Podcast Archives

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

January 27, 2022

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

Transcript:

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

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #262 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. I am so glad that you are here with me today as I talked to J.L. Torres on reading like a writer, and what that can do for our work, for our stories, for kind of our brains as writers doing this weird thing that we do, so I know that you’re going to enjoy the interview portion of today’s episode. What is going on around here? If you watch on the YouTube, you can see, I don’t know why this light makes my face bright red, but it is. I’m going for tomato Rachael in the house. I am in a co-working space in a very small town called Carterton. We are staying in a very small Airbnb and I needed to get out and also I needed a fast Wi-Fi. So I’m very glad that this place is here and that I get to use it. And I have been using it wisely. I finished the audio editing of the 10th anniversary re-release of A Life in Stitches. And I tell you what, I am going to look into perhaps saving some money to get someone to edit that next time. What happens, what I’m talking about when I’m talking about doing this editing is before we left the states, I lined my closet because it was empty. We’d moved everything out of it. And I thought this is a great time. And I needed to get it done, lined my closet with blankets and things to make it a soundproof or sound, what’s the word? Buffered. That’s not the right word, but you know what I mean, area to record in and I recorded it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:12:53] Do you wonder why you’re not getting your creative work done? Do you make a plan to write and then fail to follow through again? Well, my sweet friend, maybe you’d get a lot out of my Patreon. Each month, I write an essay on living your creative life as a creative person, which is way different than living as a person who binges Netflix 20 hours a week and I have lived both of those ways, so I know. You can get each essay and access to the whole back catalog of them for just a dollar a month, which is an amount that really truly helps support me at this here, writing desk. If you pledge at the $3 level, you’ll get motivating texts from me that you can respond to, and if you pledge at the $5 a month level, you get to ask me questions about your creative life that I’ll answer in the mini episodes. So basically, I’m your mini coach. Go to patreon.com/Rachael R-A-C-H-A-E-L, to get these perks and more. And thank you so much!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 27, 2022

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

Transcript:

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #261 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. And I’m so pleased that you were here today, we are talking to Saumya Dave and we’re talking about her overnight success, which took 10 years to occur her 10-year path to publication. And she was at the light. You are going to love the episode. I know that’s predictable when I say that but luckily, I only put people on the show who I like. So, if I ever did have a disastrous interview, you wouldn’t hear it, so it’s pretty, so yes, I do say those words over and over again, and I am always delighted to know that it’s going to be a good interview and you’re gonna enjoy it. That’s fun.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 27, 2022

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

Transcript:

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #260 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. And I’m so excited that you’re here with me today, as I talk to Lexie Elliott, who was so cool to talk to. I absolutely loved her thriller, How to Kill Your Best Friend. Couldn’t put it down. It was about swimming and you know I’m kind of passionate about swimming and we talk about using authenticity in your main character and also how threading in clues might be easier than you think a thing that we have talked about here recently on the show.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 27, 2022

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

Transcript:

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #259, this is a bonus mini episode answering your questions. If you are at the Patreon level of $5 and up a month, you can ask me any questions you want. I’m only got one today, so it’s going to be a short episode, but it’s a good one. And it’s going back to my roots of what I really love to talk about. So let’s get into it. This is from Kate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Ep. 258: Kristan Higgins on How to Write Forward Without Looking Back

January 27, 2022

New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins has sold 4.5 million books worldwide and is published in more than two dozen languages around the world. Her two most recent novels were each selected as People magazine’s “Pick of the Week.” Kristan is also a cohost of the Crappy Friends podcast, which discusses the often complex dynamics of female friendships, with her friend and fellow writer, Joss Dey. Higgins lives in Connecticut with her family. Pack Up the Moon is her most recent novel.

