Ep. 212: Bryan Washington on How Much Setting Matters

Bryan Washington is a National Book Award 5 Under 35 honoree, and winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and The New York Times Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. His new book, Memorial, is the book he wanted to read, the one he didn’t see out in the world. Something that was funny and sexy and yet at times startlingly emotional, featuring people of color, queer people of color, living their lives and dealing with break-ups and falling in love, dealing with being sick, with a parent’s death, with confronting who your parents are as you become an adult, with the meaning of family. He lives in Houston.

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Transcript

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

[00:00:15] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #212 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So thrilled you’re here with me today as I talked to Bryan Washington, it was a treat to talk to him about his book, which I really, really enjoyed. And we go pretty deep into why setting matters and how setting can act as a character, which is something that I get asked about a lot. So I know that you will enjoy this interview with Bryan. What’s going on around here, NaNo is continuing a pace. I am still ahead of schedule. Who Am I? I’m never ahead of schedule. So that is great. Although I got to admit that today, I just don’t want to write, which means I will write eventually. I have come up with a theory and it’s called The Bra Theory. The Bra Theory of getting your work done, getting your creative work done and it’s a Patreon essay. I’m going to be sending out this week and really it goes like this: You need to set yourself up for success. Feelings don’t matter. Your feelings will always tell you that you don’t want to write, that you don’t want to do your creative work because doing other things is always going to be easier.

[00:01:29] So we set ourselves up for success and we don’t ask questions about our feelings. That is what I have been thinking about a lot. And it’s helpful to remember that I cannot feel like writing, and I could do it anyway. And the truth is, and you know this, is when your fingers are on the keyboard or when your pen is in your hand and your body is in motion and you are making words, that is when the muse comes to tickle your brain pan. That is when she shows up. She doesn’t show up when you’re hoping. That she shows up to bring you to the page. I think there’s this, there’s this myth that the muse takes you by the hand and gently cresses your brow and gets you to do the writing. Absolutely not. You must tempt the muse to you. You must do the work that brings her, to whisper those ideas in your brain that you wouldn’t have had if you were not working.

[00:02:27] So I’m thinking a lot about that this week and I will do my words later, but I have been trying to get about 2,500 words every time I sit down, which means that I’m ahead and I want to beat my goal of finishing this first draft of the novel by the end of December 31st, because I want the full 90,000 words and I really am still playing in this book. I have no idea what the F I am doing. The plot changes daily. My characters change daily. I have a million abandoned scenes that I started and thought, Oh God, what is, what is this? I’m not going to go that direction. I have a tendency to make things dark. That’s what I do and I don’t want that. I want this book to be lighter than a dark book. And I keep trying to add addiction, homelessness, eviction, and I keep having to back away that is not this book. This book is to amuse me and to amuse a reader. And therefore I keep having to think about amusement and play and restarting. And and when I say restart, I am not saying that I’m ever looking at the beginning of the book. I just mean restarting where I am, where I think I am in the book. Again, really having no idea what’s going to happen next and it’s fun. It’s working. Okay. See, I’m almost talking myself into wanting to write today. 

[00:03:48] However, it doesn’t matter if I want to, or if I don’t want to. I will just do it. That’s what we do, we’re writers. What else? Oh, I also must do page proofs this week. I’ve had three weeks to do them and I haven’t done them at all. What page proofs are, is looking over what the proof reader has done and making sure that you don’t need to make any of the last minute tiny tweaks. I find doing this very tedious. So, I actually, I think I told you about this on the podcast. I actually hired my friend, Katrina, who is a brilliant copy editor to go over my book for me to look for those kinds of titles. I will also do it, but I’m, I’m trusting Katrina’s hand in this. This is a traditional New York published book and I still took the money out of my pocket to do that because it’s important to me. So, speaking of publishing news, Ooh, we knew this was going to happen. Simon & Schuster has been up on the for sale block and I and everyone else was predicting the Penguin Random House might assimilate to them and they have, they spent $2 billion and billion with a B of course, and purchased Simon & Schuster, which is worrisome. It is further contracting the market. Instead of- we used to have a big six and we went down to the big five when Penguin bought Random House. Now we’re down to the big four. And what that means is there will inevitably be cuts in prints will be axed, editors will lose their jobs and fewer books will be produced.

