Ep. 267: Tiffany Yates Martin on the Secret to Writing a Good Book (Truly!)

Tiffany Yates Martin has spent nearly thirty years as an editor in the publishing industry, working with major publishers and New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling and award-winning authors as well as indie and newer writers, and is the founder of FoxPrint Editorial and author of the bestseller Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing. She’s led workshops and seminars for conferences and writers’ groups across the country and is a frequent contributor to writers’ sites and publications. Under the pen name Phoebe Fox, she’s the author of six novels, including the upcoming The Way We Weren’t (Berkley). Visit her at www.foxprinteditorial.com or www.phoebefoxauthor.com.

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 #267 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. And I’m really pleased that you’re here today for so many reasons. Oh my God! So many reasons. The first is Tiffany Yates Martin. We had a chat. She’s the coolest. She is my friend now because we claimed each other as friends. And, you know, those moments when you find another friend and you claim them, or besties, even though we live very far apart now, farther apart than ever, but she’s amazing. And I love her approach to revision I have for a while now. And we really had a fantastic chat. So that’s coming up. 

[00:00:57] What’s going on around here? Well, if you’re watching on YouTube, I’m in my new room. In my house where I live in Wellington, there’s really not much to see. So if you’re just listening on the podcast, you’re not missing anything. There’s just a blank wall behind me, and a painting of a Fern behind me, because this is where I have set up my microphone. My microphone is set up again and y’all. Let me just tell you about the house. It is everything we dreamed about and more, it is incredible! The view from the windows is of the Wellington Harbor. Google Wellington Harbor if you haven’t seen those or go to my better yet, go to my Instagram, instagram.com/RachaelHerron and look at some of the views out the windows, from the kitchen dining room, Harbor. From Lala’s office, Harbor, from living room Harbor, from my office, it looks out into the little garden that is full of flowers. It is spring here and these flowers have just been growing on their own, just from the rain that have come. I went out earlier today and I picked flowers and I came back with an armful that will also be on Instagram. I will post that, including lilacs and my room right now, my office smells like lilacs and it is heaven, heaven. We’re up 48 steps on the side of a hill. 

[00:02:31] We changed everything around in the house, which was really, really fun. I mentioned that we are renting, but we bought all this stuff that Cassidy. Hello, Cassidy. If you’re listening, thank you! That Cassidy and Sam left behind because they moved to the states. So we bought everything and then we moved everything around. I was going to have the smaller, darker room for my office, and Lala was going to have this room here with a view onto the garden. And then we realized the smaller, darker room would hold the bed. Small dark rooms are great for sleeping in. So we both have these stunning big rooms with perfect views because I love a garden view. Honestly, if I had the harbor view, I would just be staring at boats all day and not get anything done. And I have a bed in my office, which I didn’t think I would like. It’s the spare bed and I love it. I put every pillow in the house and there were a lot of pillows. Thank you, Cassidy, on the bed. And it is now this big couch and I do my morning pages on it in the morning. I set up a monitor, which I have never had a monitor like this, that kind of faces at the foot of the bed. And I am currently doing romance author mastermind, which is a big conference and it goes all weekend. And so I’m just turning it on down there and cozying up in the pillows and taking notes on my iPad at this conference. And this house just feels wonderful. It feels like home, it feels like home. 

[00:04:06] We just got back from walking downtown to the Daiso, took about 45 minutes to walk there. And we took the bus home after we stopped at new world and got some groceries for dinner. And I have salmon cooking right now and my timer’s going to go off and just a couple of minutes so that we can eat dinner because we left the house on foot. We went shopping and we came back on the bus. I can’t even tell you. For so long, I have lived in a place. I loved Oakland with all my heart. I will always love Oakland. I’m an Oakland girl, but where we lived for the last 17 years, and for me last 19 years, we couldn’t walk anywhere. There was nowhere to walk. Even the liquor store had closed, and just walking with the dogs was really too dangerous in most of the parts, because a lot of blocks had off-leash dogs and it was just a hairy situation. There was nowhere to walk. So we would always drive about 20 minutes to go anywhere, to the grocery store to walk the dogs. Here you can’t drive 20 minutes. If you drive 20 minutes, you’re out of town. Driving downtown takes five minutes. It’s a big tiny city. 

[00:05:13] It’s a big city and it’s so tiny and wonderful. And I am just in love. I’m in love. I unpacked my suitcase yesterday. I haven’t packed both my stupid cases yesterday because I hadn’t done it yet. We’ve been here for a couple of days, but we’ve been just like organizing things. So everything I own is in the closet over there. It’s amazing. And, not unfortunately, but at some point, our boxes that we shipped over on the pallets on the ship will arrive there somewhere in Wellington. I don’t want them, I don’t want them. I have everything I need. I have all the clothes I need. I have, we have all the cooking things we need. How did we, why did we send these boxes over? I know most of mine are filled with books and journals and stuff like that, and I’ll find storage for them. But right now, I love looking at my bookcase and it’s got like nine books because I bought them here and I haven’t read them yet. 

