Ep. 263: Bella Mahaya Carter on How to Slow Down

Bella Mahaya Carter is a creative writing teacher, empowerment coach, speaker, and author of an award-winning memoir, Raw: My Journey from Anxiety to Joy, and Secrets of My Sex, a collection of narrative poems. She has worked with hundreds of writers since 2008 and has degrees in literature, film, and spiritual psychology. Her poetry, essays, fiction, and interviews have appeared in Mind, Body, Green; The Sun; Lilith; Fearless Soul; Writer’s Bone; Women Writers, Women’s Books; Chic Vegan; Bad Yogi magazine; Jane Friedman’s blog; Pick the Brain; the Spiritual Media blog; Literary Mama; several anthologies; and elsewhere. Where Do You Hang Your Hammock? Finding Peace of Mind While You Write, Publish, and Promote Your Book is her most recent book.

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.

[00:00:15] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #263 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. And today I am talking to Bella Mahaya Carter and it’s one of those interviews, you’ve heard me do it before and you’ll hear me do it again, where I make friends with the person I am talking to. She was a total treat to talk to, and we talk about slowing down. It’s something I’m really, really bad at. So, I know that you will enjoy the interview when we get there. What’s going on around here? Again, I apologize for the sound, which is not up to my normal sound quality, but I am still in a co-working space, in a little town called Carterton. And, I just can’t attach my big microphone here, plus it’s pretty boomy in here so if you hear other voices, that’s because people are walking around doing things, doing their work. It’s a small town, but it’s, I’m really kind of falling for it. There was a fire overnight and burn down the grocery on the corner. And I was just so upset. It was as if it was my own little grocery and, this just such a small town, good small town feel. And, but tomorrow we go, no, wait, I’m sorry. Today, this afternoon, we get to drive to Wellington where we have a three-week stay in an old school house. I’m looking forward to exploring that. I really hope it has good Wi-Fi because I need it. Something that will support zoom, so I won’t have to be in a co-working space, that would be ideal. So fingers crossed on that. 

[00:01:56] Interestingly, when I was writing earlier, I was just doing my morning pages, which is three pages, longhand, a la Julia Cameron, and absentmindedly, I wrote, this afternoon, we’re going home. Going home to Wellington, going home to the place we hope will be our home. We hope we get that house. We will probably know by the time, next time I do an update on this show, hopefully we will have signed a lease. Everything crossed, if not, we will look for another place and that will be fine. But I’m pretty excited about home. Last night, actually last Sunday, we met up with friends of friends in a town called Palmerston North, a couple hours north of here, and had a lovely meal with new friends. And last night, our Airbnb hosts, Anna and Ross, they had us for dinner. They’ve never had any of their guests for dinner. So we felt very special and it was so lovely to be sitting at a dining table with them and their grandson, Dexter and their friend, Fiona. And we just laughed and ate chicken and gossiped and talked about politics in a really intelligent way, because all New Zealanders are so well apprised on everything that happens in world politics, including American politics. They know more than I do. 

[00:03:31] And, oh my goodness, Anna made a trifle for dessert. Lala has never had a trifle. And actually, we were just talking about that with the other people on Sunday when we were having lunch. And how delicious trifle is? And I thought in my mind, well, I love trifle. I was raised on trifle for dessert, which is kind of a, it’s a spongy cake soaked in liquor and topped with cream and berries throughout often flowers on the top of your very fancy, like my mother was and like Anna is, and I thought to myself, well, I’ll never have one of those because it’s soaked with Sherry, I think usually, and I don’t drink so. She made a trifle and it had come up in conversation that I don’t drink, and she made a separate trifle for me that was not alcoholic. And yes, I did have some for breakfast this morning and it was delicious. Trifle is always better the next day cause all the cream is soaked into the cake. Ugh. It’s just a delightful.

[00:04:30] Anyway, it just felt so good to be with people who could be friends. You could be friends. I am ready for friends. I am gasping for friends. As soon as we put boots down in Wellington, I am going to start going to more 12-step meetings. I’ve heard about a queer stitch and bitch group. I have, I want to get involved with all of the writers, all of the knitters. I need people. I need people since March of 2020, it’s mostly been me and Lala and for the last five months of moving and nine weeks of being here in New Zealand, it has been only me and Lala, and I love her and I am ready for an expanded repertoire of friends as well. This might be something I say every single damn week and I apologize for that. But as writers let’s bring it back to you as a writer, as a writer, you need a life. You cannot write all the time and you can’t wish that you were writing all the time, which is a lot of times what writing looks like. You have to have a life. You have to have an expanded network of people who supports you. So I hope that you have that. Even better than that is to have an expanded network of writers who get what you are going through. I do have a free slack channel. If you have nothing else, come join that. It’s always at the bottom of my podcast show notes. So you can always join that slack from there. Come say, hi, it’s not as active as I would like it to be. And I know that that’s on me cause I’m not as active as I would like to be over there. So let’s shake it up. Let’s have fun over in that slack channel. If you are interested in that, please come join us. 

[00:06:11] What’s going on in with work? This week, I started editing my very first novel, the one that I wrote in 2006. It became my first novel sold in 2008. It came out in 2010. It’s called How to Knit a Love Song. I got the rights back for the first five. Oh, the all- the whole series of five novels, plus a novella that’s attached. I got the rights back from my publisher in America and my Australian publisher, which was cool. So now I’m republishing those, however, I want to say how difficult this is. So I wrote that for the first, the first draft, of course, I’m not looking at the first draft, but I wrote it for the first time in 2006, that was 15 years ago. I am a much better writer now. For most of all of my most recent books, I normally have somewhere in my email, the copy edited version, because the editor will just kind of send it to you as a common courtesy. Here’s the final draft that we’re going to send before proofing. You don’t usually get the proof file, but you get the copy edited file. Back in the dark ages, 2008-2009, your copy edits would occur on paper. Blue pencil, paper, and then they would have put them in the mail, they would put this precious manuscript that has been slaved over for hours and hours and hours by a copywriter, in the mail to you, you know, signed delivery, you would get it, you would go through them and you would accept or reject on the page and then you would put that back in the mail and it would go to them. So for it, I gonna guess for at least three or four of these five books, I don’t have the copy edited version, which means that all of the gorgeous clean-up that my copy editor did, not just for typos, because that’s more of a proofing job, but for copy edits, you know, making the sentences more readable, checking for echoes and duplications of words when you’re, when you’re overusing a word. None of that is there.

