Rachael Herron

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Ep. 244: Sanjena Sathian on How to Make Every Word Count

A Paul and Daisy Soros fellow, Sanjena Sathian is a 2019 graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has worked as a reporter in Mumbai and San Francisco, with nonfiction bylines for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Food & Wine, The Boston Globe, and The San Francisco Chronicle. Gold Diggers is her debut novel. 

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

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript:

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

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #244 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. And today, I am talking to Sanjena Sathian about how to make every word count when you’re writing in your book, in your work, in your world. It was a delight to talk to her and you are going to love the interview, so stick around for that. What is going on around here? Well, my friends, I just realized right before I pushed record that this is the last time you’ll see me in this spot. If you watch on the YouTube, but most people don’t. Most people listen on the podcast. So just know that right now, I am in Oakland, on a little street in east Oakland, that is a fantastic little, cul-de-sac, very, very family oriented. We know all of our neighbors. We have loved living here. Behind the house is a creek, there’s huge trees back there, eucalyptus and some terrible Acacia. On the other side of the trees is the high school and just a couple of weeks ago, I was sitting on the porch and could hear the way I always love to hear. I could hear the kids graduating and having their names called out and thank God they got to do a little bit of something in person this year. So that was nice. And I don’t know where I’m going to be recording this next week. Actually I do. I’ll still be in Oakland. I’ll be in an Airbnb. Don’t know what it looks like. It’ll be fine. 

[00:01:41] But it’s Thursday, June 24th, as I record this and this weekend, we’re out. We are out, we are loading the pallets we’re loading our boxes onto a pallet, which will be picked up by the shipping company and put onto a big boat. The staged furniture will be getting picked up on Monday. Everything we own needs to fit in our two suitcases. And on Monday, we will trundle our stuff out the front door and leave it locked behind us for the last time. And I’m really honestly right now feeling pretty okay with that. I feel ready. It feels like we have been gearing up for this for a long time, even though it’s only been about four months that we, since we have actually made the decision to move and sold the house and did all this stuff. But I am ready and ready for the motion. Ready, I’m ready to live out of a suitcase. I’m pretty stoked to live out of a suitcase, honestly. Packing is one of my favorite things. I don’t get to pack all the time. So that is wonderful. That’s happening. 

[00:02:42] What else is going on? Oh, I wanted to share with you, let me bring it up here, an amazing email that I got from my friend, Mariah. You have heard me talk about Mariah before. She is an amazing, beautiful writer and she’s also a friend. We go back a long time, from the knitting world. And she was a good friend of a friend of mine and that’s how I think we got him introduced Mariah. Is that right, through Carrie? Anyway, I have worked with Mariah and I have worked with Mariah because Mariah came to me when I went full-time as a writer, maybe a little bit before I went full-time and she said, you should coach writing. And I said, I don’t, I don’t know about that. And she said, you should coach me. And I said, well, okay. So I kind of practiced on Mariah. And I will always be grateful to her for allowing me to do that because what Mariah did it was, she showed me that I freaking love it.

[00:03:37] I love being a book coach. It is fantastic and listen to this letter that she sent me. This is, this made my day, this literally brought tears to my eyes. So, I’m just going to summarize a little bit. She sent her book off to her editor for the second round of structural comments. So that’s awesome. Huge progress for celebrating that. But this is something a little bit different here. So, this is what she says: “There’s something else I need to tell you about yesterday before I made the final, final touches for now, I sent a snippet from my epilogue to my critique partner. She had some good stern notes about what wasn’t working in the snippet and it wasn’t on a language level. This was deep stuff about the relationship between my guys.” “As I said to her,” and this is now Mariah talking to her critique partner: “A few years back, they might’ve sent me into a spiral of ‘I’ll check the whole book. Can’t write for toffee.’ And now I thought, right, good points. Let me try and see whether this works or this maybe? No, that’s better. And I went ahead and found some relevant moments in the story where I could add new details and poof! Made it work, at least temporarily. Won’t upset me at all, if it turns out if it wasn’t the correct solution, I’ve got the tools now to try different approaches.” And then she says she owes it all to me, dearest Rachael, which is not true, Mariah, you owe it all to yourself. She goes on to say: “You’ve given me those tools and the confidence to apply them. Practicing it over and over has helped too, of course. But, where before, I got so very, very nervous reading about the endless editing rounds that you went through with your agent, I now think that yes, I could do that. A muscle has been built. Not saying that muscle will work forever and endlessly, but at the moment, I feel that, dare I say it, I actually like editing.” My life is complete, honestly. 

[00:05:36] This feeling that people get when they understand their best process for revision, which is not the same as my best process, everybody has their own best processes, but when they learn their best processes for revision and they have the tools, it really is like a muscle that we can continue to use. I always say that first drafts, you never know what you’re going to get. You cannot prepare for a first draft. A first draft might come to you super, super easily, or it might be the worst thing you’ve ever experienced in your writing life. But revision is reliable. It’s just a set of tools. You pick them up, you put them down, you use what tools work for you the best and the, and your muscles get stronger to use these tools better. And Mariah, you just made my whole life by sending me this. So, thank you, thank you, thank you for saying that. Yes. Revision is where it’s at. 

[00:06:31] Okay. Another little business thing I would like to do that I haven’t done for a while is thank new Patrons. You can always become a patron of the show over at patreon.com/Rachael. And I send out really kick ass essays every month. And I got to start thinking about writing this month’s essay. Right now, I’m using the Patreon essays to write about this move of moving around the world. And I’m writing the memoir that the book will become, so you’re getting the first draft. You’re kind of getting 1.5 draft, like it’s a first draft, but I have cleaned it up for grammar, but I don’t know if it’ll actually make it into the book because I’m writing a first draft. First drafts teach you what a book wants to be. So that’s what’s happening over Patreon and these are the new patrons. Thank you, thank you so much to April Smith and Lisa Belkin and Bill who edited his pledge. Thanks Bill. You know, I love you. No, Bill is amazing. Thanks Bill. Sandy Miranda, Robinet is new, Julia Borghini, hello, Julia. Deborah Hart and, Amanda Schiller and Caressa Swanson. Thank you, Carissa and Lisa Page. 

[00:07:40] Thank you, thank you all of you, whether you are a patron now, whether you have been one in the past, whether you want to be one in the future, seriously. Those small amounts really add up into something that allows me to spend my time at the desk and do this work for you, for myself. You’re truly a patron of the arts and that is really freaking cool. So thank you very much. I think I have caught you up on all the most exciting things. Oh, I will say that I finished recording the audio book of Life in Stitches this week. And I got the copy edit out to my copy editor, who you will be hearing from on a future episode, you’re going to, with Katrina, you’re going to love that episode. But I realized that I have this kind of little break built in right now, because as I was doing, I did this a little bit in the wrong order, so I will tell you about it really quickly. I revised a Life in Stitches. I added a few essays to it. And then I already had the copy-edited manuscript because it’s a rerelease of a book I got the rights back to 10 years later. So, I have a very clean draft. And I added to that, I revised it a little bit. I added the essays to it, and then I sent that off to my copy editor because I will have introduced new errors and the new essays absolutely need probably a lot of cleanup copy-edit wise. 

[00:09:00] And then, I used my document to create the book, to record the audio book. And then I realized that all these changes that I’m making as I’m recording, because this sounds a little bit better, or I just used that word, I don’t want to use that word again. I’ll change it. I realized that that’s not the version that my copy editor is working on. So, I can’t do the edits on the audio book until I am looking at the copy-edited version from Katrina in front of me. And I can change those few little words here and there that I, that I moved. So, I can’t even edit the audio book. I just got to kind of sit around and work on some other projects, which is really nice, really, really nice. I’m trying to get faster after memoir of the workbook off of my desk. I’ve been working on that for a while. I’ve had the interior formatted workbook back for a while, and I just have had no time to sit and figure out the changes. Cause it looks great, but I do want some things different so I can give it back to the designer. So work is going on even while we’re moving. I feel like I have talked enough. Let’s jump into the interview. Shall we? I hope that you are getting some of your work done and please, wherever I am on the internet, come and tell me about how it’s going for you. I always love to hear. All right, my friends, happy writing.

[00:10:19] Hey, you’re a writer. Did you know that I send out a free weekly email of writing encouragement? Go sign up for it at www.rachaelherron.com/write and you’ll also get my Stop Stalling and Write PDF with helpful tips you can use today to get some of your own writing done. Okay, now onto the interview.

Rachael Herron: [00:10:37] I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show Sanjena Sathian. Hello, Sanjena!

Sanjena Sathian: [00:10:41] Hi, thank you for having me. 

