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

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

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tara East: [00:06:09] Tara, 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rachael Herron: [00:09:25] Yeah. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rachael Herron: [00:11:43] Yes

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

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

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

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

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

Rachael Herron: [00:13:10] Yes

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

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

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

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

Tara East: [00:13:48] Yeah

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

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

Rachael Herron: [00:14:14] Yes

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

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

Tara East: [00:14:51] Yeah

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

Tara East: [00:15:24] Yeah

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

Tara East: [00:15:26] I know. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tara East: [00:18:13] Absolutely. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tara East: [00:24:12] Yeah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rachael Herron: [00:27:33] Yes

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

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

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

Rachael Herron: [00:27:47] Wow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tara East: [00:29:13] You too. 

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

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

Rachael Herron: [00:29:11] Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patreon and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/

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

Ep. 171: What To Do With a Revision Letter (and where are the memoirists?) Bonus Mini-Episode!

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:13:40] Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patreon and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/

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

Maya Hughes can often be found sneaking in another chapter while hiding in the bathroom from her kids! She’s a romance writer who loves taking inspiration from everyday life. She’s the mom of three little ones, the wife to an amazing husband and also works full time. Some of her favorite things are cupcakes, cinnamon rolls, white wine, laughing until she can’t breathe, traveling with her family and Jeff Goldblum. 

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

Transcript

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

Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode 170 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron.

So we’re pleased that you’re here with me today as we speak to the fabulous Maya Hughes. If you watch on YouTube, for various reasons, she can’t have her face on the internet, and, they are interesting reasons. So you will not see her face, you’ll just see her name flashed up there and let that be a source of wonder to you as you think about why I ain’t gonna tell you. So she’s talking about the wonders of Scrivener and all sorts of other wonderful things. So you are going to enjoy that. 

My voice, if you’re listening and my face, if you’re looking, might sound a little bit different because I’m in a new spot, which I am so excited about that. I am going to talk really quickly about: I have joined a co-working space. I have done this in the past and I have not gone back. It has not been that- I have joined places that have not inspired me to make the track downtown. And, this one’s different. It’s called Sphere, it’s in Oakland. It’s a women’s co-working/wellness place, and it is amazing. There’s a quiet section and a talking section, and it smells like the spa and there’s living walls. It’s really, really inclusive, which is my favorite part. They do a very, very good job of, of attracting women of color and members of the LGBTQ community. In fact, they are the only people that they target with marketing, so that’s amazing. They have a bowl of beads that you can wear if you don’t want to be talked to at all. You’re in noble silence, which I probably won’t wear it, it’s not for me just to be quiet. But they have these podcasting booths and I’m in a phone booth doing this, and there’s a beautiful kitchen and there’s this swing. There is a fitness studio with Peloton equipment. One treadmill, one bike that you can book. They have yoga. They have fitness classes every day at noon that are all included in the price of being in the space. Dude, they have meditation every day at 10:35 AM for 15 minutes. You go into the meditation room and you meditate with other people. It’s amazing. They have a nap time, an optional nap time, which I haven’t used yet, but I plan on trying it. What else? They have all these community building and, networking event, and I’ve already met amazing people. And, and the best part of it is, is that, I’ve been riding public transit to get here. I get in the headspace on my way. I sit next to the window. I look out into downtown Oakland, right now I’m looking at this construction site and the buses going by and people walking and all the guys in hardhats, and I feel like I’m at an office. I’ve never been in an office before, so maybe that’s why I’m really excited about it.

Never worked in a, an office building ever at once in my life. And it makes me have a container for the day. I come here, I work all day, I go home and I don’t work, although probably have to work tonight to upload this podcast. But I’m trying not to work when I go home. And it took four years, but I think I finally grew out of my home office as a place to work all the time. I do. I did used to write a lot at, the mills library or in a cafe. But this is going to be better. 

This already feels amazing and it feels like kind of a home. And I get to go outside and walk around and I’m downtown and there are people and things to eat. And, I walked to a recovery meeting at lunchtime today, that was my lunch break. I walked to it. And it was amazing. So I’m just really, really, really in love with this. And this is where I’m going to be mostly podcasting from, I hope. So, I hope it’s not too echo-y, too gloomy, let me know if it is, if it’s really distracting for you, and I’ll try to figure out how to, compress that out. And I will obviously always do that on my podcast. I always work on the sound quality, but let me know if it’s driving you crazy. 

So, in other news, I’d just like to thank new patron, Whitney, thank you so much for coming along the ride, Whitney, I hope that you enjoy the essays. There is one going out, this week with a major confession and I’m not talking a minor confession. I’m talking about something that really kind of messed me up recently, and, I wrote an essay about it. So everybody in the Patreon community gets that essay. You can get that essay two for a dollar a month. You can always find the over at www.patreon.com/rachael. 

And now let us jump into the wonderful interview with Maya. I know you’re gonna like it. Please come by www.howdoyouwrite.net. Drop me a comment. Tell me how you’re doing. Tell me how your writing is going, and thank you for being here. Happy writing to you. 

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

Go to www.rachaelherron.com/Tuesday  for more information. 

Rachael Herron: [00:06:25] Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome this morning to the show, Maya Hughes. Hello, Maya. How are you? 

Maya Hughes: [00:06:31] Hi! So happy to be here. 

Rachael Herron: [00:06:33] Well, happy to have you. Let me give you a little bio before we start chatting about your process. Maya Hughes can often be found sneaking in another chapter while hiding in the bathroom from her kids. She’s a romance writer who loves taking inspiration from everyday life. She’s the mom of three little ones, the wife to an amazing husband, and also works full time. Some of her favorite things are cupcakes, cinnamon rolls, white wine, laughing until she can’t breathe, traveling with her family and Jeff Goldblum. I love that last one. 

Maya Hughes: [00:07:03] Jeff Goldblum is great. He’s amazing. He’s like, I dunno. It’s like he’s a human who’s come to earth like, with an idea of how humans are supposed to act and interact and you’re so like, he’s so charming and you’re just fascinated watching him. 

Rachael Herron: [00:07:19] That’s a really good point. He might be an alien that might actually like come out at some point. I would really like that. It’s hilarious. Okay, so you get a lot done and are juggling so many balls and those are the people I love best to talk to. How do you get it done? How do you get your writing done when and where and how does it happen?

Maya Hughes: [00:07:39] Generally less often than I would like. I try, I wake up very early for some reason, I just managed to survive on less sleep. I think it’s because of the children. They’ve just liked program me for the years, to not need my sleep. So usually most days I’ll wake up, even if I don’t want to, around 4? 

Rachael Herron: [00:08:0h] Oh, it’s really, most people say really early and they mean 6. 4 is really, really, really early. Yeah. 

Maya Hughes: [00:08:11] It was really, really early. So I’ll usually just lay in bed and go, please fall back to sleep, and then I don’t, so about 4:30, I’ll get up and then I’ll come into the office and I’ll try and write for about an hour. And then I’ll, get open, get, get everyone ready for school and all that, and we get into the routine and all that. And then I, I head into the office at work and I do my work stuff, and then, you know, afterschool activities and all of that jazz. And then once everyone is hopefully at least in bed, even if they’re not asleep by seven, seven-thirty and then, you know, my husband and I, we might maybe sit down and watch a show. If there’s something on like Westworld will be starting soon, so we will be watching that once that’s on

Rachael Herron: [00:09:01] Yes, that too, I love that show

Maya Hughes: [00:09:04] I love it. And then, and then I’m just in the office and I’m writing until -or you know, doing admin stuff, marketing, all sorts of other things usually from about 8 until 10 or 11 it’s really hard for me to stop. I kind of just could keep going, but I’m like, no, I need to actually sleep for some amount of time, so I’ve cut myself off.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:26] Wow. And then do you fall asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow kind of thing?

Maya Hughes: [00:09:30] Yeah. I have been known to fall asleep mid-sentence, like my husband, we’re having a full on conversation, he’s just like, and then you stop responding. And then you’re asleep. And I’m up and yeah, I’m a, it is time to go to sleep now and then just power down like a robot.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:46] That’s an admirable quality, honestly. So how do you get through your books? Are you a plotter or a pantser…?

Maya Hughes: [00:09:53] Oh my goodness. So I, I have wanted to be a plotter where I could just write it down and have a solid outline and know every single in and out and just because I managed it once, and that book, it just flew, it like flew by and it was, there were no hiccups, no roadblocks, nothing. And it just, it’s amazing and I’ve never done that since. So, yeah, I tend to try and get the general idea, like I have an idea of the tropes and you know, the characters and their backgrounds and where I, you know, I usually know that ending and I know how they’re going to meet. So for me it’s usually about all the ins and outs and the ups and downs between those two points, which can be, you know, challenging.

Rachael Herron: [00:10:45] Yeah, yeah

Maya Hughes: [00:10:46] Yeah, yeah. So I do a lot of walking with one of my neighbors around the block and we’ll talk through things and I’ll, you know, I feel so bad because I do the same thing with my husband. I feel like half of the time when we’re, you know, spit balling things, it’s mainly them saying, what about this and this meagle, “No, but how about this?” Like, it’s like literally just me being like, that’s a great idea, but no and we’re picking something else.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:11] I love that you say that. Like, my wife is, I think my best plotting help along with a couple of girlfriends, but, she’s literally the best, but every single idea she has, she says, you always shoot it down, but I do go the, no, no, no. I know that’s not it. But that makes me think of something. Yes, that’s exactly right.

Maya Hughes: [00:11:28] Exactly. So it’s a lot of trying to talk things out with people and sort of just, you know spit balling things or writing down things, or I’ll hear someone, you know, while I’m walking somewhere and I’ll hear someone say something and I’ll think, oh my gosh, okay, that could be a great idea. Like right now, I’m a very, I’m like, I think far in advance, so I have my books sort of planned out in a way, in a sense, loosely till 2024 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:58] Wow. Admirable.

Maya Hughes: [00:11:59] So, so I’m picking up these little bits and pieces of all of these stories that are floating around my head, and I use the notes file on my phone and it’s like, Oh, that would be an awesome thing for this character. Or this could be a really solid bit for this character, you know? So I’m just sort of like, 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:21] So useful.

Maya Hughes: [00:12:22] Yeah. And then that sort of how I work, were. As time goes on, I’ve learned that’s one thing about me, I’ve learned that the longer I think about the characters and what they’re going through and their journey, the richer it is. And the more depths there is, and the more they feel like real people. And so it’s almost like I can sort of have a conversation with them and I know about that thing that happened in seventh grade that totally messed them up, even if it doesn’t end up in the book, but they really do become like real people. So it’s kind of like this ongoing ever evolving relationship that we have. You know, in my head. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:00] I love that. Would you consider yourself an extrovert or an introvert? 

Maya Hughes: [00:13:04] I think I’m an extrovert.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:06] Because I just read something and I used to think I was an extrovert until I really felt myself changing in the last like 10 years or so. And I’m more of an introvert now. And, but I just read something that says extroverts talk out their problems. They speak that they speak them out loud. Whereas introverts tend to like sit and write and think, very quietly and don’t talk them out loud. And it sounds like you have a really good practice of speaking these things aloud with people that you love and, and working through that. 

Maya Hughes: [00:13:37] Yeah. Or by myself sometimes in the car, 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:40] Yeah

Maya Hughes: [00:13:41] Sometimes in the car, I’ll do it to where I’m, I’ll do voice memos, either it’s dialogue. So what happens for me is I’ll almost like a scene will pop into my head and it’ll play like a movie, and I can hear the dialogue and I can see everything and I can, it’s an, and sometimes it’s really hard for me because as I’m writing the story, that first scene that sparked the whole thing will be something that doesn’t make it into the book. Like it just doesn’t work at a certain point.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:05] Oh, that’s painful. 

Maya Hughes: [00:13:07] And it’s so hard cause I’m like, no, this was, this was the seed of the whole thing. How can I get rid of this? But I’ve learned that sometimes you can’t just shoehorn it in. So that’s the stricter-

Rachael Herron: [00:14:16] No matter how hard we try. 

Maya Hughes: [00:14:18] No matter how hard, it’s like, nope, it’s just doesn’t work. So there are times where I’ve really just, I’ll be in the car and there’ll be a scene. And as stupid as I feel doing it, I’ll go in and I’ll just have to say it out loud. And I even tried dictation, it has not worked for me, but I’ll do the voice memos and then I upload it in my computer. I have a program where it’ll transcribe it so I don’t even have to listen to it. And then I just get the actual words and then I, I go, you know, I’ll just add those to my little notes document where I keep them for whatever story that was for.  

Rachael Herron: [00:14:55] What program is that? You don’t have to –tap on your head if you-

Maya Hughes: [00:14:59] Oh gosh. Cause I haven’t used it in a while, It’s Dragon.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:03] Oh, okay, great. 

Maya Hughes: [00:15:04] Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:04] Great, I have that on my phone as well. 

Maya Hughes: [00:15:06] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:15:07] It’s worth having it there for the transcription.

Maya Hughes: [00:15:09] Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:10] Okay, so what is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing?

Maya Hughes: [00:15:15] So it’s usually either one of two things. Either I’m stuck in the story, there’s something where I just know there’s something that’s not working. I can’t put my finger on it. I can’t, I just can’t place, if it’s someone’s motivation or something in their background or a piece of where they’re going or something is missing and I just, I have to sit and think about it. Which kills me because I want to be writing always because I don’t have much time, you know? And I, I try to space out my releases fairly consistently. So it’s either that or it’s I have the story and I know what needs to get done, and I just don’t have the time. You know, some days, like the 4:30 thing, I mean, I tried to do that at least three times a week. But sometimes, you know, you sleep in and you wake up with the alarm and its time, you know

Rachael Herron: [00:16:03] Cause you need to sleep, right?

Maya Hughes: [00:16:05] Right. I need to sleep. So those are the hard times when it’s like, oh no, so you know, we, I have to take the kids to a sleepover, or they’ve got an orchestra concert and they have something going on and it’s like, so I’m out all day and then we’re tired, you know? So those are, those are the two hardest parts. Either it’s the story and the clicking, or I literally just do not have enough hours in the day to sit down and write. And those are, 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:28] Yeah, and those are two things. You just can’t sit down and fix. 

Maya Hughes: [00:16:32] Yeah, exactly. So I’m like, try and type some on my phone, or I’ll try and type some on my iPad and like gets it. But I just, I’ve learned to just not tried it. Like if, if it’s just not gonna work, I just, don’t force it. Don’t force it. It’s like probably the biggest thing 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:51] That’s a professional thing to do. Sometimes I just force it and then I’ll have 10,000 words that I wish I didn’t have that are not going to work because I’ve been forcing it by, I’m a big fan of beating my head against a brick wall, personally. Yeah. What is your biggest joy when it comes to writing?

Maya Hughes: [00:17:08] I think, well, it’s also one of two things. It’s actually, you know, finishing and like saving that file and just sending it to my editor and having a whole, like two minutes where there’s something that doesn’t need to be done because like the book is like 30% of what goes into actually publishing a book. Like writing a book, I feel like it ends up being such a small piece of what goes into the whole publishing process.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:36] Yeah. Yeah. 

Maya Hughes: [00:17:37] But yeah, so, so that, that moment when I know like, okay, this first draft is done. And then I don’t have to deal with the horror show that will be when the edits come back, but I’m just like, I can drink wine, I can celebrate. That’s amazing. And then I think the other part is just when I start getting people emailing me or messaging me saying, you know how much a character in the story they identified with or they loved or, you know, spoke to them or, you know, move them or made them cry or, you know, something made them laugh, whatever it was, you know, that’s, those are the best. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:17] I love that. I love that so much. Can you share a quick craft tip of any sort with us?