Transcript:

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #258 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So pleased that you are here with me today, as we are talking to the always fabulous Kristan Higgins. She’s been on the show before; she’ll probably be on it again someday. We talk about, not looking back as you go forward in your work. I know you’re going to enjoy that interview. So stay tuned for that. What is going on around here? Well, we’re still at the beach house. We have one more full day. We have tomorrow as our full day here, unless we get locked down again, suddenly, God forbid, cause I’m ready to go. We are going to on Sunday, pick up and move and drive through Auckland. So let me break it down. All of New Zealand now, a little bit more than three weeks after the hard crunch lockdown at level four, that was lockdown as you get, you don’t leave the house except for a short walk and you can’t do anything else. You’re, you don’t go anywhere. You don’t see anybody. We were at level four, then we went to level three. Now we’re at level two. All of New Zealand is at level two, except for Auckland, which is still at level four. So we had one community case of COVID. It was a Delta variant. They locked down over that, within two weeks, there were 700 cases. They were all genome sequence. They were all tracked. They’re all being cared for. It’s up to about 800 now, but yesterday we only had 20 reported inside Auckland.

[00:01:50] The only place that the coronavirus is right now is inside Auckland. And let me tell you, when you shut the city down and you don’t let anyone in or out. It can’t get out. It doesn’t get out, which is why the rest of us are at level two. And what level two is, is basically everything’s back to normal. It’s kind of like the states without the fear, because right now everybody’s back at work back at school, but you have to wear a mask when you’re indoors, except when you’re in a gym or eating in a restaurant. But the difference between being here and in the states is that, you know that no one around you has Coronavirus because they’re tracking the wastewater in these areas. They know from wastewater that right now, the only people with COVID-19 are in Auckland.

[00:02:37] The New York times did an article about a week ago saying, is New Zealand dreaming? Is this an impossible goal to eradicate the Delta virus? It may be, it may be. But so far it’s working, it’s really working and it’s so exciting. So, we are allowed to leave Northland now and drive through Auckland if we don’t stop and you have to have a reason and you have to have an address that you’re going to. There is disagreement as to when you look at the newspapers, are you allowed to drive through Auckland for other than business purpose? We can’t say that our purpose is business to drive through Auckland but I asked the government, if we could do it. I asked on Twitter, I asked the New Zealand government who is in charge of the COVID response. I said, we would like to move from Airbnb to Airbnb and drive through Auckland without stopping. And they said, yes, you can. You’re allowed to.

[00:03:36] So I screenshotted that in case. So there are, there’s police at the borders of Auckland. So I can show them that, but we were ready to move or going to Mount Montgomery, which is just outside of Tauranga or maybe as part of Tauranga, I’m not sure. And it’s a small surfing town and it looks beautiful and we are, we’re really ready to be in a place where we can walk somewhere and buy something because the, where we are right now, it’s about a 15-minute drive from town, which is fantastic. It’s the most beautiful 15-minute drive you’ve ever taken, but we’re looking forward to being able to walk and get a coffee and get groceries and, do all that stuff that we came here to do. When we leave on Sunday, we will have been in this house for a month. Which I cannot believe. But what that means is that Russell, we’re actually at south of Russell, we’re in but this area now feels like home. Like we put down roots here. It feels like this glorious beach house is mine.

[00:04:40] And that’s going to be difficult because in Mount Montgomery, we were just renting an apartment. You know, it’s going to have normal windows that look out on normal window things like other houses and cars instead of the variable oyster catcher and the white faced Herron and the pied cormorants otherwise known as the pied shags. Which is definitely my next band name. I’m going to really, really miss this place. I feel like it’s gotten deep into my soul like some places do. I feel like I’m going to keep dreaming about this house and the walks, the long walks that I take out on the deserted road, in the high wind rain whipping around, like, I’m going to dream about this place forever. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to afford to come back and rent it. I found out that I just looked at Airbnb, cause we’re renting an under the table from this guy. It’s not under the table. He gets to run it to whoever he wants to at a very, very reduced rate. Like I’ve mentioned, although it’s still a little pricey for us and he rented for $500 a night in winter! It’s $1,500 a night in summer, so I doubt we’ll ever come back, but I bet we’ll drive down the road and walk down the beach and look up at our house.