Rachael Herron: [00:10:43] Welcome. Welcome. Let me give you a little bit of an introduction. A Paul and Daisy Soros fellow, Sanjena Sathian is a 2019 graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has worked as a reporter in Mumbai and San Francisco, with nonfiction bylines for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Food & Wine, The Boston Globe, and The San Francisco Chronicle. Gold Diggers is her debut novel, and Sanjena, I loved it. 

Sanjena Sathian: [00:11:06] Thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:07] It was everything that I wanted to read. It was, I’ve just had such good luck lately of diving into books that just lift up my heart and fill my writer’s spirit. So, I have been so excited to talk to you. Welcome, welcome. 

Sanjena Sathian: [00:11:23] Great to hear. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:24] This is a show for writers and we talk about, on the show, we talk about process and how we get the work done because, I think all writers are all curious about other writers’ processes. I would love to hear about yours. You get a lot done in different areas. How do you do it?

Sanjena Sathian: [00:11:39] Yeah. Yeah. I’m very excited to talk process and craft. I mean, a lot of it is regularity. I, you know, I had a full-time job for, sort of the first half of my twenties and it was, it was hard to write on top of that. So, I have like deep sympathy for everyone who’s trying and like, mad props if you’re trying to, it’s so hard. I was not the kind of person who could wake up at 5:00 AM before going to an office and get stuff done. Like I couldn’t function that way. So, I tried to write in the evenings when I had that job. And it was okay. A lot of what I did actually was kind of takeoff on weekends. And just like, I had a job where I basically was working like 80-90 hours a week. I had to be on six days a week. But, my one day off on the weekend, I just turned my phone off and I would drive, I lived in San Francisco at the time, I would drive across the golden gate bridge and get myself a hostel and like, point Reyes or just drive for the day. You know, I would walk in the morning, take a little solo hike and then come and literally sit in my car and work. I think that was less good for actually producing great work, but it was really good for cultivating like an inner space where I could write. Because I think that’s one of the things that’s so hard is keeping up your relationship with your own, like private writing self, when you have to exist in public as someone else. I did a lot of this work when I did eventually go to grad school. And I’m sure you talk about grad school, whether or not that’s the right choice and things like that. For me, it was the right choice because I had already taken some time in the real world. And that meant that I could appreciate what it was like for someone to say you’re only job is to write. I can make use of that.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:30] That is gorgeous. 

Sanjena Sathian: [00:13:32] Yeah, I can make use of that. And so, when I was writing this, I woke up, and kind of got to my writing desk as soon as possible. Sometimes I would work out before I wrote, other times I would do that afterward. And I would write, say from like 9:00, 10:00 AM until about somewhere between 1:00 and 3:00 PM. And I tried to write a thousand words a day when I was just getting out new stuff. I am a vomit drafter. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:57] Talk to us about that. I love that.

Sanjena Sathian: [00:13:59] Yes, so, yeah. It’s really easy for me to just spew work and really hard for it to actually be usable.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:06] That’s exactly me. Exactly. Yeah. 

Sanjena Sathian: [00:14:10] It’s, so producing can sometimes be hard. But the big thing I knew I would have to do is like write the world, explore the world, write the characters, be in them and with them. And then eventually I was going to have to add some shape. So, I would, you know, I would write for, you know, X amount of time, X number words per day. When I’m editing, which is where like the real work happens, then I can be at my desk from somewhere between like two and like 8 to 10 hours a day. So, it kind of depends. 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:42] Isn’t it interesting, how revision for some, for me, and for a lot of people that I talk to, revision seems we can sit down and just do it more like a job. And it, and for me, it’s the most creative part, but it also feels more like a job whereas the first drafting is just body and soul exhausting for me. So, I think that something that is very underrated is people thinking about hostels. I live in Oakland, so, I routinely go to a point Reyes or to the pigeon point hostel, I don’t know if you ever went to that one. That is where, they’re cheap, people. And if you’re a sweet talker, a lot of hostels will close during the day. But if you’re a sweet talker and you say, well, I’m a writer and I would just love to stay on the couch and I’ll be out of the way, then they won’t kick you out. They’ll kick everybody else out. And then you have this house to yourself all day. So, in your life now, do you, is your life set up to support the writing all the time or do you kind of have to still go into that, the beautiful way that you said, having the place to center your writing? 

Sanjena Sathian: [00:15:42] Honestly, the pandemic really messed it up. As we were talking about before we started recording, you know, I was in New Zealand when the pandemic hit. I had a three-month teaching job there and I was supposed to go back to India, which is where I sort of lived on and off and I got locked out. So, yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:03] I heard about people that happened to, but I did read a bunch of people saying, well, if you’re going to be locked out, it might as well be in New Zealand. Did you feel that way or did you, were you just desperate to get home? 

Sanjena Sathian: [00:16:12] The problem was, I would have loved to stay, but I was just frankly concerned that something would happen to my family and I wouldn’t be able to get back. So, instead of staying the perfect utopia, I flew home to Georgia and, not exactly a utopia, especially not in the pandemic. But you know, my life was just a scramble like everyone else’s. Like a suitcase of mine was still in India. It’s still there. Like my, literally my life was just like in, it was in boxes for a while. But I found, in case anyone is considering this, it is very hard to write when you are living in your parents’ home.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:49] What is it, what did that look like living in your parents’ home? and trying to write. 

Sanjena Sathian: [00:16:53] I was in the bedroom that I, you know, had to like spend my teenage years in, which automatically meant I regressed.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:02] That makes me want to cry, just thinking about it.

Sanjena Sathian: [00:17:04] Yup. In some ways, it was cool. Cause my, so everyone kind of came back, my brother and his fiancée came and sheltered in Atlanta because they wanted to get out of New York. And so, like we had like a whole group of people there and like my brother’s an amazing cook, so I was cooked for. But there was something and this kind of gets back to that question of like your inner, private life. They were all working jobs, you know, like consultants and bankers and doctors and people who are like, like highly professional white collar. Like, they’re doing the jobs that like account in society and trying,

[Read more…] about Ep. 244: Sanjena Sathian on How to Make Every Word Count

Ep. 243: Emma Straub on How to Finish Your Book

Emma Straub is the New York Times-bestselling author of four novels, All Adults Here, Modern Lovers, The Vacationers and Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures, and the short story collection Other People We Married. Her books have been published in twenty countries. She and her husband own Books Are Magic, an independent bookstore in Brooklyn, New York.

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

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript:

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

[00:00:15] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #243 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. I am way thrilled that you are here today, as I’m talking to Emma Straub. Emma Straub is a blockbuster. She owns an incredible bookstore in New York and she wrote All Adults Here, which is a book that I absolutely loved. So, it’s going to be one of those episodes in which I covell and fangirl, and she’s such a beautiful writer and a beautiful person and I know that you are going to enjoy this interview. Oh my gosh, you can hear me stumbling. I didn’t even prepare notes of what I’m going to talk about because I am so tired. The house closed escrow. So we have sold the house and we’re moving to New Zealand. It’s really happening. I think I wasn’t willing to really believe it until the house sold. And we were so lucky that our house hit the market, sold and closed escrow in three weeks and six days. It did not even go to four weeks. It was all done and dusted. I’m still in the house. We’ve got another 10 days here in the house that we got back from the new owners. I’m sitting in a house that is not my own. It’s a very strange feeling when it’s been yours for 15 years and now it is not. And I was out there at this morning, watering, not my garden, before the heat of the day. It’s very strange. But that’s been really exciting. And so that was a couple of days ago that happened. So, I guess now we have to move to New Zealand. So, we’re doing that. 

[00:01:55] Let’s see, what else is going on around here? I am still somehow continuing to work and it’s going well. I am working on the revision of A Life in Stitches, adding a couple of essays and you might be able to hear that my voice is super tired. I am doing the audio book narration for it, which I am exceedingly excited about and it’s going great. The publisher never, I think I may have mentioned this last week, forgive me, but the publisher never did an audio book of this book, which was ridiculous. And it was something I was so irritated with them about because knitters and crafters listened to audio books before the rest of the world embraced the new audio revolution. The crafters had always been there and they always wanted this book in audio book. So now that I got the rights back, I get to do it. And now, that we’re in this house with empty closets, I took the closet furthest away from the street, I lined it with moving blankets, using this method that is really working well. And I will just say it here really quickly. I’m using command hooks to hang a cafe curtain rings with little hooks on them, with little, what are they called? Like pinchers. Clasps, and then kind of, I am connecting them to moving blankets. So everything is removable, which is important because it’s all fresh paint in that closet. But when I’m done, I just unhook the blankets, take off the command strip because those come off clean and then it’s like, I was never in there and I have this awesome audio booth set up. It sounds great. And I am truly enjoying the experience of reading this book. What I’m really enjoying is the experience of making this book. That was good. It was really good. I was proud of it, but I’m making it a little bit better and I get to use my voice to bring it to life. And that is just one of my favorite things to do. Y’all know that. 

