Anjanette Delgado is a Puerto Rican writer and journalist. She is the author of The Heartbreak Pill (Simon and Schuster, 2008), 2009 winner of the Latino International Book Award, and of The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho (Kensington Publishing & Penguin Random House, 2014). Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, as well as in The Kenyon Review, Pleiades, Vogue, The New York Times (“Modern Love”), The Hong Kong Review, NPR, and HBO, among others. A Bread Loaf Conference alumni, she won an Emmy Award for feature writing in 1994, served as a judge for the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award in 2015, and was a Peter Taylor Fellow in Fiction in 2016. Her short story “Lucky” was nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize, she holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University, and lives in Miami, Florida.
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Transcript
Rachael Herron: [00:00:00] Rachael Herron: [00:00:00] Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing.
[00:00:15] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #202 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. Thank you for all your sweet emails and comments lately. Yes, I have been having the best guests. Haven’t I? Becca Sime, Ed Giordano. And today we have Anjanette Delgado who you are really going to enjoy listening to. She tells us a little bit about the magic of pre-production when it comes to writing novels. Also, she wanted to let me know that she forgot to say something and she really wanted to point it out that she loves working in Granthika, which is the program that Vikram Chandra was talking about a few episodes back. So I wanted to make sure that we got in that plug for Vikram’s program, Granthika. In case you haven’t checked it out, there’s a free version you can try. So you’re going to love listening to Anjanette. She’s one of those people that I ended up hanging out with just hoping that we would go on being friends, which is, really not a bad reason to do a podcast, I have to tell you. [00:01:12] So a little bit of catch up around here. Honestly, I don’t have much writing catch up to catch you up on. I have been just kind of punching away at the memoir, trying to get it into some shape, struggling with this revision and a little bit more of a struggle than I expected, which is fine. I am up to the task, but I have been really distracted. There’s not much going on, only fall of democracy as we know it. Lala and I have been very preoccupied about again, thinking about moving out of this country. There’s always been the thing that has told us don’t go, you can’t give up. People, I’m ready to give up. I really, I really am. We’re looking into New Zealand because we can go there since I have citizenship. However, they have a very expensive quarantine, it’s two weeks and $3,000 each, which is great. I mean, they’re keeping COVID out of the nation. That’s fantastic because they are clear of it. But that’s, that’s a little costly plus, you know, importing dogs. And so we’re looking at other places too. I don’t know if you are feeling a little beaten up by news. If you are American, I feel you and I also ache for you. So please know that I am with you there. The indictment of just the one officer in the killing of Brianna Taylor has me just beyond furious and it’s very difficult. [00:02:45] It’s difficult to wrestle with all of this and get our work done, our writing done and get our jobs done, if we have another job and watch the kids, if we have kids and take care of parents, if you’re taking care of parents. This is heavy. This is a lot. If you are struggling to get your writing done, do remember that when I get my head in the game, which is generally just every morning for a couple of hours or when I go to RachaelSaysWrite, which I’m going to do this afternoon, thank goodness. I escape and it is such a good escape. It is so fun. So remember that you have that as one of your super powers, the ability to escape into your work. What other escapes have I been having? Well, I binged the home edit. I might’ve mentioned that and I have just been in really solid nesting mode. My office, you will see over my shoulder looks, Oh, there’s a dog. It looks fabulous. The office is fantastic. I’m gonna attack the kitchen next. The really nice thing is that there’s no weird corners full of stuff. I tend to be a pack rat and my wife is a lot more of a pack rat than I am, I must say. And so we have stuff upon our stuff under our stuff, over our stuff. I usually try to keep surfaces clear, but I, you know, you’ve seen over my shoulder, I don’t usually manage that. So all of this nesting that I’ve been doing between books is going to make packing a lot easier if we go. So yeah. It’s that’s exciting. So yeah, the kitchen is next. I’ve got all sorts of containers to put things in. Even the Marie Kondo would be rolling over in her beautifully 400 thread, 500 thread count sheets to know that I bought containers to organize things into. But, I love a container. I love the container store. I really love Daiso, which we have a couple of nearby. It’s a Japanese store where you can buy basically the same things you can get at the container store, but they’re all a dollar 50 or $2, it’s like a really cool dollar store. If you’re looking over my shoulder, the creek that you all just heard is my dog, letting herself out, our dog Clementine, that was Dozy. Our dog Clementine’s still sick, not feeling well, suffering pancreatitis, and maybe some kind of infection. So we’ve been spending a lot of time and mental energy and a lot of money, but you know, that’s what money is for on her. [00:05:07] So that’s what we’re dealing with and I will say that even though I’m ground down by the news, I am still hot and heavy in this romance with my work, even though I’m complaining about the revision, I’m still