Ep. 262: J.L. Torres on How to Read Like a Writer

J.L. Torres is the author of The Family Terrorist and Other Stories, the novel The Accidental Native, and the poetry collection Boricua Passport. His short story collection Migrations won the inagural Tomás Rivera Book Prize and was just released from LARB Libros. Born in Puerto Rico and raised in the South Bronx, he now lives in Plattsburgh, New York and teaches American literature, US ethnic literatures, and creative writing at SUNY Plattsburgh. He holds a Ph.D. from University of Southern California and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University.

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 #262 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. I am so glad that you are here with me today as I talked to J.L. Torres on reading like a writer, and what that can do for our work, for our stories, for kind of our brains as writers doing this weird thing that we do, so I know that you’re going to enjoy the interview portion of today’s episode. What is going on around here? If you watch on the YouTube, you can see, I don’t know why this light makes my face bright red, but it is. I’m going for tomato Rachael in the house. I am in a co-working space in a very small town called Carterton. We are staying in a very small Airbnb and I needed to get out and also I needed a fast Wi-Fi. So I’m very glad that this place is here and that I get to use it. And I have been using it wisely. I finished the audio editing of the 10th anniversary re-release of A Life in Stitches. And I tell you what, I am going to look into perhaps saving some money to get someone to edit that next time. What happens, what I’m talking about when I’m talking about doing this editing is before we left the states, I lined my closet because it was empty. We’d moved everything out of it. And I thought this is a great time. And I needed to get it done, lined my closet with blankets and things to make it a soundproof or sound, what’s the word? Buffered. That’s not the right word, but you know what I mean, area to record in and I recorded it. 

[00:01:55] What you do when you’re recording an audio book is you do not, it’s just like writing a first draft, and even a second draft. You don’t make it perfect as you go, you read as carefully as you can, and then you stumble and then you stop and then you keep going. You pick it up where you left off and you just keep speaking. So there are just a lot of speak-o’s inside the file that you need to get rid of. Some days I could tell that I was a little bit more awake and smarter and brighter, and there would be whole, you know, like maybe 45 seconds that I would go without an error that I needed to redo and cut out the thing that I had messed up. And then sometimes it would be phrase by phrase. And stitching those pieces together so that you can’t tell that there’s been a break, it just takes hours and hours and hours. Probably I think it takes, well, let’s say, I think it takes me about an hour per chapter. 

[00:01:52] These were 2000 word chapters and there are 25 chapters, which really isn’t that bad. Right? You can’t do that in a week because you would burn out and exhaust yourself, but you also can’t do it the way that I was doing it, which was about one chapter a week. That would have stretched out to a lot of weeks, 25 weeks. It was something I didn’t want to spend on it. So when I made this decision like two weeks ago to go hard and focus on one project at a time, instead of trying to spread myself thin over all the projects, I always come back to this resolution and it works really well. And then suddenly two weeks later, I’m completely done with the editing, getting the book uploaded. I’m super excited to get it out there. I’m really proud of this 10th anniversary edition. I got to clean up the essays. I got to rearrange them. I got to add essays to kind of fill in what’s happened in the last 10 years. And I love the book so today, in fact, I’m concentrating on doing things like making the vellum proof for the interior of the print book and looking at cover choices. And that kind of stuff is so exciting to meet, no lie that I woke up at four o’clock this morning, I don’t remember why. But I laid there and thought about making these decisions for the next hour and 15 minutes.

[00:04:15] I love writing. I love having written and I really love revising. But, there’s a big part of me that just loves the business aspect too. And when you give me complete permission to sit down and think hard about the business and the uploading and the formatting and the marketing, I get really, really excited. And I love that I’m in this part of the process right now. So that is that’s super exciting. That is going forward a pace. Where are we in New Zealand? We are in, are we here last week? I don’t think we were. I, we are in the Wairarapa like I said, near Carterton. We’re staying on a farm, a cattle and sheep farm, and we’re staying at a place called The Good End of the Shed. And it really is a shed that they have made into a small Airbnb. It’s kind of more like Airbnb, which I’m not the most fond of, because the host is kind of right there. And, I- we kind of like a little bit more autonomy. However, this host brings us fresh milk from the cow and fresh bread and her homemade preserves. And so that kind of thing is divine. 