Maya Hughes: [00:18:24] Sure. I use Scrivener to write my first draft. Sometimes I use Scrivener after I get my edits back. It depends on how I’m lazy I’m feeling because to copy and paste it back in is a little bit – 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:38] Yeah. Yeah

Maya Hughes: [00:18:39] But one of the things that I love in Scrivener, and let me just make sure I’m getting the right name of it. It is, it’s a feature that allows you to isolate only specific parts of speech. So pull it up and it will show you all of the, what is it called? It’ll show you like highlight or it’ll gray out everything except like all of your verbs. So you can go in and you can see all the verbs that you’re using. You know, per whatever it is, chapter, 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:12] I had no idea 

Maya Hughes: [00:19:13] Whatever it is that you’re using. So you can sort of try and cut down on duplication that way. Also, it will allow you to isolate – 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:20] Wow

Maya Hughes: [00:19:21] dialogue only. So you can go through and it’ll just show you all your dialogues so you can just sort of make sure it’s flowing. And I try and do that cause I break down my files, my, so I’ll have like a folder and then each, each chapter is a – I don’t even know what they’re called. Each chapters has its own document. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:38] Yeah. Yeah. 

Maya Hughes: [00:19:39] So I try and I’ll go through and I’ll, I’ll select only all the documents for one specific character, and then I’ll go through and make sure that it reads like, you know, they’re not reading the same. Because two people aren’t gonna think the same way. So it just sort of helps me. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:55] That’s mind blowing. 

Maya Hughes: [00:19:56] So I just use that to where is this thing is called? I need to find it. But yeah, so 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:05] People can find it though. Now that they know it exists, they can find it. But-  

Maya Hughes: [00:20:08] Yeah, and it’s amazing. I mean, I just love it because it helps me, yeah, a linguistic focus, that’s what it’s called. It’s under writing tools, linguistics focus. And you can say, show me all the direct speech so you can sort of see, “oh, is this way too dialogue heavy? Does this like chapter, have no dialogue at all?” You know? Or you can do nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, all that stuff. So you can just, 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:30] That is brilliant especially the dialogue thing, because my problem is in first draft and sometimes second draft. My characters all speak exactly the same. They speak the way I speak, and that is a, that is a revision round for me. That’s a draft, that’s a draft pass where I go in and actually change it to be specifically theirs and that’s, I’d never thought of that. That’s, I never knew that existed on be using Scrivener since it came out. So, wow!

Maya Hughes: [00:20:54] I love Scrivener. There are so many things, like there are other things that like just other tool, like other features that it has. And I’m always like, and it took me, I had Scrivener for a year and a half, a year, year and a half before I finally like opened it and was like, okay, why is this a thing? Like, what makes this worth trying to figure out all of this stuff? Like why? And then I started like watching, the people who develop Scrivener, they have YouTube videos and things like that. And I just sort of started to play around with it and I was like, oh okay, I get it now. And now, like I couldn’t do my first drafts without Scrivener. Like it’s just the snapshot. Like, I love taking snapshots, like all of that.

Rachael Herron: [00:21:36] I like the sounds it makes 

Maya Hughes: [00:21:37] Yes. That’s a very funny sound when it takes it and then, but yeah, being able to compare snapshots and see like, okay, what changed? What didn’t change? It’s just, I love it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:21:47] I’ve actually never compared to snapshot. I take them because I’m scared and I like re-duplication of my saving efforts. But yeah, I’ve never compared them.

Maya Hughes: [00:21:54] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:21:55] That’s interesting. Oh that is good.

Maya Hughes: [00:21:56] I usually after edits. Because when I’ve gotten them back and to be like, oh cause sometimes when it’s with the editor I might go in and make a change and then I’m like, oh crap, I don’t want to lose that and make sure capturing it in the new, you know, new version.

Rachael Herron: [00:22:10] You’re really good at Scrivener. That’s amazing. That’s the, I’m really excited about that. I must hang up now and go in the Scrivener

Maya Hughes: [00:22:19] Play around with it and you know about the name generator, right? 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:22] I do. And it took me a long time to find that. But as also underwriting tools is the name generator. It’s so brilliant, it’s just there. You can up the complexity and, and it’s fantastic, I use it all the time. Cause I don’t care about names, names I’ll just plug in. I’m not one of those people who really, really needs the best name. 

Maya Hughes: [00:22:39] You’re like any name, 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:40] The name that their parents gave them is fine. Okay, so what thing in your life, it can be from any area of your life affects your writing in a surprising way?

Maya Hughes: [00:22:55] That’s interesting. I don’t know how surprising it is though. Music plays a big part I think in my writing.

Rachael Herron: [00:23:02] How so?

Maya Hughes: [00:23:03] So I, I usually start once I start – once a book is maybe three books, from now, like, so that’s, that’s what I consider a close book that’ll be coming out soon. I start making a playlist and building a playlist based off of those characters and sort of their journey and their story and what’s happening to them and how they feel about each other and how they feel about themselves. And so I’ll start sort of like, I’ll go on Pandora or Spotify. And I’ll put it on whatever mood I’m looking for at that time. Like whether it’s like acoustic pop or like ladies’ stuff or whatever it is, today’s hits, that kind of stuff. Or like 90’s music, stuff like that. And then I’ll just start, you know, as it’s playing, you know, I’ll go, Oh, Oh, I think that would be like a song this character would like, and then I’ll add it to the playlist. And then sort of once I’m writing, depending on what type of writing I’m doing or how deep I’m into things and how things are flowing, I’ll just like sort of put that playlist on repeat and just to sort of give me a sort of feel for those to those characters, so-

Rachael Herron: [00:24:05] Does it bother you when there are words in the music at all? Can you still write?

Maya Hughes: [00:24:09] I can still write. I mean, it depends on what type of scenes they are, but yeah, I can, I can write even with the, with the words. 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:18] I used to do that more for some reason, I think I, I don’t know why I really stopped, but there are a couple of books that if I hear the particular songs now, it just throws me right back into the book and that’s a delicious feeling and it’s like a surprise to revisit those books suddenly when a, when a song comes on, it’s actually made me cry before, like a song will come on my, my rotation and like oh, I miss them. 

Maya Hughes: [00:24:41] Yeah. And it’s also something fun to share with readers cause then I can share –

Rachael Herron: [00:24:47] Yeah

Maya Hughes: [00:24:48] with those with the readers. And it’s like another fun little piece of that world of those characters 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:51] I did that once, never again

Maya Hughes: [00:24:55] I mean at least they found it. Now readers have found it and they’re like, Oh my God. Like they’ll go on my Spotify and they can see the same with my Pinterest. They’ll go on my Spotify, they’ll go on my Pinterest and they’ll start like, we’ll have like theories and there’ll be like this lyric said this thing about this person. Like, are you writing a book about that? Like they get, they get a bit into it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:11] That’s awesome. That’s really, really awesome. You’re extending your fictional world to them 

Maya Hughes: [00:25:22] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:25:23] And letting them participate. Oh, that’s so cool. That’s a really good answer. What is the best book you’ve read recently or not recently, and why did you love it?

Maya Hughes: [00:25:28] Okay, so it wasn’t recently, it’s an older book. But I love and I think this was maybe the first time I had read, I guess shifters, are they consider paranormal?

Rachael Herron: [00:25:43] Yeah, usually I think. 

Maya Hughes: [00:25:44] Yeah. Yeah. Although there’s no shifting in this actual book, but, Theodora Taylor’s, Her Viking Wolf was I think, the first shifter book I ever read, and I was like, what is this? I love this book. And it was just, it was so fun and it was, has like time travel in it and all sorts of stuff. And it was just, it was a book that I, that I loved and I, you know, go back and I reread it every so often just because 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:07] I have to check it out, I haven’t heard of that one. 

Maya Hughes: [00:26:09] Yeah, it’s great. 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:10] Oh, awesome. Thank you. Okay, now we talk about you. Tell us about your latest book or series a, the one that you want to direct listeners to and where can we find you.

Maya Hughes: [00:26:19] Yes. So I don’t know when this will air 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:25] This will air a couple of three weeks. 

Maya Hughes: [00:26:28] Okay. Okay. Well, I had my release then was today, so it will be on sale or it’s on sale now. It’s a, like a secret admirer, neighbor, next door neighbor, although he’s actually across the street. Friends, celebrities, type of book, and it’s in my, my series of standalones that I have right now. And yeah, I mean, they can, people can find me sort of everywhere. I’m probably more places than I should be. It’s like I’m, you wanna look at my Pinterest boards or Spotify or Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, like, you know, everywhere. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:07] Oh, you’re on TikTok? I was on TikTok for about 20 minutes and I realized that I lost all concept of who I was as a human being for 20 minutes. And I was like, no, I’ll do this for the next 24 hours. And I took it off my phone. I was so terrified. It was so great. It was such a good place to be. 

Maya Hughes: [00:27:24] Yeah well-

Rachael Herron: [00:27:24] Do you love it? 

Maya Hughes: [00:27:25] Well, I’m, I’m starting on it, so I’m not, so hopefully in three weeks I’ll have a lot more on there for people to, for people to check out. Yeah. But no, I have learned though about taking things off my phone. I actually, last year I took, I was like burned out. And I think part of the reason was I took candy crush off my phone. It’s very – 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:43] Oh

Maya Hughes: [00:27:44] I was like I am spending way too much time on candy crush. I need to get this off my phone. It’s crazy. And then I sort of been working with someone, an author coach and I, we sort of came to the realization that I am, my brain is always going, like always firing. Like it is very hard for me to shut off and just like not be doing anything. So candy crush was kind of like letting my brain just like. 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:11] Yes, 

Maya Hughes: [00:28:12] Chill out for a bit like that shower time, like when you’re just standing in the shower and you get ideas and things are flowing. Candy crush, it was like, it took enough of my attention that I couldn’t think about too many other things, but it wasn’t so time consuming or so intensive that I couldn’t also have the background’s like wheels turning, so I totally put it back on my phone. 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:30] I absolutely love that. That makes so much sense to me and I’ve never heard anybody say that. But that’s your shower time. That’s your spacing out time. And that’s when they say that the default mode network, that’s when the, that’s when it fires up in the brain and that’s when connections start to be made in your, in the back of your mind, not the forefront of your mind. So I think that’s genius. Who – was the author-coach Becca Symes? 

Maya Hughes: [00:28:57] Yes, of course. 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:00] So are you high intellection then? 

Maya Hughes: [00:29:02] No. No. I am. I am restorative, focus, achiever, communication of futuristic. 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:10] Nice

Maya Hughes: [00:29:10] So, yes. So the achiever focus can work against me because I can’t. Stop. Like I can’t ever stop. So, so sometimes I have to, I’ve tried meditation. I’m like, I’m going to be able to do, I’m going to do, I’m going to achieve that. I am going to do it. I have not been able to do it yet. But, so candy crush is like my meditation. 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:32] I love that. And I love that Becca like really tells us what, what the things are okay. Like candy crush is okay on your phone because it’s doing a good thing for you. She told me that like my pain point in writing was just that this is going to be my pain point, but just going to be my pain point. I just need, it’s going to be painful to do this, and I thought, Oh, you’re right. 

Maya Hughes: [00:29:51] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:29:52] I can’t make this easy. 

Maya Hughes: [00:29:53] I can’t! I know. She told me I can’t plot. I still, I still say, you know, I reject that premise, but I’m like, I will continue to work at it. I won’t work myself up if I’m unable to, but I’m like, I would like to get to a point in my process where I am able to very clearly see the story and all the roadblocks that might present themselves as it goes so that I won’t hit them. But yeah, she’s, she’s, yeah. No, amazing. Amazing, 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:20] That’s awesome. We’re all proselytizing about her, yeah. 

Maya Hughes: [00:30:23] Totally. Totally. 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:25] Well, thank you so much, Maya, for being on the show. It’s been a absolute delight to talk to you. So I wish you well in your writing and in your sleeping to may you get enough.

Maya Hughes: [00:30:37] May I get enough sleep. Thank you. That is like the best- the best wish that anyone could ever give. A mom. I feel like a – it’s like, may you get as much sleep as you need.

Rachael Herron: [00:30:48] Wow. May you get enough sleep. Alright, thanks so much Maya. It’s been a delight.

Maya Hughes: [00:30:53] Thank you. Bye

Rachael Herron: [00:30:54] Bye

Rachael Herron: [00:30:55] Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patreon and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/

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

Juliet Blackwell is the New York Times bestselling author of several novels based in France, including The Vineyards of Champagne, The Lost Carousel of Provence, Letters from Paris and The Paris Key. She also writes the Witchcraft Mystery series and the Haunted Home Renovation series. As Hailey Lind, Blackwell wrote the Agatha-nominated Art Lover’s Mystery series. A former anthropologist, social worker, and professional artist, Juliet is a California native who has spent time in Mexico, Spain, Cuba, Italy, the Philippines, and France.

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

Transcript

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

Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode 169 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron.

So thrilled that you’re here with me today, as I’m recording it is February 20th, 2020 and we’re talking to one of my darlings – that creek brought to you by my dog opening the door behind me. Today, we’re talking to one of my darlings, Juliet Blackwell, who has a new incredible book that just came out last week, and she’s one of my best friends and I’ve never been able to talk her into being on the show before, and we have a lovely chat and she is just one of those radiant, brilliant personalities that I personally can never get enough of. And she really knows the craft of writing. She has written so many books. She’s a New York times’ bestseller. She is everything. She writes mystery, she writes now, women’s fiction/literary and it’s beautiful. So I hope that you enjoy our conversation. I think that you will. 

And what’s going on around here. I am seriously on deadline now, the book is due in two months, but that is fully revised, so I need to finish it and do a full major revision. I kind of have about a month for both of those things. The book is halfway done and, don’t tell my editor, but, I have realized that the whole first half is flawed. So in my scrivener file, I keep all the scenes on the left hand side. You can kind of, you know, run your eye down them and see what happens in each scene. And I’ve color coded one of them red, and it says it’s just a simple empty scene that says change all to here and I’m moving forward because that’s the way I write my drafts. I keep going no matter what. If I stop and go back to the beginning right now and fix it to the way it should be, I don’t have any way of knowing if that is correct or not. And if I went back and started to revising to revise it to the midpoint, I might get it wrong. So what I’m doing is I’m going forward as if I have made all the changes that I have told myself I will, and I write it to the end. Hopefully my fixes in my brain that I’ve written down on my beloved post-its will be correct, and then I’ll just go back and in that big revision, I will incorporate all the changes I need to make to the entire first half of the book, which was a flawed premise.

And if I get that wrong, then I figure something else out, but that is what I’m doing right now. I am having a little bit of a hard time getting to the page and you’re like, I’m treading water, but sometimes grabbing a mouthful of salt water. So it’s a little bit difficult right now. But we are writers and we keep going and we keep writing, and the goal is words on the page, just words on the page. You can fix the words later. That is another goal to fix them later. That’s the fun part. I can tell you how, and I do go back and listen to my revision podcast, which was, I don’t know, like episode 116 or something like that. But if you’re not getting words on the page right now. Ask yourself why you’re not? Is it a time thing? Is it a place thing? Is it a fear thing? Get a journal, write it out. Start breaking apart. Why you’re not doing the words. Are you tired? Are you doing too much? Is there something you can offload? Single mothers of four children are screaming at me in your car right now and I apologize you cannot move anything off your plate. You will get your writing done when you get it done. Everybody else, you can do it. You can find the time. I want you to, try to work that out and figure out what it is that’s preventing you from getting to the page. If there is something you can always write and tell me about it. I love to hear from you on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron or on my email, which is www.rachaelherron.com but you have to spell it right. Anywhere else you can hit me at www.howdoyouwrite.net is working again. So you could even come leave a comment on the Share notes, which nobody ever does because that redirect wasn’t working for so long. www.howdoyouwrite.net is now working So come say hello! 