[00:06:07] Oh, I’m just enjoying this feeling and really dreading all the boxes and we will hire somebody to bring them up those 48 steps. We have no furniture. I have one Cedar chest, that my mom gave me, but otherwise we have no furniture, just small boxes, but I’m not bringing them up. Oh, no, it was a chore just getting our big ass suitcases up those 48 steps. It’s heaven. I know it’s real life too. Now we’re going to live here and have a real life, and have troubles and heartaches and difficulties and irritations and all of those things. But right now, I’m not feeling any of it. I’m just giddy. I am giddy at being home for the first time in almost six months and able to relax for the first time since February, when we started doing all this and it is now November and it just feels really, really freaking good. So, now, I just get to shunt you into this interview that I had with Tiffany while I was locked down in Russell, up in the north wind of New Zealand. So in that beach house that I was in, and it’s a wonderful dock, so I hope you enjoy it. We’ll talk writing next week. You’re writing, right? If you’re not writing, get a little writing done. And I’ve been writing, I’ve been getting stuff done. It’s very strange. And now we’ll get more done because I have an office anyway, I’m going to quit waxing rhapsodic and let you listen to this interview with Tiffany. Enjoy, my friends. 

[00:07:30] Rachael Herron: Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show, Tiffany Yates Martin. Tiffany, hello!

[00:07:37] Tiffany Yates Martin: Hello, Rachael Herron. I’m so pleased to be here with you. 

[00:07:41] Rachael Herron: We have been trying to get this particular interview done for a while and I am a fan girl of Tiffany and I want to tell you why. So let me give you a little bit of her bio first. Tiffany Yates Martin has spent nearly thirty years as an editor in the publishing industry, working with major publishers and New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling and award-winning authors as well as indie and newer writers, and she is the founder of FoxPrint Editorial and the author of the bestseller, which is a book I love, Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing. She’s led workshops and seminars for conferences and writers’ groups across the country and is a frequent contributor to writers’ sites and publications. Under the pen name Phoebe Fox, she’s the author of six novels, including the upcoming The Way We Weren’t from Penguin Berkley. Wait, Berkeley is Penguin, right? Yeah. Okay, got that right. And so I looked at the cover of that, that comes out in November, depending on when this goes out, it might already be out. Congratulations on that. It’s a gorgeous cover and it looks like an amazing premise of, 

[00:08:43] Tiffany Yates Martin: Thank you. I love that cause it’s probably my favorite cover of my books.

[00:08:46] Rachael Herron: It’s incredible. 

[00:08:48] Tiffany Yates Martin: Except Intuitive Editing. 

[00:08:49] Rachael Herron: Intuitive Editing has a wonderful, wonderful cover. And to be honest, like let’s back up to how we know each other. I know you because I love revision like that is my jam. We both agree, you know, puke out that first draft and then make it something good. And, but I spent, so I spent so many years looking for help with revision, looking for somebody that I could throw to students, somebody who kind of echoed a lot of my own sentiments about revision. And then I found Intuitive Editing. Can you tell us a little bit about that book and how it came to be? How do you come to revision? 

[00:09:26] Tiffany Yates Martin: This is like one of the reasons I really vibe with you is because everything you talk about on your show is so much, what you just said is everything I wrote the book for, because there’s so much out there about how to write. There’s so little out there about how to revise and edit your own work. 

[00:09:41] Rachael Herron: Almost nothing. Probably every year or two, I go through Amazon and I see what else has like, been released. And there’s nothing that has ever been released that is like your book. There’s just nothing.

[00:09:51] Tiffany Yates Martin: And it is the bulk of what writing is. I mean, I’ve been doing this for almost 30 years and I over and over and over, I see how much books find their feet and take shape and deepen and develop. And the vision that the author has for their book actually comes to life during the process of what are usually three passes I do with publishers and often with authors. I mean it’s a lot of revision. It’s the bulk of the work. And nobody talks about it. And so then authors finished their first draft or early drafts and they think, oh, why do I suck as a writer? Why can’t I do what my favorite authors do? It’s because you haven’t revised the living daylights out of it. 

[00:10:30] Rachael Herron: And it is something that you need to learn. It’s a series, it’s a bucket. It is a, I can’t even think of the word for it. A, what do you put your tool, a toolbox where you put your tools. This is where my brain is today that we can learn and then use over and over and over again. But you have to learn about it. So take us back to when you first started, when did you learn about editing? 

[00:10:52] Tiffany Yates Martin: Oh. Well, I started editing, like I said, about 30 years ago. I was an actor, I mentioned that to you a second ago and I was living in New York and like every other actor, I was waiting tables and didn’t want to do that forever. So I had been an English major and one day in the New York times, I see an article that says, or is like a little classified ad and it says, get paid for reading books. So just $25 we’ll say, we’ll tell you how and I’m thinking. Aha! Sure. I’m sure this is a scam, but I was so poor. 

[00:11:25] Rachael Herron: Oh my God. I love that this is how you came to revision was from that little classified.

 [00:11:27] Tiffany Yates Martin: Is this weird? Yeah, in the New York time. This is how analog it was back then. So I sent them my $25, which was a fortune to me at the time. And sure enough, this thing was full of really good information about how to find out how to become a copy editor or proofreader. And I hadn’t done it before, but I thought, well, I’m an English major. This is what I’m good at. So I followed all the instructions and I sent away for the tests and you start working for one publisher and it’s a really, you know, this it’s a very small business world. And so, you know, one tells two friends and they tell two friends. And so before I knew it, I was working for most of the big six and a whole bunch of smaller presses. And I did that for about 15 years. And then maybe a dozen years ago, I thought I would like to move into developmental editing because after all this time, you know, this was back in the day, kids before the internet, when I’m actually working on the copy edit or the edited galleys or, yeah, the hard copy of the original manuscript plus the galleys when I’m proofreading. And I’m seeing all the things that have been done to this story from the very beginning. So it was the best training ground I could ever have asked for. I started, I wanted to do it, but I had no track record. And one of the authors I had copy edited for, happened to live here in Austin and I’d gotten to know her and she said she was struggling with something. And I said, I’ll developmental edit that for you for free. If you trust me. And she said yes. And she was super pleased with our work and told a bunch of friends and again, just snowballed. So I haven’t copy edited in gosh, at least 10 years. 