[00:05:55] I’m very excited that the fancy restaurant in town just opened and you can order online or by phone, which I did. And you order a day in advance and tomorrow night they are delivering like a five course meal to us, the fancy, fancy restaurant, like, you know, truffle glaze for genie muscles drawn from the sea kind of thing and delivery means are going to go to the end of the road and text us and we’ll walk out along the beach to go pick up our dinner and that’s delivery because we don’t have an address here. And it’s been wonderful and I’ve done so much writing. And actually today I’m just finishing, writing up my next Patreon essay. So if you are interested in Patreon and reading the essay about really what lockdown is like and what it feels like to be doing this as an American and as a New Zealand citizen. The differences that we have felt. I mean, they’re obvious but I really enjoyed kind of comparing and contrasting what we thought we were coming here to do, which was to be unstuck.

[00:07:04] And we have been stuck in a couple of different places in the MIQ Hotel and in this house and how kind of wonderful all of that feels. And what does that mean moving forward? I think I mentioned last time, that we might have a line on a house in Wellington, which we might be able to rent and it’s got an amazing view. It would make up for losing this view. And my heart is just yearning toward that. So apparently no matter how footloose and fancy free, I want to be moving towns every week, I would like to not do that in a few months, maybe two to four or five months, I would like to rent a house and just settle down for a while and make some friends that is something I’m missing is just the chit chat that you have with your friends. And I would like to have that with a barista. Who knows who I am and the, you know, the guy at the grocery store and meet some writers. I really want to be in a town and meet some writers and hang out with them.

[00:08:97] Actually I’m going to reach out to one of the spa girls, if you listened to their podcast, it’s awesome. And she lives in Tauranga. So I’m going to reach out to her and maybe have a coffee. If she lets me, have a tea, so that’ll be nice. I think I’ve catch you up on everything else. That’s going on around here. I did start my classes on Tuesday and they’re going to be amazing. The people in them are just as always sublime and I’m doing a couple of new things with the classes going a little bit deeper into how to get a book done in 90 days, as I am writing the 90 day to done book, I’ve been thinking of new things. So they’re kind of my guinea pigs, in the best way they’re getting kind of the best of what I know. And that is really pretty stupendous and amazing that I was able to do that from a beach house at the far north of New Zealand where I am number 36 of the top 100 E. birders on the app. I’ve got to brag on that. I have identified 22 species of birds, me and my binoculars, so that’s not what I was expecting to do for our first month in the wilds of New Zealand, but it has been wonderful.

[00:09:23] So with that update, let us, oh, well let me, actually thank a couple of new patrons, if you don’t mind, they were open and then they closed because the internet does kind of go up and down here, but here it is. Juliet Kelly. Thank you, Juliet and Amber Reed. Thank you. Thank you so much new patrons, new and current existing patrons and all of the patrons of the past. Thank you so much. Because of you, I get to spend the time writing these essays that are the essays of my heart, that I love, love, love to do, so thank you very, very much. All right. My friends, it doesn’t matter whether you wrote yesterday and it doesn’t matter whether you have written yet today. Can you find 10 or 15 minutes today to write some really terrible words. Words that let you down., and words that will not let you down in the future when you go back to them and you make them a little shiny, a little brighter. I know that you can do that. Please find me where I am online and tell me how you are doing with this request that you write, because your story is important. Only you can tell it and I want to read it. So, keep me posted my friends and enjoy this interview with Kristan Higgins. I know you will.

[00:10:39] 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!

[00:11:37] Rachael Herron: I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show, Kristan Higgins. Hello, Kristan!

[00:11:43] Kristan Higgins: Hi Rachael! So good to see you again.