Very quickly, I would love to thank new Patrons, we have Mary Rose. Thank you, thank you so much. And Alex. No, sorry, Alice, Alice is a new Patron. Thank you, Alice. Alex Wolfson just edited their pledge to the $5 mark, which means they get to ask me any question that they want at any time, and I will answer it in the mini podcasts and let’s see who else? New Patrons, Sandy Kirschner. Hello, Sandy! It’s a wonderful to have you here. I do apologize for not getting a show out last week. I was – I was on my fourth trip in five weeks, and I have to tell you, I am exhausted. I’m very glad that I’m home until we go to Barcelona on the writing retreat at the end of April. I don’t have any more trips planned. I really need to be at home. Just working, traveling that much was difficult, but I have to tell you, the last trip I took was this last weekend. So podcast didn’t go out. I was with my goddaughter as she had a major necessary surgery, but not necessarily a bad surgery. We weren’t talking about like a cancer operation or something like that. We’re talking about a major surgery that was healable and I went down to San Diego to take care of her and we got an Airbnb, and I have to tell you that I accidentally forgot my charging cord for my computer at home, so I couldn’t do, I could not do any of the work I had meant to do while I was there.

And while I regretted that time lost on working, I also really loved just being with her and cooking her food and making sure she was comfortable and taking her pills on time and we just sat around and watched reality TV and ate good food and instead of working, when she napped, I napped. It was really marvelous and it just made me remember again, how everything we do, including this writing gig, is about connection. And right now the fact that you’re listening to me is about connection and caring, and we bring that into our work and we share our words because we want to have that connection because that caring is so important in our lives. So I don’t know, I’m just kind of pretty high on that feeling right now. So I hope that you are also feeling it. I hope that you’re getting some words done, and if you’re not, try to figure out why and send me a note, or if you’re getting your word Zen and you love it, tell me about that too. 

[00:07:00] Now let us go into the interview with the marvelous Juliet Blackwell and we will talk soon my friends. 

[00:07:08] Hey writers, I’ve opened up some coaching slots. I’m not taking clients on a weekly basis right now as I’m working on my own books, but I am doing one-offs. I call them Tune-ups. Tell me your plot problems and ask your character, quitters. Let me know what stumbling blocks you’re up against. Get tips and tricks to get you back on the right track.

Ask me questions about all things publishing. Together we’ll brainstorm your specific plan of action, making sure you’re in the driver’s seat of your book again. You’ll receive a 30-minute call over Skype or FaceTime, giving you the honest encouragement you need to keep getting better or a polite ass kicking if that’s what you need and ask for it. Plus, you’ll get an MP3 audio recording or MP4 video, your choice of our chat so you can re-listen at your leisure. And if you want a little more help, I can also critique either 10 pages or your book’s outline and talk you through my findings. Just check out www.rachaelherron.com/coach for more info. I’d love to work with you. 

Now on to the interview. 

[00:08:12] Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show, one of my truly very best friends in the entire universe, Juliet Blackwell. Hi, Juliet. 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:08:22] Hi Rachael, it’s good to be here

Rachael Herron: [00:08:24] Right before this, we were talking about how, I can’t believe that I have never wrangled her to be on this show, but I’m so excited to talk to you today. Let me give you a little bio for people listening. Juliet Blackwell is very fancy, New York times bestselling author. 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:08:38] Not so fancy.

Rachael Herron: [00:08:39] Yeah, she’s not very fancy, I added that. Bestselling author of several novels based in France, including The Vineyards of Champagne, which is the most recent one, The Lost Carousel of Provence, Letters from Paris and The Paris key. She also writes the Witchcraft Mystery series and the Haunted Home Renovation series. As Hailey Lind, Blackwell wrote the Agatha-nominated Art Lover’s Mystery series. A former anthropologist, social worker, and professional artist, Juliet is a California native who has spent time in Mexico, Spain, Cuba, Italy, the Philippines, and France. You’re really one of my coolest and most fancy friend, so honestly, 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:09:20] You’re so sweet. You are definitely my closest friends. So, you know, whatever.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:25] I was just remembering while I was reading that bio, the day that you hit the New York times for the first time and 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:09:32] Definitely that was a special moment. It was the best.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:33] I think you texted us, and I know that at least Sophie and I and maybe other people converged upon your house with champagne. 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:09:41] Yes. You were the first to arrive 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:43] Was I?

Juliet Blackwell: [00:09:42] With champagne, I will never forget. That was beautiful. So that’s one of the things we talk about loving, right, is that we have such a great community of writers, which is, which is really amazing, and we can really honestly rebel in each other’s success, I think. 

Rachael Herron: [00:10:00] Yes, and I think that’s just one of the most important things to have as a writer, and I’m always going on and on and on and on the show about that. But you, I really wanted to have you on the show. We’re going to talk about your new book at the end, but this is a show about process, and you have a process that is not like everybody else’s, you, you do not show up at a page

Juliet Blackwell: [00:10:24] Panic induced?

Rachael Herron: [00:10:26] Panic induced

Juliet Blackwell: [00:10:24] I’m in a panic induced process, yes.

Rachael Herron: [00:10:29] You don’t show up with a page every morning and do your 1300 words or whatever. Tell us what your process looks like. I know what it looks like, but tell the listeners…

Juliet Blackwell: [00:10:38] But I would say, I do try to show up,

Rachael Herron: [00:10:40] You do

Juliet Blackwell: [00:10:41] Most mornings, and theoretically I have a 2000-word count, but what, what actually happens to me usually is I usually start off great guns like a lot of people do. And then do get bogged down and what happens, I think, and I’ve been thinking about a lot because I’m at that trying to emerge from the bog right at the moment, but I think it has to do with, by the time I get to maybe the 50,000-word mark, 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:08] Yeah.

Juliet Blackwell: [00:11:09] I start having so many threads of so many plots or subplots or issues or whatever it is. So many threads that I, that I get bogged down and how to – how to bring them all together. And that’s a, that’s a hard time for me. That’s when I start doing avoidance stuff and, Oh, wouldn’t, wasn’t that shiny thing over there would be more fun than what I’m working on now and then about, usually about six weeks before the deadline, I start to panic and realize I need to actually get my rear and gear in have that all happen?

Rachael Herron: [00:11:41] Can we talk a moment too? And just about, because I think this is really illustrative and useful. Can we talk about how you feel at that point when you’re, when you go into panic, there’s something you always tell me about your book when you hit that point? Do you know what that is? 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:11:56] Well that I don’t know what the ending is?

Rachael Herron: [00:11:58] You don’t, you always say, I don’t have a book. 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:12:00] I don’t have a book. 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:01] That’s right,

Juliet Blackwell: [00:12:01] I don’t have a book, yes.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:02] There’s no, you don’t like the plot, you don’t like the characters 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:12:04] Right. I will start all over again.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:05] You always, and you mean it like,

Juliet Blackwell: [00:12:07] I want to call it professional, to finish my book. I need some professional intervention. I need to hire up an actual author, to make this thing for me

Rachael Herron: [00:12:19] But, and you’re never exaggerating. That’s how you feel 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:12:22] Right. That’s how I feel. Yes, 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:24] And I really identify a lot with that because I think, I think I just string out my existential panic a little bit longer than you do, so I’m always feeling it in a, on a on a little bit lower basis, but then you really do, you do take care of that by going kind of underground, is that right? Like you head down

Juliet Blackwell: [00:12:41] I do, generally, yeah, just kind of duck out of everything. I think my, my, my friends, my neighbors are used to like not seeing me or hearing from me for, for at least the last month before a book is due usually, and I just, I just need to be in that head space continually. And actually I just had a little talk with my boyfriend this morning about, he’s like, is everything okay with us? And I was like, yeah. And he’s like, you seem to be, not really all there, like connecting. And I was like, I just, I’m in my head now. I’m in this book, you know, I just am in this book and I can try to turn it off like in the evening or something. But it’s, it’s hard for me and I think it’s hard for people around me because I am, half of me is always now, in the book. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:27] But this is your process. This is how it works for you, and it works. 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:13:31] It is. It is and it’s painful. I would love to be one of those people who could just sit down every day, make my word count, and then bring it together and then have a few months at the end to just polish it and that kind of thing. But, at this point, you know, I do think that the only thing that gets me to finish the book though is having a deadline. Like I think, I don’t know, it would be interesting for me if somebody just said, just write a book and see how long it takes and no worries. I don’t know that I would ever finish. I really don’t know if I’d be able to push through that hard part. You know? I think I’m forced to push through the hard part because, because that’s the only way I’m going to ever get to the deadline. Luckily I will also say, luckily I have a really good relationship with my editor. We’ve known each other my entire publishing career. As you know, I have the, one of those rare stories where my entire publishing career has been spent in the same publishing house. So they know me well by now and my editor, and I have a great relationship and, and I can now kind of give her what, it’s not exactly a rough draft, but it’s, but it’s essentially what some people would call, maybe not a finished product for the deadline. You know, I keep working on it because I always feel terrible that I gave her something that wasn’t polished. And then she comes back with her comments. But by that time, I’ve already been working on it, polishing for a few weeks, and then I can incorporate all of her queries into it. And so, so, you know, 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:07] That works really well.

Juliet Blackwell: [00:15:08] I work certainly on deadline, but I feel like there is another, you know, there’s another cushion there afterward ‘cause you get your edits from your, your editor and, and that’s also so helpful. And that’s something that a lot of people who don’t, who aren’t yet published or they don’t have an editor, they don’t have that part of the process, which is, I think also really difficult. I love having the – those professional eyes reading my manuscript and giving me, and of course a very honest opinion because my editor wants my books to do well too, and she’s not going to accept something that’s not working.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:40] And have it you said that she will, she’s, she’s pretty blunt with you. 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:15:44] She’s very blunt. Yes. She is.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:47] Which I honestly prefer 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:15:48] I do too. I do too.  She’s just, yeah, she, she doesn’t, you know, she doesn’t use bad language or anything. But I often, I read into her thing, you know, a lot of WTF’s, like, I don’t get what you’re doing here, you know, and it’s, but I sort of love that about her. She’s just very, she’s very straightforward. And again, you know, she and I have been working together for so long. I know she loves my work and I know she wants my work to shine, 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:14] Yeah

Juliet Blackwell: [00:16:15] So, so I just really trust her when she’s, when she’s telling me that. Yeah. And I don’t need the flowery language. I just need someone to tell me like, this ending doesn’t work. You know, just something else. So I love that. 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:28] I also love that. I love that you mentioned that it’s painful. I have, I think the reason I do this show is there’s – there’s a lot of reasons I do the show, but I’m always looking for the magic bullet, the thing that’ll make writing easy for me. And, and I am taking this class with Becca Sime called, Write Better Faster, and it looks, it looks at your core strengths on the Clifton strengths strength finder, which is like a Myers Briggs, but turned up to 11. And, and we were, we had our one-on-one the other day and she was like, well, you know, you’re doing this particular book, which I’m writing differently because I have such a complete synopsis, so the book feels like it’s easier. But I’m less emotionally connected to it. And she pointed out why I am emotionally connected to my books, that’s from my core strengths. And she said, “Yeah, it might just be that your way is painful.” Like it sounds like your actual, your true good way just hurts. And we’re all trying to avoid suffering. And that’s why writing is hard…

Juliet Blackwell: [00:17:23] You know, that’s, that’s an interesting way to look at it. I think that, I was asked just the other day about, you know, if I write from a, from an outline and, or, or by the seat of my pants, and I was saying that I definitely write by the seat of my pants. I, I, I try to have a synopsis. I try to have an outline and it never sticks to that. Like if I try to stick to the outline, it kills what I’m writing. If I already know what I’m writing, it does that in it for me. It takes a lot of that, that emotion out of it, and I think the emotion, even though we’re, we’re feeling it as pain or – 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:00] Yeah

Juliet Blackwell: [00:18:01] Fear or whatever it is, it’s – it’s I think it enlivens the writing, which is interesting. And which might be why, why people don’t write more. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:11] I think it has to be why people don’t write more, because it is not a pleasant process a lot of the time – a lot of the time it is.

Juliet Blackwell: [00:18:18] Right.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:19] It can be joyful, but 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:18:20] You know, if you walk into the store and see your book on the shelf, that’s very joyful.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:25] It pays. It pays for all of that.

Juliet Blackwell: [00:18:28] Right. But the actual process of writing. Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:30] Yeah.

Juliet Blackwell: [00:18:31] Having written is wonderful. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:33] Yes. I – 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:18:33] It’s wonderful. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:34] I was telling you before we came on the air, I didn’t write today and I’m just like, ah, I just feel terrible and I know that I would’ve felt better if I write.

Juliet Blackwell: [00:18:42] Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:18:43] It didn’t happen today. What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing?

Juliet Blackwell: [00:18:49] Just what been talking about schedule and getting it done. Yeah. yeah. I, I, I, I think that’s being really, really consistent is, is difficult for me. I think –  I think – I think perhaps just because what we were talking about, because it is an emotional process for me it takes, it takes a while and I have to do the things like walking in the woods and whatever, but I’m not calm while I’m walking in the woods. You know, I’m actually, I’ll 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:21] You’re thinking about a bad, yeah

Juliet Blackwell: [00:19:22] Yeah. So that, it would be nice to reduce that part. That part would be really nice to reduce. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:28] I agree. Let me know if you figured that out. Cause I’d really like to know

Juliet Blackwell: [00:19:31] But I don’t have to, like, I don’t have any particular like dialogue I find pretty easy and, descriptive passages sometimes take more out of me because I, as a reader, I often find description boring, so I take a lot of time to try to make it not boring

Rachael Herron: [00:19:47] And you’re really good at it because I have such a hard time with setting both writing it and reading it. I always, not always, but I often find it boring and I’m always transported into the place that you write about and I didn’t know that about you, that you, that you spend so much time making it not boring.

Juliet Blackwell: [00:20:00] It, it – Yeah  

Rachael Herron: [00:20:02] It works

Juliet Blackwell: [00:20:03] Because I am a, I do tend to skip over a lot of description when I read. So when I’m writing a book, especially a book that, so dependent on setting. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:12] Yeah. 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:20:13] I feel like I really need to spend the time on that and get that across to people. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:17] Yeah. I’m sorry. I’m going to back up to your process one more time because, I know that in some of your books, if not all of your mysteries, you don’t know the ending, 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:20:26] Right? I don’t, I don’t know the ending. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:26] You don’t know. You don’t always know who did it. 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:20:31] Yes, I don’t. I once knew who did it and the mystery and I and I completely without meaning to unintentionally signaled the murder or through the whole book, so everybody knew who the murderer was. So I changed it at the very ends, so it was completely leading up to one, and then I’d change it to somebody else. But then I had to go back and put in at least a few clues to lead up to the other person. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:55] And I love talking about that because people think that, you know, mystery writers, when you’re writing your mysteries and not the women’s section, like they must have a plot, they must have a detailed outline. And you don’t

Juliet Blackwell: [00:21:06] Right

Rachael Herron: [00:21:07] Oh, you’re such a good example of so many things. What is your, what is your biggest joy when it comes to writing?

Juliet Blackwell: [00:21:14] The biggest joy is, is probably what you’ve heard from a lot of people, I think a lot of us feel like those very rare days in between all the painful days when somebody is not, it’s not a whole day, sometimes it’s an hour or even 15 minutes of just writing, and you forget time and you forget whatever, and you’re completely in your story and it’s coming together. You know? That’s the best, especially if it’s been giving you a hard time, and then suddenly, something happens and you’re like, “Oh, that’s what needs to happen!” This, this, this, this, and it just feels right. And it’s just, it’s like drugs. 

Rachael Herron: [00:21:50] It is like drugs. It’s like, it’s a drug I can indulge in. I wish I could indulge in it more. Can you share a craft tip of any sort with us?

Juliet Blackwell: [00:22:02] Craft tip? I was at the reading – reading the other week and I was talking about what I don’t write with an outline usually, at least not a detailed one. I have a sense of where it’s going, but I don’t have a detailed outline. But what I have started doing, and I thought I discovered this, I thought this was like the Julie technique, but apparently it’s a thing. I’ll read, we’ve been written about, which is called a reverse outline. So I, I write basically a rough draft of, of my book and then, and I often don’t have the ending cause I don’t know the ending yet. But otherwise a rough draft, and I will then go through and write an outline of the book I already have, and then I can look at the outline and looking at the outline really helps me you know, by the time you have 350 pages, it’s so, it’s like a- an octopus. You can’t, it’s so cumbersome. You can’t remember what’s going on where, and the outline I think allows me to then see from afar, like where, where I need more action, where I can insert something, where you know, where I can go back in and work something out. So that that really works for me. 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:10] That is one of my favorite things to do, and I am really happy to call that the Julie outline. That’s not a problem for me. The Juliet Blackwell outline process, what you don’t know, it?