[00:13:02] Rachael Herron: And hopefully you’ve let go of those skills. 

[00:13:04] Tiffany Yates Martin: No, no. You can never unlearn them.

[00:13:06] Rachael Herron: They’re still there, you can’t let go.

[00:13:08] Tiffany Yates Martin: But I love them. So it doesn’t bother me. 

[00:13:12] Rachael Herron: Is, what is the difference that you feel? Because, I have done developmental editing and I love doing it and I’m not an expert at it, but I’m okay at it. But it’s so easy to developmentally edit somebody else. When you’re at the 30,000-foot level, looking down at their story, how do you handle that feeling inside yourself when you are writing your own books or perhaps you’re going to tell me that your editors come back to you say, okay, Tiffany is perfect. We’re going to put it right into copy editing. Does that happen?

[00:13:44] Tiffany Yates Martin: I don’t think anybody can see their own work objectively. It’s really hard. You have to have someone to hold the mirror up.

[00:13:48] Rachael Herron: How does it feel though?

[00:13:50] Tiffany Yates Martin: That was probably the hardest skill I had to learn as a writer, especially, I identify more as an editor than an author. I mean, that’s my soul. So every time I sat down to write, especially once I began editing, it was really hard to get out of editor brain, but honestly, that’s kind of what a writer has to do too. I think one of the reasons we get stuck in our drafting process is we’re too busy trying to edit it. We’re too busy judging it. We’re too busy being our own critic and you have to put all that aside and as you said, puke it up onto the page and not worry. No one’s ever going to see it. Who cares what it looks like? You will fix it in post, as we used to say when I was an actor. 

[00:14:28] Rachael Herron: So it’s easy to say that we have to do that. But, you know, we talk about this a lot on the show that, you know, the theory of the gap, that we are incredible readers and we have great taste. And a first draft is such crap that it is so difficult to look at. And it’s so different. It’s so difficult to silence that editors brain, even if one has never been an editor, the editor’s head is still screaming at you. This sucks! So do you have any tips for on the ground? I know we’re actually leaving, editing, going into first drafting here, but do you have tips on how to silence that editor?

[00:14:59] Tiffany Yates Martin: Oh, yes. Seriously, that was such a skill for me to learn. It used to be my biggest challenge. I have a mantra. I have a couple, but my big one is permission to suck. And before I begin writing, I sort of say it like a mission statement right before I start, you have permission to suck. No one’s ever going to see it. You do whatever you want to with it. Also, I have this sitting on a post-it note, right by my computer that I just discovered like maybe a year ago, Michael J. Fox was writing a memoir and his brother-in-law is Michael Pollan, the food writer, and he got, isn’t that crazy? 

[00:15:39] Rachael Herron: It was Michael’s! Of course!

[00:15:40] Tiffany Yates Martin: So he said the best advice that Michael Pollan gave him when he was writing was velocity and the truth. And I love that. It’s just speed through it and say what’s real, 

[00:15:53] Rachael Herron: Oh that gives goosebumps

[00:15:54] Tiffany Yates Martin: Which actually kind of connects me to what gives me that ability to shut the editor up when I’m writing, which is to stop concentrating on what I, especially as an editor, what I want it to look like, how I want it to come across, how I’m judging it. And instead, just think about why did I want to write this? What is it I want to say, what happens next, and just live in the process of it, not worrying about the product of it. 

[00:16:21] Rachael Herron: I don’t even know if we’re going to touch the questions that I normally ask that I sent you that, you know, because I’m just so, so curious. I have a million questions to ask from everything that you’ve just said. So when you are, what percentage planner, pantser are you?

[00:16:38] Tiffany Yates Martin: I generally, if I’m writing fiction, I generally start with like, the characters start to, you probably do this too. It’s all noodling around in my head before I ever start to try to write for a long time. Like it incubates for sometimes years before I even start to write it. And it’s nothing I’m doing consciously. It’s just. It’s like forming back there. So when I finally sit down to write, I generally know who the players are and why I want to write it, which basically for me has to do with some journey I want to send them on emotionally. Cause I write women’s fiction and I generally know where they’re going to end up and where they’re starting from. And that’s about it. I might know a couple of things that are going to happen, but if I know, it’s no fun for me, I don’t want to write it anymore. You just had Lisa Scotteleni on. Oh God. I love that interview. I wrote her a fan letter today, Rachael, for that interview because it was so good. And the two of you, just saying everything that I believe about writing and editing and all this wonderful wisdom, like shield your own candle. Loved it. 

[00:17:41] Rachael Herron: Oh, that was so good. 

[00:17:42] Tiffany Yates Martin: Yeah. But both of you were talking about the fact that, I have no idea what I was just saying. 

[00:17:48] Rachael Herron: Oh, you don’t know where you’re going. 