getting there and I’m loving it when my head is in it. I am also allowing you to remember that it’s hard. It’s hard right now. So give yourself some grace. Don’t beat yourself up. If you’ve been struggling to get to the page, just get to the page and do a little bit. You’re the only one who can do this. I was watching Austin Kleon on, an older video, a couple year old video, and he reminds us to do the noun. Wait, sorry. Do the verb, not the noun. You want to do the verb, not the noun. You want to be a writer? That’s great. You want to think about writing? You want to read books about writing. Awesome. But you got to do the verb in order to be a writer. You got to sit down and write, even though it is uncomfortable and the only things that comes out of your finger, fingers are things that you hate. That’s fine. You will revise them later and revision is difficult. I’m leading an amazing group through 90 days, A 90-day revision right now. And every time I teach this class, I am reminded, Oh my God. It is so hard to learn how to do this. Once you get the skills though, they’re your skills forever. So that’s great. I wanted to give a quick shout out to new patrons. Thank you, Anne-Marie. Thank you, John Rindfleisch VIII, you just edited your pledge up and now I am your mini coach. Same thing to Stephanie Bond. Stephanie Bond, you’re amazing. Love you. You’re the best. Katrina Dixon, thank you and Sasha Plaque. Oh, thanks Sasha. It’s it means a lot to have you. I love your show, shows. [00:06:56] So let’s jump into the interview with Anjanette. She will pull us out of this state of existential despair, at least for a few moments. And then when you’re done listening, maybe you can go find some respite in your own work. Okay. Tell me how you’re doing, find me anywhere online. I’d love to hear from you. And I wish you a very happy writing my friends. [00:07:18] Hey, is resistance keeping you from writing? Are you looking for an actual writing community in which you can make a calls and be held accountable for them? Join RachaelSaysWrite, like twice weekly, two hour writing session on zoom. You can bop in and out of the writing room as your schedule needs, but for just $39 a month, you can write up to 4 hours a week. With our wonderful little community, in which you’ll actually get to know your writing peers. We write from 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM on Tuesdays and 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM on Thursdays and that’s US Pacific Standard Time. Go to RachaelHerron.com/Write to find out more.Rachael Herron: [00:08:00] Okay. Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show today on Anjanette Delgado. Anjanette. I said it wrong. Anjanette. Hello! Welcome.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:08:08] Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited.
Rachael Herron: [00:08:10] I’m so happy to have you here. Okay. Let me give you a little introduction. Anjanette Delgado is a Puerto Rican writer and journalist. She is the author of “The Heartbreak Pill” from the Simon and Schuster, the 2009 winner of the Latino International Book Award, and of The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho, from Kensington. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, as well as in the Kenyon Review, Pleiades, Vogue, The New York Times, the Modern Love might I add, NPR, and HBO, among others. A Bread Loaf Conference alumni, she won an Emmy Award for feature writing in 1994, served as a judge for the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award in 2015, and was a Peter Taylor Fellow in Fiction in 2016. Her short story “Lucky” was nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize, and she holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University, and lives in Miami, Florida. That’s a stellar bio there.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:09:07] Oh, thank you.
Rachael Herron: [00:09:09] That is so exciting and
Anjanette Delgado: [00:09:10] Thank you. I was just, as you were reading, I was just noticing oh my gosh she, that’s how you spell that, that’s how you pronounce Pleiades. I’ve never known how to pronounce it. I get nominated. Yeah I think it nominated me for an award. I should learn how to pronounce the name of the journal but-
Rachael Herron: [00:09:27] The thing is though, I always say that like readers, when we don’t know how to pronounce something is because we read so much, you know, we’ve never heard it, but it makes us smarter. That’s all.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:09:36] May I steal that?
Rachael Herron: [00:09:37] Yes. You should steal that. Okay. So I just read your Modern Love piece. It’s beautiful. And it gave me a good flavor for your writing. And I was looking at your books. The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho was, I, I think on one of the pages I saw it’s described as a recovering clairvoyant, is that right?
Anjanette Delgado: [00:09:56] Yeah. She’s a really bad clairvoyant. She’s just, you know, it’s really incompetent. Partly because she has decided that, you know, this gift has to be perfect, this talent of hers has to be perfect. And when it isn’t perfect, she then sets it aside. Doesn’t practice. Doesn’t listen to it. And so of course it atrophies. Right? And so, yeah, she’s, she’s, she’s just now beginning to think that she may need to pick it up after all. Pick it back up again because, she needs, she needs this.
Rachael Herron: [00:10:31] That has just, that book has just flown to the top of my TBR file, I must read it. Let’s talk a little bit about your process. The show is all about process.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:10:40] Sure
Rachael Herron: [00:10:41] How do you get your writing done? Where do you get your writing done? If people are looking on the YouTube video, there’s this a beautiful desk behind you, is that your workspace?