Juliet Blackwell: [00:23:21] If somebody ever ask, it has a copyright on it.

Rachael Herron: [00:23:26] It is one of the most useful things that I love how you called the, that draft and octopus cause it is just always slithering one arm out when you’re like, you think you got everything tucked in and then another one comes out –

Juliet Blackwell: [00:23:36] And then that one comes out and you just can’t keep it down. Yeah. It’s so good. That’s so good. 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:42] What thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way?

Juliet Blackwell: [00:23:46] Oh, in a surprising way. I would say, I mean, the thing that most surprises me is how often I come up with characters when I’m on public transit. 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:58] What? Really?

Juliet Blackwell: [00:24:01] It’s actually, I tweeted about this once and the public transit people retweeted it like thousands of times. They were like, yeah, we were on transit and I was like, okay. Oh my gosh, I didn’t know that. But it’s just whenever I go, I take Bart, which is our, our subway system for people who don’t know, into San Francisco. And I don’t do it that often, but every time I do that, it’s, I think it’s just the, I don’t tend to be on my phone a lot in public. So I think it’s one of the rare moments where I’m just looking at people and just taking it in and kind of in my own head space, but also observing people and, and you know, you get very interesting people on Bart and in the Bart station. And I almost always come out with, with an idea for a character too. And I’ll put in there, not a main character. It helps me bring even secondary characters really alive by, by just like focusing on someone I’ve seen in Bart.

Rachael Herron: [00:24:58] ‘Kay and do you have a good recall of, of like the looks of people? You’re an artist, which is why I asked. 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:25:04] I always carry a notebook and I do often sketch, sketch up, 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:09] I didn’t know that 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:25:11] There are little sketches, like little mini sketches and, and, and even just silly things, you know, orange sweatshirt, you know, with the ruins logo or whatever. I mean, but something that I wouldn’t think of.

Rachael Herron: [00:25:23] I bet you actually saw that because you’re not a sports person. 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:25:25] Right? Exactly. Yeah. It’s just something you can, but it’s really helpful then when you’re, when you’re trying to write, 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:31] Right.

Juliet Blackwell: [00:25:32] You know, people in some sort of distinctive way. I think we all have, we all have little ticks, so we have things that we will write over and over and over again

Rachael Herron: [00:25:39] Yes

Juliet Blackwell: [00:25:39] And it helps get me out of that rut, you know, by, by presenting me with people that I wouldn’t have thought of.

Rachael Herron: [00:25:45] That so, so, so, so smart. And I’m gonna try to do more of that. I usually have like their cheeks were red and they had a potbelly there. I’m done. That’s all I got. And every single man who walks onto it looks like that. Yeah. Yeah. So, that’s awesome.  And I love that you scratch it. What is the best book you’ve read recently and why did you love it?

Juliet Blackwell: [00:26:05] I read a book that you recommended to me, which was Educated by a, what’s her name? Tara… Westover. 

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

Juliet Blackwell: [00:26:15] Which I found really interesting. And I’m actually writing a book now that features a character who grew up in a survivalist household. So it was really, very interesting that way. But that’s not fiction. Of course. It’s 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:27] No, it doesn’t matter that, that character doesn’t, that, that character in the memoir doesn’t leave you very easily. Like, I think I will always remember –

Juliet Blackwell: [00:26:33] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:26:34] -that character and I, I do teach the books I think I’ve read it more than more than most people, but, it just kinda gets inside you.

Juliet Blackwell: [00:26:43] It’s a, it’s a really good one. It’s a really good one, in fact, that the thing I thought to myself was, I need to make sure that I’m not invoking this character too much with my character. You know, I can’t, you know, my character is very much not her. And I started to look long before I read it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:00] Yeah, I think you’re probably not in any danger 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:27:02] Because her, but because her character is so strong, it’s like, I don’t want to, you know, accidentally try to steal her soul. And those ones I was just, I was just mentioning, yeah, I just wanted to show it ‘cause it looks so, I would think this cover is so cool. It is gorgeous. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:22] I know, that’s called Euphoria by…

Juliet Blackwell: [00:27:23] Or a bark. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:22] Oh, wow.

Juliet Blackwell: [00:27:26] It’s by Lily King. It’s called Euphoria. And it’s a book that’s based on, Margaret Mead and some sort of romantic triangle she had, and I just started it. But this was a recommendation from a bookstore manager. So I always, I always like their recommendation. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:44] That was, that, that was basically written for you, like you the anthropologist, here, you know?

Juliet Blackwell: [00:27:50] Well, yes. Exactly. I was like, “Ooh! Margaret Mead” 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:55] Yeah. 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:27:56] And it’s more interesting than the one I would’ve thought

Rachael Herron: [00:27:58] And you know the thing about the book recommendation, I- that’s how I buy books now. Either buy books on my Kindle, or get them from the library after reading about them. But if I go into a bookstore, I just go to the bookseller and I say, “Here’s what I like. What, what can you not sell enough of? What do you, what do you keep running out of? What are you, what are you recommending the most?” And I just buy it. I don’t read the cover. I just buy. 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:28:27] Yeah. Exactly, exactly. That’s my favorite way 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:30] Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:28:32] I’ve done that with you in bookstores. 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:28:34] Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:35] Well, right now, will you tell us about your most recent book, which I have told you in person, is just my favorite book of yours. I think it’s 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:28:44] Thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:28:45] So incredibly rich and so deep and so heartfelt, but tell us a little bit about the Vineyards of Champagne.

Juliet Blackwell: [00:28:50] Oh, thank you. Yes, it is out now 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:54] As I have, like last week. So it’s, it’s pretty recent?

Juliet Blackwell: [00:28:56] Yeah, it came out last… Yeah, just a week ago on Tuesday. It’s, the Vineyards of Champagne is about Rosalyn. Rosalyn is the main character and she is a working for a wine buyer in Napa, and she sent to the champagne region of France, which is in the North of France, to select some champagnes for her, I keep putting my hands down. 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:19] That’s okay

Juliet Blackwell: [00:29:20] For her, for her boss. The only problem is that she doesn’t like Champagne. She doesn’t like France. And, and the really, the problem is she doesn’t like anything at the moment because her, her husband, who she was very much in love with, died two years prior to the book beginning. So she’s still really mired in grief. And she’s trying to figure out what’s next. You know, why she has this dream job, everyone’s like, “Oh, this is amazing. You’re working for this wine guy and get to drink wine and talk to people about wine, you get to go to France.” And she’s like, yeah, that’s great. So she spends a lot of time pretending that she’s okay and that, that everything’s fine and it’s not. So she goes to, to champagne and on the, on the airplane ride over, she meets Emma, who’s a woman from Australia. And Emma is this irrepressible. She’s very excited and exciting and she has with her some letters that were written to her aunt during world war one from a soldier, who was on the front lines in champagne. And so she herself is heading for champagne. So that a little coincidence that, she knows the area and, and so she, and she and Rosalyn basically start working through the letters and discovering a mystery that involves the, I guess the thing that got me excited about the book in the first place, that set me on this whole path, they discover that, that the people in the city of what we call Reims, and, and France, they call it a class, but the, the people who stayed behind during the war had to seek refuge in the, in the champagne caves under the city. And they actually lived there for years while their city was being destroyed by the Germans for four years. They were shelled for years and years and years. They had a massive old cathedral that was very reminiscent of the Notre dame that was just ruins, brought to ruins. And, well that 90% of the city was destroyed. But the most amazing thing is they’ve moved underground and they moved their schools underground. They moved cafes and bakeries and hospitals, and then the soldiers were billeted down there. So there was this whole mélange of like thousands of people living underground under the city of Reims. And then they also extended the tunnels out under the vineyards and the women brought in the, what they called the victory vintages every year, despite, despite the war. But they had to go out at night to pick the grapes. And, and there’s no actual record of how many people were killed, but they say that at least 20 children were killed trying to bring in the harvest.

Rachael Herron: [00:32:06] Oh my God. 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:32:07] So it was just that, to me, it was just amazing that they, first of all, that they lived down there and they survive down there, and then they managed to bring in the harvest. And why would you bring in the harvest? But they always said it was to make the wine, you’d have to make the wine. And to me it was such a, it was such a wonderful metaphor, ‘cause they have to, the champagne has to sit for years before it’s drinkable. So there’s this hope in the future.

Rachael Herron: [00:32:32] That they will have victory and they will 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:32:34] That they will have victory and they’ll be able to drink their, their wine then. So when Rosalyn goes and she discovers all of this, and she meets people, of course, um, and, and they track down a mystery that’s in, in the tunnels. And I think through that, what she’s seeing. And I think that’s what people are reacting really well to in the book, which is nice. I think she, she really, she finds a real connection to a people who didn’t give up no matter how awful it was. It was a, awful, awful war, as we all know. But these people kind of they kept going and they didn’t just keep going, but they made the wine was, I guess the, you know.

Rachael Herron: [00:33:14] I’ve heard this before and every time I hear it, and I’ve read the book, of course, and every time I hear it, I just get chills. And you do that dual timeline. 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:33:21] I do.

Rachael Herron: [00:33:22] You do the historical timeline then, and the current timeline, but just you as a person, you have this almost preternatural ability to find very cool stuff,

Juliet Blackwell: [00:33:31] Oh

Rachael Herron: [00:33:32] You know, from that nobody knows about, I, every time I’ve seen you talk about these underground, you know, the caverns where they lived. Everyone leans forward and goes, “Really? I didn’t know that.” And then you turn these into the books, 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:33:46] That’s exactly the same thing.

Rachael Herron: [00:33:48] Yeah, yeah.

Juliet Blackwell: [00:33:49] But how did we not know this? I mean, how did we not,

Rachael Herron: [00:33:51] I don’t know 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:33:52] – Learn this in history class?

Rachael Herron: [00:33:53] Yeah

Juliet Blackwell: [00:33:54] I mean I don’t feel like I learned much at all about world war one, I have to say,

Rachael Herron: [00:33:59] And you have a distinct advantage of having a wine importer, French boyfriend 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:34:06] I do. I do. 

Rachael Herron: [00:34:07] You do spend a little time in France and I, and I know that you go there with wide open eyes and an ability whenever you go and whenever you’re scouting on a new book, you look around, you say, what, what will be the fascinating, interesting thing I learned about. 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:34:22] That’s, that’s it’s true. No, it’s true. And I think, you know, I have to say, we were talking about that book, Euphoria and Margaret Mead and I did study anthropology, and I think there was, I don’t know whether I was trained as an anthropologist and therefore I observe things like that, or if I was just called to that anyway, and that’s why I became an anthropologist. But what, what fascinates me is what makes people tick. And it’s not the, like when you talk about war history, my eyes glaze over. I, I, I understand that it’s important. I just don’t care what battle is waged where, whatever. I want to know what they were eating; 

Rachael Herron: [00:34:49] Yeah

Juliet Blackwell: [00:35:00] You know? How did they get food to these guys? Like how did that, how did that happen? 

Rachael Herron: [00:35:04] Right.

Juliet Blackwell: [00:35:05] One of the, one of the little details I read was that their tea, always tasted like the stew from the night before ‘cause they didn’t have any new pots. So they made the morning tea in the same pot and they couldn’t waste a lot of water by washing. So they did the best they could. But the men complained, that’s one of the major complaints was that their tea tasted like the night before the, a

Rachael Herron: [00:35:27] That would be a major complaint for me, too!

Juliet Blackwell: [00:35:29] It was awful. I mean, they’re already in the trenches. They are, you know, it’s just this awful, awful, awful life that they’re leading and they can’t even get a decent cup of tea. It just, but I love that. I was like, what- what life was actually, because people live under wartime situations, and so I’m always, I’m always curious about what happens to women. So many of the men are off to war and they have their experiences and they’re horrific. But the women have experiences too, and you know, and they’re also usually taking care of children and elderly people and trying to get by in all those ways. And how does that happen? 

Rachael Herron: [00:36:11] And you do such a good job

Juliet Blackwell: [00:36:13] You know the people pay taxes, like what happened, like how do they get food? You know what- what’s the basics? 

Rachael Herron: [00:36:20] Yeah. 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:36:21] They didn’t even have any plumbing like what’s going on?

Rachael Herron: [00:36:23] I always think about the bathroom. Like what? What? Where 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:36:25] Me too.

Rachael Herron: [00:36:23] Where were they getting the toilet paper or whatever they were using? How did that work? 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:36:29] Yeah. It is awful. That’s an awful thing. 

Rachael Herron: [00:36:35] Well, thank you so much, Juliet. Tell us where our listeners can find you.

Juliet Blackwell: [00:36:39] Oh, thank you. Well, my, my website is julietblackwell.net or .com, either one, and I’m also on, I’m on Twitter, I think it’s just @JulietBlackwell and I’m on Facebook, it’s JulietBlackwellAuthor/

Rachael Herron: [00:36:55] You get good Facebook, if people are on Facebook, it’s a great place to follow you. 

Juliet Blackwell: [00:36:59] I’m not on Instagram cause I’m just 

Rachael Herron: [00:37:02] You’re holding out.

 Juliet Blackwell: [00:37:04] Hold out. 

Rachael Herron: [00:37:07] Alright, well thank you, thank you so much for being on the show and I can’t wait for the next time we hang out and, and just be together.

Juliet Blackwell: [00:37:14] Thank you for having me here. Love you. 

Rachael Herron: [00:37:19] Love you too. Bye!

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

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

TOMMY ARNOLD: Tommy Arnold is a digital illustrator whose work showcases the athleticism, prowess, and power of the human figure in fantastic and futuristic settings. He doesn’t believe in talent and has spent a lot of time exploring the mental landscape that artists inhabit while they draw and paint, in order to better understand what’s possible and pass it on. His work has been featured in Spectrum: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art, Communication Arts, American Illustration, and at the Society of Illustrators.

MICAH EPSTEIN: Micah Epstein is an illustrator working in fantasy and science fiction. After a childhood spent watching too many cartoons and reading too many comics, it’s unsurprising that drawing is the way he can most meaningfully interface with the stories, worlds, and subjects that he loves. Balancing a methodical & scientific approach to illustration with that same energy and joy he felt as a kid, Micah’s work explores feelings of mystery, stoicism, and majesty in its subjects.

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.

Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode 168 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. I’m so pleased you’re here. You might hear a giggle in my voice because this just the very first time I have ever done this podcast without even brushing my hair. So if you’re watching on YouTube, you’re welcome. I just woke up and here’s the thing, I have found out that some people really do listen to this podcast on the day it comes out on Fridays, and therefore when I don’t deliver, I let them down. Jeff and Will, I’m thinking of you. I have found out that Jeff and Will of the Big Gay Fiction Podcast and the Big Gay Writers Podcast listen to me for lunch. So it’s 9:43, I’ve done a bunch of other things this morning, I didn’t actually just wake up. I just haven’t brushed my hair or put on clothes yet. Therefore, you see me in my leopard robe, which is silly and awesome. I’m doing this for you, Jeff and Will so we can have lunch together. Today, you all are in for such a treat. I am talking to Tommy Arnold and Micah Epstein about creativity and art. They are artists. They are not necessarily writers, they are visual artists, and it’s the first time I’ve had visual artists on the show and they kind of blew my mind in a lot of ways and have really changed my life in terms of reincorporating play, back into my art, which you’ve heard me talking about it. I got it from them. So I know that you’re going to enjoy this completely fascinating episode that my virtual assistant and friend, Ed recommended that I do with them, and I was like, Oh God, Ed! I’ll do anything for Ed. He’s always right, and he’s always right. So, there you go. That’s what we’re talking about today, you’re going to love it. 