[00:03:57] You all hear me extemporaneously and speaking too quickly and stumbling over my words. But when I get to do books and actual, really, really reading of what I’ve written, and that’s one of the things I love to do best.  I’m going to tell you a tiny, tiny little story. I was in college. I was not even in college, I’m in community college at this point because I couldn’t bear to leave my mama go to a four-year college yet. I wasn’t ready. So I went to this community college and I was taking English 1, you know, probably the very first thing. And we read in that a story that I’d read a million times before, Steinbeck’s Chrysanthemums and it’s a story that I love and this kind of bored professor, we were going to read it in class out loud and he were going to move around the room. And, you know, one person would read a couple of paragraphs and then the next one, he would move it and somebody else would read. Somebody read the first few paragraphs, I took over two paragraphs in, and then after I was done doing my part and I kind of paused to see if he wanted me to stop. He said, do you want to continue? And so, I read a couple more and then I remember this so clearly, I’m like, you know, 18, but he said to the class, he said, do you want her to continue? And they all, they said, I heard them like, do this noise. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And maybe they were just saying that because they didn’t want to read out loud. But I loved reading that story out loud with emphasis, with passion, with emotion and when I was done, there was a silence and then they clapped and then afterwards a woman followed me outside and she said that it had made her cry. And I remember thinking, I’m reading words that I love and I’m putting my own expression into them. And how cool is that? And now, I get to do that in my own closet, in the back, reading essays that are important to me, reading fiction. I don’t know if I’m ever going to be ready to do that. But reading things, something that I wrote that I love that I’m passionate about. 

[00:06:05] So that’s been really, really fun and I’m getting a lot of work done on it. I’m hoping to finish it. I’m not hoping to finish it, I need to finish it by the end of next week. Because then we will be getting rid of everything in the house, including the stage furniture. There will be nothing in the closets including a recording studio. So I record this, I’m recording this on Thursday. By the time I talk to you next Thursday, I hope that I have it done and pushing it a little bit because I’m still continuing edits. I haven’t quite finished that either. So, I’m kind of editing and then recording and then editing and then recording and it’s fun. And I guess it’s giving me a place to put all this nervous energy that is coming out my pores. So, that’s, what’s going on around here. Let us jump into the interview with Emma Straub. I hope that you really enjoy it. Have as much as I enjoyed talking to her. She’s truly awesome. So, I wish you, my friends happy writing and we will talk soon. 

[00:07:03] Do you wonder why you’re not getting your creative work done? Do you make a plan to write and then fail to follow through? Again? Well, my sweet friend, maybe you’d get a lot out of my Patreon. Each month, I write an essay on living your creative life as a creative person, which is way different than living as a person who’ve been just Netflix 20 hours a week and I have lived both of those ways, so I know. You can get each essay and access to the whole back catalog of them for just a dollar a month. Which is an amount that really truly helps support me at this here writing desk. If you pledge the $3 level, you’ll get motivating texts for me that you can respond to. And if you pledge at the $5 a month level, you get to ask me questions about your creative life, that I’ll answer in the mini episodes. So basically I’m your mini coach. Go to patreon.com/Rachael (R A C H A E L) to get these perks and more and thank you so much.

Rachael Herron: [00:08:01] All right. Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show today. Emma Straub. Hello, Emma!

Emma Straub: [00:08:06] Hi! Hi 

Rachael Herron: [00:08:09] Listeners, we have just gotten deep before the show on things like New Zealand and most importantly, cats. So, I, Emma’s already my best friend, but she’s not your best friend yet. She will be after this interview. Let me give you a little introduction so you know about her. Emma’s job is the New York Times-bestselling author of four novels, All Adults Here, Modern Lovers, not Levels, The Vacationers and Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures, and the short story collection Other People We Married. Her books have been published in twenty countries. She and her husband own Books Are Magic, an independent bookstore in Brooklyn, New York. Welcome Emma. 

Emma Straub: [00:08:47] Oh, thanks for having me.

Rachael Herron: [00:08:49] I’m so excited. I’ve been so excited to talk to you because Modern Lovers has just been one of those books in my TBR pile forever and I haven’t gotten around to it. And I apologize for that. That is going to be immediately remedied because your publicist sent me a net galley for the upcoming paperback of All Adults Here. And I am in love, Emma. Your book is exactly what I needed to read right now, I fell into it with such excitement and gratitude. And so it’s one of those things, it’s one of those books, listeners that in the first scene, you’re like, no, yup, here I am, 100% committed. I’m not going to touch another book until this book is done. And in fact, I’ve kind of been having a crappy day and I promised myself after we talked, I’m getting in bed with your book and I’m not getting out for the rest of the afternoon. So, first and foremost, thank you for being my new favorite writer. I don’t mean to scare you, but you really are amazing. You’re amazing. 

Emma Straub: [00:09:51] It’s going to take way more than that to scare me.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:56] Good. Oh, that’s wonderful. You’ll hear my cat soon, that might work. Okay, so let’s talk about your writing process. This is a show for writers and we love to talk about process. I’m kind of a junkie for that question that we kind of roll our eyes when we get asked, but then we love to answer it. You know, what is your writing process? Can you tell me what your writing process is now, like now during the weirdness of the world? 

Emma Straub: [00:10:23] So when I was a youth, I used to be precious. I used to be precious about my writing process and I would only write in bed like Virginia Wolf and

Rachael Herron: [00:10:41] Oh I love that

Emma Straub: [00:10:43] a book with a cat or two, and I needed total silence and etc. And then I had children and it turned out that that was a lot harder to come by. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:00] Yeah. I’ve heard this rumor.

Emma Straub: [00:11:03] Yeah. And by the time I was on my, by the time I was on my third novel, when I was writing Modern Lovers, I was writing it like on the subway, like literally anywhere. Literally anywhere where there were no small children that were related to me. And now, you know, so for the first, let’s say six months of the pandemic, I didn’t write a word because I have a five-year-old and a seven-year-old and all of a sudden, I was doing school while husband was at the bookstore, keeping that going, which is no small feat last year. I mean, you know, it’s funny. We like, sometimes we get into like, arguments about like, who was more miserable.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:12] Who usually wins? 

Emma Straub: [00:12:14] I mean, that’s the thing, it’s a problem. I mean, I would say I,

Rachael Herron: [00:12:17] I think you do.

Emma Straub: [00:12:19] I would say, I win, but he was like, I would say my like emotional labor was more intense but he was doing like more physical labor, which was intense and I don’t, I mean, it was bad all the way around is what we ultimately come to usually, depending on who’s having a worst day. But so, the first, you know, from March until like September, October, I didn’t write a word because I had no minutes in which to do so. But then in the fall, my, so one of my kids was in school five days a week, starting in September and the other one started totally remote. And then has, it has like worked its way up. So now they’re in school four days a week. God, it’s so boring. I’m sorry. It’s like, 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:33] This is not so boring. This is fascinating. But, I have just a quick question. What kind of writer are you when you’re not writing? Are you a grumpy one or are you just like kind of bobbing along?

Emma Straub: [00:13:44] I would say I’m bobbing along mostly because, but unhappily, like I’m bobbing along unhappily because I really love to work. I really love to work. Like I love to write. It’s my favorite thing. Like it’s, 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:02] It shows, it shows in your writing. 

Emma Straub: [00:14:06] I know. So, but yeah, so, okay. So basically once school was like reintroduced as a concept and we hired a wonderful, beautiful babysitter who could help, then, my, like professional life started to seem possible again. And then I started writing and yeah, I mean, I, what I’m writing now is so wild. It’s so different. And I think like, I think that this is, I think it’s going to be really, really interesting to be a reader in the next, let’s say five years.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:55] I have thought the same thing. Yeah. 

Emma Straub: [00:14:57] It is like, I mean, like if I am writing what I’m writing, like, it’s going to like I’m writing a book, that is time travel with has time travel. And like, if like I, who knows, like just people are going to be writing some wild, wild stuff and it is going to be really exciting and interesting to see how everyone is like processing the trauma of this year, you know?

Rachael Herron: [00:15:37] Yeah, I’m at once right now, I’m trying to balance two proposals. One is the happiest, most up-lit book I’ve ever written. And one is the darkest book I’ve ever heard talk about and in, up to, and including like, my wife won’t let me talk about the book in the house. 

Emma Straub: [00:15:54] Oh my God, oh my god, that’s going to be a problem.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:58] I think that might be a problem, but I think we are really just we’re all writing those peaks and valleys. Where did you write before all of this happened? Were you an outside cafe writer or were you an inside? Have you had to adjust to that? 

