Today I speak with Mary Adkins, best-selling novelist of Palm Beach and Privileged about her writing journey and the business she created to help other writers find success called The Book Incubator. Want more information about Mary? Check out her website: https://maryadkinswriter.com/ her IG: https://www.instagram.com/adkinsmary/?hl=en

And for more information about The Book Incubator visit: thebookincubator.com

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TRANSCRIPT STARTS HERE:

Kat

Welcome back, everyone, to Pencils & Lipstick. I’m excited to have Mary Adkins with me, whom I’ve heard a couple of things about, and I think I’ve even heard her speak before. But she is an author, a novelist, and the founder of The Book Incubator. So I’m excited to have her on. Thanks, Mary, for coming.

Mary

Thanks for having me, Kat. I’m glad to be here.

Kat

Yeah, I’m glad to have you. I think during COVID I heard you speak. COVID is like this nebulous time, right?

Mary

Yeah, right, you’re like I think I did, but I don’t remember.

Kat

I’m pretty sure. I think it was about when Palm Beach, your third novel, was coming out. I would love to have her on and life gets busy, so I’m glad we’ve connected. This is exciting to you have such an incredible story to talk about. So let’s let you introduce yourself a little bit to people about who Mary Adkins is and then we’ll get in deeper.

Mary

Sounds great. So I am a novelist. I’ve published three novels. My first one was called When You Read This and my second one was Privilege, and my third one was Palm Beach. Two of those came out during the pandemic. So not a great time to launch a book. But I did my best. And I live in Dallas, I just moved. I was living in Nashville, but I literally moved a month ago, so brand new. Brand new for having just moved.

Kat

Oh my gosh.

Mary

You’re seeing the part that looks good, right? No, you’re right. The whole thing looks just like this. And I have a five-year-old son, and I live here with him and my husband, and I teach writing, of course. I work with novelists to finish their novels through a program that I started a couple of years ago called The Book Incubator.

Kat

That’s awesome.

Mary

So that’s who I am now.

Kat

That’s who you are now. But you started out as a lawyer, did you not?

Mary

I did, yeah.

Kat

Did you get to practicing law or were you like burnt out by the time you finished all those years or what happened?

Mary

Okay, I want to back up a little bit even farther because I wanted to be like many writers, I think I loved writing since I was a little girl, since like twelve years old is when I remember starting to tell people that I wanted to be an author, like, I wanted to write books. And so when I got to college, it was like, yeah, I even remember when I applied to college, I applied to a bunch of creative writing scholarships. I was just, like, very into, I was like, that’s what I am. I’m going to write. And so when I got to college, I signed up for a creative writing class, and I was so excited about it. It was a short fiction class, and it totally gutted me. It was the worst creative writing class experience I ever had. I got B minuses on my stories, which, just to be clear, that was, like, a very low grade at my college because we had crazy grade inflation. So B minus was, like, not good.

Kat

Especially with something creative you feel like it should all be.

Mary

Yes. And I just left that class so deflated, to the point, that was the only creative writing class I took in college. I didn’t sign up for any more after that because I was like, I guess I just can’t do that well. So going to walk away from that. I think it was partly, like, a very natural response and partly fraud syndrome, imposter syndrome, and just being like, I can’t keep putting myself out there. I’m embarrassed, kind of, because I was used to being a good student. I could usually figure my way out in most classes, or I avoided those classes.

Kat

Our grade system is what gives you validation, right?

Mary

I mean, yes.

Kat

What they teach us.

Mary

Exactly. And so it was like, well, if I’m not good at that, I’ll just avoid that. So I ended up I majored in public policy. Long story short, applied to law school, went to law school. I’m like, I’ll just go this route, because that was, like, where the action was. I was good at that stuff. I could get As it was like, I’m just going to do that. And so I went to law school. Law school was fine. I liked it because I liked being in school, and I liked my friends. But as soon as I got out of law school and started a job as a lawyer, it was like, what am I doing? It was like I had landed in the real world, and it was not what I had ever thought. I think I had just never truly known what a lawyer did. I mean, law school was interesting. And reading cases and talking about them. You were in a classroom. It was like, this is interesting. But I think I was never truly understanding of what a lawyer is. And it turns out I didn’t like it.