[00:05:25] They will be relying more and more on the blockbuster model. They really need to publish the big blockbuster names, used to be in publishing in traditional publishing they would take chances on the little guy. They would support the mid-list author as they go through being mid-list for years and years and years hoping for a breakout. And then they would have the breakout successes, the anomalies, that would kind of carry the press along. They don’t do that anymore. Mid-list is always being rumored to be completely dead. Although I will say I’ve had a thoroughly mid-list career. So it’s, it’s, it’s worrisome. However, if you’re hearing this news, I want to reassure you that in the, how long I’ve been in? In the 14 years that I’ve been actively inside the publishing industry, the sky has been falling over and over and over again. And the sky has been falling in the publishing industry for the last 200 years. It is always falling. So I want to remind you, it never falls all the way, they were, there will always be writers. There will always be readers willing to purchase our stories. And that’s what it comes down to. So, the news about Simon & Schuster is not heartening. But it’s also not killing your chances. So chin up, we move forward. We understand that publishing is a very tricky business and we also rejoice in the fact that self-publishing is so viable nowadays as a way to be read and as a way to make money. And if you are not, if you listen to my show and you don’t listen to other writing shows, number one, thank you for listening to my show, but you know, you should branch out to somebody who talks about the news more often and better than I do. I always recommend Joanna Penn’s show The Creative Pen. She has a very nice model of always having the news right up front, and then an interesting interview so if you’re not following The Creative Pen, I always recommend that you do that. 

[00:07:22] Let’s see. So I’ll be doing those patrons, those Patreons, hopefully today, or, Thanksgiving tomorrow because, I am one of those people who’s just so grateful. I don’t have to do family holidays this year. I love my family. I love them. I love being around the vast majority of my family, which is actually very small. It’s my family and Lala’s family. We have, we have small families and I love them and I still don’t want to be around them for the holidays. Holidays are stressful. I have hated Thanksgiving since I was a little girl. It’s just too much stress around a meal that lasts for 20 minutes and then you’re full. I, it just, I just don’t get it. So the fact that my wife and I are just going to be staying in the house tomorrow I’m going to make a key lime pie and that is all I’m making. That might be Thanksgiving dinner along with the steak that we bought and that’s what we’re going to do, we might binge watch something just started. What’s his name? What’s it called? Lasso. Tom Lasso. Todd, you know the one I’m talking about the Lasso Show, Ted Lasso and it does seem to be very delightful as everyone told us. So we might binge a little bit of that, although we are not binge watchers ever, but that might be fun. And I might work on page proofs. So if you are American and celebrating Thanksgiving, I just realized this won’t come out until after Thanksgiving anyway. So I hope you had a nice day and I hope that you enjoyed your Turkey if you ate it.

[00:08:53] I don’t understand why anybody’s Turkey, that stuff is dry. Cue the emails to me saying you’re not cooking it right. If it’s dry, I know that I have had good Turkey and it’s just not worth it. I’d rather eat so many other things. So, but I do hope that you enjoyed your holiday celebration if you celebrate it. And quick catch up on moving to New Zealand or moving forward. However, I have no idea how to do it. And I would like to just sit date that for the record. How does one think about packing a house when one has no clue when one might leave or how long all the paperwork will take or how long the sick dog will last that we’re not leaving without? I mean, we are leaving without her. She will have passed on, but our main focus right now is on keeping her comfortable. So I think a lot about New Zealand and do absolutely nothing except paperwork haven’t boxed a single thing. I don’t know how much we even want to take. So that’s one of those brain teaser, those problems that I, you know, lie in bed and think about, but have done almost nothing about besides that. So I’ll keep you posted. Now, let’s jump into Bryan Washington’s excellent interview. I hope that you will enjoy this half as much as I enjoy talking to him. And that will be a great deal for you my friend. I hope that you are writing. I hope that you are playing and remembering that it’s not so serious, everything can be fixed later. Everything. You can add plot and character to a book that you’ve already written. I truly believe that. So I wish you, my friends happy writing and it will see you soon. 