Anjanette Delgado: [00:10:49] It’s an old table. Yes. I actually just bought it at a vintage, it’s-
Rachael Herron: [00:10:53] It’s gorgeous.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:10:54] And that’s where I used to, to write. It’s just like a little sofa that sort of serves like a, almost like a dining bench. For some reason, I do not like writing on proper desks. I don’t know why.
Rachael Herron: [00:11:09] What do you think-
Anjanette Delgado: [00:11:10] I don’t know what that’s about. I do. I just, it makes me feel cycled a little you’re like, okay. So for example, I like to write at the kitchen counter where I’m talking to you from right now. I love when, you know, before pre-pandemic, I used to go to cafes. In another life I was a journalist, so I would write in a newsroom and you have a deadline and it doesn’t matter what’s happening. You, you will write when you have a deadline, that’s that day you will write. And so, and you learn to shut everything out, you know. Yeah. And my husband complaints a lot, because he says that sometimes I’ll be reading and he’s, you know, he’s been calling to me for, I don’t know, how many minutes and I don’t listen and I just, I really don’t. I just tune it out. So that comes from that training. I don’t like to be isolated when writing, so I’m inside, I’m isolated inside myself. I like to see people and, you know, just a lot of activity around me. And I think I get that from, you know, not being at a desk, but just sort of being like in the middle of the house, in the middle of wherever, whatever is happening.
Rachael Herron: [00:12:18] In terms of writers strengths, I think that has to be such a gift. You know, it’s kind of like those people who can just lie down and fall asleep when they close their eyes.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:12:25] Yes. Me. Yes
Rachael Herron: [00:12:27] You also?
Anjanette Delgado: [00:12:28] Yes
Rachael Herron: [00:12:29] Oh my god. I wonder if there’s some kind of connection to that.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:12:30] There might be.
Rachael Herron: [00:12:31] You could just turn off the world when you need to.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:12:34] There might be, but, you know, I think I know how I developed it, like partly obviously was because of the job, you know, right, being a journalist working in a newsroom that happens. But I also realized thinking about it, that when I was a child, I would also just get inside the book. And once I was in the story, people would be calling me and I wouldn’t hear a thing. And you know, there could be a fire right next to me and I wouldn’t even notice. And I think reading gives you the ability to focus. When people tell me I’m not able to read, I know that they haven’t practiced reading enough, to get to the point where your brain is making the pictures automatically and you’re not noticing that you are reading. Right.
Rachael Herron: [00:13:15] And it really is practice. Yeah.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:13:16] Right. And I think if somebody wants to be able to develop that ability to, you know, not to be distracted by every little noise around reading, well do it. Getting a lot reading more than two hours. You know, when I have a student that has an issue getting into a story, I said, okay, set a clock and don’t stop. You’ll notice that as you get closer to that two hours, you forget you’re reading.
Rachael Herron: [00:13:41] You’re super deep. Yeah. And that’s the best, best feeling. So right now, during pandemic, you are working from home. How is that shift?
Anjanette Delgado: [00:13:50] I am
Rachael Herron: [00:13:51] And I’m also a cafe writer. I hate writing at home. I do everything else at home, but not writing.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:13:56] Well, I’ll tell you, I feel incredibly lucky and blessed that I don’t, you know, nobody I know or love directly, you know, has, has, have been sick so far. I do live in Miami.
Rachael Herron: [00:14:07] Hotspot.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:14:08] So, you know what we make, what we have in the sun, we make up for it that’s a, maybe sometimes. So I’m happy to stay home and be safe rather than be out there with people not following basic rules and also, I don’t know that you’ll find a writer that will tell you that they didn’t find a silver lining in this whole thing,
Rachael Herron: [00:14:33] I know
Anjanette Delgado: [00:14:34] I just feel like we needed to slow down a little bit and you know, I wouldn’t have wanted it to happen this way, but I, but I do think there’s that silver lining to it. If you will.
Rachael Herron: [00:14:43] That’s slowing down has been so gorgeous in so many ways. And just like you, I would never have wanted this to happen, but to be forced to slow down is pretty, pretty wonderful.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:14:51] Yeah. I have to learn how to do it to myself. Right?
Rachael Herron: [00:14:55] Yeah. And how we keep this, if we ever get back, if we ever get back to something approaching normal, how to keep this feeling.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:15:01] Exactly. Exactly. So I think, did I answer your question? I’m sorry if I started chatting with you.
Rachael Herron: [00:15:08] I think so. N o, no, no. Yeah. So, so, so now do you write at your counters where you’re mostly at.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:15:14] Yeah, I am right now, it’s my counter. It may be my, my table, tomorrow, just wherever I feel in the middle of, and not some place where it’s I plan to write here and where, you know, you look at the place and, oh dear, you know, the, the folders with the research are perfectly lined with markers color-coded, of course. And it’s just saying you have, you know, when you, when I look at that, it’s like you have to write, whereas where I write, when I allow myself to write wherever, you know, you could write. It could be magical. You don’t have to, nobody’s forcing you but, you know, you could.
