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

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

Transcript:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:12:49] Rachael Herron: What is the leisure center, is it a place where you, there’s sports too? Is it like a club here? Do they have a pool?

[00:12:54] Lexie Elliott: They have a pool. 

[00:12:55] Rachael Herron: So you go swimming and then write?

[00:12:58] Lexie Elliott: That’s precisely what I did. I’d get, you know children on the school bus, go swimming and you know, do an hour in the pool and then go and sit and write and then go pick up children from bus. 

[00:13:09] Rachael Herron: Yeah, I always wrote at this the college where I got my masters, it’s kind of around the corner from our house, but we’re in the middle of a big move. But and I haven’t been able to do this in a year, but at the same thing, I would go to the pool and then just go to the library and write and to have, and then there was the, you know, the school cafe there and to have everything there, it’s just so lovely. So how have you been doing it now for the last year or so?

[00:13:31] Lexie Elliott: Yeah, I mean, just having to write at home and while the kids were on a homeschooling, that was really tricky.

[00:13:39] Rachael Herron: How old are the kids?

[00:13:40] Lexie Elliott:  So now Cameron’s 15 and Zach is 12. So they’re not at the age where they need someone looking over their shoulder the whole time, but there is a lot of mom, the printer’s not working or how do you conjugate this French verb or, you know, it was just Latin. I never did Latin. You’re on your own. No, no help for me on lesson. 

[00:14:05] Rachael Herron: So, do you have your own office at home or do you just kind of squeeze yourself in where you can?

[00:14:10] Lexie Elliott: It’s rather typical. I sort of do, but I end up sitting at the table in the kitchen. That seems to be the comfortable place for me. I mean, sometimes I move around a bit, but really, I very rarely sit in the space that we actually expected you to use when we, you know, renovated the house.

[00:14:30] Rachael Herron: Well, I don’t know about you, but my office space my office set up when I am at home, which I am not right now, but is where I do all my email and where I do all my bill paying and where I do it. It’s not the place where I want to do the creative work. It’s where I do work. 

[00:14:45] Lexie Elliott: Yeah, no I’m with you. I’m with you. And the other thing I had to do was just get much better at snatching the moment. So I used to write a lot when my kids were at their swim sessions, so you’d end up with like an hour and a half or something on the side of a pool and you can get some stuff done. But that stopped obviously through COVID and I just had to be better at like, okay, it’s Sunday morning, everybody seems to be occupied. I can write for 45-minutes, you know? But the problem with that then is, everything’s bleeding into everything else, you know, that whole problem that we talk about now, of what are you, you know, living where you work has oppose, you know, it’s a difficult one as opposed to working where you live. Yeah. 

[00:15:32] Rachael Herron: So how long have you been full-time writing now?

[00:15:35] Lexie Elliott: I think what are we now? We are Monday. So that would be two days. I technically went gardening leave on Friday. 

[00:15:50] Rachael Herron: I love that I have got you today. I have, I’ve been doing it for five years and it’s still, it’s still the most wonderful thing ever. How do you feel about it?

[00:15:57] Lexie Elliott: Yeah, really positive and actually really excited about the idea of doing, you know, some other projects because, as you must know, your publisher wants you to keep producing books in the same genre, but, you know, I think I could spread my wings a little bit and do some other things, and I’m hoping to have the time to do that now. 

[00:16:16] Rachael Herron: Let’s assume that the publishers won’t ever listen to this because they really don’t. What also draws your heart in terms of writing projects?

[00:16:24] Lexie Elliott: I actually quite like to do something in this sort of fantasy genre adults. So, yeah, I’m thinking of about

[00:16:32] Rachael Herron: So fun!

[00:16:34] Lexie Elliott: Yeah and I have one or two kind of young adult ideas, but I’m not sure they’re quite right for, you know, the design guys. So we’ll maybe have to put them on hold for a while and we’ll see

[00:16:44] Rachael Herron: Oh, that’s really, really exciting. I love hearing that. Okay. So congratulations on day two. What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing? 