[00:05:26] One thing I wanted to mention is that if you follow me on social media, I love social media, please come follow me on all the places. I tend to post a lot of exciting, fun, beautiful pictures of what we are doing, what we are surrounded by. Every week, it’s a little bit different. Last week I was picturing, I was posting pictures of gorgeous Wellington. Right now, it’s these incredible green fields that we’re surrounded by. And I want to really state clearly, cause I, I have gotten a few comments that’s sound like people are saying, wow, it must be nice to be able to do that. Oh yes, it is! It was actually really nice to be able to do this. However, keep, just don’t ever forget that when you are watching people on social media, they have real lives. And I think that you and I, because you listen to this podcast, we have a special relationship. And, I can be very honest with you and tell you that it is also really hard. This move has not been easy, emotionally, physically, mentally. 

[00:06:31] We see amazing things and we’re having so much fun. I think one of the most fun things yesterday was driving with Lala on the country roads because she hadn’t spent any time driving on the left side of the road. I’ve been doing all of it, and it was nerve wracking, and a little bit terrifying. I kept thinking she was going to drift off the verge off the left-hand side of the road. Guess what? She didn’t. I was just being a control freak. But also, leaving everything we knew behind getting rid of most of our possessions selling our house, losing three animals in a year and having to leave the other two behind, having no friends in place in C2, yet. It’s been making me need to really take care of myself. And there was a week last week where I had two migraines and I never really know whether I have the migraines because I’m not doing well, or I’m not doing well because I have the migraines. It’s a chicken and egg kind of situation. But, there’s something that we talk about in 12 step groups, which is, pulling a geographic a lot of people move because they think there’ll be a new person, a different person when they get to the place that they land. Of course, that is always a fallacy. It is not true. It doesn’t happen. I am in this place and I am still me and me being me, I still need to do the healthy things that keep my brain healthy and that give me the energy pennies, like Becca Sime always talks about. 

[00:08:12] I have to spend energy pennies on a daily basis. We’re spending more energy pennies on daily basis in a pandemic. I’m spending extra right now because I’m always in a new place every week. I’m dealing with new things, new questions, new issues. And if I am not concentrate on making those energy pennies so that I have them to spend, I end up crashed out and depleted. And it’s just something I’ve been thinking a lot about. So I have been going back to basics and eating well and sleeping as much as I can, and exercising, taking these long walks. Well, one of the really cool things is that when you do long walks, when you’re traveling, it’s always new and incredible and fresh. So that is, that’s been really fun and generative, and I need to do yoga and I need to do my meditation and I need to fit all of that stuff in. Otherwise, I just turn into a grumpy person, feeling like I did when I was grumpy in California. 

[00:09:19] The thing about me and my wife is our happiness set point. They talk about, I think the happiness set point is worth about 40% of your happiness, I think is just kind of the way you were genetically born. Both of our genetic happiness points are pretty high. So even on our most worried days, when we were talking about moving, we would always come back to the thing well and say, well, we’re normally pretty content. We’re probably going to be pretty content there. And that is the way we have the feeling. But you may have been hearing it in my voice, in the episodes. I’m getting tired. We are here for another week because we didn’t want to move around too much. And then we moved to what will hopefully be our last Airbnb for three weeks in Wellington. And then hopefully we will get the house we are dreaming of to rent. None of that is a for sure. And I can admit right now that my heart would be broken if we don’t get the house. We’re so excited about it, so things are stressful, things are hard and things are still good and I’m still grateful every moment. And, I’m so happy that I have my work to cling to. Some of my roughest days recently have been the days I try to take off. Why is my hair sticking straight up like that? Just noticed on the video. 

[00:10:43] For me taking time off has to be pretty carefully planned so that I don’t end up in kind of a downward funk spiral, and allowing myself to do a little work on some of my days off, really does help sometimes. So that’s something I got to keep an eye on, but when I am working all day on the stuff that I love to do, like thinking about the metadata for this new 10th anniversary, re-released, I, it just feels so good. It feels so good to my brain. And, yeah, I’m saying this out loud, kind of as a reminder to myself, and maybe as a reminder to you. If you are not writing, kind of ask yourself about those energy pennies that you need to spend to sit down and start the work. I find I spend the most just to sit down and start the work, the first five minutes. Once the first five minutes are done, the rest of the day is so much easier. If you don’t have the energy pennies to sit down and do the work, how can you make them? 