[00:17:50] Tiffany Yates Martin: Right, right, right. You were both saying that, she said, particularly that that’s the fun of it for her. She doesn’t want to know where it’s going, because if she does, she doesn’t want to write it. And that’s kinda how I feel. I’m telling myself the story as much as anything else. And then with my non-fiction writing, like Intuitive Editing, or articles for like writer’s digest or Jane Friedman or wherever. That’s the velocity and the truth one comes in handy there because sometimes I worry about, am I saying this just right? Is it going to be clear? You know, does it sound good because I’m supposed to be the expert and then I just go shut up. What is it that you are trying to convey? And why does this matter to you? And just say that thing. And then you can go back and fix it. 

[00:18:30] Rachael Herron: The reason I love the fact that you call it a mantra and that it is a mantra to you, the permission to suck, is that I think we don’t talk often enough about how frequently we have to remind ourselves that we must have this permission to suck. Like, I think there are some writers and I’m one of them who think, well, I am going to give myself permission to suck at this book. Great. I did it once to check it off the list, and I’m going to sit down the next day and I’ve already forgotten. I can forget half hour to half hour and go back into that really tight place where there’s no velocity, there’s no truth. There’s just me trying to sound good. Even though I don’t even know what I’m talking about. I don’t know what the book is about yet. I’m writing, 

[00:19:05] Tiffany Yates Martin: And we’re such critics of ourselves.

[00:19:08] Rachael Herron: I would never critique any other writer the way I critique myself for a first draft. I’m writing, actually the course that I teach 90 days to done, I’ve decided to do the book. So I’m writing that book right now. And it’s the worst because I keep trying to sound good. And I, every day, I have to remind myself and the velocity of truth is really going to stick with me to just write fast, write crappy and write what I know. Write what I know to be true. And then I’ll make it sound good later, but even something like that even in non-fiction I have to remember that.

[00:19:39] Tiffany Yates Martin: It’s true, because you’re probably like me and, you know, obviously you want to sound like you know what you’re talking about and you care about the words, like all authors, but you also, I think are like me because I just, from listening to your podcast, you’re very good extemporaneously when you’re really just talking about that thing. And it’s all coming to you. And that’s what I think we can lose as a fiction writer, nonfiction, whatever. That sense, you know, when you’re walking your dog or taking a shower and these brilliant things are going through your head and then you sit down and you’re like, trying to make it as perfect as you can. And you lose all of that beautiful, messy spontaneity that brings the story to life. 

[00:20:18] Rachael Herron: That is one thing that I do every once in a while. When I remember it, when I’m on the walk and I’m having the breakthrough, I will start recording that I don’t necessarily record what I’m going to write. I’ve done dictation and I don’t love it personally, but I’ll send myself, in the cloud that messy, like 73 paragraph thing that I just verbalized while I was walking. And in there, there’s two or three, that’s the idea I wanted to bring that stuff, feeling that I wanted to break. 

[00:20:41] Tiffany Yates Martin: Yeah. It’s almost like brainstorming with yourself. 

[00:20:44] Rachael Herron: Yeah, exactly. And I don’t want to do it really with anybody else most of the time. My wife every once in a while.

[00:20:48] Tiffany Yates Martin: No. I don’t want anyone knowing what’s happening in there, it’s messy. I think it just pops out like

[00:20:56] Rachael Herron: Gorgeous, gorgeous extemporaneously and perfect the first time. So, tell us now, like how, what is your, I’m really curious as to what your process is like right now that you do both non-fiction and fiction. Are you ever working on two projects at the same time? Or do you focus on one?

[00:21:17] Tiffany Yates Martin: No, it’s worked out weirdly. So I had a book come out last year and I have another one coming out in November and I’m getting all these emails from people because Intuitive Editing also came out last year.

[00:21:31] Rachael Herron: Was it really last year? I swear it like 20 years.

[00:21:34] Tiffany Yates Martin: 20 years.

[00:21:35] Rachael Herron: Oh my God. Okay, yeah.

[00:21:36] Tiffany Yates Martin: So, plus I do a lot of, you know, I probably write 60 articles or more a year and you know what I mean? Like I do a lot of this stuff. Everyone’s super impressed with me, but I’m sort of cheating because when I signed the penguin contract, both these books happened to be written. So I look really,

[00:21:55] Rachael Herron: Fabulous. 

[00:21:56] Tiffany Yates Martin: Yeah. It’s hard. It would be hard for me to work on both at the same time, I think. Like right now, I’m working on a follow-up to intuitive or I just, one by one with each of the topics in there, you know, I break it up by the category, like character, and stakes and plot. And one by one, I’m going to go through and dig really deep on those. 

[00:22:15] Rachael Herron: Oh great!

[00:22:17] Tiffany Yates Martin: Not just the editing, in fact, not at all yet editing of it, but really a lot about how to, develop all of these things, and also anyway, just a deeper dive. 

[00:22:26] Rachael Herron: Oh I’m excited about that

[00:22:28] Tiffany Yates Martin: Thank you. But that’s sort of, my brain has been swirling around on that so much that I don’t know how I could possibly try to write fiction at the same time. So I don’t, I couldn’t do that. I do my mornings for whatever writing I’m working on, whether that’s fiction or non-fiction. And then my afternoons are actual editing. 

[00:22:46] Rachael Herron: Oh, okay. And what are you editing at the moment? Are you editing your own work? Are you still editing other people? 

[00:22:52] Tiffany Yates Martin: Yeah. I still edit other people. I worked with major publishers and I also worked directly with authors. I actually really love doing it. 

[00:22:58] Rachael Herron: How do you do it all?