[00:08:10] So I’m having to do it. And I always have this idea that this kind of thing goes quickly. It does not. It goes slowly. I slaved over it for hours of the day and I got 30 pages and it’s a 420-page book. And it’s due to my copy editor on Monday. It is Thursday as I record this. So we will see. Katrina, I hope I get it to you on time. Katrina is a freelance copy editor. And she’s been on my show, Katrina Turner. She’s fantastic. And when we have freelance editors, we honor that deadline because this is how they feed their families too. This is not just somebody working at a publishing house. Who’s going to get a bill, who’s going to get a paycheck, no matter what I do. No. I’m going to hit that deadline somehow. But what I am doing, I actually moved the whole thing into pro writing aid, which is a, an app that I really like. I think I’ve, am I paying yearly? I can’t remember. I may have just paid outright for this particular app. I think that’s what I did and it kind of copy edits on the way. I only have it turned on for typos, duplicated words, that kind of thing. And then I’m editing inside that because it will export it to a clean document and then I will send it to my copy editor and she’ll find a million more things. And that is what I am paying her to do, but it is, I always think it’s going to go fast. It just doesn’t go quickly. It is a special kind of agony to I’m super grateful that I get to do this. I’m super grateful that I get to bring some of the language into a better alignment that makes my soul happier. 

[00:09:47] I don’t have time to re-do every sentence. And honestly, I don’t need to, this is a beloved book. It is not my favorite book I ever wrote, but it is the favorite of many of my readers, I think because it has some big tropes that people really liked to read that kind of strokes that, oh, I want that juicy, delicious, terrible stalker guy plus hot rancher, plus wish fulfillment in a, the quest from a will, so all of that kind of fun stuff, people really liked this book. I don’t need to stress myself out over it so much, and I am enjoying it. And I’m trying to enjoy the process rather than get lost in every sentence that I couldn’t make better. I need to remember the 80% rule. I’m going to do 80% of my best. I can’t do a 100% of my best. I could labor over this 15-year-old book for months and I absolutely refuse to do so. I’m going to try to do it in four days. 

[00:10:50] That is what I am up to this week. I will get back to you next week on how it went. So, I hope that you are getting some writing done in some format. 15 minutes before you go to work in the morning is enough to make you a writer. A writer writes. That’s all. That’s all. Are you writing? You’re a writer. Are you not writing? That doesn’t make you not a writer, you’re still a writer. You’re listening to writing podcasts. You know you’re a writer in your heart. Just claim that a little bit. Find me online, where I live. Tell me how it’s going. I’d love to hear about that. And let’s jump into the interview. I wish you happy writing. Next week I hope I have some good news about our rental. Okay, bye ya’ll!

[00:11:36] 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.

[00:11:53] Rachael Herron: Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show today, Bella Mahaya Carter. Hello, Bella! 

[00:11:59] Bella Mahaya Carter: Hello, Rachael. Thank you for having me. I’m delighted to be with you today. 

[00:12:03] Rachael Herron: It’s a thrill to talk to you. And a lot of times, what I love happens is when you make the connection before the show, which we have already done. So now we’re just like rolling full steam into the interview, having already enjoyed each other’s presence. But let me give you a little bio for those who might not know you. Bella Mahaya Carter is a creative writing teacher, empowerment coach, speaker, and author of an award-winning memoir, Raw: My Journey from Anxiety to Joy, and Secrets of My Sex, a collection of narrative poems. She has worked with hundreds of writers since 2008 and has degrees in literature, film, and spiritual psychology. Her poetry, essays, fiction, and interviews have appeared in Mind, Body, Green; The Sun; Lilith; Fearless Soul; Writer’s Bone; Women Writers, Women’s Books; Chic Vegan; Bad Yogi magazine; Jane Friedman’s blog; Pick the Brain; the Spiritual Media blog; Literary Mama; several anthologies; and elsewhere. Where Do You Hang Your Hammock? Finding Peace of Mind While You Write, Publish, and Promote Your Book is her most recent book. So welcome! 

[00:13:10] Bella Mahaya Carter: Thank you, Rachel. 

[00:13:11] Rachael Herron: We’re going to talk all things writing today, but, so I’m a little bit backed up in episodes right now. So your podcasts won’t be coming out for a little while, but as you and I are speaking, it just came out last week. Is that right?

[00:13:22] Bella Mahaya Carter: It came out last Tuesday, June 1st and June 3rd was my virtual launch and it was so much fun. 

[00:13:28] Rachael Herron: How did the virtual launch go? 

[00:13:30] Bella Mahaya Carter: It was fabulous! I was, you know, I really got to benefit from the people who, the authors, who I published with. She writes press, and we have this Facebook community of women authors. It’s fabulous. And we pick each other’s brains. And when I was completing this book, I knew that I had to include a chapter on the virtual launch because it was 2020, and people were having to pivot to the virtual launch. And, you know, I got to speak to three people and interview them and pick their brains. And I got so much good information. So that by the time 2021 came around, I was ready. I don’t know, like those brave authors in 2020. 

[00:14:06] Rachael Herron: Oh. My God.