Rachael Herron: [00:15:50] Oh, I love that. I’m, I’m a little jealous of that. I’m one of those isolated writers I’ve gotta like, if I’m not isolated, I have to put the things in my ears and turn up the white noise so loud so everything is drowned out. What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing?
Anjanette Delgado: [00:16:04] My biggest challenge is my life be having it be too full, right. And not being able sometimes to decide how full it can be at any given moment. So right now I’m editing an anthology and I’m happy. I am, no, very excited about it. I am teaching MFA students for the first time. I’ve always wanted to teach and I’ve taught, but you know, mostly lecturing or, you know, it’s still,
Rachael Herron: [00:16:33] Are you all online now?
Anjanette Delgado: [00:16:35] My school will be online. Mostly online. Yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:16:38] Yeah. That’s good. That’s good.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:16:42] And so there’s all these things happening, right. I just finished my third novel.
Rachael Herron: [00:16:45] Congratulations.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:16:47] Oh, thank you. And hopefully it’ll go to my agent soon so he can tell me how to rewrite it. And so all of those competing things that I love to do, right. Saying no to this and that, that I also love and just kind of, you know, focusing, but I do write every day and I found that if I have a lot of projects, a lot of writing projects, that helps, the other thing that helps me a lot is to write when I’m not writing. So, because I wrote my first novel, When I Was the Mother of Two Teenagers, I learned to get those moments. I’d never, I could never tell you, Rachael. I have to wait until I have a full afternoon. Because it takes me so long to get into the concentration of the page that once I get there, you know, I can’t just stand up and have to go do something else.
But I learned that if I did something called pre-production and that again comes from my TV days and I teach a class called Finish Your Novel the TV Way, which is, which is basically using what I learned as a TV writer and working with new writers. Oh my goodness. Let me tell you. When you are getting paid to write, you write. I don’t know you write well, but I know you write. So my class isn’t about that writing veterans so there’s a lot of other people that can do better. You know, how to write better. I’m just, I just tell them what I use, because I need to get paid and to get, you know, to get paid, you have to finish, right. It’s not enough to start and it’s not enough to spend X amount of hours. You have to have a plan for, for finishing something.
Rachael Herron: [00:18:29] A plan and that deadline that goes with it. Yeah.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:18:30] A plan and sometimes it’s your own deadline, right?
Rachael Herron: [00:18:33] Yeah. Yeah.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:18:34] So, so one of the things that TV writers do or have is that the world is built. Right. There’s a head writer that has imagined or conceived of this series. Let’s, let’s come, let’s compare this series to a novel, right? So a novel, a series that has, let’s say 26 episodes and a novel may have 20 to 26 chapters. When you think about in terms of arc they’re similar, but the TV writers starts with, okay, this is the world, this is the tone, these are the characters more or less, you know while we’re casting, start with an idea. So I started doing that for myself. For example, I would go online or on a magazine and I would kind of cast my characters and it doesn’t mean that you’re going to describe the picture exactly.
Rachael Herron: [00:19:26] It just something in your head
Anjanette Delgado: [00:19:27] Well, it forces you to think, why did you think this picture? Because then you say, well, yes, Mark Ruffalo looks just like Peter, but what is it about the essence of Mark? Well, you know, he looks boyish, but he looks earnest or, and that, that forces you to think about your character in a deeper way and maybe
Rachael Herron: [00:19:47] That’s genius.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:19:48] And you throw away the picture, right?
Rachael Herron: [00:19:50] Right. It becomes your character after awhile
Anjanette Delgado: [00:19:53] But you found, what was it that called you to that image as opposed to having to draw paint from, you know, from scratch to begin with, start from like, you would start, you know, like people sometimes will base a character on a friend or a, or a family member. It’s the same. You’re just doing it with a photo and kind of using that process to tell yourself what calls to you, what, what is in your head already. The same I do, I do a map and I like to know where each place is. Right. But all of that, what I call pre-production helps you because of one day I just have 10 minutes and I don’t know where I am in a scene. I may use those 10 minutes to think about what a character may be cooking in a scene I know I have to write later, just gets that out of the way, you know, so that I use that time. And, and I keep myself in the world of my novel. If that makes sense.