[00:23:02] Tiffany Yates Martin: I like dividing my day like that. Don’t you? Like people always say, oh yeah. People say I want to write all day. And I think, oh hell no, I could never do that. 

[00:23:11] Rachael Herron: I could never two to three hours would be my max. Yeah. 

[00:23:15] Tiffany Yates Martin: Exactly. And then sponge wrung out and I have to go to another area of my brain and I really do love editing and it also, continuing to do it is what helps me write about it, you know? Cause I’m seeing this stuff day after day after day, and I’m getting really hands-on with it. So it makes it much more immediate when I’m writing about it. And it’s constantly firing up ideas about topics I can get a dig deeper into. 

[00:23:39] Rachael Herron: Are you still learning at this point about editing and revision?

[00:23:42] Tiffany Yates Martin: Oh yeah. Aren’t we all? 

[00:23:43] Rachael Herron: I mean, I would assume so. I know that I’ve got a lot to learn, but I look at you and I think, oh no, no, no. She knows it all already. 

[00:23:49] Tiffany Yates Martin: Oh, you’re so nice. No, don’t we all think we’re imposters or is that just me? No. Actually, this is one of the things I love about this is, creative arts in general. I don’t think you’re ever finished learning it. It’s always, there’s always something new. 

[00:24:05] Rachael Herron: And isn’t that so exciting? I literally lie in bed and I think, right now I’m reading Madeline L’Engle’s journals, The circle of Quiet. And she’s just, she’s just musing. She’s just rambling on the page and I’m thinking. I can’t remember how old was she was when those, when she wrote those, but I’m like, oh, I’ll still be thinking and learning at that point, hopefully. And I just find that really, really exciting for all of us.

[00:24:27] Tiffany Yates Martin: If you love it, it’s stimulating. It drives my husband crazy because I cannot watch anything, I mean, commercials. I mean, anything, without analyzing the story of it. But to me, it’s the funniest puzzle I could possibly think of to try to solve. And so I love seeing how things are put together and deconstructing. And honestly, one of the courses that I teach is how to train your editor brain that talks about how to watch analytically like that, how to read analytically, because it’s one of the, you talked earlier about getting objective about your own writing. One of the reasons I think authors have trouble with that is because we, what’s the first thing you do when you finish your draft, you go back to the beginning and you start revising. You’ve skipped editing, and editing is where you do what I do. You know, when I’m working on an author’s manuscript, which is take the whole thing in get, yeah, you’re doing the, like the 30,000-foot view. Let’s get that high level picture and get an idea of what you have and what the story might need to be as strong as it could be before you do that, you’re kind of just spinning your wheels.  

[00:25:29] Rachael Herron: That’s the missing step that people don’t understand, and that’s what you teach. And that’s what I teach is that step in between to figure out what you wanted it to be. It’s not what you want it to be. What do you want it to be? And how are you going to change this draft into closer to what you want it to be. 

[00:25:46] Tiffany Yates Martin: Yeah, you gotta see it before you got to know what you have before you can do that.

[00:25:50] Rachael Herron: Would you mind telling us about that the three rounds that you do?

[00:25:55] Tiffany Yates Martin: Yeah. And this isn’t always how I do it, but it’s how publishers generally like to work, and a lot of authors do, and I love it as it. I always think of it as kind of circling the drain. The first one is that big high-level pass where we kind of work on big structural stuff. The, what I call the holy Trinity character stakes and plot, make sure all the key elements are really strong and in place. And as there any like story, foundational story level stuff that could be strengthened or developed or deepened or clarified. And then on the next pass, we kind of circle in a little bit closer and we start doing fine tuning. I focus a lot on what I call like, micro edit elements, kind of like, strong point of view, building up suspense, the momentum tension in the story, the pace of the individual scenes, we might work on some of the voice in that. And then by the third pass, we’re really doing sort of the fine tuning, the line editing and polishing, which I was called that the sexy part. Cause that I think is what a lot of authors think of as revision.

[00:26:59] Rachael Herron: That’s what they want to go to right after they finish the draft. Yeah. Oh, and it’s so fun. I was going to say the one exception to my 2 to 3hour rule, I can work 2 to 3hours on my work, except if I’m in the sexy part, I can literally and have literally done this for 12 hours a day, especially when I’m on a deadline and it’s got to get done, but it’s just so fun and Ooh, it’s just, 

[00:27:16] Tiffany Yates Martin: It’s like decorating a house. You can do that all day long, but building that sucker is a pain.

[00:27:22] Rachael Herron: Exactly. Okay.

[00:27:23] Tiffany Yates Martin: But you don’t have to do that part before, I mean, like, I always say, you don’t hang the curtains before you got the dry wall up, so you have to do the bigger stuff first and then you earn the sexy part. 

[00:27:34] Rachael Herron: Yeah. You earn the sexy part. I love that. And of course, I want to say that you could hang the curtains before you do the drywall and it’s just not going to work out. It’s going to leave a lot of people unhappy and probably cold. Yeah. I would really love to get to the question that I sent you on. Can you share a craft tip with us?

[00:27:51] Tiffany Yates Martin: Oh my God. Yes. How much time do you have?

[00:27:53] Rachael Herron: I mean, you’ve already given us like eighteen.

[00:27:55] Tiffany Yates Martin: Okay. I will show, I talked about the holy Trinity a second and are sort of what I think are my three foundational craft tips, which for character, it’s readers don’t care what’s happening until we care who it’s happening to. 