[00:14:07] Bella Mahaya Carter: Bless them. It was not easy to have to make, you know, all, they had all their launch plans in place and they had to change everything. 

[00:14:18] Rachael Herron: I recently launched a book and I don’t ever want to do it any other way. I love the virtual lunch. 

[00:14:19] Bella Mahaya Carter: That’s great. 

[00:14:20] Rachael Herron: Absolutely love it. What would be your top tip for a writer doing a virtual launch? 

[00:14:25] Bella Mahaya Carter: Oh, I have a lot of tips. Top tip would be, pay attention to the frame. You know, thinking that as a set, it is a set. It’s your, it’s your background. So pay attention to what’s in it. You know, don’t set up your computer in a place that’s busy, that’s cluttered, that’s crowded, that is visually stressful. 

[00:14:45] Rachael Herron: Yeah. And, for those of you, few of you who watch on YouTube, look at Bella’s background right now, it is perfect. I will describe it for the listeners. She’s got her book over to the right and behind her, you can see that her fireplace burning cheerfully. And then there’s a red tablecloth with fresh flowers and a red chair. And there’s outside greenery behind her. Your shirt goes with the painting behind you. Was that on purpose or was that on accident?

[00:15:13] Bella Mahaya Carter: That’s, you know, I would say that was unintentionally intentional. I mean, the truth is like I bought that painting years ago at Goodwill for $5 and I love it. It’s in my living room and I once had a photo shoot at my house and I wore, and that was years ago, and I have, I’ve wore for that photo shoot in the living room, what I’m wearing now. 

[00:15:34] Rachael Herron: The jewel tone. 

[00:15:36] Bella Mahaya Carter: So I think, yeah, I think I just kind of unconsciously remembered that and knew it would work in the living room. I haven’t used like, for my launch. I was in my office. I was, there were books behind me. I had pink flowers to match my book cover. I thought about in terms of wardrobe I thought about, okay, well then I actually went out and bought a green top and a pink top. And then before the event, I tried them on, I set up my zoom camera. I looked at it and with the help of my husband, who’s a great partner, and we’re like, I don’t know, those don’t really look that great. So I went into my closet and I just pulled out a white top. And the white top, you know, it was just something I had in my closet and I put it on and I looked at myself and I, and for some reason, you know, it was kind of working. And then I thought to myself, oh, that’s interesting. I’m not the hammock. I’m not the trees. I’m the sky. 

[00:16:25] Rachael Herron: Oh, I love that!

[00:16:27] Bella Mahaya Carter: And it was unconscious. But, that’s how it was.

[00:16:31] Rachael Herron: Wow! And the testing of it, the iteration is what I really, really like. That is something that I almost put no thought into. And right now, I’m living in the stage house with a strange painting that isn’t mine and weird curtains. 

[00:16:44] Bella Mahaya Carter: That’s actually really cool. That painting is really cool. 

[00:16:47] Rachael Herron: It’s not bad. It’s not bad. It’s part of the staging. So, but just saying that, I’m reading this wonderful book called Joyful right now, and it’s about design choices and how they actually affect our happiness. And that is something, I’m looking at you, and I’m filled with joy, just looking at you because of these aesthetic choices that you have made. So I think this is really important. I think I’m going to take a large. 

[00:17:10] Bella Mahaya Carter: I want to just add one little thing, because, I don’t know if your readers would care, but I’m going to tell you this because I think it’s kind of amazing. I told you that I applied to Mills College and Scripps College and got into both and that I ultimately went to Scripps because of the, they gave me an extra semester. They gave me a semester. But there was one other thing that I really loved about it. I loved their stationery. And I know that sounds ridiculous, but I could not afford to travel. I was, I’m from New York. I couldn’t afford to come and look at the campus. But every, all of their correspondence had a set, like it was just infused with beauty. And to me, that matters, especially with a book, you know, it has to be beautiful.

[00:17:53] Rachael Herron: I chose Mills. I swear, primarily because of the trees on the campus. I, those eucalyptus are so incredible and it just made me feel good to be there. And, oh my gosh, I feel like we could take this conversation a million different directions right now. But I would like to start off with my normal question, which is how do you write, how do you get it done? Where do you get it done? Tell us all those little details. 

[00:18:19] Bella Mahaya Carter: Okay. So when I was a young writer, I thought that, that in order to be a writer, I had to write eight hours a day in my office. And if I didn’t do that, it meant that I wasn’t a real writer. I rarely did that. 

[00:18:35] Rachael Herron: Yeah. 

[00:18:36] Bella Mahaya Carter: So I was always living with this feeling of, I’m not a real writer. I’m not a real writer. I don’t do what real writers do. They sit down. I had this idea to sit down for eight hours and write, and I didn’t really ever do it. I guess what happened was, at the end of the day, I just, I, couldn’t not write. So I just wrote in the way that I wrote, which was maybe a couple of my best favorite time to write is in the morning, going straight from sleep to my office. And if I have, if I wake up with an idea, which, you know, I don’t always wake up with an idea, but if I do, I’ve actually been known to just go straight from my bed, right to my computer, and I’m just writing and I haven’t done anything. I haven’t washed my face. I haven’t brushed my teeth. I haven’t put on clothes. I’m sitting at my computer naked, typing out the idea. But in most cases,

[00:19:23] Rachael Herron: I love that

[00:19:24] Bella Mahaya Carter: In most cases, I do stop to get dressed, but I don’t do any grooming or anything. And I oftentimes don’t even eat. I’ll just throw on some clothes, I’ll go to my computer, and I’ll be there. That’s if I’m working on a particular project. What I really love to do is to come into my living room, I have a little altar, I have a window. I hadn’t seen the windows if you’re watching on YouTube. And there’s a view of the mountains, which you can’t see in this shot. And I have my journal and I like to write by hand and my journal because it’s, I dunno, there’s something about the hand heart connection that is valuable to me. So I just, you know, I show up to my journal and if I can show up to my journal in the morning before I’ve done anything else, I’m golden. It almost doesn’t matter what happens to me in the day, because I’ve taken the time, I prioritize my writing. Now, since I’ve launched my book, like I’ve had six interviews this week. So the priority now has shifted, right? 