[00:10:29] Hey, you’re a writer. Did you know that I send out a free weekly email of writing encouragement? Go sign up for it at www.rachaelherron.com/write  and you’ll also get my Stop Stalling and Write PDF with helpful tips you can use today to get some of your own writing done. Okay, now onto the interview.

Rachael Herron: [00:10:47] Okay. Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show, Bryan Washington. Hello, Bryan. 

Bryan Washington: [00:10:52] Hi Rachael. Thank you so much for having me.

Rachael Herron: [00:10:54] I’m thrilled to have you. Let me give you a little bit of an introduction before we jump into talking about writing. Bryan Washington is a National Book Award 5 Under 35 honoree, and winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize. The Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and The New York Times Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. That one just sounds cool. His new book Memorial, is the book he wanted to read, the one he didn’t see out in the world. Something that was funny and sexy and yet at times startlingly emotional, featuring people of color, queer people of color, living their lives and dealing with break-ups and falling in love, dealing with being sick, with a parent’s death, with confronting who your parents are as you become an adult, with the meaning of family and he lives in Houston. Bryan, your book has just really touched something in me. It is you wrote the book you wanted to see in the world. And you also wrote the book that is, is hard to find in the world. I believe I was telling my wife about it and she’s, next on the list to read it. I find it kind of starkly beautiful, is that okay to say? 

Bryan Washington: [00:11:59] I think it’s okay to say it

Rachael Herron: [00:12:00] I- there’s this there’s this sweetness and romance, and also just this beautiful, beautiful reality that is presented to us and I’m, I just love it. So I would love to talk to you about your writing process. This is your second book, right? The first one was at a short story collection. 

Bryan Washington: [00:12:20] Yes. This is the second go around of that the first novel. 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:23] Yeah. Oh, that’s so exciting. Okay. So tell us, so you live in Houston, is this your full-time gig or do you have another gig?

Bryan Washington: [00:12:30] Oh, well, right now I teach at RISE. So I’m over there for a bit and little stones writing Memorial. I was actually teaching ESL and that was my job. And it was a chocolate job that I really loved. I like working with that cohort, and those kids, like it was really lovely gig, but I’m usually am teaching in some capacity and freelancing in some capacity and also working on longer stuff.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:55] Okay. So where do you fit that writing time in and how do you get your actual writing, writing done around all of that? 

Bryan Washington: [00:13:02] In the morning, you know, and usually I say in the morning, people say well, I’ll do that too but like I have to wake up at like 4:30 central time, and like I work until about like 8. So that’s my-

Rachael Herron: [00:13:16] I have this theory that like 4:30 is the sweet spot to get out for a writer. 

Bryan Washington: [00:13:20] It really is. Okay. Yeah. Usually people are like, I guess and they’re like, no you don’t. But like that’s, you know, you haven’t really- like I’m awake and I’m present, but like the day hasn’t destroyed me yet. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:31] Yes

Bryan Washington: [00:13:32] It doesn’t like imparted its will on me. So I can, as far as like generative material is concerned, like I have to be up that early. If I’m editing, I can do that just any time of day, just about anywhere except maybe a plane, but yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:45] Oh, my God. I love you say that, that you said that because every, all the other writers say, well, you know, I can get four hours of work done on a plane. I can’t do anything on a plane. I could just watch a movie.