Kat

A lot of it’s like, corporate in an office, trying to figure out what laws, I’m not a lawyer, but most of my friends are like, yeah, I’m just figuring out tax laws for this company. That doesn’t sound interesting. I’m sorry.

Mary

No. And I was in litigation, which is like the antagonistic kind of law. So it was like representing this side, and we would talk about the other side as if they were jerks or something, which was weird when they were banks. The whole thing was just so strange. It was like, I cannot get my heart into any of this. This all just feels like just a way people are making money, which is great for them, but it wasn’t a good fit for me. And I also think a large reason I felt this way is because that twelve-year-old was still in me. I still wanted to be a writer, and I had just managed to avoid it for like over ten years. Yeah, keeping myself busy. And I felt like she started screaming. Like, once I was in a law office, I felt like my internal creative kid was like, what are you doing? You want to write? You should be writing stuff. And so I tried to write. I’m like, okay, well, I’ll just write in the mornings before work and at night after work.

Kat

As like a book or just like…?

Mary

Or just anything creative, because I hadn’t written creative in a while. I just want to come back to that. And so I did start to do some of that, but my job was so all consuming that I didn’t have very much time. And so it didn’t take me very long to realize, like, I don’t think I can stay in this job. So I started applying for jobs that would well, this makes it sound better than it was. I was actually much more reckless. I called my parents, I’m like, I’m quitting. And my dad’s like, please have another job first. He’s like, I don’t care if you are a barista. He’s like, go get a job at Starbucks. Just please have a job before you quit this job. I was like, fine, deal. So I waited until I applied to a ton of jobs and finally I got this tutoring job. I’m like, great. I have a job. I can quit. So I started tutoring and quit my job right away, my law job. And the tutoring job turned out to be perfect because I just tutored people for like a few hours a day. It added up, but tutoring, you kind of tutor on other people’s schedules are supposed to be evening, so I would work a lot of times at night, which meant I have a ton of time during the day to write. And that was when I really got to start focusing on my writing. I do want to say sorry, I get a little carried away talking about all this. So it’s been a long time on my story. But my internal fraud syndrome around writing fiction, though, that had not changed. So I was like writing creatively, but I had so ingrained from that college creative writing class that I couldn’t write fiction, that I was only writing nonfiction. I was like, I’ll write personal essays, and I’ll write humor from my real life. But I’m not a fiction writer because I learned that in college. Can’t do that. We’ll never try that again. So I wrote a proposal for a memoir that I started submitting to literary agents. Because if someone had told me, like, this is how you get published. You have to get a literary agent, I’m like, okay, I’ll just do what everyone’s telling me to do. So I was sending that out, and they were saying no, but one agent said, he goes, no, I can’t sell this. But I like your writing. What else do you have? Do you have a novel? And I did not have a novel, of course, but I had had a novel idea, and I was like, I don’t have a novel, but here’s an idea that I had for a novel that I was thinking of writing, which isn’t true. I wasn’t thinking of writing it because I didn’t trust myself. But I had this person’s attention.

Kat

You got to answer.

Mary

Right. And so anyway, he wrote back, that sounds really great, or something like, that sounds fascinating. Write that and then send it to me. That’s what he said, write the novel and send it to me. And this person never became my literary agent, but I think ultimately he ended up ghosting me later when I did write the novel. But I’m still so grateful to him because he gave me permission. That’s the only reason I ever started writing fiction, because this person said, write that and send it to me. So in my head, it was like he was waiting for it. Which of course he wasn’t, like, he was, I’m sure, moving on and doing other things. But I was like, oh, this person is waiting for something, and said it was a good idea, so now I’m going to do it.

Kat

Do you think that gave you, like, a deadline too, of like, I got to figure this out?