[00:20:23] Rachael Herron: Yeah. 

[00:20:24] Bella Mahaya Carter: So now it’s like, okay, I got to set up the shot. I got to get ready. I have to be grounded. So maybe I’ll just, I’ll meditate. I’ll get focused. You know, I didn’t write in my journal this morning. I did write in my journal last night, which is, what I want to say about this question, I know I’m going on. So I’m going to stop, but I just want to say one thing. Don’t be rigid about what you think your writing is supposed to look like. You know, life is fluid. Be fluid. Write when you know, like, yes, if you’re procrastinating and you’re never getting to your desk, then absolutely pick a schedule and make it a very simple thing, like I’m going to write for 15 minutes, three times a week, set a timer, then go. And then if you feel like writing longer, which you probably will because it’s 15 minutes, you know, like the hardest part is getting started. So just sit down and write for 15 minutes and then if you want to stop, you can, but be flexible.

[00:21:19] Rachael Herron: Here’s a technical question. What do you, what is your screen look like when you sit down at it? When you go straight from bed to the screen? My most successful times when I do this are when I have already shut the email because I tend to let email live on my desktop. So I make sure that I close it at night, because if I accidentally look at it, I’m sucked in. I’m now no longer working.

[00:21:41] Bella Mahaya Carter: I mean, I, for years I would go write from my bed to my creative work. In the last 10 years, I’m still in my bed and I’m picking up my phone and I’m going to look at my email and I’m looking at Facebook and you know, like I kind of feel like that’s, I don’t know, like I’ve been soiled in some way, you know? Like,

[00:22:01] Rachael Herron: It feels that way. 

[00:22:03] Bella Mahaya Carter: Yeah. But honestly, I keep my email closed on my computer and I have a beautiful, like purple-ish pink background with a gorgeous yellow Lotus flower in the middle, and what I love about the Lotus flower is that it blooms in muck and mud. And so, there’s this like something beautiful coming from the depths of ugliness. 

[00:22:28] Rachael Herron: I love that. That’s gorgeous.

[00:22:29] Bella Mahaya Carter: That’s just a nice reminder. And I always, I try to keep my desktop as clear as possible. When my desktop starts to get cluttered with files, I just, I said, okay, it’s time to clean up. I really try to keep that spacious because that is something I see when I go to my computer.

[00:22:45] Rachael Herron: I haven’t tried to do that. Also, I have been leaving open a window recently. And I can’t remember the exact URL, but people can search for it. It’s something like windows of the world. Have you seen this one? 

[00:22:53] Bella Mahaya Carter: I don’t, but I, but I’ve seen images that have like, what I’m imagining that is. 

[00:23:01] Rachael Herron: Yes! It’s actual video that people shoot out their windows all over the world. And there, you can turn the noise off, so you can’t hear the wind chimes or whatever it is that they’re looking at the traffic. But whenever I walk into my room, it’s changed overnight and it’s something else. And it’s something else, you know, in Paris that somebody is looking out, and you know, or in, you know, Iraq, it’s just, it’s incredible. So it is kind of mind blowing, but it’s also not very interesting. Like you can look and enjoy it and then you can go write. It doesn’t distract me.

[00:23:29] Bella Mahaya Carter: That’s so cool. I’m so glad you explained it because I had an assumption based on what it sounded like, which was completely false. 

[00:23:37] Rachael Herron: It’s so neat looking. It’s so neat looking. They’re not live. I, they’re pre-filmed and then uploaded to this site, but it’s beautiful. So what is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing?

[00:23:51] Bella Mahaya Carter: I would say that my biggest challenge when it comes to writing is not writing. 

[00:23:54] Rachael Herron: Oh my gosh! Tell me more about that. 

[00:23:59] Bella Mahaya Carter: Well, no, unless I’m working on a particular project, I guess what I want to say about that is that I kind of have to write. But I don’t, I’m going to, and I’m going to get rid of the qualifiers kind of; I have to write. Sometimes I don’t do it. And I recognize that that’s okay as I’m getting older. Cause I always want, I always had the impulse, I don’t know if you have this too. I want to record everything. 

[00:24:35] Rachael Herron: Yeah, me too. I am also a journaler like you are. I have the compulsion to record everything. 

[00:24:40] Bella Mahaya Carter: When I go around the house, this is so funny. I have this little basket; I don’t know if you can see it. And the basket has my Kindle, my glasses, my Air Pods, headphones in case the Air Pods aren’t charged, pens and pencils, notepaper, sticky tabs. 

[00:24:57] Rachael Herron: That’s hilarious. 

[00:24:59] Bella Mahaya Carter: And I have to bring it with me everywhere I go. You know, I go into the bedroom, I bring my basket. I go out into the hammock, I bring my basket. I go into my chair in the living room to read, I bring my basket because I’m always writing notes because I think I read somewhere and I totally identified with this when you said this, I don’t know if it was an interview. I watched an interview recently with Catherine Nikolai. 

[00:25:18] Rachael Herron: Oh, she’s great! Yeah. 

[00:25:19] Bella Mahaya Carter: Amazing. But you said that you have a scanty memory, I’m that way too. So if I don’t write it down, like, I don’t know it’s going to do this, I feel like it’s going to disappear. And I just want to be able to talk about all of it, because it’s also interesting to me. 

