people were having to pivot to the virtual launch. And, you know, I got to speak to three people and interview them and pick their brains. And I got so much good information. So that by the time 2021 came around, I was ready. I don’t know, like those brave authors in 2020. [00:14:06] Rachael Herron: Oh. My God. [00:14:07] Bella Mahaya Carter: Bless them. It was not easy to have to make, you know, all, they had all their launch plans in place and they had to change everything. [00:14:18] Rachael Herron: I recently launched a book and I don’t ever want to do it any other way. I love the virtual lunch. [00:14:19] Bella Mahaya Carter: That’s great. [00:14:20] Rachael Herron: Absolutely love it. What would be your top tip for a writer doing a virtual launch? [00:14:25] Bella Mahaya Carter: Oh, I have a lot of tips. Top tip would be, pay attention to the frame. You know, thinking that as a set, it is a set. It’s your, it’s your background. So pay attention to what’s in it. You know, don’t set up your computer in a place that’s busy, that’s cluttered, that’s crowded, that is visually stressful. [00:14:45] Rachael Herron: Yeah. And, for those of you, few of you who watch on YouTube, look at Bella’s background right now, it is perfect. I will describe it for the listeners. She’s got her book over to the right and behind her, you can see that her fireplace burning cheerfully. And then there’s a red tablecloth with fresh flowers and a red chair. And there’s outside greenery behind her. Your shirt goes with the painting behind you. Was that on purpose or was that on accident? [00:15:13] Bella Mahaya Carter: That’s, you know, I would say that was unintentionally intentional. I mean, the truth is like I bought that painting years ago at Goodwill for $5 and I love it. It’s in my living room and I once had a photo shoot at my house and I wore, and that was years ago, and I have, I’ve wore for that photo shoot in the living room, what I’m wearing now. [00:15:34] Rachael Herron: The jewel tone. [00:15:36] Bella Mahaya Carter: So I think, yeah, I think I just kind of unconsciously remembered that and knew it would work in the living room. I haven’t used like, for my launch. I was in my office. I was, there were books behind me. I had pink flowers to match my book cover. I thought about in terms of wardrobe I thought about, okay, well then I actually went out and bought a green top and a pink top. And then before the event, I tried them on, I set up my zoom camera. I looked at it and with the help of my husband, who’s a great partner, and we’re like, I don’t know, those don’t really look that great. So I went into my closet and I just pulled out a white top. And the white top, you know, it was just something I had in my closet and I put it on and I looked at myself and I, and for some reason, you know, it was kind of working. And then I thought to myself, oh, that’s interesting. I’m not the hammock. I’m not the trees. I’m the sky. [00:16:25] Rachael Herron: Oh, I love that! [00:16:27] Bella Mahaya Carter: And it was unconscious. But, that’s how it was. [00:16:31] Rachael Herron: Wow! And the testing of it, the iteration is what I really, really like. That is something that I almost put no thought into. And right now, I’m living in the stage house with a strange painting that isn’t mine and weird curtains. [00:16:44] Bella Mahaya Carter: That’s actually really cool. That painting is really cool. [Read more…] about Ep. 263: Bella Mahaya Carter on How to Slow Down