[00:28:07] Rachael Herron: Oh, I love that.

[00:28:08] Tiffany Yates Martin: So I’m a character editor and to me, character is the basis of all story. And I think it’s what readers hook into, I think it’s, you know, we don’t remember. I think of all the most popular stories, the most enduring stories we think of the person, we think of Sherlock Holmes. We think of Ironman. We think, you know, it’s, the people that we look into story on, so make your, you’ve got to make your reader invest in that character and want to go on the journey with them, which is, which leads me to the stakes one, which is that readers don’t care what is at stake for the character, unless the character cares profoundly about that. So make sure that the stakes really mattered to them and they’re meaningful like they have consequences and they’re urgent, like if it’s something that could happen at any time, it’s not that high stakes and readers don’t hook in that much because there’s really nothing on the line. And then for plot, I always say, action is not plot, and plot is not story. Meaning, action is just stuff happening and you kind of get a story that’s a little bit episodic, a lot of exciting things, but we don’t know where it’s going, yeah. Plot is that where we kind of see the character progressing, you know, the plot is the device by which the character is chasing after her goals. And then what makes it story is that the characters changed as a direct result of chasing after her goals.  

[00:29:37] Rachael Herron: I would like to point out that if anybody wants to stop this, stop listening to it right now, back up about I’m going to say a minute and a half. That is a masterclass on what stories should be. And I’m talking about novels and memoir because I believe memoirs are structured the same way, and in many, in most cases.

[00:29:55] Tiffany Yates Martin: And narrative non-fiction.

[00:29:56] Rachael Herron: And narrative non-fiction, yeah. And you just laid it out, bare bones. This is why you’re doing what you’re doing, and this is why it matters. And that’s what story is. So that might be the best craft tip I’ve ever heard given on this show. So, I don’t know if anybody else does this when they’re listening to podcasts, but I really do stop things. And then, or I’m making note of the count the minute count. And then when I get home for my walk, I start taking notes for what I just heard. 

[00:30:22] Tiffany Yates Martin: I did that with your Lisa Scott Eleni interview. 

[00:30:25] Rachael Herron: Did you hear us?

[00:30:26] Tiffany Yates Martin: I write my fan letter.

 [00:30:27] Rachael Herron: Did you actually, did you hear us say, love you at the end? At the very end, she goes, love you, as she’s hanging up. And I said, you too. That was the first time we’d ever met. Oh my God. She’s amazing. As amazing as you, yeah, so do you.

[00:30:43] Tiffany Yates Martin: Oh, thank you.

[00:30:44] Rachael Herron: So, thank you my friend. Okay. So what thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way?

[00:30:50] Tiffany Yates Martin: Alcohol. 

[00:30:52] Rachael Herron: Tell me more. So I’m sober because it affected my writing so much. Yeah.

[00:30:59] Tiffany Yates Martin: Okay. Interesting. Yeah. I, even as an actor, if I had even a sip of wine, it cuts off some connection for me, between my creativity and the execution of it. And so I always joke, I’m never going to be Hemingway. You know, like, I haven’t, there’s no danger for me of becoming that cliche drunken author, because it’s done the second I have a glass of wine or a sip of wine. It’s over. 

[00:31:25] Rachael Herron: How about the next day? 

[00:31:28] Tiffany Yates Martin: I don’t usually drink enough for that to be a problem so, but back in the day, maybe, yeah. Who can write with a hangover? 

[00:31:35] Rachael Herron: I was very great. Oh, I could for years and years and years because I had to ‘cause I was drinking too much. And then, but the one thing I’m very, very grateful to myself for is that I’d never wanted to be Hemingway. So never once in my long illustrious drinking career, did I ever write while I was drinking. I never tried. I just thought it sounded so, like I thought it sounded like so much fun that I knew that I might, I mean, this was before I was really a problem drinker and I thought this what’s going to tip you over cause this is going to be amazing. And so I never did, so I never had to learn to write sober cause I’d already always written sober. Thank God. 

[00:32:09] Tiffany Yates Martin: I’m afraid I would just create like a word salad.

[00:32:12] Rachael Herron: I’m sure I would. I’m sure I would. I’m sure it would look brilliant on a day and that’s, and that’s dangerous too. You wake up in the morning. You’re like, well, I don’t know. 

[00:32:20] Tiffany Yates Martin: This was so good last night. 

[00:32:21] Rachael Herron: Might’ve gotten me sober quicker. Okay. So what is the best book that you’ve read recently and why did you love it? 

[00:32:30] Tiffany Yates Martin: I’ve been on a non-fiction tier lately. 

[00:43:32] Rachael Herron: Please tell.

[00:07:33] Tiffany Yates Martin: I go in phases. So right now, I’m reading Barack Obama’s A Promised Land, which is so good, but the best thing I’ve read lately that honestly has had a, an enormous impact on me. I bet you’ve heard this from other people on the show, Cal Newport’s Deep Work. 

[00:32:48] Rachael Herron: Oh my God. That changed my life. 

[00:32:50] Tiffany Yates Martin: Oh my God. It has just all of the way I work. 

[00:32:53] Rachael Herron: I teach it. 

[00:32:54] Tiffany Yates Martin: Yeah. It’s brilliant and so simple.

[00:32:56] Rachael Herron: I assigned it when I was teaching the memoir classes at Stanford. That was one of the, it was not a memoir, but they had to read it. It’s so simple. So tell us what are the biggest takeaways that you’re using from the book?