[00:16:55] Lexie Elliott: Well, it used to always be finding time and hopefully that’s going to be less of a challenge going forward. I think sometimes the challenge can be, you know, I don’t suffer for ideas, that’s not a problem. It’s finding the right one that has, you know, real proper legs to carry a 300-page novel. And that can take a bit of time and, you know, take some discussion between myself, my agent, my publishing editor, and so forth to make sure that we’re focusing in on the right thing and I find that process quite a challenge. But once you get there, you know, everybody’s on board, then you can really just get stuck in, 

[00:17:39] Rachael Herron: How much pre-writing do you do of those ideas? Cause I also, I also really struggle with that. How much do you play with it? 

[00:17:48] Lexie Elliott: So I tend to write, almost like the blurb for the back of the book. And I don’t always know exactly how it works. I just kinda know what those kind of big points, you know, USP might be and then send that across. So it’s maybe, you know, a paragraph and then we have a discussion about which of those might work best, but you know, before the novel that I’m working on right now, I think we went through seminar, you know, which is quite a lot actually to really thought about and to put enough time into that, you can come up with the blurb for a back of a book 

[00:18:30] Rachael Herron: and still have the hope that you would be able to pull it off what you have said which is blurb that you can do. And I have actually had a couple of times where I’ve just failed. Like the first draft is like, oh, I didn’t actually do anything that we wanted me to do and then you start over. 

[00:18:47] Lexie Elliott: And did you try and get back to what you had in the beginning? Or did you say, Hey, no, this is going a different direction then I should just follow that?

 [00:18:56] Rachael Herron: The book is, you know, it just happened with the book that just came out, but the book is still kind of similar to the blurb, but the synopsis that we, that I wrote to support the blurb just didn’t work. And I didn’t notice it in the synopsis and my agent didn’t notice it. And my editor didn’t notice it. And there was just this big plot-hole in the middle that no one could fix and I’d done some beautiful, like, you know, hand-waving like some nice language and then she’ll show that and she couldn’t show that. So yeah, it just took it a little, little different direction, but yeah, it’s exciting. What is your biggest joy when it comes to writing?

[00:19:33] Lexie Elliott: Well, I think that, which you’ve just mentioned when you solve that kind of issue, because particularly for psychological thrillers, it’s a bit like a jigsaw puzzle, isn’t it? And you’ve got to try and get all the pieces to fit and to hang together. And so you’ve got this nice smooth picture at the end and I think that’s quite a mental challenge and I really enjoy that. And I have a certain amount of faith now that you will solve those problems, but you don’t know when you start what those problems are. They present themselves to you as you go along. And so it’s almost like you’re having to solve it at the same time as the characters are having to solve it

 [00:20:11] Rachael Herron: Yeah. Well, I think that works the best. Honestly, if we set problems up that are so difficult that we can’t solve them at the beginning, then the reader, hopefully won’t be able to solve them as she goes along too. Right?

[00:20:20] Lexie Elliott: Yes. Exactly.

[00:20:21] Rachael Herron: That’s what we hope anyway. Okay. Can you share a craft tip of any sort with us? 

[00:20:27] Lexie Elliott: Ooh, let me think. I think authenticity in particular kind of character articles and diversity is really important. And I think you need to trust your gut for that because too often I read things where you know that the writer just wanted to be able to say kind of gotcha, at the end with it, I’m kind of plot twist and it doesn’t fit with the characters or you read something where you think, nobody in the right mind would do that. You know, it’s a storm, there’s no lights. You hear a noise from the basement and you’ve already been told there’s a serial killer on the loose. Let’s go down and look in the basement. No, no one’s doing that. No one is doing that. You’re running for the hills at that point, you’re going to find a friend. So I think sticking to the authenticity of what you would reasonably do in a situation it’s important that a character that the choices they make fit with, who you’ve shown them to be all along. And I don’t think that takes away from being able to surprise a reader. You want them to go, oh yeah, I should’ve seen that, but I didn’t as oppose to, oh yeah, you got me. But there was no chance of me working that out. 