[00:11:43] What very small change or a couple of changes can you make that will give you a little bit more? That has been pivotal to me during this incredible time of the last five months of being homeless and upheaval. Yeah, we’ve only been here for two months, but, a little bit more than two months, but, we’ve been homeless and living out of suitcases for about 5. Oh boy, mama’s done. Yeah, I’m done. Hopefully, hopefully soon we will find a place to rest and I can’t wait for it. Thank you for being with me here. As I kind of wander through what’s going on in my brain. I always, always appreciate that you are here and that what I say may spark something in your own mind or when I talk about with my guests, may spark an idea, may give you a little bit of a revelation about how to do your work a little bit more reliably, with more joy. So with that said, let’s go jump into the interview with J.L. and I wish you very happy writing my friends. I’ll talk to you soon. 

[00:12:53] Do you wonder why you’re not getting your creative work done? Do you make a plan to write and then fail to follow through again? Well, my sweet friend, maybe you’d get a lot out of my Patreon. Each month, I write an essay on living your creative life as a creative person, which is way different than living as a person who binges Netflix 20 hours a week and I have lived both of those ways, so I know. You can get each essay and access to the whole back catalog of them for just a dollar a month, which is an amount that really truly helps support me at this here, writing desk. If you pledge at the $3 level, you’ll get motivating texts from me that you can respond to, and if you pledge at the $5 a month level, you get to ask me questions about your creative life that I’ll answer in the mini episodes. So basically, I’m your mini coach. Go to patreon.com/Rachael R-A-C-H-A-E-L, to get these perks and more. And thank you so much!

[00:13:53] Rachael Herron: Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show JL Torres. Hello, JL!

[00:13:59] J.L. Torres: Hi, Rachael, and thank you for inviting me. It’s a pleasure to be here. 

[00:14:02] Rachael Herron: I am thrilled to have you, let me give you a short introduction here for people who might not know you. J.L. Torres is the author of The Family Terrorist and Other Stories, the novel The Accidental Native, and the poetry collection Boricua Passport. His short story collection Migrations won the inaugural Tomás Rivera Book Prize and was just released from LARB Libros. Born in Puerto Rico and raised in the South Bronx, he now lives in Plattsburgh, New York and teaches American literature, US ethnic cultures, oh sorry, ethnic literatures, and creative writing at SUNY Plattsburgh. He holds a Ph.D. from University of Southern California and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. Welcome and congratulations on Migrations.

[00:14:44] J.L. Torres: Oh, thank you so much.

[00:14:45] Rachael Herron: I was lucky enough to be given a copy and it’s just, it’s beautiful writing. It’s incredible writing. So I am so happy to have you on the show to talk about your writing process with our listeners. Maybe you can start out by telling us how does being born in Puerto Rico inform you as a writer because it informs everything about you as a writer, I think.

[00:15:11] J.L. Torres: Right. Well, I mean, if you start from the premise that you write what you know. What I know about a lot about is really the experience of being a Puerto Rican, diasporigan, living in the United States, and a lot of my writing really focuses on that experience.

[00:15:26] Rachael Herron: Yeah. What is your writing practice look like today with all of these other things that you’re doing with the teaching and the, how does your writing fit into your life?

 [00:15:36] J.L. Torres: All right. So that’s a good question. I mean you know, being an academic, we only have these little spurts of time that we can actually write. So I’ve always been able to schedule, you know, my writing projects during that time. Otherwise it’s very difficult. I mean, I, you know, I think a lot of people don’t realize how busy and academic can be. Besides the classroom teaching, you also have meetings and you have all these other stuff that you have to do. So I just try to manage that time. Now I’m retiring. So actually,

[00:16:09] Rachael Herron: Oh, congratulations.

[00:16:10] J.L. Torres: After 40 years. So now, for the first time in my life, I find that I’m actually a full-time writer. 

[00:16:16] Rachael Herron: Oh. So now have you already retired or are you just like right in the process of doing it?

[00:16:20] J.L. Torres: In the process, you know, September will be the first, it will be the official.

[00:16:25] Rachael Herron: I wonder how things will change for you? 