[00:25:35] Rachael Herron: It really is. I’ve been recently. I’ll show you. I’ve been recently just using comp books in different colors, but this only holds about two months-worth. And then when the book is done, I go back through it and I read through it and I index it. So I, you know, put the page number of what happened, where, and I will have already forgotten things two months ago.

[00:25:58] Bella Mahaya Carter: I put sticky tabs and I give it like a little title. 

[00:26:03] Rachael Herron: I do that too.

[00:26:04] Bella Mahaya Carter: I have a file on my computer that is, I call it hatching. So I’ll take like, whatever information, like I’ll take some information from what I wrote, like, I look at the tabs, like I might do this kind of regularly, give it a title, give it its own document and put it in this file in this hatching file. And in fact, not long ago, my publicist said, could you give me some ideas for articles that I could pitch to media? And I actually sat down and I looked at my hatching file and I sent her 40 or 50 ideas. 

[00:26:35] Rachael Herron: Oh my goodness. That’s amazing. 

[00:26:37] Bella Mahaya Carter: I realized, you know what, this is my next book.

[00:26:41] Rachael Herron: And could you have pulled those out of your brain at a moment’s notice? Of course, not.

[00:26:44] Bella Mahaya Carter: No way, no way.

[00:26:45] Rachael Herron: No way. Maybe one or I could get them one or two, maybe three.

[00:26:47] Bella Mahaya Carter: Right. 

[00:26:48] Rachael Herron: That’s so really cool.

[00:26:49] Bella Mahaya Carter: And then I realized, you know, I, this is my next book I realized, oh, wow. I didn’t realize that all this was going on. 

[00:26:58] Rachael Herron: That is amazing. Okay. I’m going to actually, maybe try that hatchings file idea of putting on the computer. I’ve never done that. 

[00:27:05] Bella Mahaya Carter: Yeah. Like if you write, if you go after you write in your journal, if you read through with a highlighting pen and then you know, even if you, or even if you just like have a list, you know, like a pad and you just write like, oh, I could write, I could explore that and I could explore that and I can explore that. Give it a file and give it a name and then put it, I mean, give it a document, give it a name, put it in your hatching file. It’s like, oh yeah, I have something to say about that, and that, that, and that. 

[00:27:36] Rachael Herron: Oh, I know that people are leaning in to listen to this. That is gorgeous, gorgeous. Thank you. I think you’re already giving us the craft tips here, but before we get to the craft tip question, what is your biggest joy when it comes to writing?

[00:27:47] Bella Mahaya Carter: This, again, I heard you say this too. So recently, I want to meet you. I think you’re so cool.

[00:27:52] Rachael Herron: We’re meeting each other right now. 

[00:27:53] Bella Mahaya Carter: That’s true. You’re right. We are meeting each other right now. I want to see you in person. 

[00:27:58] Rachael Herron: I would love that too. 

[00:28:00] Bella Mahaya Carter: Which question was it?

[00:28:01] Rachael Herron: Joy, your biggest joy when it comes to writing?

[00:28:03] Bella Mahaya Carter: Oh, that’s right. Yeah, yeah. So, I think you mentioned this. I didn’t remember where or when, but my biggest joy is being surprised.

[00:28:13] Rachael Herron: Ooh, yeah.

[00:28:15] Bella Mahaya Carter: Like when I’m writing something and I didn’t know that something was there and it just, not only is it a surprise, but it’s given to me. So it’s like, it’s like I didn’t write it. It’s like it came from somewhere else, came from a place that is just much bigger than I am. And that was actually my experience with Where Do You Hang Your Hammock, with the entire book. I wrote it in a couple of weeks, two or three weeks, but I was drawing on 10 years-worth of material, but it came together so fast. It, the idea happened years ago when my publisher, Brooke Warner said, you want to turn your blog into a book. And I couldn’t really imagine why that was a good idea. I’m like when people read my blog and why would they, you know, want to, you know, it’s like repeat performance. But what I discovered was, you know, I had just finished my memoir and that took five years and I thought, well, maybe, you know, this would be kind of light. This could be kind of light and easy. So I looked at the blog posts that I had and I had over 200 blog posts and I thought to myself, wow, that’s really interesting. And I noticed that the blog posts, they fit into one of five, most of them, fit into one of five categories: dream, nourish, write, publish, and promote. So I started shuffling them into the different categories and I strung them together and I was like, oh, you can’t just string together blog posts and expect to have a book.

[00:29:42] Rachael Herron: I tried once it did not go well.

[00:29:44] Bella Mahaya Carter: But, and I realized, oh, I just need a unifying principle. I need a theme. And once the narrative of my theme became clear, I was like, oh, now I have to do is just tie everything to get together with that, fill in the holes, delete the redundancies, and I have a book. 

[00:30:05] Rachael Herron: Amazing. So this is usually the last question I asked, but we are very comfortable in doing things out of order here. Tell us more about what is inside this book.

[00:30:15] Bella Mahaya Carter: What is inside this book? You know, it’s really, I, you know, when you said that I thought of Grant Faulkner’s book pep talks for writers, which is on my reading list. I haven’t read it yet, but I love the title.  

[00:30:29] Rachael Herron: It’s cute. It’s a good one for dipping in and out of. It’s like, just when you need the perfect thing, it’ll come up.