Emma Straub: [00:16:11] I have always been an inside person, but last, I guess I wrote most of All Adults Here in a coworking space that I could walk to. And it was perfect because it got me out of the house and I could drop my kids off at school and then keep walking and it was like a nice walk from home. 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:43] I had a coworking space for three weeks before the pandemic, I had just made the decision to do it. And I would take Bart there and take the train and it was like, you know, two stops. But did yours survive? Mine closed.

Emma Straub: [00:16:56] No, mine closed too. And you know, I think that like, I mean, one good side, if we can call it that, is that like, I am now able to work at home. Like, before I would have said, oh, I can’t work at home, but I can and I do. And actually, I bought something recently, just a couple of months ago that really changed my whole game. 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:24] Tell me it was an Alpha Smart. 

Emma Straub: [00:17:26] I don’t know what that is. 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:28] Oh, that’s a different topic for a different day. Tell me what yours is. 

Emma Straub: [00:17:31] I’ll be next, whatever that is. It sounds like a robot that writes my books for me. 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:37] Yeah. That I, that I would like to buy. I can’t afford that one actually. 

Emma Straub: [00:17:41] Yeah, I’m looking for that one, but I bought myself a treadmill for my, and an adjustable desk. So, I just walk on my treadmill. I don’t go faster than that because, but I love to walk and I just, I don’t really have time ever for anything. But now, I can walk for, you know, a half an hour or an hour maybe, and then sit for a while and walk and sit, and then I can write. I’m going slow enough that I can write. I can type and, 

[Read more…] about Ep. 243: Emma Straub on How to Finish Your Book

Ep. 242: Jennifer Craven on How to Get the Words On the Page


Jennifer Craven is the author of “A Long Way From Blair Street” and “All That Shines and Whispers,” both works of historical fiction. In addition to her novels, she had bylines in various publications including the Washington Post, HuffPost, Motherly, Today’s Parent and more. When she’s not writing, she teaches fashion merchandising at Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pa.   

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

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript:

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

[00:00:15] Well, hello writers! Welcome to episode #242 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So thrilled that you’re here with me today, as I’m talking to Jennifer Craven, who was such a joy to talk with, and we really talk about how to get the words on the page, which is something that we are all always dealing with. So, that is coming up in the interview section. A little bit about what’s been going on around here. Y’all it’s getting closer, six weeks out. We’re six weeks away from moving to New Zealand. And when I say those words out loud, I don’t even understand them. I keep stopping in my tracks and thinking, oh my God, we’re really doing it. So, I know maybe you’re getting tired of hearing that. Sorry about that. It is just what is going on. We got a beautiful bouquet of flowers from the buyers of the house, saying they can’t wait to live here. So I’m thinking that they don’t want to cancel the contract yet. We still have, it is Thursday. We still have five days to go before escrow closes and I will believe it when I see it, but we just got the flowers yesterday and they’re gorgeous. And I just thought that was the most thoughtful, sweet thing ever. In the meantime, I have been actually getting work really done. I’m still working on Life in Stitches, the revision and the adding the extra chapters to it. I’m planning on hopefully starting to record the audio book next week because we have two more weeks in this house and I have an empty closet and I got all this stuff to line it with. So, I’m going to do that and record it before we go. 

[00:01:57] I also got another idea for a new book. They just keep coming to me. But this one is kind of sticking. I may see if I can write it while I’m doing a couple of other things. I always talk about how, for me, it is best to focus on a project and stick to it until it is done and then I pick up another project. However, there is an exception in my world with this and that is sometimes I am able to work on a fiction project at the same time that I’m working on a non-fiction project. And that’s what this would be. So, I could keep working on these non-fiction projects that really need to get off of my desk while perhaps I am writing a thousand words a day-ish or so on this new project. I will just say that it involves organized religion and tarot, and things that delight me to think about writing about, I don’t know if I ever told you all, but in my youth, I think that kids either go to sex, drugs, rock and roll or religion, and I was that teenager. Oh my goodness. I was Pentecostal, speaking in tongues, that kind of thing for about two years of high school. My hippie parents were incredibly upset about this. I think it was my best way of rebelling was basically becoming a Republican and a Pentecostal at the same time. Both of those things passed right around the time I got my first girlfriend, which changed everything and the church didn’t want me, at that point, I wonder why. But it would be really fun to write about that stuff. I dunno, it feels fun and dangerous. And, I shared this somewhere. I can’t remember where, but Hush Little Baby is to date my best book. It is my strongest work. Super proud of it. People are loving it. The people who are reading Hush Little Baby came out last month, loving it. I will say that people who are reading Hush Little Baby, are not that many. It is not selling well. Books right now, a brand new books, especially hardcover fiction is just not selling. 

[00:04:06] So, my book isn’t selling. That’s why I may not be a thriller writer for much longer, or I may have to take a break from it. If I want to write thriller, this is, these are my guesses. If you happen to be my publisher and you’re listening to this number one, I know you won’t. Number two, cause you’re very busy, Stephanie. But number two, I also know how publishing works. My first book did pretty well, very well. My second, and I’m talking about my thrillers, my second thriller, which just came out, Hush Little Baby, is not doing well. Which means that if I don’t earn out or get close to earning out my contract, the advance that they gave me, then they can’t financially offer me a new contract, because I’ve already been a blot against their bottom line, right. So, I know in my heart that perhaps I won’t be writing thriller for a little while. And honestly, my heart is okay with that. I’m just so filled with all these other book ideas that are not thrillers. 

[00:05:02] So that is all right, but it’s something I really wanted to make clear and actually made myself a note of this. And I can’t believe I remembered to say it, but there’s this myth that a good book will sell well. That is not true. Commercial viability has nothing to do with quality. And you’ve seen this. You’ve seen crappy books outsell all the other books. And you’ve seen your favorite book failed to perform well in the marketplace. Every once in a while, it will go together. A great book will sell well, and those are the ones that we celebrate. But, I’m far enough along in my career and I’m happy to report that I know that bad sales have nothing to do with the quality of the book. And that’s fine. I can hold both things in my head that I wrote a really good book that people love and also nobody’s buying it. I don’t know why I feel so cheerful about it, but I do. Because I know that this, I’m not in this for one book. And I bet that if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re not in it for one book too.  You were possibly in this game for the one book you’re writing right now, and then you want to get it out there into the world. The best thing you could be doing while you’re trying to get that first book out into the world is writing the second book and the third book and the 15th book and the 25th book. 

[00:06:18] You don’t have to go up to 25 if you don’t want to, but you’re a writer, you’re going to keep writing. And that is the thing, like while my book is either becoming a bestseller or failing to sell or somewhere in the middle, which I’ve been kind of on all of those spectrums, except for the extreme bestseller. I’d like to try that someday. While all of that is happening, it doesn’t really matter. That’s the part I have almost zero control over. I can Instagram about it. I can write blog posts. I can write articles and try to send people towards me so that then they then discover the book. But that kind of marketing is very hard to do. I can’t do much. I have no control. So, I choose to let go of that and work on the books that are thrilling me. The ideas that literally keep me up at night and I can’t stop thinking about, so that’s what I’m doing. And that is what I would encourage you to do, too. 

[00:07:14] If you are thinking hard about marketing, if you’re thinking hard about how to get an agent, number one, if your book is not done and revised a bunch of times, and it is the best, and you’re done to the best of your ability, you don’t need to do that right now. You don’t need to be researching that and figuring out how to do things. You need to be spending your time writing and revising the book so that then you can get it off of your plate and start writing the next one. When you get closer to releasing your book, you can start thinking about all that other stuff, but I’m just gonna encourage you to put the time in on the hard stuff. It’s the easy stuff is thinking about marketing. The easy stuff is thinking about what, where’s the publishing market right now when it comes to middle grade fantasy. That’s fun. Of course, you want to research that rather than doing the work, but again, get comfortable with doing the hard work of sitting down, keeping your butt in place, doing uncomfortable work. Anything else would feel better. But you know, that after you’re there 15 or 20 minutes, you slip into it and suddenly it starts to feel good to work. 

[00:08:18] So, I would challenge you if you haven’t done any writing this week, pick a time and a place, set yourself down and do a little bit. This is the work of your heart. Listen to me less and write more. I know that you can do it. I know that you have it in you. That’s why you listen to podcasts like this. That’s why you’re here, because writing is inside your heart. So please do some of that for yourself. Come find me on the internet, tell me how it’s going. And in the meantime, let’s get into this interview with Jennifer Craven, and I wish you very, very happy writing my friends. 

[00:08:53] Hey, you’re a writer. Did you know that I send out a free weekly email of writing encouragement? Go sign up for it at www.rachaelherron.com/write and you’ll also get my Stop Stalling and Write PDF with helpful tips you can use today to get some of your own writing done. Okay, now onto the interview.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:11] All right. Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show, Jennifer Craven. Hello Jen!