[00:16:29] J.L. Torres: Well, besides more time to travel and when the pandemic madness ends, more time to write. And that means that I can really, I have several projects that have kept, you know, kind of at a distance because I would take more time. With more time, I think I can, I’ve never had problems when I have the time to write. I’ve never really experienced a writer’s block or anything like that. It’s just when I have the time, I’m very productive, but it’s very difficult when you know, schedule, when you have to navigate, you know, all this stuff, besides teaching and grading. I grade a lot because I teach a lot of writing and besides, you know, all that and then social life and family life.

[00:17:11] Rachael Herron: Yeah. The really important things. So how, I have taught and I teach, but not in a full-time academic way, but I have a problem keeping the energy that I give to the classes, holding onto enough energy to do my own work. How have you managed that? 

[00:17:33] J.L. Torres: Well, whenever, I actually really, in writing, in writing mode, I don’t have any of that. I don’t have the classes. I don’t have anything cause this summer so that I do find energy. And it’s, you know, I’m a morning writer. I have to, you know, get up. I put in maybe, try to put in four hours into lunch. And if I’m really, really going strong, I’ll come back and maybe put another two hours. But I do not write or try to write in the evenings. Because I’m just so loopy and groggy. I mean, I don’t grade papers to them, right? It’s unfair. So students, they’re like, oh, this sounds like a B, no. I can’t do that. I have to really be sharp. Right. So I said, let me just vegetate for a while. I can’t do any of that. 

[00:18:19] Rachael Herron: What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing then?

[00:18:22] J.L. Torres: Well, you know, I always, the time is always a challenge. Isn’t it, for all of us? But really my biggest challenge I find is since I write stories, having to do it with the Puerto Rican community in all kinds of ways. The hardest thing for me is finding material that I feel, I don’t, I can’t explore do I want to exploit because sometimes it’s very easy to fall in those traps, right? There are a lot of tropes in that literature that includes Puerto Rican literature. You know, I don’t know how many stuff has been written about gangs and, you know, abusive fathers and all this kind of dysfunctional stuff. So I, the biggest challenge is finding material to write that I feel I can do justice to with without also falling into the demands of much of mainstream publishing that is seeking for sensational stuff. 

[00:19:21] Rachael Herron: Yeah, absolutely. It’s easy to do the, maybe the cheaper, easier thing for the, for the blast of it. What is your Puerto Rican community look like in Plattsburgh? What does it look like there? I don’t know what Plattsburgh is like. 

[00:19:37] J.L. Torres: You’re looking at it.

[00:19:38] Rachael Herron: Oh, it’s you.

[00:19:40] J.L. Torres: That’s not really true. I mean, there actually, there aren’t that many of us. There and if they are, I know them. More, there’s more of a Latin mix to me. And then of course the students, right. When the students are on session, there’s more of a community, but there aren’t too many of us up here, quite frankly. 

[00:19:57] Rachael Herron: Yeah. How does that affect your writing? 

[00:19:59] J.L. Torres: Well, actually one of the stories in the collection in world deals with a person that came up here and sort of the you know, cut all roots from his community. And that person is in a very lonely spot, you know, because they don’t really connect, and his wife died and now he’s all alone and he can’t connect with that community. So he has nothing now, right? He’s kind of rootless. So, and I sometimes feel that way, you know, I’m five hours away from New York city, which is a hub of, you know, there’s a lot of Puerto Ricans in New York city. But I don’t have that here. So, I feel, isolate along with my family. So we, from time to time, we have to kind of refresh our Puerto Ricaness by going to New York city and connecting with family there.

[00:20:53] Rachael Herron: What is your biggest joy when it comes to writing?

[00:20:57] J.L. Torres: Oh, well, I love the short story. I really, this is my second collection. I’ve written one novel. I want to write another novel. In fact, I’m working on one. But short stories are just, they make me happy to write them and be able to find that click at the end that everything seems to be falling in place. When that happens, I’m a very happy person because I feel that the story, I mean, the characters are working, you know, whatever plot I have, whether there’s character driven or otherwise everything’s coming together. And I feel like this is, this is done. This is a good story. And, you know, it’s very hard to find out what the novel, because the novel has so many, as you know, you’re a novelist and there’s so many parts of it that, trying to get it all together, and of course you have more experience the signal, you can give me some advice. Do you ever get that feeling yourself when you have it all clicking? 