Bryan Washington: [00:13:53] No, I can sit down and I can ask for like some tea and go to sleep on a plane. But beyond that, I’m just about useless. 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:01] That’s awesome. So how has the pandemic affected where you write? If it has it all. You’re probably always at home at 4:30 in the morning. You’re not one of them

Bryan Washington: [00:14:12] No, no, I’m, I am now I’m at home at 4:30 in the morning. As far as where it’s almost exclusively like from my home, you know, and that’s been a radical departure in that like I spent a lot of last year sort of like bopping around doing promoting things. So I wrote quite a lot in airports, which I don’t mind at all, because you can be by yourself and like, it’s understood that, you know, you’re by yourself, but also you have a number of different things that are going on in the foreground. So that’s like an ideal writing environment, like a variation of that is like coffee shops, like they’re like a lot of boba shops and like part of town. So like, I’ll go there and then would, I would just you know, work at the boba shop and just drink cocoa and just like work and it was ideal. And you can order like crispy chicken, like hanging out, but you can’t do that anymore. So yeah, just staying at home. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:08] I miss, I miss airports to write in and hotel lobbies were like the best. 

Bryan Washington: [00:15:13] That’s nice. I’ve never, have I ever tried writing in a hotel?

Rachael Herron: [00:15:17] Oh, I will just go. I live in Oakland, so I’ll go sometimes or I used to, go to San Francisco and just pick a hotel and go sit in the lobby.

Bryan Washington: [00:15:23] Oh really? That’s such a good idea. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:28] It’s great. The chairs are always comfortable. Nobody ever knows, like if you go to enough hotels, they don’t know that you’re 

Bryan Washington: [00:15:35] Nobody really says anything. Yeah. I can’t imagine anyone saying anything. That’s a great idea. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:39] So what is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing?

Bryan Washington: [00:15:45] Setting is really tricky for me. Description is really tricky for me. So I have to come up with rules for myself sometimes. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:55] Share your rules

Bryan Washington: [00:15:56] Yeah. They vary depending on the project, you know, depending on the length of the project. I mean, one for Memorial is that I want to at least 20% of every scene to be describing the world and to be filling in the world and telling something about the world. So it’s fascinating whether it was like the world of a room, whether it was the world of an outdoor bar, whether it was, you know, the world of the kitchen, even if it was like a recurring scene, like describing something new about that particular place, because a quick thing is that I don’t know. I feel like if there’s certain places that we can set a narrative where we maybe don’t have to do as much work, which can lead to a little bit of laziness, which I’m very guilty of, like very often that you can say that, you know, a narrative or a scene is taking place in the kitchen and then you can just stop and because. No, hopefully the majority of your readers will spend some time in a kitchen, like one kitchen or another. Like that’s all they need and then you can move on and that’ll work for some scenes. But I think like the story of it is the particularity of that particular kitchen, you know, or that particular room or that particular bar, like you can say bar and everyone will understand like the sort of emotional pocket and the sort of tonal pocket that the places, but maybe not the things that one character or another is observing about that particular space, because I feel pretty strongly that observation is just as much characterization as description, right? Like the things that, yeah. The things that your character sees, will tell us just as much about them as the things that they do or don’t do in tandem with are things that they don’t see or we’ll tell a good deal about them and what they don’t notice and who they don’t notice. So really good description and observations are a bit trickier and I have to be a bit more intentional about making myself like a lot of page time. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:01] I have to go back and actually reread some parts because I have a hard time with setting in description too, we have some similarities and I would have guessed that 20% would have been too much and bothered me and it, and it never did. Like, it never felt like too much. I just felt like I was there. So you pulled that off really, really beautiful. 

Bryan Washington: [00:18:19] Thank you, thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:20] Wow. Okay. So what is your biggest joy when it comes to writing? 