[00:30:33] Bella Mahaya Carter: Well, this is like that in the sense that the chapters are all short and they stand on their own, but there are 87 of them. So there’s a lot of them. But the main thing, the main message that I want to convey in this book is anxiety is not the price of admission to a creative life. And, you know, this book aims to point writers in the direction of their own wisdom. To get them in touch with their own wisdom, and to just give some pointers along the way, in these different categories of dreaming, nourishing, writing, publishing, and promoting. And a lot of writers don’t like the publishing and promoting part. And what I want to say is, you know, I get it, like, believe it or not, I’m an introvert too, but there’s a way, it’s all about perspective. This book is all about perspective. And there’s a story about my hammock, which I tell which, which talks about that. But you know, how can you do the stuff that you love to do? How can you bring your creativity to publishing, to promotion? You know, I think about promotion, not in terms of, oh my God, I have to get my stuff out there, oh, I got these interviews, I got to do all this work. No. I think about it as like, who will I meet today? What kind of community building can happen here? I get the opportunity to talk to people about the stuff that really lights my fire. I get to do that. And so when I think of promotion, I try to talk about it in the sense of it’s all about connection. It’s all about love. What do you love and who else loves it? And how can you share it. 

[00:32:14] Rachael Herron: And who do you get to share it with and who like, that’s what I think about this podcast and my teaching is that how lucky I am to get to make those connections as a solitary, introverted writers, we still get to do this deep heart to heart connection like you and I are having you’re my new best friend, by the way. So,

[00:32:31] Bella Mahaya Carter: And it’s creative! Like we don’t, you know, you can’t, there is no secret sauce for publishing or for any of it. And so the idea is, well, what are the things that you like to do? 

[00:32:43] Rachael Herron: And bring that 

[00:32:44] Bella Mahaya Carter: And bring that and feel like, know that, you know, know that you don’t have to do anything else. You’re enough the way you are. Show up and do the stuff you love and that is plenty. 

[00:32:55] Rachael Herron: This is incredible. I absolutely love all of this. All of it, all of it. Can you share a craft tip with us of any sort?

[00:33:05] Bella Mahaya Carter: Craft tip. Okay. I have lots of craft tips, but I,

[00:33:08] Rachael Herron: You’ve already given us a couple of good ones, but 

[00:33:10] Bella Mahaya Carter: I would say my two favorite craft tips are try writing the same piece from multiple points of view. You know, write it from the first person. A lot of people, especially when they’re first beginning, they’re afraid of what they’re going to say especially if the excavating the depths, you know, they’re really, you know, they’re dealing with stuff that’s shameful and difficult and all that. They write it in the third person. And I think that’s great. I think that’s the perfect thing to do when you’re trying to access something scary, write it in the third person, right. You’re the narrator, right. But at some point in time, you’re going to really want to write that in the first person, because you’re going to want to claim that whatever it is that happened to you, you’re going to want to claim it and own it and know that, you know what, even though I did this thing that I’m really ashamed of, it’s okay. It’s okay. Because I was just doing the best I could and we’re all human and we’re not perfect beings. We’re human beings and it’s okay. And when you move it into the first person and you start to claim it, you liberate yourself and it no longer hijacks your wellbeing. 

[00:34:22] Rachael Herron: That is gorgeous. And so, so, so true that third person, I always have students ask me, which is better. There’s no better in terms of writing, but third person, if you’re writing about something that’s so important to yourself, it can be that extra protective shell, which is useful as we’re coming out of that egg or whatever, you know, however you want to continue that metaphor. But later on, we want that immediacy.

[00:34:48] Bella Mahaya Carter: Right. 

[00:34:49] Rachael Herron: What is your other craft tip? You said you had two.

[00:34:51] Bella Mahaya Carter: Oh, thank you. You’re so observant. I love that you’re asking. The other craft tip is read when you’ve written out loud. 

[00:34:58] Rachael Herron: I never do that. I always mean to do that. And I’m so I’m always on such a hurry. 

[00:35:04] Bella Mahaya Carter: Yeah, slow- oh, that’s actually my number one craft tip. 

[00:35:07] Rachael Herron: Please tell me how?!

[00:35:09] Bella Mahaya Carter: Slow down. Honestly, you know how. I don’t have to tell you how to slow down. I mean, I can tell you how I slow down. I have some really good strategies because I tend to move really fast. 

[00:35:25] Rachael Herron: Yeah, me too. 

[00:35:27] Bella Mahaya Carter: My mind goes and I love what you said. You’ve said so much wise stuff. You said somewhere at some point in time. Oh, what was it? Can I remember? I just see, I just had four thoughts in my head at the same time. 

[00:35:38] Rachael Herron: They all crashed into each other and, 

[00:35:42] Bella Mahaya Carter: Oh shoot. I don’t. What was I saying? Remind me.

[00:35:44] Rachael Herron: Going fast, moving fast. 

[00:35:45] Bella Mahaya Carter: Going fast, yeah. So the main thing is to slow down, so to come into some kind of a slow-down. Sometimes I can do that by just focusing my attention on my breath.

[00:35:59] Rachael Herron: Meditation helps immensely for me. If I’m not meditating every day, I crash into myself.

[00:36:03] Bella Mahaya Carter: It does, and I don’t even have to call it meditation. I can just say, all right, I’m sitting in this chair and I feel my body in the chair. And I’m going to put my hand one hand on my belly and one hand on my chest and I’m just going to breathe. I’m going to breathe 10 breaths. And I’m going to count my breaths. And every time my mind goes wherever it goes, I’m just going to gently bring it back to my breath. So, you know, that can, that’s certainly helpful. Moving in slow motion is really helpful. Like, maybe just like move, I don’t know if you could see me, but just like starting to move my, my arms in slow motion.

 [00:36:40] Rachael Herron: Wow. That’s interesting. I’ve never tried that. 

[00:36:42] Bella Mahaya Carter: Just move slowly, really slowly. 

[00:36:46] Rachael Herron: I think that my wife would call the paramedics if she saw me do it.

[00:36:50] Bella Mahaya Carter: You’d have to warn her. This is an exercise, this is a test, for real emergency.

[00:36:56] Rachael Herron: I move so quickly that I’m constantly crashing into walls and tripping over things and you know it is problematic. So I’m going to try that actual slow motion.