[00:21:50] Rachael Herron: Oh, yeah. Yeah. But it doesn’t click. Well, I don’t know. I think the clicks feel different in my head. I think that I have this hierarchy in my brain, and I don’t think it’s correct, but I’m going to say it anyway. I think that novels are up here and then short stories are harder to write and then poetry is the hardest to write, because you’re always distilling. So I think the clicks in the novel kind of maybe happen more frequently, but aren’t as important perhaps for me, but a click in a short story. Oh, you’ve got it.

[00:22:22] J.L. Torres: Yeah, you’re right. You are right about that, for that reason, right, in talking about this distilling that’s like Gwendolyn Brooks said it all right, basically. So you’re right. And that’s why I feel that you can get that click where novel is seemed, there’s so many parts that maybe this little part clicks, but overall, yeah.

[00:22:39] Rachael Herron: Exactly. And you may need to throw that click away tomorrow. Cause it doesn’t make any, it doesn’t make any sense anymore. Yeah.

[00:22:43] J.L. Torres: That’s true. 

[00:22:44] Rachael Herron: So speaking of writing and being on the page, can you share a craft tip with us? 

[00:22:49] J.L. Torres: Okay. I think that the master tip for me,

[00:22:53] Rachael Herron: Please.

[00:22:54] J.L. Torres: Is to, I might be wrong, but this is for me, it’s really reading as a writer.

[00:23:01] Rachael Herron: Okay. Tell us more about that. How do you do it?

[00:23:02] J.L. Torres: Okay. Because when you’re reading and you know, all of us have taken probably English classes and you always read for interpretation, what is the meaning of this? And, you know, as a student, you know, I did a doctorate, so it’s almost like trying to find out how I’m gonna interpret this. What is my reading on this and how I’m going to write that critical academic paper, right. So we’ve taught to do that, right? Finding meaning, like squeezing, meaning out of it. But when you write, when you read as a writer, you come to a passage, it’s absolutely, seemingly flawless to you or something just triggers you up. This is amazing. So you have to stop and go back and read it, you know, in a sort of writerly way and say, okay, why, you know, how did this particular writer make this happen, you know, and then really find it. And I’ll give you a couple examples. I mean, I remember reading Alice Monroe, great story teller.

[00:23:52] Rachael Herron: She’s the best.

[00:23:54] J.L. Torres: And so, I’m reading her and I find, wow, she has such a great way of, sort of segway-ing into the, into different sequences that you’re reading and you go, oh my God, I’m like 10 years, this is 10 years later. And without that jarring sort of many years later kind of thing, and you don’t, it’s not like jarring. It was jarring to me because I realized that what she had done, but I was already engaged and I was already flowing and I would have continued reading until I said, wow. So I went back and, you know, and then I realized it’s all about the details that she included. The sort of, you know, objective correlatives, I mean, all this stuff that kind of makes you say, okay, I’m beginning to sense something different here, then you get it because you start putting it together, but you want to keep writing, reading, right. That kind of thing is I think what all of us need to look with your writers. That’s the best tip I can give, because then those are tips that you find yourself, with every master.

[00:24:52] Rachael Herron: You’re kind of creating your own curriculum. 

[00:24:54] J.L. Torres: Right.

[00:24:55] Rachael Herron: My problem, and I don’t know if you have an answer for this, but my problem is collating that information. I have this idea because I read a lot on Kindle and I will highlight it so that you can go back and look at it later online. Which is great, it’s all there but I never do anything with it. I mean, I have this revelation and I think, oh my gosh, it’s changed me as a person and as a writer. And then I know, I forget 90% of them. Do you have a collation method?

[00:25:21] J.L. Torres: I think if it’s a matter, if it’s a tip, if I’ve seen something and I’ll give you another example from, you know, Cormac McCarthy does not use you know, these quotation marks, when he does his dialogue and, you know, Juno Diaz does the same thing.

[00:25:36] Rachael Herron: Right. 

[00:25:37] J.L. Torres: And I started noticing that, and then this collection, I said, I’m going to this, I’m just going to discard these quotation marks. So put into practice, you know, as soon we can.