And in just a little bit of thank you or a lot of bit of thank you. Thank you to new and renewing patrons, Nikki Heisen. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much Nikki and Leslie Buck renewing, thank you, thank you, thank you. I really appreciate every single person who supports me over at www.patreon.com/rachael and I hope you love the essays that I send and please know how grateful I am to you that I get to sit in this spot and do this.

I have no other news to update you on besides this, is, if you’re watching on YouTube, you don’t need any more of this. I went to Austin for the story shop summit. It was great, and I met some incredible people, and I love going to conferences because I always steal a few people and take them with me into my community, and that’s what you should be doing too. When you go to anything writing related, meet everybody. And tap the one or two that you really, really adore and bring them with you wherever you go next. That’s how we built our own personal communities. We all resonate with different people at different times, so there’s plenty to go around and, so I’m glad to be home. Glad to be writing again and that is it. Let’s jump into this fantastic interview. I hope that you are getting some of your own writing done, my friend, and reach out at any time to tell me about it. I love to hear how you are doing. Okay, Happy writing! 

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.

Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show for the very first time, two people and two artists. We are talking to artists today, not writers, because I want to kind of compare what writing has in some – has in common with art. And I’m talking to first Tommy. Hello, Tommy. 

Tommy Arnold: [00:04:26] Hey, how’s it going?

Rachael Herron: [00:04:27] Good. And Micah? 

Micah Epstein: [00:04:29] Hello!

Rachael Herron: [00:04:31] Hi, Micah. Let me give you a little introduction for both of you. Tommy Arnold is a digital illustrator whose work showcases the athleticism, prowess, and power of the human figure in fantastic and futuristic settings. He doesn’t believe in talent and has spent a lot of time exploring the mental landscape that artists inhabit while they draw and paint, in order to better understand what’s possible and pass it on. His work has been featured in Spectrum: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art, Communication Arts, American Illustration, and at the Society of Illustrators.

Micah Epstein, is it Epstein or Epstein?

Micah Epstein: [00:05:04] Yes. You are actually one of the only people to get that right in the first try. 

Rachael Herron: [00:05:07] Micah Epstein

Tommy Arnold: [00:05:07] Nailed it

Rachael Herron: [00:05:08] Yay! Is an illustrator working in fantasy and science fiction after a childhood spent watching too many cartoons and reading too many comics, is there any such thing? It’s unsurprising that drawing is the way he can most meaningfully interfaced with the stories, worlds and subjects that he loves. Balancing a methodical & scientific approach to illustration with that same energy and joy he felt as a kid, Micah’s work explores feelings of mystery, stoicism, and majesty in its subjects. Both of those are really good bios. Who wrote them?

Tommy Arnold: [00:05:38] We each did after significant prodding by others because as I’m sure you’re aware of bio is one of the toughest things in the world.

Rachael Herron: [00:05:46] It’s so hard. I have written 26 books and I still look at my bio and now; I can’t do it. I cannot get this right. 

Tommy Arnold: [00:05:54] Yeah. Well it really does takes some kind of like…

Micah Epstein: [00:05:55] Well it feels a lot like external catalysts like I had for years. It wasn’t until we started doing the podcast that I, actually like wrote a proper bio cause for years it was basically just like, I dunno, email me.

Rachael Herron: [00:06:06] Yeah. 

Micah Epstein: [00:06:08] But 

Rachael Herron: [00:06:10] I think your, I think Tommy, it was on your website where you said, don’t follow me, you know. Follow me on social media or whatever, but join my mailing list. 

Tommy Arnold: [00:06:17] Yeah. I’ve been trying to push that

Rachael Herron: [00:06:18] I like that too

Tommy Arnold: [00:06:19] -just because they can’t take your mailing list away, but

Rachael Herron: [00:06:22] That’s the only thing we own, 

Tommy Arnold: [00:06:23] Well, and even that it’s like through MailChimp or whatever. Right. But the emails, yeah, it’s a little, I don’t know. It’s, it’s one that you control a little bit more, I guess so you can develop a more personal rapport with people and communicate in the way you want where, because, it all comes down to what you want, right? I don’t want to communicate in a way where once I communicate or try to communicate, I then have to check my communicate every 20 minutes or else no one will get the message.

Rachael Herron: [00:06:47] Exactly

Tommy Arnold: [00:07:48] That really frustrates me. So I just figured, you know, people really want to hear from me and I want to talk to them, or vice versa. And that’s nice because people send a lot more genuine replies because all the replies are secret. It’s an email, so.

Rachael Herron: [00:06:58] Exactly. And that’s still how I communicate the best with a lot of my readers is that’s where they come to me to talk. And that’s where I go to them to talk. And it’s, and it’s the way I like opening my, I love opening my email, unboxing, getting email from people or creators or artists that I love. 

Tommy Arnold: [00:07:14] Yeah, that’s a really refreshing thing to hear with, because I know that, Micah and I have both gone through periods where we really dread our email inbox. And so yeah, finding a way to change that paradigm is pretty important. 

Rachael Herron: [00:07:23] Oh, I hate my email inbox. I liter- legit, hate it so much. I was just hating it for the half hour before we talked. Just sitting here hating and going through. I’m trying to maintain something like inbox zero, but it’s generally about inbox a hundred but all of those hundreds have something I need to do.

Tommy Arnold: [00:07:40] Yeah. It’s a to do list.

Rachael Herron: [00:07:41] Exactly, to do list.

Tommy Arnold: [00:07:42] Soon as you open it.

Rachael Herron: [00:07:44] Yeah, and I just. There was one in there, she’s a writer from Montana, her name is Anne Helen Petersen, and she sends out these great, really relaxing emails about what she’s been doing, and I just sat there and read it. And then I got back to doing all the other crap. But you know, that was just a delight. So good. Keep up sending out those, those newsletters. 

So I want to ask both of you this, basically I’m taking all my questions that I normally ask and kind of spinning them a little bit for art. Tommy, let’s start with you. What is your artistic process? And that’s a huge question, but what I’m really looking for is a nuts and bolts, day to day, what is sitting down to do your art look like? 

Tommy Arnold: [00:08:23] Well, it depends on which type of art I’m doing. Because I’m in a little bit of a transitional period right now. I really badly injured my drawing wrist,

Rachael Herron: [00:08:38] Oh no

Tommy Arnold: [00:08:23] 20… it’s been so long that I can’t remember which year this happened then. Anyway, a long time ago, actually now it’s been awhile.

Rachael Herron: [00:08:48] Was it RSI or an injury? 

Tommy Arnold: [00:08:50] No, that’s the thing is the wrist was totally fine. And then I took a fall at the rock climbing gym, and suddenly it was just not usable, really. And I, I mean, it’s kind of usable a little, so I would kind of hobbled on and made it worse. And that became a chronic RSI that- that really was destructive to the entire muscular skeletal structure of the body on that side. And so it took a lot of work to get that fixed. But in the meantime, I did some soul searching and started working not just on illustration, which is historically what I’ve done, sort of specializing on book and story art and I started working on comic books, which is fun because in comics, I’m the writer and the brief writer, and the artists. So when I’m working on illustration, what it used to look like is that I would wake up and then just sit down and do the hardest work, which was sketching. I don’t know exactly the equivalent is in writing, but I assume…

Rachael Herron: [00:09:43] First drafting, 

Tommy Arnold: [00:09:43] Yeah, this is really quite difficult. 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:46] So it’s so painful. I love revision, but I can’t stand a first draft. Yeah.

Tommy Arnold: [00:09:50] it’s funny cause I actually love the first draft and I hate revision in terms of their fun, like what’s more engaging, but it’s more difficult and I find that I just have more willpower first thing in the morning, so I would just wake up. And plop down and just basically sketch until I’d beat the thing or it beat me, which usually happened around lunchtime, and then I would go for a run, do lunch, and then the afternoon it was like the autopilot stuff where it was like, okay, this sketch is already approved, I need to render it. And then it’s just several hours of sitting there and you still try to be engaged with and stuff. It was just a different mindset. So that was, it’s pretty rhythmic and it was just these discrete four hour chunks that would grow or shrink depending on my interest or waxing and waning my energy levels. And then now I guess a lot of my work is a combination of study and practice, which is, at first it felt really different. And now it’s getting similar where I’m a little bit back in a groove, but you basically wake up and do the essentials and the things you gotta do like my physical therapy stuff and take care of my body. And then, yeah, sit down and just whatever the thing that is the most pressing in terms of my study of comic books, which sounds weird to say, but it really can be broken down into, into something study-able and so like this morning I spent four hours analyzing, panel shot decisions across like eight or nine different books, and I made a bunch of notes, I have like a journal that sits right on the desk all the time. That’s like, here’s how it went today, and it’s that, it’s just the training journal. It doesn’t have any drawing or anything in it. And then, in the evening I do work that goes out. So I guess I kind of look at it as work that comes in or is internal, which is any self-development, or practice, or training, and I don’t really interface with the world at that point in time. You know, we were talking about email and I never check email or, or any social media or anything like that before that period’s up. And then after that I have the same break I used to where I run and I have some food. And then during that break time, check email, that’s the only time during the day I check email now so that I can just trap it and not think about it. And then in the afternoon, whatever came in from email or whatever needs to go out like, okay, we have to do something for the podcast, or we have to, I have to finish an illustration that I took on. That stuff happens in evening. 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:03] That sounds really disciplined. Are you good with discipline?

Tommy Arnold: [00:12:06] Discipline is something that no one’s good with, but I, I work on something that we talked about a lot on, on our podcast actually is, we’re both always kind of trying to design our lives the same way that we’re trying to design our art to specific goals. So whatever I’m like hunting right now, decides what, what goes on in the life. But yeah, I guess I’m pretty – I’m pretty rigorous. We were in the parking lot the other night outside of the, we, we got kicked out of where we were having dinner because they closed because we were just talking about art and it just kept going and going. And we got on the parking lot and I was talking about something about this, you know, the rigorous element of this life crafting. And one of our mutual friends turned to Micah and was like, well, you know, you’re not talking to a human. So I don’t know. It’s been good and bad that I can be this way. It denies certain other types of normalcy, but for me now, it’s, it is quite normal to be, to be that way. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:08] That’s so interesting and it reflects my process really, really kind of note for note, including not letting other voices in, not taking in the world until my work is done the afternoon for the other stuff, it’s…

Tommy Arnold: [00:13:21] That is so interesting to hear a lot of this stuff is based on universal principles. You can boil down to science and then look at it, and in fact, when Edward suggested that we do this sort of, cross discussion, one of the things he mentioned was that on our show, a lot of the stuff we talk about is so general to Micah, you put this best just a moment ago, not the picture making process, but the art making process. And that process seems really universal across different types of creative acts. And so he said he’d been listening to our podcast and getting stuff, and we’ve been checking out yours and getting stuff from it. So that’s, 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:54] And it’s all tied up in that creating the artist’s life too, just like you said, crafting that. Fascinating. Micah, what about you? What is your artistic process going to look like on a day to day basis? 

Micah Epstein: [00:14:05] In, in some ways it’s pretty similar to Tommy’s that it’s fairly regimented, so right now I, basically I will wake up and I spend sort of a while to sort of like taking care of like myself. So I’ll like wake up, I’ll like do stretches and breathing exercises. I usually go for a run or something as close to first thing in the morning as I can like safely manage and then I like to start the day with, usually some kind of reading. Either like a book about sort of self-development or, sometimes I’m just looking at art books or, you know, watching other artists paint or something to sort of like, just really get my brain moving and then, you know, for a long time I would jump, I kind of let my commissioned work rule my life for real long time. And sort of what with this, this, this, misapprehension that because that was paying the bills, then, you know, that just, it had to be that way. And then if I, if I didn’t put it first, then it wouldn’t get done. And, I’m sure I will, I’ll allude to this at a different point during, during our discussion today. But, my big sort of project for the last year has been sort of retooling my own relationship with art because for a while it got to be a, a source mainly of stress, and it just became like a very sort of unhealthy relationship with this thing that I ostensibly do because I love it. So most of what I do is sort of aimed at getting back to that. So one thing I started doing back last January that I try to keep up whenever I feasibly can perfectly every day is, you know, when I’m done reading and I’m, I’m like sitting down at my desk, I will do something fun for an hour. And the only, the only stipulation is that it’s fun and that it’s art.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:59] That’s pretty awesome.

Micah Epstein: [00:16:00] So oftentimes, it turned out to be, and I, I didn’t do it necessarily with the thought that it would become something as groundbreaking for me as it ended up being. But, we, we spoke with another artist in our podcast, Greg Ruth, who’s just an absolutely phenomenal draftsman who’s become known for his sort of like little mini passion projects that he does. And he had, he had this one called the 52 weeks’ project that, as it turns out at knows at the time, basically came from the same place where he said that, you know at different points, he realized he was like starting to have like a, like a Sunday night feeling before he would have to go back to work the next day. And I absolutely was, was in the same place, but sort of, it started as just a way to like make me look forward to sitting down in front of my computer every day. But it’s become sort of a really important cornerstone of all the stuff I tried to focus on. So that’s usually what I do first. And that can be anything from oil painting to just moving pictures around on my computer and figuring out stuff that I like to just doing free drawing or something like that. Wherever possible I try to get in an hour of training, which, it kinda just depends on what I’m studying at the time. Recently it’s been sort of going back to composition basics and working on how I work with sketches and stuff like that and then, you know, I tend to like, I don’t really have like a set meal times. I just kinda like, I have like a fixed like seven or eight meals that I eat in the same order every day, and it just kind of graze. I should be more disciplined about that, but I’ll eat some, some variant of lunch and then I’ll usually sit down to do, my like commissioned work, which it’s just, it’ – it varies day by day and it’s pretty much either sketching, drawing, or painting, and you can tell me, you’ve already sort of alluded to this and I’m sure you understand with like first drafting and outlining, but that if it’s sketching, that tends to, things will get moved around to accommodate that because like I can’t train on the same day that I sketch because it just takes up like I just have a finite number of brain cells and they get tired real fast.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:12] Oh my God. That is so interesting because for writers, most a lot of us, I won’t say most of us, but a lot of us feel the first drafts are exhausting because you are presented with all of these. You have the all the choices in the world. Whereas in revision you’ve narrowed all your choices, you’ve got what you’ve got on the board, and you get to work with it, so the energy level is different. That’s completely fascinating. 

Micah Epstein: [00:18:30] Yeah. Do you or do you find that you, do you outline before doing a first draft? I knew some authors do that…

Rachael Herron: [00:18:34] I do, I do a real rough outline. Basically I have a set of beats that I try to hit but basically soon as I start writing, anything can happen.

Micah Epstein: [00:18:43] Is that, is that…

Tommy Arnold: [00:18:44] That’s Exactly like sketching

Rachael Herron: [00:18:47] Really? Really?

Tommy Arnold: [00:18:48] Yeah. Yeah. You sit down and you’ve got all this work to like figure this thing out and you make 20 marks and sometimes immediately. It’s right and you, you nailed it. But most of the time, one of those marks leads to a place more interesting than you could have ever thought of. And now you’re screwed. What are you going to do? Stick to your guns in the face of a clearly superior product. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:03] And when you do that and you have the tone of somebody who’s done that, and we’ve all done that, where we keep chasing what we thought was supposed to be our idea, and it always ends up badly. And if you follow your gut, it turns out right. Although you may end up you know, I have one book that’s 97,000 words long, which isn’t a good long book, and there are 103,000 words in the trashcan that were not reused. 

Tommy Arnold: [00:19:25] Yeah, that’s awesomely you have the word counts on that. That’s a great illustration of how much does get trashed, and I think that’s absolutely right.

Rachael Herron: [00:19:36] That gets trashed. Exactly.

Micah Epstein: [00:19:32] Yeah. It’s interesting cause I don’t have a way of quantifying sketches that get thrown away 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:46] Why?

Micah Epstein: [00:19:47] Because they often kind of morph. So they’re kind of like in so many ways, yeah, there’s almost like an infinite number of potential ideas that could have gone other ways that’s…

Tommy Arnold: [00:19:55] That you went on down to like, 

Micah Epstein: [00:19:57] Yeah. 

Tommy Arnold: [00:19:58] Or maybe three.