Bryan Washington: [00:18:24] My biggest joy is conversation in a lot of ways, like in dialogue, that is just as tricky structurally as description and setting is for me. But I could spend all day doing it in a lot of ways. Just sort of pulling out the conversations that characters have, and not only just like the conversation, but like what actually makes it onto the page. Cause I feel like I have to over write scenes or an iteration, Memorial is about 11 drafts or so, and the earlier iterations of the novel would appear deeply overwritten to the point of unrecognizability comparison to like the final iteration. But I feel like I had to overwrite that in order to get a sense of what each conversation was about, you know, cause like if you directly transcribed dialogue between most anyone in your life, like it would just be English, like unread. Like how are you? Okay. Like not really answering questions, just sort- because you have so many other cues that you can use and you have rapport. And all of those things are sort of understood and not on the page. So trying to find a way to choose what were then the dialogue that I have on the page would imply that rapport and apply, imply that context and imply the sort of visual cues that you know, your reader or your audience isn’t privy to on the page is all surely fun.

Rachael Herron: [00:19:56] You also do an incredible job of, of what they’re not saying between Benson and Mike, there is throughout a lot of the books, there is just so much unsaid and that is as much part of the dialogue as the words that are on the page visible. So, beautiful. Can you share a craft tip of any sort with us? 

Bryan Washington: [00:20:14] A craft tip? Yeah. It sounds obvious to a point of redundancy, but reading aloud, right? Like reading, 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:24] Reading your own work aloud?

Bryan Washington: [00:20:26] Yeah. Reading your work aloud in the middle of your editing it, because there’s a way in which a text like reads, like you just like sitting down and you like reading the thing and it can be really beautiful and lush, and then those switch which the text reads and the orality of attacks and the story of visual prism in which it can exist, can mask a lot of cluttered-ness and a lot of gaps in rhythm and sort of clunky dialogue that aren’t immediately discernible just by your eyes because you were, you and you wrote the thing and you’ve seen it X amount of time. So you’ve internalized a lot of ways, but even just hearing it and hearing yourself, read it out loud, at least for me, like I’m able to find so many things to change and to fix and to make the narrative and interactions between the characters a bit more cohesive. So that’s something that is a pretty major part of like the editing process is just reading through, for in Memorial, the one of the last, last, last drafts I went to like, we can’t go now, but there’s like a Korean spa that opened up in Houston, like way up on highway six. So maybe 20 minutes away from me and like for, you know, the final iteration I just went there and I stayed the night, so I was there for two days. And I just ran through the whole draft, like just like aloud to myself, just to have a sense of like what it sounded like. And even in you know, that sort of last, last, like you have to turn in your draft or we will terminate your contract iteration. I was so finding like so many things that I could change, you know? So that, that’s something that’s been really helpful to me. 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:18] I love hearing that that is one of those things that I always mean to do, and I never quite get the time to do it. And I wonder if I’ll, I’m supposed to get first pass pages pretty soon. And maybe I’ll do that. I’m worried about how many things I would find to change. 

Bryan Washington: [00:22:33] You’ll find so many things

Rachael Herron: [00:22:34] No they tell you what, like, you know, you can change up to like 8% without it, you know, without getting in trouble. 

Bryan Washington: [00:22:38] I find so many things, but I’ve been really fortunate that my team has been really and my editor specifically like Laura specifically super amenable, so like if there’s like a major thing I want to change or a thematic thing that I want to change, like I’ll email her, if it’s just like a handful over it will just like you know, change it and, but they’ve, my editor has only been receptive and only wanted to push, you know a draft from trying to be like the best iteration of what it can be. So I’m just really fortunate to be back in the show. 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:09] So you really do the reading at the very last minute, or do you do the reading in pre in earlier drafts as well? Reading out-

Bryan Washington: [00:23:16] I do it throughout, I do it throughout which probably

Rachael Herron: [00:23:18] You do it throughout. That’s a lot of time

Bryan Washington: [00:23:19] It is. It’s not like writing Memorial wasn’t, like it wasn’t, like when I think about it cause like now I’m on the other, you know side of like the actual process of it and able to think about it even I’m just wow that’s like a bit much. You know, like 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:36] let it work

Bryan Washington: [00:23:37] Yeah, I felt like I still like even though it was a bit much I still do feel as if though like I had to do all the overwriting and a lot of that reading aloud and a lot of that spending time with each of the characters, because a part of what got me to finish the novel in a lot of ways was not knowing what the conclusion would look like or where it would end up and wanting to write toward figuring out what that would look like. So I needed to know who people were before I could have a sense of like where they would end up.