[00:25:45] Rachael Herron: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

[00:25:47] J.L. Torres: Put it into practice and I find that it really, in that case, it really helps the overall flow because how extrusive are those quotation marks, really. Why are they there when we all read, we know what dialogue is by now. It’s almost like you watch a film, you know when it’s a cut and you know when the dissolve comes is going to, why do we need to have these quotations?  So these conventions that are old that, but I really believe that when you take them out, it forces you, instead of just putting this crutch, right? This is a you know, it forces you to really improve your dialogue and make it flow better. 

[00:26:22] Rachael Herron: Gosh, I think that’s so, that’s such a deep, insightful thing. It is a crutch now that I think about it, but I am, but it’s interesting. I can’t think of any female writers who do this. I mean, I’m, Roddy Doyle does it. Interesting. Okay. I’m going to have to, I’m going to have to cut. 

[00:26:39] J.L. Torres: You try it.

[00:26:40] Rachael Herron: Yeah, I will!

[00:26:41] J.L. Torres: And I think that, you know, take a passage that you’re working on and do it and try to do it because it really, 

[00:26:45] Rachael Herron: And if it doesn’t work, then you’re right at your dialogue isn’t strong enough. Period.

[00:26:49] J.L. Torres: Yeah, because that’s a good point because you know, the point is that the dialogue should just work without having to need, you know what I mean? You should know when it’s there and how do you keep that flow going? And I think it helps the overall flow of the piece because dialogue is a stop, isn’t it? We’re gonna stop and talk now for a while, and sometimes I like to embed the dialogue in a paragraph and to keep that flowing too, right. Maybe it’s one piece of dialogue, this included, and I think that’s work that you should try to do to make overall flow. 

[00:27:25] Rachael Herron: I love that. If you find the mastery and to make it your own, you practice it. That’s the, 

[00:27:31] J.L. Torres: You gotta practice it.

[00:27:32] Rachael Herron: That’s the missing piece that I have not been doing. 

[00:27:33] J.L. Torres: I know you’re working on something all the time, so just try it. I tried it with this, with this collection. It forced me to go back and look at the dialogue. 

[00:27:43] Rachael Herron: That is so, so cool. All right, so what thing in your life affect your writing in a surprising way? 

[00:27:50] J.L. Torres: Oh, wow. You know, I, that’s a good, the key for me there is the word surprising, right? Cause there’s a lot of things that have affected my life. But I think it, sometimes I read my pieces and I asked myself, why is this character so angry? And also the violence, sometimes. I don’t know if you had a chance to read some of the pieces, but,

[00:28:14] Rachael Herron: Yeah, I did. Yeah. They’re beautiful.

[00:28:16] J.L. Torres: You know? And I’m like, but my stuff, I’m like not a violent person. I am not by nature. And so I’m always asking myself, what is that? But then I’m thinking about my life and how I’ve watched a lot of violence. Not a lot, but I’ve watched more than I should have. I’ve had things like I’ve been playing basketball with my friends at a particular place in, you know, some guy comes out with a machete and hits another guy, you know. And my friends and I watching this and I’m like,

[00:28:40] Rachael Herron: Oh my god.

[00:28:41] J.L. Torres: You know, yeah. Or the violence that people do to themselves, you know, or society does to them when I’m walking up the stairs in my tenement house building. And I see a junkie line and, you know, these are things that just still in my mind, I can’t. So, maybe that surprises me that sometimes the violence is there and even bothers me, but it’s out of coming out of me, right. So I know it’s coming from somewhere that maybe an angry place, because I’m also sometimes angry by stuff that’s happening to us. 

[00:29:13] Rachael Herron: Yeah. Does it rise up out of your writing as a surprise or is there something that you plan to add? 

[00:29:20] J.L. Torres: I don’t think you could really package that, you know, like. It’s, you write a scene, and then, the all was the biggest problem, how I’m going to end the story, right. Well, I have to really go to the violent route. You know, it should be organic, right. But if it’s there and the opening is there, I don’t know. Sometimes I do all the scenes, the scenes don’t have to be there. I try not to write gratuitous violence. I mean, that’s, but still there, you know, it’s like navigating this thing. There’s a lot of violent things have happened to us. Okay. And the collection covers some of that. And there’s no way that you can get around the fact that women were sterilized in a systematic way in Puerto Rico, right. Sort of a eugenics problem program, which is the colonial government, you know, putting as themselves falling. So, those kinds of things, the toil that, you know, my mother was worked in a factory and every time I see her coming home, I can see that, you know, how it affected her body. So these are things that are violent to us. I mean, they, you know, they’re constantly affecting us and it’s another form of violence because violence comes in many different ways. So I think that that’s something that, is there, it does surprise me because I don’t want, I don’t like violence myself, but it’s one of those things when it’s surprising that is, this surprising.