Rachael Herron: [00:19:59] And I think that’s maybe when you keep a scene and you keep pushing it different ways that would be like that. But then for writers, there’s that delete button and that scene just goes in the trash because it was stupid and you just wasted your life writing that. So, Oh my gosh. But Micah, that’s pr- you just gave me a really apathetic moment with the fun thing, because this is, you know, this has been my full time job for almost four years now and, and it’s fantastic. But I do have that sometimes a Sunday night blues and, 

Micah Epstein: [00:20:25] Oh yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:20:26] And I’ve been trying to let myself have like make myself do something else for 10 or 15 minutes a day. And I even begrudge that in the morning, before I start working, but I’m looking at it in a different way. What if I just give myself an hour to play?

Micah Epstein: [00:20:41] Yeah, I

Rachael Herron: [00:20:42] I want to try it for a couple of weeks and just see how it feels. 

Micah Epstein: [00:20:45] I would definitely try it. For me, I’ve, I’ve just found that, like, I, I tried for a long time to sort of manage that dissatisfaction by separating myself from the work. So it became a more about like the, the stereotypical discussion about work life balance where I thought the solution was to like, you know, rigidly put work over here and life over here and know the two shall meet. And that kind of worked for a while, but what’s ended up making a much more positive change over a much greater length of time has been actually getting under the hood and retooling how I feel about art so that that separation isn’t, it isn’t like a survival mechanism. It’s just kind of happens naturally if and when it does.

Tommy Arnold: [00:21:34] Yeah. Maybe – maybe because watching you from the outside, that is a great way to put it, that the difference between the negative parts of what was going on in the positive, cause I really don’t think that you can affect change by motivating yourself negatively. So to go, well,

Rachael Herron: [00:21:48] It goes when one day and you can do it for much longer, yeah.

Micah Epstein: [00:21:51] Yeah 

Tommy Arnold: [00:21:51] Yeah. Like I want to separate these things, so I just won’t really think about the problem. And Micah you kinda talked about getting under the hood. It was really like you had a car that was messed up and you just like duct taped it closed and you were like, I’ll keep driving. Yeah, it’s… 

Micah Epstein: [00:22:05] Pretty much like, yeah. I’ll drive for 15 minutes at a time and then walk away and forget that the car exists and then drive for another 15 minutes.

Tommy Arnold: [00:22:11] Yeah. Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:12] I’ll get there, I’ll get there.

Tommy Arnold: [00:22:13] And the rest of the time I’ll focus so hard on making sure that car is not in my mind, but you really seem to have tapped into gold with this in this fun hour because what it really is, is training self-indulgence, 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:22] Yes.

Micah Epstein: [00:22:23] Yeah.

Tommy Arnold: [00:22:24] Which is the root of all good art making in that, like you said, you said, you know Rachael about shooting from the gut, like you have to learn to trust yourself and to know even what you like and what you enjoy. And if you’re always doing what you should do. How can you ever figure that out? So this-

Rachael Herron: [00:22:40] Oh my God, my life is a shrewd. I’m always trying to work that diligence in hate that word. 

Tommy Arnold: [00:22:46] Yeah

Micah Epstein: [00:22:47] Briefly you had mentioned that like, you know, you sometimes, sort of begrudge, I need to take 15 minutes before starting your schedule work. And that’s something that I’ve really been kind of struggling with myself. Even, even doing this, this fun hour thing is that there is, it’s really interesting to hear you say that because there’s this tendency for like, the schedule to kind of dominate a person’s psyche?

Rachael Herron: [00:23:10] Not even like a little way, but in a huge way.

Micah Epstein: [00:23:13] Yeah. And will I, I find myself and I’ve seen in other people, like, you know, re-contextualizing everything that happens based on that. So like, things that you have to do before getting down to your work-work, just become distractions or, you know, annoyances. Even if they’re actually quite important. And there’s, there’s, like I realized for a long time I thought I just hated doing art and I realized like, “Oh no, I hate feeling behind schedule”, but because of how I think about or thought about art for such a long time, whenever and because of how I thought about, you know, work that I should be doing, every time I sat down to do art, I was already behind schedule. So they were just like merged. It’s so interesting to hear some, someone from a different discipline say that, it’s just interesting to hear that it doesn’t just happen in visual art and I’m starting to think it’s just a symptom of any field that requires a certain level of like rigid self-discipline.

Rachael Herron: [00:24:06] There’s the, oh gosh, what’s her name the dancer, who wrote Twyla Tharp’s Book on Creativity. When I read that, you know, she’s, she’s a dancer and she wrote a book about creativity. That is brilliant and that’s the point at which I was like, Oh, it is kind of all the same. I’m throwing these questions out the window. We’ll get to what we get to. I wanted to ask you, you’re both full time creatives then. Right?

Micah Epstein: [00:24:26] Yes. 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:27] So all three of us have done that thing where we turned our passion into our profession, which I think is incredible. And we’re so lucky that we got to do that. So you’ve got the fun hour, Micah, what – what other ways do you guys keep it fun? Do you have, I find myself I need outside hobbies, like now I need something to fuck around with that isn’t writing, you know? Do you do any of that?

Tommy Arnold: [00:25:00] Oh, 

Micah Epstein: [00:25:02] We were hesitating for a damning amount of time. 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:03] That was a really long pause.

Tommy Arnold: [00:24:53] I was just wondering who’s going to talk first, because for me, it’s just, no, there’s no, there’s no framework in which anything can exist in which it’s not tied to artistic. 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:21] Well that is true. There’s nothing I don’t do when I’m not thinking about writing.

Tommy Arnold: [00:25:25] Yes. So when I try to, we’ve all had periods where we’re like, Oh, people say you should have work life balance. And I hate that phrase because it so misses the point that if you really are doing this stuff right, then there is no feeling like that. There’s no, there’s nothing to miss. There’s no, 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:44] There’s email though

Tommy Arnold: [00:25:45] But even that you can, like, you can only like tune things. You know, the car is like constantly breaking down because that’s life and the car is made of entropy, but you, you have this like build this human ability to mess with it and move forward. And so anything I’ve ever tried to take on, it instantly just becomes part of the art or it feels like it keeps me from it and it goes away, but I’ve never successfully looked for anything else, and maybe sometimes even to my detriment. I don’t know. But now, there’s no, I don’t, I think anything that I’m, because if I get interested in it, I consider myself interested through the lens of art. So it just comes in when it needs to for- for art. 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:32] Yeah. It’s one of those things that you see it when you see it because you have to look

Tommy Arnold: [00:26:35] You’re looking

Rachael Herron: [00:26:36] Everything is, yeah, exactly. Everything is sucked into this black hole of our obsessions. 

Tommy Arnold: [00:26:40] Yeah, but I don’t… even that word puts it in a little bit of like a, a negative light. 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:46] Oh, I like to negative shit up.

Tommy Arnold: [00:26:47] Yeah. I like the word passions that you use, that was good for this stuff. Like, you, you, you jump in on this. 

Micah Epstein: [00:26:59] Yeah. I, I absolutely have stuff outside of art, that I enjoyed doing. Not that, and it’s not stuff that I seek out, specifically as a break from art. It’s just kind of stuff that I like. So like I, I enjoy playing video games, I enjoyed like reading mostly fiction. I read a lot of fiction. Really just those two things. And then just, 

Tommy Arnold: [00:27:23] It started as such an exhaustive sounding list. 

Micah Epstein: [00:27:27] Yeah. No,

Tommy Arnold: [00:27:28] It’s turned out to be too,

Micah Epstein: [00:27:29] Well no, I was thinking about like, the rest of that list is just drawing.

Tommy Arnold: [00:27:32] Yeah

Micah Epstein: [00:27:33] So yeah, it, but though even- even like my hobbies outside of art, I’ve, I always try to sort of manage my relationship with them because I think they’re at their most beneficial when they are related to art not intrinsically, but just in the, if I can take energy or ideas that I get in any of those things and move that into art, because you know, a lot of things, like when I was a little kid, like the comics that I read, the games that I played were the reasons why I started drawing in the first place. And that’s something that I’d been really interested in reconnecting to recently as art, as a way of interfacing with the thing that I like and exploring something that I can really only do through drawing. And this is, it’s an ongoing process, it isn’t something that I’ve, I’ve really cracked yet, but I’ve, I’ve definitely used hobbies as escape patches from art very frequently.

Rachael Herron: [00:28:33] Yes.

Micah Epstein: [00:27:34] And they’ve never been as beneficial as when I’ve gone the other way and tried to sort of fold everything together, enter this like central identity, if that makes any sense at all outside of my own head. 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:47] Absolutely. I love that you said reading too because reading, I think, for all three of us just feeds this, it feeds so much of it, whether you’re reading comics, whether you’re reading novels, whether you’re, I mean, if I could have perfect days, it would be moving from the bed, or I’m reading to the computer where I’m writing and basically just going back and forth in those two places. And that is, that’s an ideal day for, for me. What is your biggest, what does each of your biggest challenges when it comes to actually doing the art? How about Tommy? You go first. 

Tommy Arnold: [00:29:20] Unlike you, I really enjoy to read. So, it’s very easy for me to get lost in thoughts about how cool this technique is for drawing or how interesting this technique is for maintaining presence in the work or how all this stuff is so connected. And I just want to go on a walk and like, think about this stuff. But what I love about the field of artists that you can’t really do anything, so you can do it. You have to put it down on paper or else it’s not real. It doesn’t leave your head. And so, my biggest challenge habitually has been to leave the fantasy of being decent at art and to enter into the difficulty of being just okay at it. And whenever I face that challenge, I feel really good and slowly that’s built. You get kind of hungry for things that challenge you in that way, but it’s still not a native human thing to want to walk into the cave of failure. And so I guess, every time that you do it, you, you condition yourself against it a little bit. And when I’ve been at my worst is times when I, I grow quite fearful and I stick to the cusp of the cave of failure and I just hang out near it and I go, “Hey, everyone, I’m near the cave of failure.” And they’re like, “Oh, that’s really good for ya. Nice. Nice.” And I’m like, “I know, I know. It was pretty awesome” but I don’t, but I don’t walk in. And so, yeah that-

Rachael Herron: [00:30:45] I love that.

Tommy Arnold: [00:30:46] That can be tough, but, but, every day I try to build in more a step in a little further. So I’m pretty deep in right now and it’s weird in here. 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:46] Its just. Oh. I was telling my students like one of the number one things I’m always telling them is to lower your expectations. Just, you know, you have this expectation for yourself. Lower it. 

Tommy Arnold: [00:31:07] Yeah that’s great.

Rachael Herron: [00:31:08] And, I also just read this on a podcast the other day and I can’t remember where it was. I think it might’ve been, Adam Grant talking, about making a failure resume and failure bio?

Tommy Arnold: [00:31:19] That’s a great idea. Oh my gosh. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:20] Isn’t it? I’m going to do it. I’m going to put it on my side because our bio’s amigos might look like really pretty cool. But really, I’m only here, the bio is there because of how much I have failed and how, how, no, I’m never, I always liked to think that I’m comfortable at failure, but I’m absolutely not. I hate failure. 

Tommy Arnold: [00:31:25] Well, how could you ever be, I mean, that’s a constant challenge like meditation. How could you ever not have thoughts? You’re going to have them. So part of this is learning to reconcile with, I think that’s, this isn’t my favorite and one of the harder of the questions that you’ve presented us, just because, if you don’t have challenges, you’re not really doing it. You know, there has to be something that you’re really struggling with too. That’s the struggle is the activity. 

Rachael Herron: [00:32:03] I think there’s a lot of people that who don’t understand that when they’re trying to, 

Tommy Arnold: [00:32:06] Of course

Rachael Herron: [00:32:07] Do their art. Are you, are you both familiar with iron glasses theory of the gap? 

Tommy Arnold: [00:32:01] I am. Just because its related in Robert McKees screenwriting book story. 

Rachael Herron: [00:32:19] Oh, did he mention it? Yeah, basically 

Tommy Arnold: [00:32:20] Yeah.

Micah Epstein: [00:32:21] I believe so, yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:32:22] That we have, we have great taste and because we have great taste, we know that when we do our work, it is not at the level at which we want it to be. And it’s the tension between something being good. And what we actually did. And are trying to fix to be good. That’s the tension that’s in that tension is where most people usually drop out because they’re not comfortable just being so sucky here, you know? And it’s really uncomfortable. So if we can embrace the suck, 

Tommy Arnold: [00:32:48] Micah mentioned his identity earlier, that when he could successfully be a little happier, he was integrating more things under one central identity. And even though I like those things to be organized, I think the, the smaller your identity can be, the more helpful it is for living in that tension. I don’t remember where I picked up this idea. It’s definitely not mine because it’s a decent idea, but basically that you, the less you are, the less there is to -that you’re fighting, you’re not fighting your own perception of yourself in that void of tension.

Rachael Herron: [00:33:21] Yes.

Tommy Arnold: [00:33:22] So you get in there and you go, Oh, I’m going to do a thing. Oh, I couldn’t, I’m going to fail. But why should you be able to do it? You know? So if you let go of the idea that anything you should be able to do, we mentioned that word a bunch so far, but it’s a terrible word should and what you might be able to do and just can you reduce your identity? Like after I hurt my wrist, I had to reduce my identity to some kernel of myself that didn’t involve making art, and I’d never been in that place before. 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:46] That is, I don’t- How did you get through that? 

Tommy Arnold: [00:33:50] Very painfully and with a lot of sense. 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:53] It’s one- it’s one of my great, it’s one of my greatest terrors to know that like something like a stroke could happen and suddenly I would have the writing ability to be removed. And it is, it is who I am. And I know that’s not who I am, but it, it’s something I drive around, you know, Oakland thinking about 

Tommy Arnold: [00:34:07] Yeah 

Rachael Herron: [00:34:08] What would, what would happen if I couldn’t be a writer? I don’t know. 

Tommy Arnold: [00:34:11] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:34:12] You are, you are an artist, so you are speaking from a place-

Tommy Arnold: [00:34:16] Same. It’s the same place. Yeah, 

Rachael Herron: [00:34:17] Probably, yeah.

Tommy Arnold: [00:34:19] I guess, yeah, just recovered into a different thing, I guess. I don’t really feel like I’ll ever be that what I was before again, and yet I didn’t lose the deeper kernels of, of what I was, I suppose, but I didn’t know what they were at the time. So it just, you don’t really change until you’re forced to. So I can’t give any sort of prescription for how I would achieve this in oneself, besides get out there with a hammer and slam them fingers. I, you just, the brain, like it just finds a way and, and so, but there was a reading of philosophy where I found this idea that you could shrink the identity as sort of intentionally, actually. And, so being in those desperate situations, but that’s what the cave of fear is, is that you give yourself controlled yet desperate situations. And that’s why I think that what the value is walking in that scary place because you, you can, you can figure this stuff out if you even think you have to, you can really trick yourself into thinking that something’s essential to do and,

Rachael Herron: [00:36:21] Brains will believe what we tell them. 

Tommy Arnold: [00:35:23] Yeah. And get, get the, get the results that way.

Rachael Herron: [00:35:26] That’s also problematic. Micah, what about you? What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to doing your art? 

Micah Epstein: [00:35:30] Oh, goodness. Oh, this is gonna be such a long answer. It’s so many things. I think I, I will like go Tommy’s comments a little bit at first, which is that, really sort of overcoming that, that basic human tendency to shy away from, from challenge and failure. I, I know it’s, it’s probably not like a smart thing to say for my career, but I honestly like it and I don’t think many people in their natural state like enjoy the challenge and failure that is, endemic to sit, to succeeding in, in growing. 

Rachael Herron: [00:36:08] It does not feel good. And we shy away from things that we don’t feel good.