[00:37:05] Bella Mahaya Carter: Yeah. Or go outside and sit in the sun for two minutes and just feel the sun warming your body. Or just focus on a tree, you know, like, look at a tree and just, you know, focus on the tree. Like just, I think, I think what happens is, when we’re present, our mind is here. You know? I mean, but most of the time I’m here and my mind is somewhere else and it’s moving a mile a minute and it’s moving really fast. So the key is really, come back. I have to say that to myself often. Bella, come back.

[00:37:44] Rachael Herron: Do you do that in your journal? Cause I know I do. And that is a really useful place for that. I will say what I can feel. 

[00:37:51] Bella Mahaya Carter: Yes. 

[00:37:52] Rachael Herron: What I can see, what I can smell, and people, wherever you are, when you’re listening to this. Take a second right now and feel like, what is your body feel like? How do your feet feel? How do your ears feel as you’re listening to us have this conversation? And what that does is it puts us in the now for right now. I actually have a tattoo on my arm that says now.

[00:38:11] Bella Mahaya Carter: I love it. 

[00:38:12] Rachael Herron: And it’s just for me. It’s angled so that I can see it because I am so infrequently in the now. 

[00:38:17] Bella Mahaya Carter: I love it, yeah.

[00:38:19] Rachael Herron: To pin that down, okay. So I’m going to actually go back and you said that your top tip was to slow down, but that was in relation to, I like how you and I are providing each other’s memory on this. It was, in relation to your second tip, which I immediately hijacked by saying how do you slow down? 

[00:38:33] Bella Mahaya Carter: No, that’s okay. It was multiple, it was explore multiple points of view. 

[00:38:37] Rachael Herron: Okay. That’s right. All right, thank you. What thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way?

[00:38:49] Bella Mahaya Carter: Well, I don’t know if this is surprising. It might be really obvious to me. It’s super obvious. But if, and it goes with what we were just saying, that the thing that most impacts my writing and my life is my thinking, is my relationship to my thinking. 

[00:39:06] Rachael Herron: Okay. I’d love to hear more about this. 

[00:39:09] Bella Mahaya Carter: It’s not my thoughts themselves because you know, there’s all kinds of thoughts that, over the years, have sabotaged my creativity. Thoughts like, I’m not good enough, I suck, who cares what I have to say, there’s important things going on in the world. Why should I speak? Why should I bother? That thinking, and I talk about this a lot in my book. It’s really sort of the foundational principle of the book. So I can’t control the thoughts that come into my mind. But I absolutely can control how I relate to them. In the past, I was not aware that my thoughts were separate from me. I thought it was my thoughts, I thought I was like a fish in the water, swimming around in the fish doesn’t know the water is not part of it. I was fused by my, with my thoughts. And so as a result, I, when I would have a thought and I tend toward the negative, you know, there’s a negativity bias. I, so I would tend where the negative and also, you know, I want to be in control. So I would like think of all the bad things that could happen so that I could control them. But you know, that doesn’t, that’s not helpful. So I’ve learned that when I can be aware that I’m having this kind of thinking, I can just say, you know, I hear you, Bella. I know you’re feeling insecure. I know that you think that, you know, nobody’s going to read it, but you know what, do it anyway. You know, like I’m going to do what I want to do because like, cause I want to do it. So I’m just going to, I’m not really stopped by that thinking anymore whereas for years and years and years, I wasn’t even aware that that thinking was running the show.

[00:40:50] Rachael Herron: Is there, so I could not agree more. And for me, it has come through meditation that I have been able to step back and see that narrator’s voice in my own mind. Are there any tools that you would also suggest to become more aware of those thoughts for people who are surprised by this idea? 

[00:41:10] Bella Mahaya Carter: You know, I can think meditation is a great tool. I love Headspace, for people who don’t have experience.

[00:41:16] Rachael Herron: Headspace is great. It’s an app. It is, you pay for, I think the first 10 days are free and then you pay for it, but it is worth the money people and you never have to sit alone. You never have to sit alone and try to calm your brain and get all the thoughts out of it because you will never be able to do that. But Headspace talks you through it. And also Andy Putty comes voices sounds good.

[00:41:32] Bella Mahaya Carter: Oh, I love him. I love him so much. Yeah. And I would say actually, you know, bringing your attention to anything you love, like maybe you love to arrange flowers or maybe you love to walk, you know, to go hiking, or maybe you love to swim, or, you know, it doesn’t really matter. Like I think that anything could be a meditation. You don’t have, it doesn’t have to look a certain way. Again, it’s not rigid. It’s like, what is your pleasure? What brings you pleasure? And you know, how can you be really present with whatever that is?

[00:42:11] Rachael Herron: I have fallen in love with swimming again. Before the pandemic, I had learned how to swim as an adult. And then about a year after the pandemic, I finally found a place where I could swim and I realized why I love it so much is that I can not be fast. 

[00:42:26] Bella Mahaya Carter: Yeah. 

[00:42:27] Rachael Herron: I can’t think about anything else other than I have a little in-ear thing where I could just play music and I could think about not drowning. And I could think about swimming and breathing. I’m thinking about my breathing the whole time, and it’s 30 minutes of my brain getting this ultimate break just listening to music and thinking about my breath. 

[00:42:47] Bella Mahaya Carter: It’s great. You just reminded me of what I was going to say earlier. And that is that when I’m writing in my journal, my mind can’t wander. It has to stay present. Right?

[00:42:57] Rachael Herron: Yes.

[00:42:58] Bella Mahaya Carter: Because it’s one word, it’s another word, it’s another word. And my mind can kind of go all over the place, but it goes all over the place one thought at a time. 

[00:43:05] Rachael Herron: And it keeps coming back because you have to write the next word. That’s big! I never thought of that. It’s obvious, but it’s big.