Rachael Herron: [00:20:50] I have done this show for four years now, and I have never heard this. It is so helpful to think of using these little bits of time to do little pieces of pre-production so that when you get there, you’ve already worked on some of this stuff. This is kind of blowing my mind.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:21:06] Right? Well, because when you’re saying, has, has it ever happened? Good on Saturday, I have the whole afternoon to write, I’m so excited. You sit down with your tea, right. Your color-coded research, your whole thing, and you, and then you start to see it in your like, and you, and you, cause then it’s like information for information. So you go, so then you think, Oh, I need to do more research. And then you go down the rabbit hole of more research for God knows when, but if you have specific, so I’ll do like a little homework list. Oh wait. I have to think about, songs. I need some songs. \
Rachael Herron: [00:21:42] Oh my gosh. This is amazing
Anjanette Delgado: [00:21:43] And then, yeah. And I put it in the notes, my phone, I mean, nothing fancy. And then when I’m at the doctors or wherever I am when I have 10 minutes, 15 minutes to kill, but I wasn’t expecting, I said, Oh, you know, I don’t have a head sometimes to, to write. My, my head is, you know, my head hurts, or it’s too much. I can’t, I can’t concentrate, but I can concentrate on finding a few songs. That I can always do. I can look up research for what a name of a character might mean. I could look at a map of the neighborhood where it takes place and do a Google satellite just to familiarize myself with what the streets might look like right now.
Rachael Herron: [00:22:20] Oh my God, Anjanette. This is
Anjanette Delgado: [00:22:21] Right?
Rachael Herron: [00:22:22] Especially having the list to work from.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:22:25] Right. Cause you won’t think about it in 10 minutes, Right? You won’t think about what you may spend the 10 minutes thinking, what would I –
Rachael Herron: [00:22:31] Just trying to think of something. Yeah.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:22:32] Yeah, no, but it’s just pick something from there that that would adjust to the time you have. And then that also helps when you do have the 4 hours of luxuries, you know, because you have a lot of information that you’re excited about.
Rachael Herron: [00:22:46] Oh my gosh, this is, this is, this is blowing my mind. And it’s so good. So, so let me ask you, in terms of your process, are you a plotter or a fly by the seat of your pantser?
Anjanette Delgado: [00:22:58] I do not like to be a pantser, but I do admit that sometimes the fancy strikes and I’ll just, you know, start thinking that I am a pantser, but I’m not, I’m not, I like to, I like to plot loosely, let’s call it,
Rachael Herron: [00:23:13] Okay. Yeah
Anjanette Delgado: [00:23:14] I’m a loose water. Right. So I like to have, I like to understand the world. I don’t need to know every detail about the world that I’m going to be writing about, but I do need to know some. Right. Some basic things. I like to know something about my character. I don’t think so much in terms of like what’s in her closet and doing a whole biography. Because if I start doing all of that, I’ll get lost in all that. Right. I’m the kind of, of students, when I was a student, you know, I’m the person with all the markers and all their little tab divided notebooks and, you know, I could get, I could get really lost in all that process, too much process. So I try to keep it practical to what I will use to know enough to start laying out something and I’ll kind of go back and forth, right? Maybe that I started by plotting a bit loosely and I started to write and I realized, wait a minute, something’s missing. I need to go back to plotting a little more, you know, and I go back and you go back and forth. Right. yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:24:20] So now when do you make, when do you add to this list, this pre-production list that you’re going to look at later to?
Anjanette Delgado: [00:24:25] When I’m stuck.
Rachael Herron: [00:24:26] When you’re stuck. That’s when you, that’s when you start adding to it?
Anjanette Delgado: [00:24:29] Yeah, because once they have, once I, when I have the list and I start getting all my info, I start getting excited. I can’t wait to write that list and, and you know, and explain how, whatever she used burned the lips and how to describe, you know, how the lips or when, whatever. But once I’m, you know, I get to a place where I don’t know, I can’t see it. I can’t visualize anything. I know that I need to, you know, to answer those questions that I’m, whatever it is that I’m missing. It also helps you when you’re revising, you know, you could just, at some point, instead of doing formal revising, you could just go through to find words that repeat themselves too much. It’s a job it will do.
Rachael Herron: [00:25:14] It has to be done.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:25:15] Right. It has to be done and you don’t have to think a lot. Adjective, adjective, adjective, cross it off, you know, or circle it so that you can decide out of 36 adjectives, which 10, is that you’ll keep.
Rachael Herron: [00:25:28] Right. How many justs you’ll keep. Because I have so many justs on everything.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:25:32] Yeah. Like bite-sized tasks that will keep you working, writing will save you time from feeling like a failure, because you’re not writing. You are writing you just not writing, writing. You can touch it, you just not, you know, writing sentences. But you’re writing, you are creating the world of your novel and what happens in it. And you keep giving it texture.
Rachael Herron: [00:25:56] You’ve just given me this huge piece of writing that I’ve never used this big tool that I have never picked up before. And I love it. And I know that listeners are going, Oh my gosh, I’ve never thought about it that way.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:26:06] I hope so, I hope so. I mean, when you think about it, what it allows you to do is to use up, to be more productive, right?
Rachael Herron: [00:26:15] Yeah. Yeah
Anjanette Delgado: [00:26:16] You are able to use your uptime and your downtime, your focus time and your unfocused time.