[00:11:45] Rachael Herron: It’s a thrill to talk to you. I don’t think I’ve seen you in a while!

[00:11:49] Kristan Higgins: Years

[00:11:49] Rachael Herron: Well, we haven’t got a conference. I had you talk to one of my classes one time, and that was awesome, but I’m so glad to welcome you to the show. Let me give a little introduction for those who may not know you. New York Times bestselling author, Kristan Higgins has sold 4.5 million books worldwide and is published in more than two dozen languages around the world. Her two most recent novels were each selected as People magazine’s “Pick of the Week.” Kristan is also a co-host of the Crappy Friends podcast which discusses the often complex dynamics of female friendships, with our friend and fellow writer, Joss Dey. Kristan lives in Connecticut with her family and Pack up the Moon is her most recent novel. So that’s, you’ve got a lot going on. Plus, you’ve got the daughter getting married. We were just talking about off air. Oh, my goodness! Well, congratulations on a new book. I am in the middle of it and loving it, and it is such a tear jerker.

[00:12:46] Kristan Higgins: Yeah, i know

[00:11:48] Rachael Herron: It’s gotta be your tear jerkiest. Right?

[00:12:50] Kristan Higgins: It definitely is, and I say that with pride, you know, I love books that affect me so much that I cry. And I think there’s something really cathartic and healing, and it’s like a gift to be able to cry over a fake person, a fictional person, you know, because sometimes it’s harder to cry in real life, over real people because you have so much going on and you have to take care of things and details. And other people’s grief. And so when you’re reading a book and it’s sad and you have a good blubber, you know, there’s something great about that. And I mean, I hope you’re finding too that it’s not just a sad book, you know? It’s

[00:13:39] Rachael Herron: Oh no, not at all. It’s a tear jerker but it’s moving.

[00:13:43] Kristan Higgins: Yeah. The premises is clear, you know, a young woman with a terminal illness writes 12 letters to her husband to kind of walk him through that first year of widowhood for him because she knows, you know, that she’s the best thing that ever happened to him. And that he’s not going to have an easy time of it. And that she’s his person. So she’s going to take care of him even after she’s gone, so I think it’s very romantic in that sense. And, you know, it’s a love story. It’s a tragic love story, but without being a plot spoil, it does have a happy ending.

[00:14:25] Rachael Herron: I’m feeling that I’m feeling that’s going to happen. I’m very confident in that. But also like it’s just, I think it’s a really good time for this book to come out. I think people have had a lot of feelings and a lot of us included, you know, I struggle with feeling feelings, and this is a way to do that.

[00:14:50] Kristan Higgins: We all have had such a, the whole world has had such a rough 18 months plus, and we’ve all gone through this trauma and uncertainty. And I think, you know, for me, certainly, and I think for most people we’ve never really felt the possibility of our immortality, more realistically than we have in this past pandemic, you know, where I’m, you know, I was just doing another interview earlier and I said, you know, I’m Hungarian and we think about death all the time. We it’s our hobby, it’s our, you know, the song of my people is to plan a funeral, you know, and yet every time in the past year or so, year and a half, going to the supermarket might be the last thing that, you know, that keeps you out of the house, you know, that puts you into the hospital or, you know, and I would think that I would go out and say like, is this the day I get COVID I’ve got two masks and my hand sanitizer, and I’m doing all the distancing and, you know, being as careful as can be, but, so were a lot of people who caught it. So I do think that like, as a nation and as a, you know, as a world, we’ve all been in mourning, we’ve all been looking at the possibility of the death of our loved ones. You know, my daughter’s a nurse, she just became,

[00:16:18] Rachael Herron: Oh my gosh. That’s amazing. And good for you for raising a woman like that

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Ep. 257: Cassandra Lane on How to Parent Yourself as a Writer

January 27, 2022

Cassandra Lane is a writer and editor based in Los Angeles. Lane received her MFA from Antioch University LA. Her stories have appeared in the New York Times’s Conception series, the Times-Picayune, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and elsewhere. Her debut memoir We Are Bridges was published in 2021 by Feminist Press. She is editor in chief of L.A. Parent magazine and formerly served on the board of the AROHO Foundation.