Jennifer Craven: [00:09:15] Hello! Thank you so much for having me. 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:17] So happy to have you. Let me give you a little bit of an introduction here. Jennifer Craven is the author of “A Long Way from Blair Street” and “All That Shines and Whispers,” I love that title, both works of historical fiction. In addition to her novels, she had bylines in various publications including the Washington Post, HuffPost, Motherly, Today’s Parent and more. When she’s not writing, she teaches fashion merchandising at Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania. That’s why you look so cool. That whole fashion merchandising thing. So welcome to the show! 

Jennifer Craven: [00:09:50] Thank you. 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:52] Let’s talk about your writing process because obviously you’re a busy person and you do a lot of different things. 

Jennifer Craven: [00:09:57] Yes. 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:58] How do you get it all done? 

Jennifer Craven: [00:10:00] You know what? It’s not easy. I don’t think any writer would ever say it was easy.

Rachael Herron: [00:10:04] Oh my god, if they said it was easy. I’d probably boot them up the show, 

Jennifer Craven: [00:10:08] Honestly. Seriously. 

Rachael Herron: [00:10:09] Just like, click the hang up button. 

Jennifer Craven: [00:10:11] Yes. So, I mean, for me, it’s more of, kind of like, you know, the idea spark and then finding time to just kind of like, get it all, get all the words out, you know, and then go back and sort of revise. But yeah. So, you mentioned that I do teach there, like that. I do have kind of that day job thing going on, but in addition to that, I have three young kids. So,

Rachael Herron: [00:10:30] What are their ages? 

Jennifer Craven: [00:10:32] Eight, six, and four. 

Rachael Herron: [00:10:33] Oh see, that is, I don’t know how. Got to tell us how. 

Jennifer Craven: [00:10:37] That’s what a lot of people say to me. They’re like, how on earth? Like a lot of my friends have kids around the same age, you know, that sort of thing. But they play really well independently and they know that I write. They know that I’m a writer. We talk about that kind of stuff. They, you know, they show their books for like show and tell on, you know, like zoom. And,

Rachael Herron: [00:10:55] Oh, how cute.

Jennifer Craven: [00:10:56] I know, so, honestly, there, they just really kind of get it. And, but I, but I’m also very conscious to say like, okay, if my kid needs me, I’m going to stop what I’m doing and give my kid the attention. So, it’s a lot of maybe like I’ll bust out like a quick paragraph and then, you know, go do a puzzle on the floor or like, I’ll be coloring in a coloring book, like thinking about my plot. You know, that kind of stuff. So, it’s really just kind of like a balance, but yeah. So, it’ll be after the kids go to bed and thankfully mine go to bed like at a pretty decent hour. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:27] Oh, that’s nice. Yeah. 

Jennifer Craven: [00:11:28] Yeah. Or weekends, or, you know, my husband’s great and he, you know, helps out. But honestly, when I really get in like the writing groove, it like flows. So, you know, I can really just kind of like, get it going and I get a good chunk done a lot of times. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:44] I think that seems to be one of those blessings, hopefully given to most parents who have this, but I think there’s so much, and this is my guessing. So, you tell me if I’m right or not. But there’s so much that you can’t do that when you can let it flow, you have to let it flow. Like it’s just got to go. 

Jennifer Craven: [00:11:59] Oh, for sure. And that’s so true. You know, especially with first drafts, because sometimes I can get stuck in my head and over analyze what I’m writing and then I’ll say like, no, stop. Just get it out, just write. And then you can go back later and it’s probably going to be garbage and you might delete it all, but you know, at least it’s something there and you can like work with it and craft it from there. So yeah, I have to like really stop myself from trying to edit as I go along.

[Read more…] about Ep. 242: Jennifer Craven on How to Get the Words On the Page

Ep. 241: Ilana Masad on How to Chase Emotional Obsession

Ilana Masad is a fiction writer, essayist, and book critic whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, the Paris Review, NPR, BuzzFeed, Catapult, StoryQuarterly, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, as well as several others. All My Mother’s Lovers is Masad’s debut novel.

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

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers.

Transcript:

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

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #241 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So glad that you’re here today as I speak to Ilana Masad on something that is always really exciting to me to think about and to dwell on, which is chasing emotional obsession. It’s not really fair to say, but I’m going to say it anyway, that I am obsessed with obsession. I might be, might have a little bit to do with the fact that I’m an addict in recovery, but obsession is so fascinating in all of it. Tiny ways that it sneaks into our lives and all the big ways in which it can make our lives incredible or derail or kill us. So we talk about that and our conversation was just fascinating. I know that you are going to enjoy talking to her. You’re not gonna be talking to her. You’re gonna be listening to her, but listening her to talk to me and with me for your benefit. So please enjoy that. 

[00:01:18] What’s going on around here? Well, I’m still in the house for another three weeks or so. And then we move into an Airbnb. The sale is still going ahead. We’re supposed to close escrow in, I think 12 days, touch wood as my mother would say, I’m still very nervous about it. Oh, just nervous about everything. But yeah, that’s where we are in our move toward New Zealand. I did have a moment today when I was writing my journal and I thought, what the hell are we doing? Because all of a sudden it’s really close. Like I can see three weeks in our house, two weeks in an Airbnb, one week in Boise, and then we leave. That’s seven weeks away and then we are leaving to go live in a new country. Just the two of us with no friends, a very small smattering of family who, no you know, I’m not close to but they are a family and I liked them a lot, but wow. Wow! What the hell? That’s my feeling today. What the hell? Writing wise, I have been steadily plugging along my assistant Ed Giordano. If you have not heard the episode where we talked to each other on episode 200, you should go back and listen to that because he’s awesome. We have committed to some accountability together because its always helpful to have an accountability partner. And I want to reassure you that if you’ve had an accountability partner in the past and you flaked on them, we all have. That’s how accountability partners go. Get a new one, go back to the old one, restarted up. That’s part of accountability is failing and I really got pretty granular when I was talking to him about what I want to accomplish in the next few weeks while we’re so busy, I just want one hour, a day focused work on the project at hand.

[00:03:11] And I have a bunch of projects at hand that I could choose from, but I am just choosing one at a time and I’m working my way through them. And generally I do more than one hour. But knowing that I have to do one hour, one focused hour means that I don’t look at my email first in the morning. I don’t all the things that are normally easy for me, are not easy for me right now. Well, everything is so upside down. So having that one hour to fall into, has been really awesome. This morning I was working so my project at hand right now, I will tell you is a re-release of my collection of essays in memoir shape called A Life in Stitches. It’s a 10 year anniversary, and I got the rights back. So I am self-publishing it with a new essay and a new epilogue, a new cover. I am hoping to get a bunch of beta readers from my email list because I would like some reviews. I have great reviews on the book and I am going to have to lose all those reviews, since the one thing you can’t change on the vendors is ISBN. And I do not own the ISBN the Chronicle books assigned to the memoir. So I have to give it my own ISBN, which means it’s a brand new book and I’ll lose all those awesome reviews. So that’s something I’m thinking about, but that’s what I’m working on right now. That’s my project at hand and working steadily on it.

[00:04:29] Moving forward, it’s just getting done. It’s just getting done in one and two and three hour bursts, but mostly one or two hour bursts and it’s going to be done soon. And then I’m going to read the audio book of it, which I was so excited about. I don’t think I’ve mentioned that on this show, but I always wanted an audio book of that particular book. Knitters, listen to audio books, knitters, listen to audio books before anyone else was listening to audio books so that they could keep their hands free and their eyes on their work. Knitters crasher’s, crafters in general love audio books. So I’m very excited that I’m going to be able to do that. And in something I may regret, I’m going to try and do it here in the house in the next three weeks before we leave so that I can at least be editing it when we’re in New Zealand. So I am in the process of soundproofing, or at least sound dampening one of our closets because we’ve never had a closet that was empty. And right now we have bunches of closets. Well, three closets that are empty and I’m going to line one and make it into a soundproof chamber. We have air conditioning now that’ll save my life. So that’s what I’m working on right now. That’s what’s going on around here. 

[00:05:39] That’s enough of an update for me. Let’s jump into the interview with Ilana. I hope that you enjoy it. I hope that you are getting some of your own writing done. Do you need an accountability partner? Come to any of these episodes, HowDoYouWrite.net and at the bottom, there’s always a link to join my slack channel. Find an accountability partner in there. We have an accountability channel in onward writer, slack channel. So you should come and join that. All right. Happy writing my friends and enjoy the interview. We’ll talk soon. 

Rachael Herron: [00:06:07] Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show today, Ilana Masad. Hello, Ilana, welcome!

Ilana Masad: [00:06:12] Hi, how are you?