[00:43:12] Bella Mahaya Carter: Yeah, that’s big. And then the other thing that I want to tell you is that I too started swimming before the pandemic. I joined LA fitness and I started swimming. And then of course it was all shut down, but we do have a jacuzzi in our bathroom with French doors out to the patio. 

[00:43:26] Rachael Herron: Oh, lovely. 

[00:43:27] Bella Mahaya Carter: I’m telling you, I sit in the Jacuzzi, and I’ll do like, I’ll do the arms and then I’ll do the legs and I’ll float and it’s, oh I love it. 

[00:43:37] Rachael Herron: Oh, I think you and I are the same person in a lot of ways. 

[00:43:41] Bella Mahaya Carter: I know.

[00:43:42] Rachael Herron: Okay. So what is the best book that you’ve read recently and why did you love it? 

[00:43:46] Bella Mahaya Carter: Oh, God, I’ve been reading. I’m reading. I’m always reading a lot of things at once. 

[00:43:50] Rachael Herron: Yeah, me too. 

[00:43:51] Bella Mahaya Carter: I’ve been reading a lot of Mark Nebo, I love his stuff. But I have to say that the best book I’ve read recently is Gina Frangella’s Blow Your House Down. 

 [00:44:01] Rachael Herron: Ooh, haven’t heard of it. Is it fiction, non-fiction? 

[00:44:05] Bella Mahaya Carter: It’s a memoir. 

[00:44:06] Rachael Herron: Ooh, perfect.

[00:44:07] Bella Mahaya Carter: Subtitle is a story of family, feminism and treason. 

[00:44:11] Rachael Herron: Okay. I’m just going to go buy that. 

[00:44:13] Bella Mahaya Carter: Just go buy it. It’s, and there’s actually kind of a cool story about this. So, who was it? I think it was Danny Shapiro had written a review in the Times. I could be wrong about this, as I said, my memory is sketchy. Brooke Warner, the publisher of She Writes Press, who is a goddess, and a brilliant human being, and a friend, and someone I adore. She kind of hopped on the bandwagon with Danny Shapiro and lobbied a criticism against Gina. And she got a ton of pushback from her, from the writing community. And she said, oh, wow. I guess I need to read this book. She read the book that she has so much integrity. I admire her so much. She read the book and she said, wow. And she issued a public apology. 

[00:45:12] Rachael Herron: Wow! That’s awesome. 

[00:45:14] Bella Mahaya Carter: It was amazing. I mean, like a less secure person. A less generous person would have just like kind of slunk away with egg on their face, but no.

[00:45:25] Rachael Herron: Or double down, 

[00:45:26] Bella Mahaya Carter: Or double down, right. Yeah. She didn’t do that. She stood up. She said, wow. I will never comment on a book that I haven’t read before. No matter who is trashing it because this book is efff-ing brilliant. I never say eff-ing. Can I just say it was fucking brilliant? 

[00:45:42] Rachael Herron: Yes. You could say that. 

[00:45:43] Bella Mahaya Carter: Yes. It was brilliant. And so, and I didn’t want to read it because like, because some of the criticism about it was that it was angry. And I don’t like when writers are angry, because I feel like when they’re angry, they’re not, it means that they haven’t done their work enough to be able to talk about what happened. But I did not feel that way at all. I didn’t feel that way one bit. I felt like this woman was so brilliant, like the way she told her story, it was courageous, it was literary, it was, it was just exquisite. I just, it was everything that I want a piece of literature to be and,

[00:46:23] Rachael Herron: I cannot wait to read it. 

[00:46:24] Bella Mahaya Carter: It’s amazing. 

[00:46:25] Rachael Herron: Okay. Thank you so, so, so, so much. I cannot wait. That is, that sounds like my jam entirely. 

[00:46:32] Bella Mahaya Carter: I mean, yeah, it’s amazing. Just read it.

[00:46:34] Rachael Herron: Now tell us where we can find you out there online. 

[00:46:38] Bella Mahaya Carter: You can find me at my website, which is bellamahayacarter.com. My favorite places online are my Instagram and my, actually my, I do have an author page, but I have to say that my heart is really with my Facebook profile page.

[00:46:57] Rachael Herron: Good to know. That is a good place for people to find people.

[00:47:00] Bella Mahaya Carter: I’m not sure why, but that maybe it’s because there’s so many people there that I actually do know and love that, and I do have, you know, I do have followers on my fan page and I’m, I just tend to not be as I don’t know. I, my heart isn’t there as much. And I am on LinkedIn and I am on Twitter, but honestly, I don’t get Twitter. I’m one of these people-

[00:47:22] Rachael Herron: Don’t bother getting it. 

[00:47:24] Bella Mahaya Carter: I haven’t really gotten it, so I show up, you know, it’s here and there, but I my passion is Instagram and Facebook profile. 

[00:47:32] Rachael Herron: I’m going to follow you immediately on Instagram. So I will see you there. Bella, it has been such a heart treat to talk to you today. I am so glad that you were on the show and that now we are friends and you live in LA?

[00:47:48] Bella Mahaya Carter: I live in LA. 

[00:47:50] Rachael Herron: I got to come through on my way to New Zealand. So maybe I’ll hit you up for a cup of coffee or something. 

[00:47:54] Bella Mahaya Carter: Please do. I would love to have you here. 

[00:47:57] Rachael Herron: Thank you, Bella.

[00:47:58] Bella Mahaya Carter: And thank you so much for having me on your show. I love the work that you’re doing. I think you’re doing amazing things and I think you’re wonderful, thank you.

[00:48:05] Rachael Herron: Ditto. Ditto back at you. Alright, thanks so much. Bye.

[00:48:08] Bella Mahaya Carter: Take care. 

[00:48:10] 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.