Rachael Herron: [00:26:22] Yeah.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:26:23] Your interrupted time, and your not interrupted time, and stay in it because what do you know of anything worse than having a lot of bass pass without getting back to it and then having to reread everything from scratch because you forgot, you’re not, you’re out of it. You have to get back into it. Right. And it’s okay when you have five pages, but when you have a hundred, you know, it’s time that you’re wasting, it’s not gonna make your book any better. So stay, stay in your novels, stay in it, stay in it as much as you can, even if it’s just thinking of it as you’re, as you’re cooking, thinking. And thinking about the character, just thinking even,
Rachael Herron: [00:27:05] And what would I rather be doing? Like, you know, Googling something that’s super interesting that I can use in the book or looking at Twitter for the 400th hour that-
Anjanette Delgado: [00:27:12] And sometimes, right, and sometimes what you’re looking for and, I mean, I’ll confess to this, but, dear God, you want something mindless to do.
Rachael Herron: [00:27:23] Exactly. That’s why we scroll Twitter. That’s why we look at Facebook. Yeah.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:27:27] Right. So you, you are there and you say, Oh my God, I’m so tired. I just had 10 calls, 2 zooms and whatever. You know what? I’m going to browse the sale. I’m going to browse Twitter. I’m going to look at houses that I will never buy I’m and you’re doing something mindless. You could do something mindless that nevertheless could be useful later.
Rachael Herron: [00:27:51] I feel like you may have just changed my life and that doesn’t not always happen on this show.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:27:53] Your new game.
Rachael Herron: [00:27:57] This is my new game! And I am starting a book pretty soon so this is like so incredibly exciting. I think that must, that must satisfy the craft tip question that I was going to ask you about unless you have something else.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:28:10] No. I mean, it’s, it’s basically what I’ve taught it. I can’t tell you students just look at me, you know, when I walk in with magazines and scissors and when I did the sort of okay. There, there is another part of it, right? Obviously, you’re trying to build a, what happens next and why by causal effects. And all of those things and so, yeah, there’s, there’s more to it but they are pretty, pretty excited about being able to build the world before, you know, having to think of everything as if it were magical
Rachael Herron: [00:28:46] Yeah. It doesn’t, it doesn’t have to be that difficult. Yeah. Let me ask you what thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way?
Anjanette Delgado: [00:28:56] Well, it’s not surprising to me. I have grown daughters and when they are unhappy, I know they’re unhappy. They broke up with the boyfriend or they fought with the husband, or they’re not getting along with their mom-in-law or, you know, or they lost a job or they lost a friend, it just consumes me.
Rachael Herron: [00:29:16] Really?
Anjanette Delgado: [00:19:17] And I’m saying, and I’m pretty hands off. I mean, one of my daughters, my eldest daughter lives in New York. She just got married. And, in November, I love my son-in-law, but things that affect her life, affect me. She had an issue with a lawyer, that, you know, basically was trying to cheat her like a month ago. And I couldn’t think about anything else. I was like, I’m going to run an email and you do this and you go that and call the bar and I get completely sucked into solving it now. And I cannot, I cannot just, you know, until they’ve told me that they sold it on their own or, you know, or they ask for help so I can do it for them.
Rachael Herron: [00:30:02] How does that, how does that mama bear energy translate into your work?
Anjanette Delgado: [00:30:08] Exhausting. It’s exhausting. I don’t know that it does. I really don’t. Most of my, my protagonist and I’m going into, you know, long-form novel. They’re childless. All three of them are childless.
Rachael Herron: [00:30:23] God, that’s hilarious. And I have no kids and I’m obsessed with the mother-daughter connection. All of my books are about moms and daughters. So that is so,
Anjanette Delgado: [00:30:31] Lord. I, you know, I think that’s why they’re all childless. I’m excited about that other,
Rachael Herron: [00:30:38] So simple.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:30:39] That other part that just, you know, it’s, it’s crazy, you know, that once somebody else is born, it’s not up to you to be happy anymore. They will be able to determine whether you can be happy forever. That’s terrifying.
Rachael Herron: [00:30:55] I could tell from here that you are an amazing mother.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:30:56] Oh, thank you.
Rachael Herron: [00:30:58] You love your girls so much.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:31:00] I try, I try. I have amazing girls. They are amazing.
Rachael Herron: [00:31:05] Okay. So what is the best book you’ve read recently and why you love it?
Anjanette Delgado: [00:31:10] I love; I love to talk about that. Okay. Well, I’m still reading this one, but I’m enjoying it very much. So this is, I think it just came out yesterday. This is “The Boy in The Field” by Margot Livesey.
Rachael Herron: [00:31:25] It’s a beautiful cover.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:31:26] Oh my goodness. All her covers are really good. I’d never met her, but I love her. I tweet at her all the time. She just, her sentences are lyrical, but also they drive. They go places, they don’t have to go under, you know, in the beauty of whatever. She can write a really poetic sentence that doesn’t take you out of the story. And for me, that’s high praise.