Micah Epstein: [00:36:11] Absolutely. And, and I am, I’ve done a lot of, a lot of work on this in the past year because I do think that like, you know, oftentimes the, the solution to improving our artists, to improve ourselves, but, I am endemically a catastrophically attention deficit and extremely anxious person. And when I’ve been at my worst, it’s those two things have been, you know, like I was saying about like the external hobbies when I’m at my best, when those are sort of wrapped up in the art and everything is sort of feeding into each other. I’ve had a lot of difficulties with art becoming sort of the focus of anxiety. And so, you know, just like, you know, there’s basic mechanical stuff, like it’s tough to stay on task, especially when something is really tough. But also just managing my emotional relationship with painting and drawing. Because so often my brain will just sort of automatically scapegoated. If I’m, if I’m feeling, it’s like I was thinking about like, the, the, you know, it’s not that I hate painting, I hate feeling behind schedule. It took me a long time to realize that one because I just thought that doing art was inherently miserable. And then I kept wondering, he’s like, man, whenever I sit down and do art for myself, it’s super fun, but whenever I do my job, it’s terrible. Guess that’s just life. But, just, just sort of, you know, separating these sort of emotional distinctions for me is, challenging but rewarding. But it’s, I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t sometimes been an absolute, like miserable bloody struggle sometimes. 

Rachael Herron: [00:37:46] Oh, but isn’t that comforting me here? I don’t know why. As artists, we are comforted to hear that other people are struggling. 

Tommy Arnold: [00:37:54] Yeah, you’re right though. We are. I don’t know how all the conversations end up like this. Like our podcast is the same way. It’s just a bunch of people telling each other it’ll be okay. I feel terrible that way too.

Rachael Herron: [00:38:06] I have a, I have another podcast that I share with my friend Jay Thorne. He’s a writer and- and the, and we ask each other questions. It’s called The Writer’s Well, and a couple of weeks ago I asked him, is it worth it? And it devolved into this, 

Tommy Arnold: [00:38:18] Oh, that’s an interesting one

Rachael Herron: [00:38:19] I don’t know. And 

Tommy Arnold: [00:38:21] I just saw your-

Rachael Herron: [00:38:22] We have got emails from listeners, one person like said, do you guys need counseling? I’m like, we’re still going to do it. 

Micah Epstein: [00:38:30] I think most people do to be honest. I mean if

Tommy Arnold: [00:38:33] Yeah, yeah, my sister has a great saying, which is anyone who can afford it should be in therapy. 

Rachael Herron: [00:38:38] Hell yes! Okay. So what about your, we are going to skip some of these because I know we’re running out of time, but what is, what is your biggest joy?

Tommy Arnold: [00:38:44] We know you have a timeline, but we’re not in a super rush, so,

Rachael Herron: [00:38:47] Okay,

Tommy Arnold: [00:38:48] We’ll, we’ll go at the pace that’s comfortable and you can tell us you’re done whenever, 

Rachael Herron: [00:38:52] Okay, thank you. Cause this is fantastic, so far. What is your biggest joy, Tommy, when it comes to your art?

Tommy Arnold: [00:38:59] I’ve started on all of – make Micah start.

Rachael Herron: [00:39:01] Okay, Micah, you start.

 Micah Epstein: [00:39:03] Biggest joy. There is,

Tommy Arnold: [00:39:14] This is why I pawned it off. 

Micah Epstein: [00:39:16] Yeah, I know, right? I’m like, oh man, I wish I had someone else, like, it just 

Rachael Herron: [00:39:19] What- what feels the best, what feel the best when you’re creating? Is it just you have to be in yourself?

Micah Epstein: [00:39:25] I’m actually, I’m thinking there’s a particular incident that happened recently that sort of, exemplifies, I think the things that I like most about art, and I’m trying to think of a way to like, boil that down to like a centralized theme, but, I’ll just go ahead and tell the story because I’m a rambler. 

Rachael Herron: [00:39:40] Please, this is a story podcast

Micah Epstein: [00:39:43] Yeah, I, I had, I had been really struggling with some aspects of like the, the basic sketching process for, um, for a long time. And, um. It was really inhibiting my ability to start a lot of things that I enjoyed. And I did hit it. I worked on for a while and I hit a big breakthrough in it. It wasn’t the ask the, the fact of solving a problem specifically, it was solving that particular problem because that lets me tap into the thing that I kinda started doing this in the first place for, which is, just the ability to be a dumb, impulsive child. Like when I hit this breakthrough with sketching, I was like, Oh, right. I could- I could draw just about anything.

Rachael Herron: [00:40:20] Awe

Micah Epstein: [00:40:21] I can be tough, but like, just, I mean, just from just from like the basic sketch phase, I mean, this isn’t getting into like technical abilities required later on down the line, but just sort of like, you know, if I have like a dumb idea about a little story I want to illustrate, I can do that. So, you know, if I, if I have just a thought about a character, I can get that out on the page. And that was something that had been sort of locked away behind a big terrible vault door of fear for a long time. But at its core, that’s the kind of thing that like, that’s why I started drawing like when I was a kid is, you know, I would, I’d be sitting there like playing Zelda or something and after a certain point in the game ends, but I’m like, I really kind of want to keep thinking about this and there’s certain things I can’t do in that game, so I’m just going to sit here and draw it.

Rachael Herron: [00:41:06] That is magical.

Micah Epstein: [00:41:08] Yeah, just, just interfacing with ideas and being in, using it as a way to explore just things and feelings that are interesting to me. And, it’s, it’s at its most enjoyable when I do sort of feel empowered to do that. If that makes sense. 

Rachael Herron: [00:41:26] And again, it is exactly the way I use writing. 

Micah Epstein: [00:41:29] I’m good. Okay.

Rachael Herron: [00:41:30] But I don’t, I don’t ever know what I think about anything until I start writing about it. I don’t know what I believe or what I know to be true until I find it through words. It’s something you just said reminded me of that. Tommy, how about for you? Where’s the joy?

Micah Epstein: [00:41:43] There’s no one to pass the buck to now 

Tommy Arnold: [00:41:44] I’m good. It follows quite naturally from what you two were just talking about. And, I’m a little surprised at this answer as I give it but it’s possible that my favorite moments related to making art are these, that the ability to commune with others. 

Rachael Herron: [00:42:04] I love that, yes.

Tommy Arnold: [00:41:06] Because art is, another podcast I listen to, that’s no longer going on, called Your Dreams, My Nightmares by Sam Weber. There was a brief discussion in one episode about would you make art if no one was going to see it? And they agreed, no, and I’ve thought about it a lot, and I also think probably no, but, it’s funny because the moment where someone sees my art is not the part I get excited about. But the chance that communication could occur on channels that are as ancient as our race and that are sure and definite and yet at the same time, they’re indefinable. There’s something so contradictory and yet real about the art making process. And that’s what life feels like. So it, it’s just this microcosm where like you, you mentioned you’re using it to work on yourself and you come out a little bit changed and the, the evidence is there on the page somehow. And then you and another person who’ve interface with those experiences individually can get together and go. Hey, when I was in there and it felt like this, did you feel that? And they go, yeah, man, I, I did feel that. What is that? And then you have a discussion about it. And, those discussions give me the fire and drawing uses some of that fire. And sometimes drawing gives you fire, but it’s not, I dunno for me, and again, this, this kind of goes back to my, my difficulties of the realm of the idea is so exciting to me. And so when we have discussions like this and we come up with ideas and we find out that we’re all human and we’re all just normal people and making stuff and it’s hard, that’s really cool and universal and, I enjoy that feeling of, of connection.

Rachael Herron: [00:44:05] I was just thinking about this this week where I’m, you know, I heard that question, would you continue to write or do your art if, if no one were going to look at it? And I thought, I realized that if there was any chance that anyone could look at it, I think I would continue doing it. Even if even though I don’t care, I decided that if I were the last person on earth, 

Tommy Arnold: [00:44:26] Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:44:28] If I thought an alien race might someday uncover these thoughts, I would write about them, but it was still wasn’t for them. It was for, and I didn’t understand what that was. Is this some kind of narcissism? Is this some kind of glorification of my ego? But what it is, is exactly what you just said. It was the desire to communicate. If I were that alone, I would hope for a communication, even if I were not around to enjoy it. You know, we’re always trying- 

Tommy Arnold: [00:44:53] That’s a really interesting subtle distinction. 

Rachael Herron: [00:44:55] Yeah. It is really subtle, but I hadn’t, I hadn’t realized that. Okay, fabulous. Let’s do, because this isn’t normally

Tommy Arnold: [00:45:04] This…Isn’t all this stuff are super cool? It’s so much fun!

Rachael Herron: [00:45:06] It is so- It’s exciting! And if we were like the, you know, if we were at Denny’s right now, we’d be doing this for the next three hours. 

Tommy Arnold: [00:45:13] And that’s why I said we got kicked out of restaurant ‘cause we just ended up talking about this stuff. And they’re like, they turn on the lights and we keep talking and we keep talking and they go, you know, we’re closed for 20 minutes now. Sorry to say something man,

Rachael Herron: [00:45:27] But isn’t it interesting that we are kind of you know, ghetto wise, like the writers and I or we hang out and talk writing all the time, all the time, all the time, all the time. And I didn’t really know that the artists were having the same, of course they are, of course you are. I’m married to an artist and she, she and I have some really intensely interesting discussions about,

Tommy Arnold: [00:45:46] Yes, the same. 

Rachael Herron: [00:45:48] Same thing. And I understand like creativity works that way. And actually Tommy, she’s a fan of yours. When I said I was interviewing you guys, she’s like, oh my God, heroine of the night, I just, I just love his work! I’m getting some, I’m getting some street credit.

Tommy Arnold: [00:46:01] Tell her thanks.

Rachael Herron: [00:46:02] Yeah, I will. I will. And this is not a question on the list. How do you guys feel about meditation? Do you either, do either of you practice that?

Micah Epstein: [00:46:11] I wanna punt this up to Tommy.

Tommy Arnold: [00:46:14] It’s only fair. It’s something that I very recently got interested in that I’ve scoffed at for a long time because I feel that I’m, a natural skeptic. But oftentimes when you go in looking to disprove, or if you go in skeptic, but you’re open to the possibilities. I like that place and so I went in based on a book I read this, this place into a- another question that we were going to discuss, which is,

Rachael Herron: [00:46:42] Oh yeah, talk about the book.

Tommy Arnold: [00:46:43] Whatever we read recently that was good. So I read a book by Josh Waitzkin, who is the subject of the caramel feature film searching for Bobby Fischer. 

Rachael Herron: [00:46:51] Oh, yeah.

Tommy Arnold: [00:46:52] He was sort of known as a chess prodigy when he was young, and then he moved out of chest and into the world of Tai Chi where he became the international push hands champion. And he talked her out. 

Rachael Herron: [00:47:05] Under achiever really. 

Tommy Arnold: [00:47:05] Yeah, I mean. Only two things that he was decent at. The book was mediocre. Yeah. But in there he talked about his relationship with meditation and how it’s helped him in his life, and he phrased it in a way, because so much of what I’m sure you end up talking about on this show, and what we talked about in our show is the mental constructs that will enable you to do a certain thing because you have to think about it in a certain way in order to do it and I’m obsessed with those mental constructs. And he put forth the construct for meditation I hadn’t heard before. And he explained it in a way that, you know, he was like, when people try to meditate, they run into this problem. And I was like, yeah, that’s me. And he was like, but that’s not I’ll just paraphrase it here. He basically said, type A personality is people who want to achieve. They go to meditate and they have some thoughts and they go, ah, I’m having thoughts. I’m not, 

Rachael Herron: [00:47:56] Failed!

Tommy Arnold: [00:47:57] Failed to do that, I failed. And so then they doubled down. They’re like, I will think of nothing. It’s like one of those moments where someone goes, I’ll be quiet now, starting now, starting now. And he said, it’s that the whole time. And then they’re angry and they get up and they leave and they go, meditation is stupid. And he said, it’s not about not having thoughts. The point is that you return to your breath. So whatever happens, you come back, you, you get lost and you come back. He said, it’s just getting in touch with the fact that you will get lost and then you can come back. 

Rachael Herron: [00:48:28] And then the meditation is actually that moment of catching yourself and coming

Tommy Arnold: [00:48:32] Yeah. And you develop this, this more introspective set of, for lack of a better term, neural pathways that come on at other points during your day where you’re out on a walking, you are thinking just, Oh, I had this experience with another human that was honest. So when you’re like, Oh, I’m thinking about that. I’m supposed to be looking at, Hey, that’s a cool house. And then now you’re off on the path you meant to be on. And so yeah, I’ve, I, I don’t do it very, I do it very frequently and not very much. So it’s just 10 minutes a day early. It’s one of the few things I allow myself to make sure I do before I sit down with coffee to work. But I do it now and I have no idea for how long that will last. Cause I’ve certainly done a lot of other things daily at other points in my life, but I’m getting a lot of value from it right now. 

Rachael Herron: [00:49:19] I think of them as mental pushups and they allow me to, ‘cause I don’t, I don’t, and I’d like to ask you this, when I’m writing about four or nine times a second, my brain is going, get up, get up, get up, stop, stop. And the mental pushups of meditation make me able to say, “Nope, Nope. I’m just coming back. I’m just coming back.” Micah, why did, why did you punt it off to him? Are you just like an anti-

Micah Epstein: [00:49:43] Oh, no, not at all. I, I, I brought that up because Tommy has been basically telling me all about this stuff recently, and he’s been doing a very good job of selling me on it. I have been planning to get into pretty much for exactly the reasons you all been describing. My answer is going to be a bit more of an oblique tangent, which neither not realized, doesn’t make geometric sense, but I think we all understand what I was going at. So it actually, it does sound like a very logical next step for me, actually, Rachael, for the exact reason you were just describing, because being able to, emotional regulation is something that is becoming increasingly, just desperately fascinating to me. And the ability to weather distraction, not by resisting it, but by sort of folding it into your experience, like I said, Tommy has done a very good job of selling me on that part of it. About a year ago I started studying, cognitive behavioral therapy. Mostly just to deal with like my own anxiety and that was actually one of the things that started me on my whole kick of like, let’s just, let’s completely like break down the car and fix everything from the ground up. Cause it, it has been very interesting. But the process of basically, retooling how you process stimuli or emotions or distractions is something that’s very fascinating to me. And so I have a lot of techniques that I use for that. But meditation sounds like an incredibly useful next step for pretty much all the reasons you all both described up until now.

Rachael Herron: [00:51:25] And I did not mean to proselytize for meditation. I was just wondering across disciplinary  

Micah Epstein: [00:51:31] No, the reason why I laughed and punt it off on Tommy just because it’s been a topic that’s come up in a lot of our discussions recently. So it was actually a very timely question. 

Rachael Herron: [00:51:38] I could, I could feel it. I could feel it. 

Micah Epstein: [00:51:40] Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:51:41] I can hear my wife like fixing the food for dinner. So I would like you both to tell us about, your work, where we can find you about the podcast. Micah, how about you? 

Micah Epstein: [00:51:54] Well, I am at a just www.micahepsteinart.com That’s sort of my core portfolio. I’m also on Twitter and Instagram at twitter.com/micahepsteinart, instagram.com/micahepsteinart which I update with, criminal infrequency. And the podcast is really just served the, the main thing that we were both sort of plugging here if there’s any, if there’s any proselytizing going on.

Rachael Herron: [00:52:18] Please tell us about it. Yeah.

Micah Epstein: [00:52:19] Yeah, it’s just, it’s actually in many ways, very similar to the discussion we’ve been having where it’s just a us having discussions about the process and thoughts that go into art making. And that’s, we call it Black, White, Grey, and that’s over at a bwgcast.com/ and at patreon.com/bwgcast

Rachael Herron: [00:52:40] Why is it called that? 

Micah Epstein: [00:52:29] It’s so true. I, I, we’ve, we’ve gotten into this on different points. Black, White, Grey is, it’s one of, one of the things we talked about on the show was the idea of the surf. We called mental models, like these container ideas we use to sort of organize information from larger concepts. Black, White, Grey was one of the first and most impactful mental models that was sort of taught to both of us by our shared teacher. The comicers Brian Stelfreeze, and on paper, it’s essentially a way of organizing the values of a painting to make it, read effectively to read and hierarchy, that sort of thing. But I think for both of us, it took on this, much greater personal significance because it was our introduction to this idea of powerful container ideas that you can use to really get into the nuts and bolts of what you do and, and basically enhance your learning by, by studying these concepts.