[00:33:08] Tiffany Yates Martin: I didn’t realize how much my focus was split until I started paying attention to it as a result of that book. And I realized I was bopping over to check email, maybe every 5 or 10 minutes, I’d check my phone, my phone would make noise. 

[00:33:23] Rachael Herron: Even though you’re an expert. You’re an expert in doing this and doing this work and your attention was still split.

[00:33:29] Tiffany Yates Martin: And I was starting to feel a little bit scattered and I was, I didn’t have the concentration that I’d always had. And I thought, well, I’m getting older, but I’m not that old. So I, this book was just like a, an explosion in my brain. I put pretty much every one of these things into practice. I even did the thing not for a month, but he suggested quitting social media for a month without announcing it. And just see if anyone misses you basically and see if it affects your work. Now, this is harder for writers, I think because so much of it is marketing, but it is amazing how much of your energy is sucked into that. And, if you force me to choose the thing that matters the most, to me, it’s my deep work of editing and writing about it and my fiction. And that’s what, I mean, not to sound grandiose, but you know, we’re all put on here with a, a calling. 

[00:34:23] Rachael Herron: That’s your purpose. 

[00:34:24] Tiffany Yates Martin: That’s my purpose. And do I want to dilute that purpose with something as a femoral as email or social media? That’s really not that important. So I know, the other thing I took away from not that book, but one by Celeste Headlee called We Need to Talk, which is also brilliant. University of Texas did a study where even having a phone in the room, if it’s turned off.

[00:34:46] Rachael Herron: I saw that study.

[00:34:47] Tiffany Yates Martin: Oh my God! It affects your mental acuity. So not only did I silence all the notifications on my phone, but I leave it in the other room. Most of the day has changed my life. It’s only has to jump when the phone rings and then you get to do the, you know, none of us want to write shallow stories. We want to write meaningful, deep stories and how, how can you do that if you don’t let yourself get in the place where you’re able to do that kind of deep work. 

[00:35:13] Rachael Herron: You are reinspiring me all over again. I’ve been, doing the Pomodoro sessions because I’ve just been so you know, scattered with the move in different places all the time. Yeah, living in paradise. So it’s so rough. And then I realized something really deep recently, which is the reason I’d never liked Pomodoros is that I’d run them in 20-minutes sessions and then 5 minutes to check email, check Twitter or whatever. I was doing it wrong for myself. And I think I got this from Beca Syme. Those were open-loop tasks I was doing in the 5minute break because it’ll never stop. It’s an open loop. Your email will always keep coming, your social, your Twitter will always, there’s always something else to scroll. And she, I don’t think she was actually talking about Pomodoros, but I use it for Pomodoros, that in that 5-minute break, I do a closed loop, which means I get to go up and move, get another cup of tea, go to the bathroom, brush my hair, do something that has an end, a physical end that has nothing, that’s not taking my brain away from the work. So even though I am taking that little break during the deep work, my head stays in that deep part of my writing as I’m folding the laundry or doing whatever it is that I’m doing. So that’s been really great. 

[00:36:23] Tiffany Yates Martin: Yeah, I like that. I think you have to find the way that works for you. He talks about different lengths. I call them focus blocks. And I think you have to find the length of focus block that works for you. 

[00:36:33] Rachael Herron: And I think it can change over time. Mine has always been 45, 15. Like for 10 years, it was 45 minutes on 15 off was my deep work. And right now it’s just gotta be the 25’s cause that’s all my brain could do, but I’m still getting 2 to 3 hours of work done a day.

[00:36:47] Tiffany Yates Martin: I was going to say you can do a lot in a 25 minute chunk. That’s the other thing. This has made me insanely productive, not just like I’m doing better work, I think, and more focused work, but I’m doing more work in less time. 

[00:37:01] Rachael Herron: And that’s one of the things he argues in the book, which is, there’s also, have you read Rest by Sue Pang?  

[00:37:07] Tiffany Yates Martin: No, but you know, it’s sitting in my Amazon cart this second.

[00:37:10] Rachael Herron: Go click it. It’s as important to me as deep work. 

[00:37:13] Tiffany Yates Martin: Okay, good to know. I think I read a recommendation of it just recently by someone like this. And I can’t think who and I thought, oh, I got it because this is where my head’s at right now. I really want to dive deep into this because this is what we love. Your writer or whatever it is that thing you love that you want to do. And this is one of the things I love about your podcast is how much you are constantly encouraging writers to honor that and take themselves seriously.  

[00:37:42] Rachael Herron: I love that you said that it’s just one of those things, again, that we have to remind ourselves every day that we get to do this, that we get to claim this and we get to be serious about this thing that we love. Thank you for saying that. Tell us where we can find you and I, this is, let’s tell, you know what, tell us about the new book, the new novel, because it’ll probably be very close to being released by the time this goes out. 

[00:38:05] Tiffany Yates Martin: It’s called The Way We Weren’t. It’s about a woman who had experiences, I stole it with her permission from author Camille Pogon that she was going to use it for one of her books and decided not to. And I was like, hey, if you’re not using that, and she was really nice. And she goes, sure, it’s all yours. I will always give her credit. But anyway, it’s a woman who experiences a major crisis in her marriage. Long-term marriage. It makes her question everything. One day she gets in her car and keeps driving and winds up at the beach, passed out from dehydration and, an old man who’s lived there his entire life finds her outside of his house. And even though he’s kind of a Curmudgeon in the worst possible way, he helps her and these two develop sort of an unlikely bond where they wind up having to face a whole bunch of things in their histories that they’ve been avoiding and they can sound so women’s fiction, doesn’t it secrets are revealed and they kind of become the key to each of them being able to move forward. And finally let go of things. 