Mary

Yeah, because I didn’t want too much time to pass. It was like, I’m going to knock this thing out. So I just became obsessed with getting this novel down. And ultimately, that was my first novel that became.

Kat

Oh, that’s awesome. You have three novels out, so tell us a little bit about each because are they standalones? Do you write in series or standalone?

Mary

They’re standalone. They’re all standalone. Yeah. So they’re contemporary fiction, and they’re all different. So the first one is, it opens, the main character has already died, and she has left behind a printout of a blog that she wrote in her final few months that she left it behind with her boss, who is also a good friend of hers, asking him to try to get it published. So it’s the story of him trying to get this thing published that she left behind. And we also read her blog as part of it, so it’s sort of like a book within a book.

Kat

Oh, that’s cool.

Mary

So we get to know her after she’s gone. Yeah. And we kind of see how she left some little Easter eggs behind for the people that she loved. So that’s the style of that one. The second novel is a sexual assault on a college campus, a Southern college campus. And in the wake of this assault, the victim initiates a judicial proceeding at the university. It does not go her way. So then the second half of the book is really about how do you find justice or how do you recover your power when you don’t have it. It’s been taken from you.

Kat

That’s a pretty heavy topic. Was that hard to write?

Mary

That’s the heaviest, I would say, of the three books. Yeah, I would definitely say that one is. And then the third one is called Palm Beach, and that second one, by the way, is called Privilege. The third one, Palm Beach, is set in Palm Beach, Florida, and it’s about a young couple that moves from New York to Florida when half of the couple, the husband, gets offered a position running the household for this billionaire in Palm Beach. So this young couple’s lives get sort of enmeshed in the lives of this billionaire family, and things go south.

Kat

Yeah. I would imagine that he’s got to go south. That’s the energy.

Mary

It’s got to go south.

Kat

Yeah. You were talking about how, with the memoir idea, you were trying to push it out to traditional to get an agent. I guess. So did you decide to go traditional?

Mary

I did for all three of my novella, yeah. So my publisher for my three novels was Harper Collins. Same publisher.

Kat

Okay, cool.

Mary

For all three.

Kat

Oh, that’s awesome. So is that like, the agent route? Like, you have to find an agent and then they sell it to Harper Collins?

Mary

It is, yeah. It was definitely, looking back, I have no regrets about going that route. I think I also didn’t even know there were other routes, though.

Kat

Right.

Mary

So it worked out well for me, but if it hadn’t, I think it would have been helpful for me to know, like, oh, but this isn’t the only you didn’t have to go this way because it took me six years to get a literary agent. Like, I was querying literary agents for that long before signing with mine. So it was long. It was a long road.

Kat

Did you keep writing the other books, like, while you were querying? So did you have, like because your last two came out pretty quickly, like, pretty…

Mary

Yes, exactly. Like, the three my three books came out three years in a row. Boom, boom, boom. And so they were not like, you write so fast. I’m like, no, I don’t I’ve been working on these a long time. I mean, the third one I wrote pretty quickly, but the first one I was writing and rewriting for, like, seven years. The second one several years because, exactly, I was, like, working on the second one while I was querying the first one.

Kat

First one, okay.

Mary

Yeah.

Kat

And then how did you? So you’re a lawyer. You’re, like, licensed as this lawyer and you decide to become a novelist because the guy told you that you should. Which I think is great. But was it difficult to… there’s a lot to learn. So sometimes people are just really intuitive and they can write out their novel and there isn’t that much to change about it. And then there are those of us, like me, who you write a novel and then you realize you should actually learn some things.

Mary

Exactly.

Kat

How was that journey? And from being a lawyer to, like, I’m writing a whole novel, like, 1000 words, if not more. That’s a lot.

Mary

Yeah. I took a bajillion writing classes and so I definitely was like, I need to educate myself on this. And I always like school anyway, so I loved taking classes. But I also think, I don’t know, I’ve been thinking about this lately because I’ve been having ideas for my fourth novel and I’m almost finding this one the hardest one to start. And I’ve been thinking about how there was something beautiful about being kind of cavalier in my early writing days and being like, how hard can this be?