Rachael Herron: [00:53:41] And that’s one thing I want to thank you both for, because you both stressed something that I find is common among many professional artists is the emphasis on learning. There’s, we’re always studying. We’re always learning because we’re completely fast. I could not sleep last night I was reading a book about writing and I got so lit up that, you know, two hours later I was just spinning, spinning, spinning. I was writing notes in the dark, like a mad woman. I haven’t even looked at yet because I’m scared that I’ll look like a drunk person or something, you know? That’s what we get excited about and learning. So thank you. 

Tommy Arnold: [00:54:14] Yeah. It has to be, there has to be that kind of excitement. I mean, Brian, our teacher has another great a sort of mental framework he uses, which is that he says, all creating people, they come in two wavelengths. You’re, you’re like a tape recorder. You’re either recording, you’re bringing in, or you’re in playback. 

Rachael Herron: [00:54:31] Oh my God. 

Tommy Arnold: [00:54:32] Putting out, and he said, 

Rachael Herron: [00:54:33] That is so true.

Tommy Arnold: [00:54:34] Really need like at least four to one recording to play back because you’re just taking in, taking in, taking in. And then when they go, Hey, we got some money, will you, put out and then you’re like, well, I don’t like how you phrase that, but yeah, I can, I can like make you something real quick, here. This is just, and he has, he has this great description for it, which is that like what clients get is what they can find in the garbage. You already ate that meal. It’s in the bin. They see it in there and they go, Hey, we wanted some of that. And you’re like, just right there and just give me some money in that. It’s fine. So he’s like, he kind of thinks that artists’ styles and what they make are the byproduct of everything they’ve taken in.

Rachael Herron: [00:55:10] I can absolutely see that. 

Micah Epstein: [00:55:11] Yeah. 

Tommy Arnold: [00:55:12] That’s not really you. And it’s an important distinction because when we started out as artists, I felt like what was in the trash was me and I was very concerned with what was in the trash and letting go of that has been the most liberating thing. 

Rachael Herron: [00:55:23] Isn’t that interesting though, because when the, at the beginning of your career, you’re not, you’re not able to let anything go out. Now I do not care when I’m done with a project. It’s, 

Tommy Arnold: [00:55:32] Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:55:33] I have readers, readers write to me and say, well, what happened after the book end? I’m like, I don’t know. They’re fake. I made the book. I don’t care!

Tommy Arnold: [00:55:39] That’s a great answer. Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:55:44] But yeah, and because I’ve digested that, that’s gone.

Tommy Arnold: [00:55:47] Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:55:48] The gore image and what it looked like.

Tommy Arnold: [00:55:51] Yeah, he has a pension for metaphors. 

Rachael Herron: [00:55:54] Tommy, tell me where you could, where can you be found? 

Tommy Arnold: [00:55:56] I’m at tommyarnoldart.com 

Rachael Herron: [00:55:59] Perfect. It has been such a treat. I basically trust our mutual friend Edward; with anything I’ll do anything he says. He’s, he’s literally the best, and he always tells me the best things. And he said, I should interview you guys, and this has been such a delightful treat. We could keep talking for another couple of hours, 

Tommy Arnold: [00:56:16] Yeah. Totally

Rachael Herron: [00:56:17] But I’m also hungry. 

Tommy Arnold: [00:56:18] It was nice knowing you’ve met a kindred spirit.

Rachael Herron: [00:56:21] Kindred spirits!

Tommy Arnold: [00:56:22] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:56:23] Thank you both of you

Tommy Arnold: [00:56:24] It’s been so lovely. 

Micah Epstein: [00:56:25] Thank you so much.

Rachael Herron: [00:56:26] I’ll let you know when it’s live and happy creating. 

Tommy Arnold: [00:56:29] Yeah, you too man. 

Micah Epstein: [00:56:30] Yeah. Happy creating!

Tommy Arnold: [00:56:31] It was turned out okay

Rachael Herron: [00:56:33] I was scared. Bye. 

Micah Epstein: [00:56:35] Bye. 

Rachael Herron: [00:56:37] Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patreon and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/

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

Rachael took a flight and listened to three podcast that may change the whole way she lives (and she loves that!). She shares them here. 

Food, We Need to Talk, all episodes

Ten Percent Happier, episode #221

The Happiness Lab, Mistakenly Seeking Solitude

Transcript

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

Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode 167. This is a bonus episode and I’m fearing off the rails today. I am not going to answer a question, but if you’ve submitted one, they’re all still in the queue. I will get to them. You can ask me any questions if you’re a Patreon at the $5 level or above. 

But today, I really wanted to talk about some podcasts that I heard the other day. If you’re watching on YouTube, you can see that I’m in a hotel room. I’m in Austin. I was at these stories shop summit conference. It was lovely. And getting here, I spent some time on the plane, not reading, not working, but plowing my way through a few of the podcasts that I listened to. And I had one of those wonderful couple or three hours in the air. Austin is far from California, I found out. Listening to some shows that kind of blew my mind and I kind of wanted to share them with you because they gave me a lot of new stuff to think about. They are not about writing; they are just about kind of living in general. I will go ahead and list these over http://rachaelherron.com/blog  I’ll list the links because my podcast’ place is broken. It won’t take comments or leave comments and I’m really irritated about it. So you can just go to http://rachaelherron.com/blog when you listen to this, and I will put the links in there. The first one I listened to is something that, my girl friend Nicole Peeler told me about, and it’s called Food, We Need to Talk. And it is from WBUR, NPR, the people who bring you Radio lab. So it’s that kind of production and it is a conversation between two scientists about food and how we think about it. 

[00:02:13] I have been recently inspired by the rather annoying book called Intuitive Eating, which I didn’t want to read, and I’m still irked by. Because it flies in the face of the things that I have believed that, you know, I should cut out all sugar forever and I should be eating low carb because that’s what my body likes. This book argues something a little bit differently and this is kind of what they’re exploring on this podcast, is the idea – challenge the idea that there’s good food and bad food. I’m very good at falling into the idea that, you know, kale is good, morally and cake is bad morally. When I eat kale, I’m a good person. When I eat sugar, I’m a bad person. It’s really internalized in my system and it is for a lot of people especially in America, in the United States. So I’m really enjoying the podcast. It’s only, it’s short. It’s like, you know, 20-minute hit. And it talks about, some mindfulness about when we’re eating, the podcast and the book. Talk about that they are not linked in any way, but intuitive ideas; intuitive eating is kind of the idea behind it. And I was talking to my friend Jay Thorne on the Writers Well recently about how I was reading this book. And then I went to my silent meditation where they fed us three times a day. They fed us delicious vegetarian food, even though I’m not a vegetarian, and we were being mindful about it and I would take a bite. We’re encouraged to put down the fork, think about the bite. All the things that we don’t do in real life.

[00:04:00] We just don’t have time where, you know, you shoving a taco bell burrito in our mouth as we’re driving to the next appointment or to pick up the kids or whatever, and being mindful really did something to my brain and that I could feel my body filling up. I could feel my hunger getting faded and it was a lovely feeling. I want to point out that, I am an overeater in a lot of different kinds of ways, and I’m not going to ascribe good or bad to that. I, but I am going to say that that overfull feeling is something that I feel a lot and I don’t like it. It gives me heartburn and, and, it’s not a comfortable feeling. I went to the movies last night and I ate my face off with smothered fries. And afterwards I was like, Oh my God, could I have stopped? I don’t know. Should I have? I don’t know. But these are things that I am exploring. Sugar is something I do try to keep out of my diet because it can trigger migraines and generally makes me feel like crap, but there’s a time for sugar. There really is. It’s a celebratory thing. I really feel like for me it’s an addiction and it is a place to numb myself. I can sit down with a pint of ice cream and really affect my mood system. My, my emotional weather in my body I can affect that by eating sugar. But the whole point in my life right now, well, not the whole point, but a point of my life right now is to affect my life in a positive way by doing things that are good for me. And, or staying in the moment, including with the feelings that don’t feel good. If I don’t feel good for very many years before I quit drinking and using whatever drugs I was using, I always had a way to affect my emotional system and that is my default go to. If I don’t feel good, I reached for something that makes me feel better. And I’m trying to learn better ways to do that, that are more sustainable. I would like this body to continue to live healthily and strongly for a long time. That is a goal. So these are things I’m thinking about. I’m not fixing anything. I’m not changing much. But I am thinking, and I thought that you might like the podcast. I do apologize for any noise on the echo-y sound that is in here. I don’t have my normal podcasting microphone ‘cause I forgot it. So, and the maid is vacuuming in the room next door. So that is what is happening. 

[00:06:43] Another thing that I listened to on the way here was the Ten Percent Happier episode #221, which was called, “All Your Sleep Questions, Answered. Ten Percent Happier episode #221 is pretty recent, “All Your Sleep Questions, Answered.” Dr. Matthew Walker wrote the book, Why We Sleep, and it has been one of those that I have been waiting from the library to read for forever. I think I’m 4000th on the list. I could just buy it. Maybe I should, but I listened to this podcast and it was wonderful and it made me challenge a lot of things. In fact, I am going to buy the book and maybe read it on plane home. Maybe challenge some things that I should do. We all know how we should be sleeping. We have heard the stats, we know what they look like, but he provided some insane statistics about how we affect our health and mentality and happiness and, all the systems, everything is a system and all the systems connect. And when our sleep is affected, even by an hour a day, it really screws us up. And he was arguing in a very polite and kind though terrifying way that we really do start going to bed every night at the same time, getting up at the same time. I have never been able to do that, especially when I was working for 17 years on a graveyard shift or a 24 or 48-hour shift. I slept when I could get it. Many of those 17 years, I was on a 12 on, 12 off. I would set my body clock to be up all night for the days I was working, and then I would be up like normal people and sleeping at night for my days off. So I was jet lagging myself 12 hours a week, every week. It was one of the most, that was one of the –

the worst things you can do to your body. It’s classified actually as carcinogenic. So I am glad that I’m not doing that anymore, but I do feel like I have a lot to make up for and damaged my body for a long time that way, and I’d like to try to work on fixing it. So I’m saying this to you now, my best days are when I get up at 5:30 and I either do my movement, my yoga, or swimming or whatever it is, and meditate, or I go to my early morning 6:00 AM recovery meeting and follow that with meditation and or movement. Those are my best days. That’s when I get my most words written. I am done writing by 10 you know, I’ve gotten everything that I really need to do and then the rest of the day can be for business or for screwing around or whatever it is. 

[00:09:31] Those are my best days. I am going to –  here I’m saying it, I’ll get back to you in a couple of weeks, as to how it’s going. I’m going to start getting up at 5:30 every day because on Tuesdays, I get up at 4:30 AM so I can run the 5:00 AM to 7:00 AM Tuesday Write-in, which, if you’re interested in joining go to www.rachaelherron.com/Tuesdays. Or Tuesday? one of the other –  one of those (www.rachaelherron.com/Tuesday) and it is the most fun thing ever writing with people that early in the morning or wherever you are in your time zone. So one morning weekend you need to get up at 4:30 that’s fine. All the other mornings a week, I need to get up at 5:30. Because on the weekends I’m often sleeping until 9:30 or 10:30, there is a five-hour jet lag, a five-hour difference, and in the podcast it goes really into detail about how doing that on the weekends can really screw with the internal workings of our bodies and our brains. Not in a good way, so I’m going to try it and see how I feel. I am excited about this. It requires a couple of changes. It means that I’m going to have to eat dinner earlier than my wife who doesn’t know this yet, because I’m still in Austin. Because she often gets home at 7:30, and if I’m going to be going to bed at 8 or 9 to get up at 5:30 and try to get that optimal 7 to 9 hours of sleep, including time falling asleep. I need to go to bed early and I do not like to eat dinner right before I go to bed. That isn’t, Ooh, it doesn’t make me feel good. The other thing I’m going to miss is snuggling.

[00:11:09] I’m a big snuggler. I love to sleep in, in the mornings. The reason I sleep-in in the mornings is because my wife and I are such good spooners and we’re so cuddly and it’s just one of my favorite things to do is just snuggle in bed and drift in and out of sleep, and I have solved problems. I have solved both of these problems when my wife eats dinner, I will have a nice cup of tea or a sparkling soda or sparkling water with her and sit at the – dinner time for us is really important. We sit and we talk about the day every day, so I’m still going to do that. I’m just not going to eat with her. And the other thing can be solved with a text. She often sleeps in on the weekend even later than I do. And she can text me when she gets up and I’ll go into the bedroom and cuddle. And in the meantime, I’m getting maybe a bunch of work done or maybe some reading done on the weekends in this beautiful window of time that I’m generally sleeping through. I’m going to try it. I ordered myself a sleep tracker, which I have never used. I didn’t want to find out, kind of how my sleep changes, what it looks like if I’m getting enough. So I don’t know. It’s pretty exciting. I’m also going to commit more fully to meditating every day. I’m pretty good at meditating often, but if you do it every day, studies show that the average meditator falls asleep 40 minutes faster. And for me, a person who usually takes an hour to 90 minutes in order to get to sleep, 40 minutes faster sounds really good to me. The other thing that he says that I’m really struggling with on this podcast is that the bed should be just for sleeping, you know, and all sex. But, just for sleeping. And I love reading in bed. You’ve heard me say it before. I love reading in bed. If I can spend a whole day in bed reading, I’m in heaven and I always read in bed for an hour or two before I go to sleep. So I’m going to try also to move reading into the living room or into my office some places cozy that I can curl up and try using bed just for sleep. It said to work better. I don’t know. I would love your comments over at www.rachaelherron.com/blog on whether any of these things have worked for you or if you’ve given them a real try or if you listen to the podcast, Ten Percent Happier episode #221, tell me what you think about that. And if you’re gonna change anything. These are going to be experiments for me. You know, I love experimenting on myself, so I’m excited about this.

[00:13:45] The last one that I’m going to mention is the happiness lab, which is a podcast you should be listening to. And I was listening to; Mistakenly Seeking Solitude and put really quickly, this podcast shows that almost to a person, we all think we do not want to connect with the person next to us on the bus or in the line or at school or in places where we would talk to kind of strangers and this says that we all feel that way and we are all wrong. The Happiness Lab as a podcast its really about the way we think we’ll be happy, and proving that human beings as a whole do not understand what will make us happy. We think it is one thing, it is reliably something else that they document and I listened to Mistakenly Seeking Solitude and to me, talking to a stranger on a bus or on a plane is my idea of hell. Oh my gosh. I tried to avoid Lyft and Uber rides as much as possible because I don’t want to connect. But I landed in Austin after listening to the podcast with this episode still really fresh in my mind, and it changed everything for me about this conference. I wasn’t hiding, I wasn’t allowing myself the introv-  introversion that I prefer. I made myself talk to Lyft drivers and two people in the lobby and two conference attendees that I normally would have kind of tried to skirt by and avoid because I am truly, a secret introvert. And instead I went up to them and said, “I don’t, I don’t know anybody here. I don’t know many people here. Tell me about yourself.” And I had the best conversations. I had the best time. I ended up in places I did not expect to be in conversation and actually physically, because of these, cause I’m putting myself out there like that and it gave me happiness. It gave me these really sweet burst of dopamine.

[00:15:39] So I would recommend listening to that. Also, the Happiness Lab Mistakenly Seeking Solitude. And I think if you’re listening to a podcast, you are like the rest of us podcast junkies. Not only are you a writer, that’s why you listen to this one, but you are also trying to improve your life and podcast listeners have that over some people who go through the same day, groundhog day every day without thinking new thoughts, without trying new actions, without getting under the hood of our bodies and our brains and our spirits. So I recommend these podcasts. Go check them out. Feel free to come over to www.rachaelherron.com/blog and tell me what you have been listening to and loving lately. And thanks for listening to this bonus episode.

 I wish you happy writing. And we will talk soon my friends.

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

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