Transcript:

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode # 257 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. I’m so pleased with that you are here with me today as I talked to Cassandra Lane. She was absolutely smashing to talk to. And we really talk a lot about the process of writing and how to take care of yourself as a writer, even, shall we say, how to parent yourself as a writer, which I thought was a really interesting thing to talk about. So I know you will enjoy the interview and what’s going on around here? Well, we are still in lockdown in New Zealand in the Northland. But we just went from level four, which is the most extreme lockdown: you don’t go anywhere, you don’t do anything at all, except to the grocery store if you need to, to level three. Nothing changes. You still have to stay in your bubble. You still have to not go anywhere. We still can’t leave this Airbnb on the water. It’s real rough, piteous. The one thing that changes is that you can get takeout and I’m going to be able to go kayaking. Really? What else do we need? This morning it happened, we went to level three, up here. Auckland below us is still at level four. We need to drive through Auckland in order to leave this place. So we’re kind of here until Auckland goes off of level four, which is going to be about another week and a half, hopefully. Hopefully that will go down to level three and then we can move to a new apartment, which is more affordable. But in the meantime, we’re going to enjoy the crap out of this. But this morning, while my wife and I were working, I said, “Hey, you want to go get a coffee?” And we went and got the best coffee ever. She got a Cappuccino, I got a latte. We got it from a person, we went to a place, to buy a thing. It was amazing!

[00:02:11] It was so, so, so good. I’m still giddy on the fumes and the high of getting that coffee. It was wonderful. Unfortunately, I will admit, it threw me off my game, leaving the house during my writing time, getting so excited about the coffee. I have not written today. And I’ve been doing really, really well with those daily Pomodoros, getting my work done, and I haven’t done it yet. So, I’ve got a little bit of guilt and a little bit of angst around it. So, I will be getting that done after I upload this. I apologize for the days recently where it hasn’t gone out on a Friday, or it has come out on Saturday or even I think one came out on the Sunday. I can’t keep my day straight, even though I’m a day ahead of the United States. My brain is all confused and it just makes me feel like I have a lot more time to get you the show, which means I don’t do it. And also, the Wi-Fi speed here is okay, but it’s not great for uploading YouTube videos. So I’m behind in uploading a couple of the YouTube videos of the podcast in case you watch on that, I apologize for that. I keep meaning to do it when we go to bed so that it can be the only thing using the internet when we go to sleep, but I’m tired, and I have forgotten every night, for a week. So, I’m feeling pretty relaxed and my brain is showing that I really, really love being here. I love the walks that I’m taking through the rain and through the sun and just being surrounded by this much beauty is incredible. Also, it has cemented our belief that when we do eventually settle down, we want to settle down within walking distance of a cafe and/or a grocery store.

[00:04:01] For the last 15 years, before we moved here, we had to drive at least 20 minutes to get to somewhere to get anything. And you know, we’re back to that and that’s awesome. And we drive through the most gorgeous countryside you’ve ever seen in order to get coffee or to go to the grocery store, but I’m ready to just walk. We had those six beautiful days in Auckland where we walked everywhere and got everything and this was pre-lockdown. So no masks, everybody inside, it just felt normal for a while. I know that there’s a lot of talk about what’s going on in New Zealand with the lockdowns. Right now, the goal is elimination of coronavirus, which is what they have done a couple of times successfully before by a total lockdown, keeping it out of the country.