[00:30:42] Rachael Herron: Yeah. That’s really interesting that it is, but it’s, but it sounds also just imperative to come out in your work.

[00:30:47] J.L. Torres: Yeah. 

[00:30:49] Rachael Herron: So speaking of your work, can you tell us about Migration? 

[00:30:53] J.L. Torres: All right. So, Migration is, as I think listeners should know by now, it’s sort of a, you know, collection of short stories that deals with the impact that certain historical moments in our history, the impact it’s had on just everyday people. Everyday people being the characters in my story. And I wanted to do something historical because I think a lot of people do not know enough about Puerto Ricans. They don’t even know that we’re, I don’t know how many times I’ve asked, you know, like for my green card. Dude, I don’t know. 

[00:31:24] Rachael Herron: Oh my god.

[00:31:25] J.L. Torres: But somebody actually asked me that and at that time I had my green American express. That’s what I gave them. I said, this is,

[00:31:33] Rachael Herron: Good for you.  

[00:31:34] J.L. Torres: This is the only green card I own. I don’t know. That or you know, how to check from the university of Puerto Rico. When I first got it, I got back and they asked me, you know, do you want this in Puerto Rican dollars or American dollars? And you know, when people ask me that, this is a teaching moment, Rachael, I’m thinking. So I said, give it to me in Puerto Rican dollars.

[00:31:54] Rachael Herron: Why did you do that? Can you find that conversion rate?

[00:31:57] J.L. Torres: She did. She went to find the conversion rate and she came back. She was good about it though. She said she had a big smile. You got me, and I’d say, well, you know, it, all we have is American dollars. So you know, that kind thing. So the way I think readers to find out about more about us in some of the history of Puerto Rico is not happy, granted. So I can’t be, oh, we’re happy people at the time, but, I think it’s a reality check for, you know, other Americans to find out that 8 million people, 8 million Americans. This is some, sort of the stuff that they’ve gone through.  It’s thematic, it’s linked. And I think the stories are very different. It’s a variety of different stories, so hopefully they’ll enjoy it. 

[00:32:42] Rachael Herron: And it is award-winning. 

[00:32:44] J.L. Torres: That’s true!

[00:32:45] Rachael Herron: That must have felt really great. Congratulations on that.

[00:32:48] J.L. Torres: Oh. Thank you so much. I think we’re always looking for validation writers. Aren’t we?

[00:32:53] Rachael Herron: Yes.

[00:32:55] J.L. Torres: And when somebody else says, hey, this is pretty good. It wins an award. I’m going to be like, oh, wow.

[00:33:00] Rachael Herron: Thank you very much.

[00:33:01] J.L. Torres: Thank you. That was, that makes me feel very happy. And then I’m not wasting my time, you know, putting so much effort into my writing.

[00:33:12] Rachael Herron: Well, thank you so much for being on the show. I wish you the best in retirement from academia and your pivot into full-time writing. That’s going to be super fun. Keep me posted on how that goes.

[00:33:23] J.L. Torres: I will. I’m gonna have to follow you, yeah. 

[00:33:26] Rachael Herron: Please, please. Yeah. When I, the only reason I say this is because when I went, full-time writing, I didn’t write that much more. I found that I was already doing as much as I could. So, yeah,

[00:33:35] J.L. Torres: Right, right, right. The teaching helps. I think the teaching helps. 

[00:33:38] Rachael Herron: Yeah. Well, thank you. Oh, and where can we find you online? 

[00:33:41] J.L. Torres: Okay. So, my handle Facebook is @RicanWriter  and that’s together. And then my website is jltorreswriter.com  So, either way they can find it there. 

[00:33:52] Rachael Herron: Thank you so much for being here. JL, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. 

[00:33:56] J.L. Torres: Thank you, thank you. Bye-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.