Kat

I was just talking about that to a friend of mine. We’re both on our 4th, 5th novel. And I find it harder. I don’t know if it’s the expectations people have or the expectations you have on yourself or the like, I don’t know what it is.

Mary

Interesting. So you relate? You relate to that?

Kat

I completely relate, yes. I think I agonize more and I was telling her it’s like, I wish I could go back to that. I’m writing a book and I don’t know what tropes are, and I don’t know what structure is, I kind of know what dialogue tags are and how to invent a paragraph. But other than that, it was like, whatever came to my head. Of course that came with problems.

Mary

Yes, it did. It came with problems. Writing a really messy first draft. I didn’t know anything. And then having to rewrite it over and over again. But, yeah, there was also something really beautiful about the innocence of being like, oh, I just have to hit a word count. I wasn’t quite that naive, but it was close.

Kat

I was close to that. Yeah. And I’m trying to figure out if it was easier to delete 40,000 words of my way overwritten novel or if it’s easier now of like, no, let’s try to not overwrite, Kat. Let’s try to stay in the line. I don’t know.

Mary

That’s such a good question, right? Yeah, it’s almost that. I wonder, too, if there’s part of it that once we’ve been through it a few times and we kind of know what the end kind of final, polished product is, you’re, like, looking for ways of maybe getting there faster this time.

Kat

Oh, true.

Mary

When really, maybe we just need to be a little bit more humble and be like, the first draft will be bad, even though we’ve done this several times before.

Kat

It’s so easy to say. And you say it to all your students, and then you’re like, no, but mine should be better. Yeah.

Mary

Oh, that too. And maybe that’s it, too. You’re like that’s, actually, I feel like you just nailed a lot of it for me because you’re like, well, yeah, yours can be bad because you’re new to this. But my first one is supposed to be good because I’m supposed to be the expert.

Kat

True. It’s a lot of self imposed pressure, I think, because I’m not sure really expect that, but yeah, I have to be careful, too, not to look at other people and be like, gosh, you write fast. Because, like, you I’m a mom, so I started writing when my when I had a newborn. And you did as well, right?

Mary

Yes.

Kat

We’re either insane or I’m not sure.

Mary

Or brilliant. No, my husband would say it was brilliant. We’re brilliant.

Kat

We’re totally brilliant. So was that just, like, a coincidence of time? Like, you were pregnant and this guy tells you, gives you permission to start writing. But what was that like, to realize, I mean, pregnancy-wise, if you don’t feel sick, you can keep writing. Right. But then this little thing comes along and expects you to all the time.

Mary

Writing with a newborn. Well, I got a book deal, right, when I had a baby. So then I had to write the book, was the idea.

Kat

Yeah. You sold it before?

Mary

I sold it because this was actually my second one that I wrote, so I felt like I had no choice. But I also because my husband, we were recently talking about this, he was like, I really feel like that was the best thing that ever happened to you. I mean, at the time, it was a lot of pressure, and it felt really kind of stressful. But looking back, I think he’s onto something, because it does feel like it would get me out of the house, which meant I had to put on clothes, which meant I had to think about something other than just keeping my little baby alive or how little sleep I had had, or like it forced me to use my brain. And I don’t know, I think it might have been really good for me. It felt like complete chaos. It felt just crazy. But I don’t know that it was a bad thing. And I never felt I still loved writing, like, it was harder because I was tired and I was like, right hormonal, and all that, but I feel like I always felt like a little bit charged by it. That was actually kind of nice to get away, which I think would have been I just know my personality. I wouldn’t have justified, oh, I need to go take 2 hours to, like, read a book or get a massage. Like, I just wouldn’t have done that, probably because it would have felt selfish or something stupid. I mean, it would have been a good idea.

Kat

Because we’re women. Exactly.

Mary

Yeah.

Kat

But we always think it’s selfish. Yeah.

Mary

This felt like work. Like, I had to do work so I could justify it to myself.