Rachael Herron: [00:31:54] Absolutely.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:31:55] You know? So she’s really good. And she’s got a really good plotter, I find. A really good plotter. So this one, for example, there’s a mystery in it. And I am, I think I made less than 50 pages from finishing and I don’t know the answer. I don’t know. I don’t know what happens. Okay.
Rachael Herron: [00:32:15] Also very high praise. When a writer can’t figure it out, that’s amazing.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:32:19] Thank you, right? Because it’s not a one dimensional plot where I can see it coming right now and also she’s not like rattling off suspects. I had to read up. And after a while I said, wait a minute, this could be a suspect. That could be a suspect. Anyway, then, this, I, I, I actually reviewed them. I don’t know either the writer or the translator. So Nona Fernandez is a Chilean writer. Look at the thinness of this novel. I think some things, very short pages, 70 something.
Rachael Herron: [00:32:54] And this is a novel? It’s not poetry?
Anjanette Delgado: [00:32:56] This is a novel.
Rachael Herron: [00:32:57] Wow.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:32:58] It’s a novel about the Chilean dictatorship and when I finished, I was complete. I said, Holy cow, I get it. I get it.
Rachael Herron: [00:33:07] And what’s, and what’s it called again?
Anjanette Delgado: [00:33:08] “Cool Space Invaders”, both in English and Spanish.
Rachael Herron: [00:33:11] Okay
Anjanette Delgado: [00:33:12] Now the first time I read it, I read it in English. It was translated by Natasha Wimmer who, who has translated many- she was Bolaños’s translator.
Rachael Herron: [00:33:23] Oh, wow. Okay.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:33:24] So she knows something about translating dense things and making them, you know,
Rachael Herron: [00:33:28] Yeah. It’s an art.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:33:29] Accessible, but, oh my goodness. I mean, I read this first and I said nah, she must’ve rewritten it because there’s no way she captured all that lyricism translating from Spanish to English, you know, with the dramatic roots and all of that.
Rachael Herron: [00:33:42] Yes
Anjanette Delgado: [00:33:43] So that’s why I have to buy the Spanish. She did. She did capture it.
Rachael Herron: [00:33:47] I’m not thinking about it.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:33:48] And I’m one of those people who like, well, you know, we’ll be watching something on Netflix and going, translation. It just, it just bothers me so much. When something is translated to English and that’s not what they meant at all, or the other way around English to Spanish, you know, like a formal (word in Spanish), which would really be a formal lawyer. And what they hadn’t meant to say was a former lawyer, not formal. I have issues. And this one, this is a perfect translation. I mean, it’s just, it’s amazing. It’s about, it’s a story of a bunch of kids who are children in the same classroom when the dictatorship took hold. And one of their classmates is the daughter of a military guy and she disappears one day. And so they’re piecing together what they know.
Rachael Herron: [00:34:46] Don’t tell me how much more cause I have to read it.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:34:49] You will know, but, but it’s just, it’s so beautiful. It’s so beautiful. I actually wish I had marked like a paragraph to read you. So you could hear the music of the, of the, of it. And then lastly, and this one, I’m just, I’m just discovering. This is like “El Salas Rivera”, “While They Sleep, Under The Bed is Another Country”. She’s Puerto Rican like me and she’s, you know, she’s writing about colonization and she’s writing about lack of identity and she’s writing about Puerto Rico. Look at these pages. She’s just kind of going at overheard pieces from people after Maria and just kind of tracing.
Rachael Herron: [00:35:30] So there’s a lot of white space.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:35:32] of overheard prayers, and then it’s all sort of comes together and, you know, in a, in a longer prose poem or lyric essay, but by the time you get to that, to that lyric essay, all those little layers have just gotten inside you and so it’s just so much more powerful.
Rachael Herron: [00:35:52] I’m going to put all of these in the show notes for everyone.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:35:53] This is an amazing, amazing book. I haven’t told her, I don’t know her personally, but I know her on Twitter and you know I, you know I’m loving the book before she does, so
Rachael Herron: [00:36:04] That’s so exciting.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:36:05] Anyway, I’m a big reader. I read almost a hundred books a year. I, I, I
Rachael Herron: [00:36:11] I was a big reader. I think I only do like 60 or so.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:36:14] I read, I read every two, three days. I’m on the next book. I just, I read a lot to fall asleep. And I read a lot because it just keeps me so, so there,
Rachael Herron: [00:36:25] it keeps us in the water.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:36:26] Yeah. And then what I did to sort of keep myself at that pace. I reviewed books for the New York journal of books. Last year I reviewed 50 books.
Rachael Herron: [00:36:36] Holy cow, Anjanette. That is fancy too.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:36:38] I know, I know, but it’s so great because you have a deadline and you’re, you know, you get into the books and you read deeply, deeper then sometimes we do, when we can just put it off, you know.