Rachael Herron: [00:06:14] I am so happy to talk to you about All My Mother’s Lover’s. I have been really

Ilana Masad: [00:06:19] Thank you 

Rachael Herron: [00:06:20] looking forward to this interview. Let me give you a little bit of an introduction here. Ilana Masad is a fiction writer, SAS, and a book critic whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and the Paris Review, NPR, BuzzFeed, Catapult, StoryQuarterly, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, as well as several others. All My Mother’s Lovers is Masad’s debut novel. And first of all, I loved it. 

Ilana Masad: [00:06:49] Thank you

Rachael Herron: [00:06:50] Second of all, I saw it referred to, and I kind of remember where I saw this, but I saw it referred to as a queer tour de force. And I really feel like that’s what it was. So first of all, I want to thank you for the way that you write about love 

Ilana Masad: [00:07:06] Thank you 

Rachael Herron: [00:07:07] and its forms. But even more than that, like my, one of my favorite things in life to write about, and to think about not to feel necessarily, but to write about his grief. And you do- I have goosebumps just thinking about your book right now. You did such an incredible job with that

Ilana Masad: [00:07:22] Thank you. Thank you. I, grief is one of those legitimately universal feelings. I think it just looks so different depending on who you are and when you are and where you are and how,

Rachael Herron: [00:07:32] Yes

Ilana Masad: [00:07:33] How you relate to it. But it’s something that I think any person who is lucky enough to have any kind of love in their life feels

Rachael Herron: [00:07:40] And I think it’s really important, what you just said to how you relate to it. I think how we all relate to it changes as we, you know, aging and changing the lives of, there are some people in my own life that I’ve known who are not willing to ever look at it. And then there are people who kind of enter into willingness unwillingly because of events. And I think that’s kind of what you look at in the book. And it was just so moving to me. So I would like to talk to you about your writing process. This is a show for writers and about process. However, I feel like you might have, this is my jumping to an assumption. I feel like you might have feelings about not writing a book like this, but also being a book critic. How does that feel? How do you put those two things together? How do you step out of your own way to get the work done?

Ilana Masad: [00:08:31] Well, in terms of, I mean, I think about fiction and criticism just very differently, you know, like they serve such different purposes in my life as a writer and I tend to not think about them in relation to one another very often, or at least I think that was true before the book was published. I think the process of publication as most writers will tell you is so utterly different than what writing is, right. Publication is like the opposite of writing. 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:02] Every way

Ilana Masad: [00:09:03] Right, exactly. And so, I think probably now I’m realizing more how much being a critic means that I get in my head about who’s doing better than I am, and who’s getting the accolades and, you know, and I need to always remind myself, well, first of all, it only looks like that from where you’re sitting, the people who are experiencing that are probably not feeling it the way that it looks. Right. Most people, I think, I mean, at least most writers I know even those who’ve succeeded very much don’t tend to feel the success in the way that it maybe looks like they should feel it. But otherwise, I mean, I, you know, and just in terms of the craft, I really don’t think about them in related ways at all. Which I think is lucky because I’m not sure I wouldn’t be able to write fiction if I had started out as a book critic, but I started out as a fiction writer. I just succeeded in my book criticism sort of writing earlier or more publicly than I did with my fiction writing. 

Rachael Herron: [00:10:08] That makes so much sense to me. For some reason, I thought the book critic proceeded the fictional, although really nothing usually proceeds fiction. We started so, so young that makes a lot of sense in my head. How does it- and these are just my own, I know these aren’t on the list of questions that I said, but how, how does it feel just out of curiosity, how does it feel to be critiqued?

Ilana Masad: [00:10:29] It’s weird, you know, because I find myself looking at the articles, like both from, you know, my own ego is there as a writer of like, what are they saying? And are they saying nice things? Or are they saying not nice things? What are they criticizing? But then also as a critic,

[Read more…] about Ep. 241: Ilana Masad on How to Chase Emotional Obsession

Ep. 240: Kathryn Nicolai on Focusing on the Good in Life and Writing

Kathryn Nicolai is the creator of the enormously successful podcast Nothing Much Happens and the author of the book of the same name. Nicolai is an architect of coziness, writing soothing stories that both ease the reader into peaceful sleep and teach the principals of mindfulness so that waking hours likewise become sweet and serene. She leans on her years of experience as a yoga and meditation teacher to seamlessly blend storytelling with brain training techniques that build better sleep habits over time. She is the owner of Ethos Yoga. She lives in Michigan with her wife and three dogs.

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

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript:

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

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #240 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. I’m absolutely thrilled that you are here with me today because today I am talking to Kathryn Nicolai and I fan girl quite a bit. This woman has changed in my life, because she has changed my sleep. She tells stories that help you go to sleep. And she has a book about it too. And it just popped into my head one night when I was listening to her voice. I thought, oh my goodness, I want to talk to this writer. And she said, yes. And it’s a fantastic conversation. We talk about focusing on the good in life and also in writing, I know you’re going to love it. I can’t wait to re-listen to it myself, honestly. So that’s coming up, stick around for that. 

[00:01:03] What’s going on around here? Well, the house sold, it went on the market last Wednesday, and it’s sold on Monday. So five days, tons of people through the house, we were not here. We exited the house and stayed at a friend’s house who was out of town, which was so miraculous and wonderful. It sold quickly. It sold for above asking, and I will believe it when the money hits the bank and I hand the keys over until then, I’m just very, very hopeful because everything is working out. Timing wise, the staged furniture gets to stay in here we were out of the house for about a week or so, and it was really hard to un-nest the house that we had lived in 15 years and leave just the stage furniture in here. And some things that we hid in closets and drawers, you know, like our spices, I still want to cook for the next five weeks while we’re in the house. And then we came back to the house last night and re-nested all of the stuff that had traveled with us over to my friend’s house is now all over all the tables and the counters. And, you know, my desk has exploded and it’s everywhere and we’re going to have to un-nest again for the appraiser to come through. And then for the buyers who we are allowing to come through and measure things and do things like that.

[00:02:23] So we have to re-stage it. Which is weird. But it feels really good to be back in these walls where we have spent 15 years, even if the house looks nothing like ours, it looks beige. If you’re looking at me on YouTube, number one, I apologize about my hair. It’s just been a day. And number two it’s all gray. Like I said, white carpets. It’s not us. I literally went to Home Depot and bought seven drop class to cover the carpets. I am not letting our feet touch these white carpets, even for a moment, I don’t trust us. So that’s where I’m at and living still in chaos and trying to get more and more comfortable with that because it’s going to be this way for a while. In terms of writing, I have only been writing during Rachael Says Write, I think I mentioned this last week. I really like Rachael Says Write, those two hours twice a week people show up and write and I am one of them, that is like a sacredly held space for me to do my writing. Otherwise I’m having such a hard time finding time to fit it in. So that’s I always record these on Thursday and that’s happening this afternoon. Thank goodness. I’m going to be writing a Patreon essay about nesting, about what it means to have home, what home means, what it means when you adjust it for good reasons, you know, good grief. We are the luckiest. We’re not being displaced by war. We are choosing to do this amazing, exciting thing that we are very, very, very privileged to be able to do. But it still makes me feel like a cat who’s just had cold water thrown all over them and just the lack of continuity really puts me on edge. And that’s, you know this, an exciting thing for me.

[00:04:22] I believe that one of our biggest goals in life is to learn how to deal with moments that aren’t comfortable. Especially when it comes to our writing, dealing with moments that aren’t comfortable. If we want to be comfortable people who have a happy, smooth life, we are not going to be writers. Writing is hard to do, and it’s not smooth. And it is uncomfortable. A great majority of the time. And if we are people who cannot stand discomfort and run away, of course, we’re going to stay away from our manuscripts forever and knock it back to them and not do the writing of our hearts. If we get comfortable, or more comfortable, nobody’s going to get comfortable with it. But if we get more comfortable with discomfort and being able to sit at the desk and look at the words that are just stupid, that sound wrong, that sound awful and realize, oh, they went, now it won’t be very good right now, but I can fix them later. I’m not going to fix them today. I’m going to fix them later when I’m in a fixing stage. And when we’re in that fixing stage and it feels bad and wrong and uncomfortable, we just know that that’s part of the process as a writer. That’s what it feels like. We just keep coming back and therefore things get done. We are not going to be comfortable as writers, but we are going to be living as writers. And I think that’s really, truly amazing. 