[00:21:44] Rachael Herron: Right

[00:21:45] Lexie Elliott: I think it’s important. And I think another thing that I’ve learned is that you can change the slant of something. You can change kind of the tone of it with very few sentences afterwards, in the end

[00:22:03] Rachael Herron: Tell me more about that

[00:22:05] Lexie Elliott:  Well, I think if you suddenly decide that you want, or you get to the end and you need to thread something through that you haven’t done so far, like an idea, or even you know, somebody has to become a person who is maybe just a little bit more malignant perhaps than you had written them originally, it doesn’t take much to do that. You know, you just need to find the right places to add. It might be six sentences in the whole book, right. And you can completely change the arc of it for that character and for the book as a whole. So don’t get distressed. If you suddenly get two thirds through and think, it’s not going in the right direction, or I need to change this because probably the changes are very slight actually, they’re meaningful, but they’re slight. Which I always think is a great thing. And it gives me hope, but I was speaking to a friend of mine who actually is a film producer. And he said, that’s what petrifies him, because he’s like, what if I miss putting in that short or that sentence? And then I don’t get the tone I want. I was like, oh God, I hadn’t thought of it. Maybe I’m a bit more glass half full, 

[00:23:24] Rachael Herron: But that is a really interesting point is that as writers, we get to make those tiny changes that change everything for the book right up to the end. I mean like you could even go over your copy edit allotment you don’t have, I don’t know if they, they do this in Britain, but I don’t think they would. I don’t think they would like it, but what you put, whereas if you’re the director and you haven’t shot the one thing that you needed to shoot in order to get that you just can’t, you can’t go back and recreate that day and that light 

[00:23:51] Lexie Elliott: Yeah. I mean, she might be able to do something with a voiceover, but still it’s kind of, it’s tricky, isn’t it? 

[00:23:57] Rachael Herron: Yeah, we have the best case scenario. My wife has a graphic artist and she always says, well, you could just go change words. And I have to, I had to redraw a picture and I say, it’s okay, just do it anyway. Just vision is still your friend.

[00:24:12] Lexie Elliott: But I have a lot of jealousy for people who are graphic artists somewhere, because it seems like they just get it done a lot quicker, right. You know, it’s probably nine months to a year to write a book. And, I hear about all these fantastic songs that get knocked out in 20 minutes. I don’t even get through a cycle on the washing machine in 20 minutes. Come on. 

[00:24:36] Rachael Herron: I can’t remember to eat breakfast in that amount of time. Exactly. That’s brilliant. I love those craft tips. What thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way? 

[00:24:47] Lexie Elliott: I think everything kind of does though, you know, everything sort of creeps in. Well I think probably the best example of that is when I was just starting out as a writer and I wrote a story called Japanese tourists, it was called and I thought I was writing about one thing. And then I realized sort of two thirds of the way through this, that I was writing about my grandfather’s death. And I just hadn’t realized. And often it tells you something about what you’re thinking when you write and you find things creeping in. So I think everything does and everything sort of finds its way in there and in its own way and maybe you only realize it when you have the finished product. 

[00:25:37] Rachael Herron: I have been thinking along those lines that I’ve been wondering, what’s going to happen in about three years when the COVID books are written and edited and sold and published. You know, like the books that we were writing during this time, what is going to be like you said, in the zeitgeists then about connection and family and friendship that we’re not consciously thinking of. But I know that when I’m looking at my own work, ideas are creeping in from this past year of accumulation. 

[00:26:06] Lexie Elliott: I know you expressly setting your novel in co- yeah. No, I’m not either on, I don’t know what that’s, because we’re harking to a world where it didn’t exist or we think that, you know, readers maybe don’t want to be reminded of it.

[00:26:28] Rachael Herron: That’s more where I’m leaning. And also for the book that just came out, we were in COVID when I was doing like the final edit. And I tried to, I put in a couple of throwaway lines about, you know, like when she couldn’t see her friends or something during some pandemic, and my editor asked me to take them out. She actually expressed, they said we don’t want to, you know, we’re hoping that someday this ends, and we don’t want to remind people of that. And I’m not sure if that’s right or wrong, but that’s what my editor was thinking. 