Rachael Herron: [00:36:51] Right. Right, right, right, right. And you get boxes of free books all the time.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:36:55] There you go. Win-win.
Rachael Herron: [00:36:59] Tell, tell the listeners where we can find you and tell them about your most recent book.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:37:05] Well, my most recent book, I’m hoping it will sell. So I’ve written three novels, two of which you mentioned, and the third, which my, my agent is selling part of what it has and that’s interesting. I’ll just mention it very quickly, but it’s such a, it’s become such a big thing. My first book was, quite frankly, what they call Chiclet was a woman’s story. It was a little lighter in the sense that it didn’t deal with no big things. It dealt with love battles. It wasn’t exactly a romance. I remember that the blurbs read smart chicklet as it books were, women were done. What happened? This one happened to be smart. We need to point that out. Smart Chiclet. Yeah and the second one was I was compared to Charlene Harris. And at the time I hadn’t read publisher’s weekly compared Clairvoyant to Charlene Harris, which I hadn’t, I hadn’t read. And I, you know, when I looked and said, why and I said, what are they, what does that mean? They’re comparing me to what you know, to a white book.
Rachael Herron: [00:38:08] Correct
Anjanette Delgado: [00:38:09] Later, I was very, very honored and flattered.
Rachael Herron: [00:38:12] Yeah. Those are great books. It’s so fun.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:38:14] Oh my God. I read all. But then I decided as I changed as I went on conferences, and I said, as I started, you know, leaving behind my, my life as a journalist and becoming more of a, of a full time writer, if you will, I realized that I had changed that where I sold my books may not be the best places going forward because I am not necessarily just a commercial writer anymore. And so that necessitated a lot of time in transitioning. And even now, I think that, you know, a lot of it’s a lot of learning, to sell a literary novel that’s nevertheless, has cannibals and it’s about hunger and death and there’s a mystery and all of that, but it’s the language has it. It’s different.
Rachael Herron: [00:39:00] Yeah, of course.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:39:01] So, people can find me anywhere that books are sold. Honestly, my website, which is just my name, very easy. I’m all over social media. I regularly write columns and op-eds on social justice. Yeah, once in a while I get so upset, it needs that that needs to, you know, leave the body.
Rachael Herron: [00:39:23] That’s one of our jobs as writers is to work for social justice and we have this particular tool that not a lot of people have.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:39:30] I should be surprised. I’ve been surprised at how much it has helped all my other writing to pan an op-ed. And, you know, people think an op-ed is just writing what you think. But it’s really testing yourself, testing what you think, finding the arguments, finding the factual arguments to support your thesis, you write your feeling, and that brings about a process of, of thought of claiming your own feelings and, and telling yourself whether they’re, you know, they pass muster or not that I find enlightening and, you know, just, just a great release. So I, I’m doing that so they’ll find a day if they, they’ll find me talking about Latino issues, racial issues, feminist issues.
Rachael Herron: [00:40:17] I’m going to follow you immediately on Twitter, because I’m a twitter head
Anjanette Delgado: [00:40:19] Thank you. Yes, please. And soon in other places where, you know, there’s a new anthology coming out that I’m so excited about first.
Rachael Herron: [00:40:29] What is the anthology based around?
Anjanette Delgado: [00:40:30] It’s a, it’s for University of Florida press and the working title right now is lack of next writers on the politics of belonging. So I’ve tried to create a whole selection on the, on the literature of a rootedness, right, and what that means so, Richard Blanco is in it, Jennine Capó Crucet, who you may know,
Rachael Herron: [00:40:53] I’ve heard the name
Anjanette Delgado: [00:40:54] Natrisha Angle, there’s just (Spanish name). And so I was able to get, select the story for this and I’m really excited about that.
Rachael Herron: [00:41:01] You’re doing a little bit of everything.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:41:03] And that’s, remember how you asked the big thing, having all these things that are also important to me, trying to, you know, take away eat away at the purely writing time.
Rachael Herron: [00:41:17] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you’re getting it all done and you are incredibly inspiring.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:41:24] Thank you.
Rachael Herron: [00:41:25] I have enjoyed this interview so deeply and I love the energy that you bring to this and I’m trying to stay very still because I’m having a microphone thing where it makes a lot of noise, but usually I would just be like doing this all over the screen because I’m so excited to talk to you and meet you. And thank you for doing this show.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:41:43] Anytime, anytime. Anytime at all.
Rachael Herron: [00:41:45] Oh my gosh. Wait, I’m going to claim you as a friend now, so you can’t get rid of me.
Anjanette Delgado: [00:41:48] Of course.
Rachael Herron: [00:41:50] Thank you Anjanette. Happy writing
Anjanette Delgado: [00:41:53] Thank you and thank you to your listeners.
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.
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