[00:06:45] So that’s about what’s going on around here. I would love to hear what’s going on with you, how your writing is going. Please reach out to me. I will be releasing a couple of bonus episodes here, coming up, including the talk that I had when my book launched last week. I got the permission to do that and that’s going to be fun. And then I have a writer Q&A, for those of you who subscribe at the $5 and up level on Patreon. I’ve got some many questions, many answers coming at you. So hopefully I’ll get those out this week, but I wanted to make sure that this went out on Friday as always. And I’m going to wish you a very happy writing and I’m going to also wish you happy sleeping, perhaps listen to Kathryn’s dulcet tones as you go to sleep tonight. And let me know how that goes for you. You’re going to love the way she writes stories. Okay, my friends I’ll talk to you soon and happy writing.

[00:06:35] 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’ll 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.

[00:07:11] Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show, Kathryn Nicolai. Hello, Kathryn! 

Kathryn Nicolai: [00:07:16] Hi, thanks so much for having me. 

Rachael Herron: [00:07:18] I am a little giddy. I’m a little starstruck. We were already connecting before this. Let me give you a little introduction for people who don’t know who you are yet. Kathryn Nicolai is the creator of the enormously successful podcast, Nothing Much Happens, and the author of the book of the same name. Nicolai is an architect of coziness, writing soothing stories that both ease the reader into peaceful sleep and teach the principles of mindfulness. So that waking hours likewise becomes sweet and serene. She leans on her years of experience as a yoga and meditation teacher to seamlessly blend storytelling with brain training techniques that build better sleep habits over time. She is the owner of Ethos Yoga. She lives in Michigan with her wife and three dogs. Welcome!

Kathryn Nicolai: [00:08:01] Thank you so much for having me.

Rachael Herron: [00:08:04] So I found you by, probably the way everybody else finds you, which is, you know, searching sleep podcast. And I’m sure that yours was the first one that came up and I have tried everything to sleep over the course of my life, literally everything. And I swear to God, Kathryn. Yours is the only freaking thing that works. 

Kathryn Nicolai: [00:08:23] I’m so glad that you’re getting sleep. 

Rachael Herron: [00:08:25] It is amazing! I have been, I usually go to bed before my wife, but every once in a while she comes to bed at the same time. And she, and this is what I want to first start asking you here. Like, so my wife goes to sleep like four seconds before her head even hits the pillow and it’s incredibly irritating and I never sleep. So, I asked her the night that she came to bed recently at the same time as me. Do you mind if I play my friend’s story? And she goes, no, I’d love to hear what it sounds like. And she never even got past the introduction. So your story, how are you asleep? I’m dying to know 

Kathryn Nicolai: [00:09:03] I do sleep really well because I’ve been doing this my whole life. One of my first memories being like four years old, was laying in bed at night and having that awareness of imagination where, oh, I can take my mind anywhere? Oh. And being like four years old and going, I could tell a story, you know, I was obsessed with stories even as a kid and especially audio stories. I can remember, I have a condition called aphantasia, which means I can’t visualize anything. I have no inner eye. So, I think I really have always responded to audio and I remember like I had a Peter Pan record, and I would play it over and over the story of Peter Pan. And then my dad got me in like my first books on tape and I ran that thing out. He had to check it out from the library, like every other week for the entire summer. And so stories were always big to me and so I’d always done this my whole life. And I remember the stories that I would tell myself as a kid. And so as I got older and I was meeting, you know, just paying attention to my yoga students, listening to my family and friends, hearing from so many people who kept saying, I can’t sleep, I feel anxious. I can’t settle down. And I kept thinking, how do I get this from me to you? Because I know how to do this. And that’s when I thought, oh, it’s a podcast. 

Rachael Herron: [00:10:29] It’s the most brilliant podcast and it is the most brilliant book. So let me tell what my experience of this is, and then you can actually tell what you actually do. But my experience is that you tell me a story with really rich detail. And this is really why I wanted to have you on the show because with all writing detail, the more detail we are, the more specific we are, the more universal it becomes in terms of understanding what’s happening. And you give my brain a track to follow. Like right now we are in the middle of a move to New Zealand and I am anxious as hell. Like my brain just wants to follow every track on like, how are we going to have to get the house painted? What kind of suitcase should I buy? But you give me a different track and then you do this beautiful thing where you say, and if you wake up in the middle of the night, you can replay it. And I do, and it works. I’m like there was a lemon tree and then there was a pencil. How would you describe how you tell these stories?

Kathryn Nicolai: [00:11:29] Well, I always think of it sort of as a recipe, there are three factors that I always like to put together for a solid bedtime story. One is that the overall action or activity of the story should be soothing. So no off the bat, anything we’re going to do, it’s going to be enjoyable and soothing. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:45] There’s no bungee jumping in these stories, yeah. 

Kathryn Nicolai: [00:11:48] There’s no suspense, there’s really very little in the way of action, but that’s kind of nice. As a reader, I always love the part of the book before the inciting incident, when the person is just moving through their life and I’m 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:01] Status quo?

Kathryn Nicolai: [00:12:03] Just a little bit longer because I just want to hear like, what are they going to eat for lunch 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:07] I love list of things. Like what did they put in their luggage? I want to know what goes in the luggage.

Kathryn Nicolai: [00:12:10] Yeah. I intentionally put a lot of lists into that

Rachael Herron: [00:12:13] yes,

Kathryn Nicolai: [00:12:14] Into the podcast and whenever I, you know, if the character goes to the farmer’s market or there’s going to be lists and lists and lists of everything. So call me an activity and then there needs to be this element of familiarity or nostalgia, where even if you haven’t had the experience, you can relate to it so easily and you know, that it would feel good. And then last is tons of sensory details. Cause that’s going to make you present. It’s going to keep you in that moment following that track and just on sort of the neuroscience level what’s happening in that moment, is that we are shifting you out of your default mode network and the default mode network is the place where everything spins, it’s sort of the background static. It’s what your brain does when it doesn’t have anything else to do. And we’re putting you instead into a task positive network. Task positive network means your brain now has a job 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:07] interesting 

Kathryn Nicolai: [00:13:08] you can sleep in task positive, but you cannot sleep in default. So that’s why it works to think through it in the middle of the night, even if it’s just, and usually it’ll happen in just a couple of seconds, 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:17] A few seconds and then I’m gone again. 

Kathryn Nicolai: [00:13:19] Yeah. Oh, I remember there was this I’m out because I got switched over in my brain network. 

[Read more…] about Ep. 240: Kathryn Nicolai on Focusing on the Good in Life and Writing

Ep. 239: Kirsty Capes on Using Tips from Screenwriters to Write Novels

Kirsty Capes works in publishing and, as a care leaver, is an advocate for better representation for care-experienced people in the media. She recently completed her PhD which investigates female-centric care narratives in contemporary fiction, under the supervision of 2019 Booker prize-winner, Bernardine Evaristo. Careless is her first novel.

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

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript:

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

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode # 239 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. I am so thrilled that you’re here with me today. If you’re watching on the video, I am in a friend’s house who is out of town, housesitting for her, so that’s why it looks a little bit different. Might sound a little bit different, that might keep happening for a while on the show. As you know, today we are talking to Kirsty Capes, and we are talking about stealing or borrowing tips from screenwriters in order to write novels and she was, as all my guests are, delightful, so, I know that you will enjoy the interview, stick around for that. 

[00:00:52] What’s going on around here? Well, moving is continuing a pace. It’s been a very exciting, very incredibly busy week. Probably the busiest we’ve had so far as we completed cleaning up the house, getting the interior painting done, getting the staging done. We, I just realized this morning when I was journaling that we are not homeless because we have a house, but we are without a home. Our home has gone. The staging is ridiculous. It is just ridiculous. If you look at my Twitter, I have linked, or on my Instagram too, I have posted pictures of what the stagers did to our house. It is so fancy. It is mid-century modern; it has clean lines; it has light colors. It’s white carpet. Oh, it’s white carpet. All of that has been done. All of that has been put in and as of yesterday, people are coming through the home and hopefully somebody will want to buy it as soon as possible. I’m here in this friend’s house for another few days, and then we will go back to the house and we will live in the staged furniture, which makes me very nervous, especially when it comes to my wife and her coffee cup on those white carpets so that’ll be interesting. I’m just planning on buying drop cloths, drop cloths and putting them absolutely everywhere because I don’t trust us, I don’t trust myself and I don’t trust her. So, it is a weird feeling. We have everything that is hours that we need for the next, however long with us. We have our clothes, we have our computer setups, everything that is not packed and ready to be put in a shipping container is with us, besides our kitchen stuff, we did leave a minimal amount of kitchen stuff in our kitchen because we are cooks and we will keep cooking and we will pack up the spices and our favorite two pots at the very last minute, right before we leave the country at the end of July. 