Rachael Herron: [00:24:09] That’s really, really cool. What thing in your life affect your writing in a surprising way?

Bryan Washington: [00:24:18] Normally I’d say cooking, but I’ve talked so much about it. It’s probably like a very obvious thing. So I won’t say that for this, but if there’s a city in which I’m comfortable and just walking by myself in it, that impacts the writing and a lot of explicit, but also implicit ways. And that I think that you can do so much work on the page when you’re trying to build a place through the scenes that are occurring around the, I suppose, main narrative. Right? So we’ll have a scene where the, the mid-scale or, you know, just sort of driving to one place or another, whether it’s grocery store or whether it’s, you know, drop something off the GPS, like wherever and they’ll notice things. And those things will be stories and, and of themselves. And like, as the writer, like I may know that I’m using this observation or this moment in order to show something about the character, show something about the place and it’s a tool and a device, but I can’t approach it that way. Like I have depression, seeing you learn autonomous story that is occurring simultaneously. So really just being like open to observations like this, like walking around and without clear point or end goal in mind has been one way of, just sort of hard lining that many different things can be true simultaneously. And like many different narratives can be running simultaneously, which is something that was really helpful to have the, I was drafting and also editing 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:06] Are people saying to you, things like Houston is a character in this book?

Bryan Washington: [00:26:10] Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:26:11] Okay. Yeah, I figured that was, that was, you’re probably tired of hearing that. My students always ask like, well, y’all want to make the area a character. How do I do that? And, and I’m just, I like to tell students what I know and to that I’m always like, I don’t know, I can’t write setting to save my life. And you do it. You, you, you know Houston, you love Houston, at least I think you do. It comes through as you do. Okay. The only part of Houston I know is like the queer section cause I, I stayed with

Bryan Washington: [00:26:39] Oh mantras?

Rachael Herron: [00:26:40] Yes! Two of my, one of my friends, he works at a murder by the book. Yeah, John, John. And, when we go, we stay with them and people give Houston a bad rep. It is, I loved that town. And maybe it’s because I’m with people I love when I’m there, but it was so nice being there and seeing it through the eyes of someone who knows it and loves it. 

Bryan Washington: [00:27:04] Yeah. Admittedly, it can be a tricky city to untangle in a short period of time. Right? Like it’s like one of those places where if you were spending or planning like a trip to Houston, maybe not now because we should all be staying at home. But if that weren’t the case, then you want it to pass by Houston, probably tell someone that I’d consider like, allotting like a week, you know, or at least five days, because there are certainly definitive parts of you know, Houston-ian culture within the larger American Canon, whether it’s NASA, whether it’s the rodeo, whether it’s like football or like a Texas high school football game. And those are certainly valid and pivotal for the culture, but it’s also a city in which, you know, many different things can be happening at the same time. So you have, you know, your rodeo in that context and that experience, and you also have a deeply vibrant Vietnamese food culture. And then you also have a deeply vibrant music culture, and then you have like a massive arts scene and museum scene, and you have all of the sprawl inside of that. And then you also have the sort of queer life within all of that. And you also have really lush art spaces and many of which are, you know, third places or operators are third places because it’s a tricky city and that we don’t have too many third places. So everyone utilizes the parks and utilize the free things. And because we only have, you know, a pretty, not so big amount of them, you know, folks from so many different ethnic and racial communities and various financial stratum and just walks of life that are coming to the same places. And it makes like a relief. It makes for a really, really interesting place. So I think that one, like tiny joy, like maybe specifically to me in writing about Houston, put a lot and also for a Memorial is that I can pull from all of these different sectors of the city. And that would be perhaps more feasible to experience and you know, a $27 book or using an e-reader like $15 book then to plan like a five-day trip where like you do all of the different things. So that’s been like a nice thing.