[00:39:09] Rachael Herron: I was just thinking like, this is my cat nip. This is what I want to immediately go buy.

[00:39:15] Tiffany Yates Martin: I love women’s fiction. 

[00:39:17] Rachael Herron: I do too. 

[00:39:18] Tiffany Yates Martin: I’m all, it’s the, you know, character, it’s the emotional journey. And to me, that’s what story is. And it’s just undiluted and women’s fiction, which I love. 

[00:39:26] Rachael Herron: And it’s so, it’s so funny because right now I’m focusing on the nonfiction. So I’m not doing fiction, but in my fiction bucket rattling around in the back of my brain. And I make notes maybe once a day or once every two days about this book. It is about a woman abandoning the life she hasn’t going to the coast, which is basically what I’ve done too, right? Like I have abandoned the life I had and ended up at the coast, but like if a women’s fiction book has that at all, I’m just like, take my money.

[00:39:50] Tiffany Yates Martin: I mean, at some point we’ve all kind of thought about doing that, right? 

[00:39:54] Rachael Herron: Yes, yes, yes. So tell us where we can find you?

[00:39:58] Tiffany Yates Martin: Best place for the editing stuff is foxprinteditorial.com. And I’ve got a ton of free resources on there for authors, and also other resources, but I’ve got like a self-editing checklist. I’ve got a edited guide, how to find a vet, reputable editors and what to look for and what it should look like and what it should cost. I’ve got online courses. 

[00:40:18] Rachael Herron: That’s great. I didn’t know about that. I’m going to, I’m going to use that and give and send my students to that place. 

[00:40:23] Tiffany Yates Martin: Oh, good! Please do. It’s got a great big list of like specific places to look for good editors and had there’s so many people out there who are editing and, you know, it’s a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get. So, it’d be an informed purchaser and also make sure you get the right editor for you. And this is hopefully will help people do that. And then I’ve got, online courses on there and my book is on there and a whole bunch of other resources. 

[00:40:47] Rachael Herron: You should get their book. Everyone listening, you should get the book. Just go get the book, I’m serious, Intuitive Editing, just one click.

[00:40:52] Tiffany Yates Martin: And then I write under the pseudonym, Phoebe Fox. And so that’s phoebefoxauthor.com. Although my books are also on my Fox Print website, all of them are so you can see them, you see everything everywhere. I didn’t use to, I didn’t use to meld the two identities. Phoebe was kind of a secret. Yeah. I decided to out her. 

[00:41:14] Rachael Herron: It’s so much easier. I’ve had a couple of different identities, but now they’re all in one. 

[00:41:21] Tiffany Yates Martin: It felt a little artificial because I worked with all these authors and I was kind of concealing the fact that I am one too. And it was for the wrong reasons. It was because, you know, as an editor, I thought, what if they read my books and I don’t like it? And that just felt so ungenuine.

 [00:41:37] Rachael Herron: That’s so silly. They would read the books and think, oh my God, I have the best editor. Okay. And this endless let us not avoid the question that will come up. Are you accepting clients at this point? And if you are, how does that work? 

[00:41:54] Tiffany Yates Martin: I mostly tend to stay close to clients just because I book out so early, but right around the beginning of every year, I open up and then, you know, however many people I can,

[00:42:05] Rachael Herron: Do you have a mailing list?

[00:42:08] Tiffany Yates Martin: I have, yeah, I do. I have my newsletter subscriber thing, which everybody who’s on there will be the first to be notified when I open up to queries. And then also, I have a weekly blog and you get that directly to your inbox, but that’s probably the best way to find out when I have availability. 

[00:42:23] Rachael Herron: Why am I not subscribed to that? That I’m going to immediately go subscribe. I don’t know how I missed that. 

[00:42:27] Tiffany Yates Martin: I don’t know, but I’m so glad you said this, because one of the things, I’m going to totally put you on the spot. One of the things I have on my website is a feature called how writers revise and it’s everything we’ve been talking about. I’m trying to pull the curtain back on this part of the process that doesn’t get talked about as often as it should. And I interview authors about challenges they faced in their careers and how they overcame them. And then I ask them to answer some questions about their specific editing process and I was hoping you might come on and do that.

[00:42:55] Rachael Herron: Yes, yes. I tried to like, even get it before you stopped talking. Yes, I would love to, I would be honored. I would love it. And this is how friendships are built, everyone. This is how it goes. Tiffany, thank you so much for being here. I am so glad we were like two or three different things that might’ve pushed our meeting again today. And I’m so glad that we didn’t. 

[00:43:16] Tiffany Yates Martin: Me too. 

[00:43:17] Rachael Herron: I’m so appreciative of you.

[00:43:18] Tiffany Yates Martin: It’s so nice to finally connect and I love you too, Rachael. 

[00:43:23] Rachael Herron: I love you! I’m gonna, actually, this is the new litmus test. If I don’t say, if we don’t say I love you at the end, then it’s really not a good.

[00:43:28] Tiffany Yates Martin: Now every other guest is going to be like, okay. And I love you, just FYI.

[00:43:35] Rachael Herron: You’re the best, my friend. Take care.

[00:43:37] Tiffany Yates Martin: Thank you for having me. 

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.