[00:04:52] There was an article in the New York Times this morning saying, “Can New Zealand really do it?”, because the Delta strain is so much more easily spread. I don’t know. I don’t think they’re going to keep us in lockdown forever if we can’t corale it. But, to be fair, we had one case. It, what was it about, a week and a half ago, and that’s one, maybe two weeks ago, when we locked down. We had one case in the community. It is now up to 700 cases. And I was like, oh my God, that’s so many. And all of those people have been, you know, quarantined. They’re all there, I think there’s 20 people in the hospital. No one has died. Only 26 people have died of COVID, total, since coronavirus started in New Zealand. And, in kind of a comparison last night, I was curious and I pulled up the states that are closest in size to New Zealand, New Zealand has 5 million people. Alabama and Minnesota both have about a million people. Alabama, yesterday, reported almost 5,000 cases in one day. We have 700 cases in the country, total. Of course, you know, that’s Alabama.

[00:06:00] So it’s a little bit different from Minnesota. They reported 1400 cases in one day. We’ve had 700 cases over the course of two weeks and all of those people are being tracked and monitored. Everyone in the country is being tracked and monitored and that might fly, that might not fly so well in the United States. We really have a group of people in New Zealand who are willing to turn on their Bluetooth, willing to use the COVID tracer app, wherever they go. And that is why I, I’m still hopeful that we can stamp out Delta here. If not, they’re rolling out the vaccines as fast as they can. About 25% of the population now is vaccinated. Everybody, almost everybody, wants to be vaccinated. Of course, there are some anti-vaxxers. There’s one guy protesting in Auckland a few days ago. Just one guy, they gave him a ticket.

[00:06:57] They were the last developed nation to get the vaccine, New Zealand was, because they didn’t really have much need of it. Could they have done a better job at getting the vaccine in? Probably, I don’t know. I don’t profess to know much about New Zealand politics, although I am trying to learn. So people are very, very eager to get the vaccine so that Delta being out and in the society would be not acceptable because it’s not acceptable, but a little bit better and a little bit less scary for them. New Zealanders are scared of this as, I can’t even imagine, like when Delta came out, everyone I knew had the vaccine, so at least we knew that if we got it, we wouldn’t get it sick and go to the hospital and die. But, right now, the vast majority of new Zealanders don’t have the vaccine and they, we don’t need Delta raging through the community. But, anyway, that’s enough of that. I just find it really interesting and still so fascinating to watch the response here and how everybody just pulls together. It’s unreal. It really, really is. It’s wonderful to see.

[00:08:06] I would like to quickly thank new patrons, Mary Poliath and Mary M. Barnett. Hello, Mary. Sarah McKenzie and Carol and Cecilia, what a pretty name. I apologize if I mispronounce any of those, I just got a visual migraine while we’ve been sitting here. So while I’m looking at the camera, I can’t really see it. It just looks like lightning. Visual migraines don’t always go along with pain migraines in my life. So I’m hoping I don’t get one of those cause I don’t feel migraine-y at all. And oh, speaking of Patreon, I will say that I am a proud and happy member of Becca Syme’s Patreon. And you know how I feel about Becca Syme. If you have not heard my interview with Becca Syme, S-Y-M-E go back, find that, listen to it. I love her. And, I will say that the, one of the reasons I didn’t write this morning is that I’m taking her Facebook ads for intuitives, of course. Which is basically, make an ad somewhere and then track it intuitively, not looking at a hundred different numbers and cost per click and all of those other things. Here’s how you look at it intuitively. And I’m loving it. I actually created a Facebook ad this morning and it was fun to do. So I am thinking about that and if you are looking for a person to become a patron of, number one, you can look at me at $5 and up. I’m your mini coach. You know that at $1 and up I’m eternally grateful. That’s Rachaelherron.com/ no, it’s not. It’s at patreon.com/Rachael. But after that, really consider patronizing Becca Syme. You can just find her by searching Patreon – Becca Syme. She’s definitely the person I love being a patron of most. She provides so much value to her patrons. I just wanted to give a non-sponsored, non-affiliated plug for that. I just love everything she does. So, you might want to check her out.