Rachael Herron: [00:29:46] I think maybe the reason I love Houston so much is as you’ve been describing it, it just reminds me of my favorite city in the world, which is Oakland. And we, we have those things. And, and also when I think of Houston and you’ll understand this, I think of freeways, I think of highways and how they bisect and dissect. And it’s the same thing here is that freeways actually create cultural lines, delineations. You know, below this point is this, above this point is that, we’ve got the Lake over here where everybody meets every single person. We’ve got these three restaurants where everybody goes, but over here, we’ve got the Vietnamese section and we do not have a queer section at all. However, 

Bryan Washington: [00:30:28] Wow

Rachael Herron: [00:30:29] No, not at all, but we do have more married lesbians than anywhere else in the whole world 

Bryan Washington: [00:30:35] Oh that’s around

Rachael Herron: [00:30:36] I know, it’s pretty 

Bryan Washington: [00:30:37] The world! That’s the

Rachael Herron: [00:30:38] The world. This is the, this is the capital of that. And it’s very clear. I think we’re just like all, all over the place, but, yeah. So thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you for discussing Houston that way. I really love it. 

Bryan Washington: [00:30:50] Well, thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:30:51] What is the best book you’ve read recently? Why did you love it?

Bryan Washington: [00:30:56] That’s a really good question. I read Nights Where Nothing Happened by Simon Hahn which is a novel that is on the way it comes out in a bit. It’s really lovely. Like super great and also Luster by Raven Leilani, which is so great. And also Bestiary by K-Ming Chang. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:19] I keep hearing about that 

Bryan Washington: [00:31:20] It’s really good. Like it’s so everything you heard it’s all true. It’s so good. Like it’s all true. There’s a book called, Tokyo Leno Station by Yu Miri, which was published a little while ago but it’s up for a National Book Award in Translating Fiction. So I’m really happy about that because that means that more people are going to read it. But I also just finished Helen Oyeyemi’s next novel that’s going to be on the way in a few months, like in the new year. And it’s really good and really interesting. And I want more people to read it so that I can ask them what they think about it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:19] Tell me her name again?

Bryan Washington: [00:31:20] Helen Oyeyemi, her last book was Gingerbread and it came out, I want to say last year, like she’s super-fast and she’s just brilliant. Like she’s so great.

Rachael Herron: [00:32:17] Oh, I’m going to look her up. Thank you. Speaking of wonderful books, that people need to look up, will you please, can you tell us a little bit about Memorial and where to find you?

Bryan Washington: [00:32:26] Yeah. So Memorial is at its heart, a love story between two queer CIS men and living in Houston. Benson, who is a black aftercare teacher and Mike, who is a Japanese-American chef at Tex-Mex Restaurant. And they’re trying to figure out what it means to be okay, just as people and also what it means just to be okay. It’s like a person among people and needs go. Mike’s mother helps them along in that journey. Yeah, Thank you. She’s like the emotional heart for the novel in a lot of ways. I’m on, I am on the bird app. I’m on Twitter. So I’m @brywashing and I am also on the internet off twitter, brywashing.com 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:17] Perfect. Bryan, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for writing this book for allowing us to talk to you about it. I, your book was one of those where I was giving up one day, you know, quitting writing forever. As I often, as I often I do it, like at least weekly, 

Bryan Washington: [00:33:31] Me too

Rachael Herron: [00:33:32] You know, we all have to, and you have to really mean it. And then you get on the couch and I got on the couch with your book and I was reading and it actually made me get up to write because it was so beautiful to hear the sentences I wanted to play. So thank you. 

Bryan Washington: [00:33:44] Thank you so much for having me, Rachael, take care, 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:47] Take care. 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 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.