[00:02:54] So, for the next two months, we are without a home, home. Without our home that we created together and have lived in together for the past 15 years. But what was home? What is home, really? Home is my people, my wife, my family. Home is my writing, home is reading. Home is talking to you all, home is thinking about writing. Home is teaching, home is being with my students, that is all home. That’s all the home that I need. Get back to me in six months and see how I feel about that statement. But it is pretty exciting right now. And I’m feeling, I’m pretty good, I really am. I’m glad that we rehomed our cat Waylon when we did, because he is settled in so beautifully and that makes me so happy. And my little dog dozy is actually going to be living in this home behind us until we can send for her, until we buy a home and can send for her. She’s going to be living with my friend Sophie, and that’s the house we’re in. So, it’s really pretty nice that we’re spending 10 days in this house, with the house with dozy so that she can get to know this as her new home as well. And, when it comes to writing, I can admit that it, except for the two hours, twice a week, where I’m in RachaelSaysWrite, where I’m writing, that’s about the only time I’m writing right now. It’s been, rough and that’s fine because I’m actually not on a deadline right now, I’m just doing different projects, finishing up some revisions of things. And I do get those four hours a week, but on the other days I have been, I’m not a step tracker, but my aura rank that I wear, that tracks my sleep, I am a sleep tracker because I have terrible sleep and this has really helped me to get better sleep. It also tracks my steps and I was really impressed when I started to get 11 and 12 and 13 and 15,000 steps a day as I was, you know, moving around the house, packing, moving, cleaning, doing all this stuff. But over this last weekend, I was getting 23, 24, 25,000 steps a day. Absolutely exhausted. So much to do. And it’s, it’s seemingly never ending. So, I think that now that the whole, the house is open for business and people are coming through, there’s really nothing left to do. There’s nothing left to pack. I would like a nice 5,000 step day where I just walk from the, this desk to the bathroom and back, and maybe out for a coffee.

[00:05:20] So, that, because Sophie lives in a place where there is walkable, I have to tell you, this is one of our dreams, is to someday live, where we can walk to things. For 15 years, we have lived in a place in east Oakland. There is nothing to walk to, even the liquor store is closed. There’s literally nothing to walk to at all. Here, at Sophie’s house, there is a Trader Joe’s, there is a Pete’s, coffee shop. There is a Chipotle, there’s 31 flavors. There’s a comic book shop, like literally two blocks away. So, someday in New Zealand, we would love to move someplace where we can walk to some place. Walking to a cafe, isn’t that amazing? And we’re entering a time where, perhaps, you’re getting closer to being able to write in cafes again. In New Zealand, of course, we’ll be able to write in cafes because they’ve been opened since last June of 2020. But all of us in the United States, too, we’re getting to a place where perhaps the writers are going to be able to go out and write again. And for a lot of us, that’s kind of a big deal. However, we have gotten used to writing at home, haven’t we?  So that’s been something that’s one of those silver linings of the pandemic. Perhaps we all had to learn how to write and revise in our homes, which is something that I’ve heard from a lot of writers, is something that we were really bad at, a lot of us were really bad at. So, that’s exciting. I’m just going to jump in to the interview right now. I’ve updated you on all the important things. So please enjoy this. Please get some of your own writing done, whether that’s in your home or in your car, or on one of those car lap desks like I have. And then come find me where I am on the internet and tell me about it. I really, really love hearing from you all about where and what kind of writing you’re doing, what you’re struggling with. Please, let me know. I will be doing a mini episode soon, probably within this next week. So, if you have any questions, I have a couple of questions that are waiting in the queue that I will get out in that mini episode and I really love doing those. So, if you are at patron at the level at which I am your mini coach, which is $5 a month, lay some questions on me. Let’s get some good ones in there. There are already good ones in there. Let’s get some great, a great selection to do a mini episode on and thank you all for listening. Thank you all for being here. Thank you for being writers cause you’re amazing. Okay. Bye. 

[00:07:41] Hey, is resistance keeping you from writing? Are you looking for an actual writing community in which you can make a calls and be held accountable for them? Join RachaelSaysWrite, like twice weekly, two hour writing session on zoom. You can bop in and out of the writing room as your schedule needs, but for just $39 a month, you can write up to 4 hours a week. With our wonderful little community, in which you’ll actually get to know your writing peers. We write from 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM on Tuesdays and 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM on Thursdays and that’s US Pacific Standard Time. Go to RachaelHerron.com/Write to find out more.

Rachael Herron: [00:08:21] Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show today, Kirsty Capes. Hello, Kirsty! 

Kristy Capes: [00:08:26] Hi! Thank you so much for having me, so lovely to meet you, Rachael.

Rachael Herron: [00:08:29] It’s a thrill to have you on the show and I’m so happy to talk about writing today. Let me give you a little introduction. Kirsty Capes works in publishing and, as a care leaver, is an advocate for better representation for care-experienced people in the media. She recently completed her PhD, congratulations, which investigates female-centric care narratives in contemporary fiction, under the supervision of 2019 Booker prize-winner, Bernardine Evaristo. Careless is her first novel. And when this releases, it will have just, the book will have just released. So, congratulations on that. 

Kristy Capes: [00:09:05] Thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:07] Have you, we don’t have a term that I can think of, and it may be a blind spot in my vocabulary. And I shouldn’t even say the word blind spot, but using more sensitive language, but we don’t have, we don’t use the term care leaver here in the states, as far as I know. Can you explain what a care leaver is?

Kristy Capes: [00:09:25] So a care leaver is anyone who has spent time in the care system at any time in their life. I think generally, from like a policy governmental perspective, it’s six months in the care system. Although I might be wrong on that, it might be three months. And they have left the care system. So, you know, they’ve either aged out or they’ve left whatever care situation they were in.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:59] I feel like here, at least there, people, I hear conversation, people talking about there should be a term. We should have a term. Instead, we just have foster kids who’ve aged out and that’s, I mean, there might be a better phrase for that, but I love that you are an advocate for this and talk to me a little bit about how your first novel is about this subject. Did you always want to do this or is this just kind of what came out of your body as a care leaver yourself? 

Kristy Capes: [00:10:25] Yeah, so I think there was definitely a part of it that it just came out of my body as you say. So, I grew up in foster care myself and I always wanted to write. I always wanted to be a writer. I was a really big reader as a kid and I had, I went to university and I did creative writing at university. And a lot of the creative writing that I was doing, were kind of short stories and poems and things like that, that were kind of influenced by my own experience growing up in care. So, I had all of these kinds of bits and pieces of writing, where I was kind of looking at the care experience, dealing with my own care experience, kind of working through some of that. And I got to the point where, I was, I felt as though I was ready to start writing a book and it seemed very natural for me to write something about care because I’d been through it myself. I had so much firsthand experience of it. I had a lot of writing already on the care experience and it felt like it was something that I needed to do for myself to kind of have some sort of catharsis maybe to, you know, kind of deal with some of the sort of unresolved bits of my own experience. And also, you know, I was very, very aware that when I was growing up in care, there were very few representations of people like me in the books that I was reading. And as such a big reader, especially as a child, it was so it felt very important to me to write something that felt very true to my own experience, but also felt more of a positive and hopeful representation, of someone who’s been in foster care. And that’s kind of where Careless came from it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:28] It, I’m not done with it yet, cause I just started it the other day a little bit late, but it is beautiful. 

Kristy Capes: [00:12:34] Oh, thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:35] Your writing is just sublime and it deserves all of the accolades that you are getting. I’m so excited to read more of it. Let’s talk a little bit about what your writing process is like. How do you get it done? Do you have a full-time day job? Are you working around that? Are you working on the next book? Tell us all about that.

Kristy Capes: [00:12:56] Well it’s interesting that this podcast has fallen when it has, because I just sent my second book to my editor yesterday, first draft.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:08] Like, and as we’re recording this, I think your book comes out in about a month. Is that right? 

Kristy Capes: [00:13:13] Yeah. About three weeks. Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:15] That’s exactly the timeframe I had for my first two books. And I hated turning in my second book before the first one had come out. It was also, 

Kristy Capes: [00:13:22] Yeah, it was really insane. So, yeah, I mean, it’s all at the front of my head at the moment, so I can tell you all about it. But, I had, I do have a full-time job. I have a nine to five. I work for HarperCollins, funnily enough. For mills and boon, which I think in the states is called Harlequin. So, lots of lovely romance. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:46] I’m also a romance writer, so 

Kristy Capes: [00:13:49] Oh, amazing! So yeah, I do my nine to five there. And, 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:55] What do you do there?

Kristy Capes: [00:13:56] I do marketing, which is loads of fun. I love working there. It’s just the best. So yeah, so it’s been, it was quite intense. And I think originally when I got my book deal, back last year, in February last year, they kind of asked me when I would be able to deliver book two. And originally, they wanted January, 2021. And I was also doing a PhD at the time last year as well. So, 

[Read more…] about Ep. 239: Kirsty Capes on Using Tips from Screenwriters to Write Novels