[00:10:14] In the meantime, let us just get into the interview with Cassandra. I know you’re going to enjoy it. I hope you are getting some writing done, my friends, visual migraine, or not. Actually, you know what, if you have a visual migraine, just go lie on the floor till it passes because it will. Oh, I am feeling scattered today and I will just tell you my favorite visual migraine story in 30 seconds or less. The very first time I ever got a visual migraine, I was about 25 and I had just curled my eyelashes for the first time. It was a total coincidence, but I thought I had made myself blind by curling my eyelashes and it was a very scary morning. Now I scrub my eyelashes every day because that’s one of the things I like to do and I don’t normally get visual migraines. Okay. That is all. I’m silly today. It’s the coffee. All right, my friends, happy writing to you.

[00:11:06] 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.

[00:11:23] Rachael Herron: Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show, Cassandra Lane. Hello, Cassandra!

[00:11:29] Cassandra Lane: Hi, Rachael, how are you?

[00:11:31] Rachael Herron: I’m so glad to talk to you, I’m so excited. Let me give you a little bit of an introduction here. Cassandra Lane is a writer and editor based in Los Angeles. Lane received her MFA from Antioch University LA, Louisiana. Louisiana?

[00:11:44] Cassandra Lane: No, at Los Angeles.

[00:11:45] Rachael Herron: Oh, it’s actually LA, okay. Her stories have appeared in the New York Times’ Conception series, the Times-Picayune, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and elsewhere. Her debut memoir, We Are Bridges was published in 2021 by Feminist Press. She is editor in chief of L.A. Parent magazine and formerly served on the board of the AROHO Foundation. What’s the AROHO Foundation?

[00:12:07] Cassandra Lane: It’s A Room of Her Own.

[00:12:08] Rachael Herron: Oh, I did not know that. Well, let’s start off by saying I’m a memoir junkie.

[00:12:18] Cassandra Lane: Oh, yeah.

[00:12:19] Rachael Herron: Absolutely. It’s just probably my favorite genre to read and to write, and We Are Bridges was just absolutely stunning.

[00:12:27] Cassandra Lane: Thank you so much.

[00:12:28] Rachael Herron: It was haunting, it was traumatic, it was about trauma, generational trauma. And you just did such an incredible job, and I felt honored to walk with you through that and kind of see things through your eyes. So thank you so much for writing it. At the end of the show, I want you to tell people what it is and what it is about.

[00:12:52] Cassandra Lane: Okay.

[00:12:53] Rachael Herron: But, as we get started, as we normally do, let’s talk about process because you sound very busy. How do you write, how do you get it done? Where does it live inside your busy life?

[00:13:10] Cassandra Lane: Oh my God. Well, thank you so much first for your lovely words about the book.

[00:13:14] Rachael Herron: I loved it.

[00:13:15] Cassandra Lane: That’s taken me forever to write.

[00:13:16] Rachael Herron: Yeah.

[00:13:17] Cassandra Lane: When I saw your, I think it’s a class, or a book that you wrote about writing in 45 days, what is it, 48 hours?

[00:13:23] Rachael Herron: 45 days and yeah, no, 45 hours, and it is the crappiest first draft and mostly that’s over the course of many weeks.

[00:13:30] Cassandra Lane: Okay. But I was like, oh my gosh, I need this book. So for me, yes, it’s been a very long process. I mean, I started the first seeds of this in maybe 2002. So, almost 20 years.

[00:13:44] Rachael Herron: Yeah.

[00:13:45] Cassandra Lane: I’ve always pretty much worked full time, very demanding jobs. So, just getting a little bit in, I get up really early for 4:30 in the morning.

[00:13:56] Rachael Herron: Ah, yes, you are the really early bird.

[00:13:58] Cassandra Lane: Yeah. Yeah. And I have to, before the craziness of work, and once I became a mom, you know, parenting begins.

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