[00:26:56] Lexie Elliott: Interesting

[00:26:57] Rachael Herron: Yeah, I know. It’s going to be interesting. So what is the best book that you’ve read recently and why did you love it?

[00:27:02] Lexie Elliott: Best books I’ve read recently, I really enjoyed Jenny Offill, her Weather, yeah, the one that was in, that was on the shortlist for the women’s prize. 

[00:27:15] Rachael Herron: I haven’t read it yet, but I love Department of Speculations so much. 

[00:27:19] Lexie Elliott: I haven’t read that, but whether if it’s like poetry, I mean honestly, 

[00:27:27] Rachael Herron: That’s Department of Speculation. 

[00:27:24] Lexie Elliott: Okay. I have to read that one too. 

[00:27:27] Rachael Herron: It’s so brilliant. It’s about a relationship kind of falling apart. What is Weather about?

[00:27:34] Lexie Elliott: So it’s a woman who is living in New York and is just really getting dragged into a panic about where the world is going you know, environmental impact, political environment impact on her, on her son, on you know, on her marriage and so on. And she has a brother who is falling apart. She’s very real in the way that she deals with him and it makes you laugh. And then the next sentence makes you want to cry. It’s just utterly beautiful. Yeah, 

[00:28:15] Rachael Herron: I can’t wait to read it. I love reading her and people like her because I know I can never do what she does. So it’s kind of pressure off. I could just enjoy

[00:28:24] Lexie Elliott: Yeah. I mean, there’s certain books I can’t read when I’m writing. I don’t know if you have the same, but I pick up the voice, but something like Jenny, I’m not going to pick up that voice. That’s going to be fine, then the other one I’ve been reading, but I’ve been reading forever is, Hilary, Mantel’s The Mirror and The Light which I have the hard back it’s sitting beside my bed. It is honestly, it’s a door stone and I love it, but also I kind of don’t want it to end because you know where it’s going. Right. I mean, I don’t think it’s a spoiler, you know, he’s gonna die. So if you’ve enjoyed and you like him, you kinda don’t want to read that. But at the same time, I, yeah, I just, I’ve got to get on with it. I’ve got to get on it.

[00:29:11] Rachael Herron: So funny. I’m in the middle of Wolf Hall and I read a little bit at a time and I don’t know if I’ll ever finish same reason, 

[00:29:20] Lexie Elliott: And you enjoy everything you reading, but it’s impossible concentrate through it. 

[00:29:25] Rachael Herron: There’s no cantering at all. Okay. So well, you tell people then a little bit about How to Kill Your Best Friend, maybe give us your elevator pitch and where we can find you online

 [00:29:36] Lexie Elliott: Oh, I’m so terrible. Terrible, okay. So, it’s based around a group of friends who have swimming, they swimming at university was the thing that drew them all together, and one in their party, Lissa has drunk, and all the friends meet at the luxury hotel that her and her husband were running for a memorial service and, Georgie in particular, she can’t quite understand how the drowning is coming by and it doesn’t quite make sense to her and she starts digging and then everything unfolds from there. 

[00:30:18] Rachael Herron: I think that’s a wonderful logline and Georgie was just such a great character. I really, really enjoyed being with her. Okay, where can we find you online? 

[00:30:29] Lexie Elliott: Yes, so I am @lexieelliottwrites for, let me get this right. That’s for Instagram and Facebook (lexieelliottwrites) and then on Twitter, I’m a terrible Twitterer, so there’s not a lot of tweets coming out of me. I’m a  elliott_lexie for that and if people can’t wait for How to Kill Your Best Friend, which is out in August, they can always buy the French Girl or The Missing Years, which are my other two novels and are already out. 

[00:30:56] Rachael Herron: Which I am very much looking forward to reading. However, I think I’m so far ahead in my podcasts that your book will probably have just released by the time it sells out. Perfect. So How to Kill Your Best Friend is out now everywhere and you should all go scramble to buy it. Thank you so much, Lexie. I really appreciate talking to you and I wish you very, very happy writing.

[00:31:18] Lexie Elliott: Thank you. Same to you. 

[00:31:20] Rachael Herron: 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.