Kat

You didn’t really have to justify it to anyone else, honestly. Yeah, that’s nice, actually. That’s very cool. But then do you think that led you to this whole philosophy of carving out time for your creative self that you teach your students?

Mary

Yeah, definitely. Because I think the cool thing that I discovered through that the other piece of pressure for me during that period was my husband had gone back to school, so I had a full time job so that we could get health benefits, so that I could have a baby. So I had a maternity leave, and I was like, I don’t think I can write a book and be in a full time job and have a newborn, so I have to write this book on my maternity leave. So I gave myself that deadline. I was like, you have ten weeks. By the end of this ten weeks, you will have written this draft. But I couldn’t write for more than a couple of hours a day, tops, because and usually, honestly, not even that, like hour and a half, maybe because I was nursing, I was tired. We had childcare in the sense, like, my husband would watch him a little bit. My mom was in town for some of those weeks, and she would help out, but other than that, we didn’t.

Kat

You had 8 hours of child free.

Mary

No, exactly. But I think the thing that I learned through that that was cool was that I wrote a draft. I wrote a draft of my book in ten weeks in like a little over an hour a day, and it was like, okay, that’s doable. I just didn’t know that was possible until I did it, and that was really empowering. So I explained that to people,. Now you don’t have to overhaul, a book sounds like such a big thing, where they’re like, well, I’ll probably have to take a leave from my job. And it’s like, I mean, you could do that, but you may also just have to find a little bit of time every day. Or like a few hours a week total. Right? You can actually make good progress.

Kat

So do you teach your students in the Book Incubator to outline or to do you have a certain way that you think is the best way for them to do it? Or do you just sort of work around what their creative process is?

Mary

I guess I teach them my creative process, which is not outlining, and then help them find what’s best for them.

Kat

Okay, that’s cool. So you don’t outline?

Mary

No.

Kat

Wow. Okay.

Mary

I do have some tools that I use, like something called the Big Question, where you think of, like, what is the big question that your story is going to explore and a story destination. Like, you’re writing towards something that’s going to happen. What is that thing going to be? And it doesn’t have to be at the end, but just have something in mind, and then we talk about characters having unfulfilled wants. There are things that we’re working with, but it’s not an outline.

Kat

Okay. One of my questions that I always philosophize with my writer friends is, like, I’m not sure it’s so much the outline, because an outline can be good on one hand, but it’s also the thinking, like, an outline of what’s going to happen, sure. And some of your questions are probably like, that going towards a moment that’s sort of going to bring everyone together. Like the realization or something. Something like that. It’s good to have that there, but I’m almost convinced that it’s the thinking about your book more than everything else that will help you write. I don’t know what you think about that. I love that.

Mary

So you mean just like, kind of getting obsessed with it in your head so that it’s just what it’s like where your brain goes?

Kat

Yes, because otherwise, I don’t know about you, but when the years that get really chaotic, like, we moved in 2020, I was re-editing a book. Of course, it took longer than it should, so we’re moving, looking for a new place to live, all that stuff. It’s a pandemic. Three kids on zoom is what’s insane. I was distracted, so I was thinking back of like, why did it take so much to edit that? And there would be pieces that didn’t make sense, and my editor would be like, what is this? And I would just like, I wonder if it’s because I wasn’t present in the book.

Mary

Yeah. Yes, I completely agree. And I inversely, too. I love when I just had this idea for a new novel, and it’s that fun thing where you like, it becomes the default that your brain goes to. Instead of like, what color rug should I get in my living room now? It’s right where you’re like, what should be her motivation? Why is she doing that? But why did she marry him in the first place? You get to just mole over those things. And I love that. That’s like my when it’s like this private puzzle that you’re doing in your mind.

Kat

Yes. And I think that should count as your writing time. You don’t want to elongate that too much to not get words on the page. But it’s good to know that stuff because I’ve worked with students who don’t know that stuff and then they finish the novel and they still haven’t answered any questions because they never asked any in the beginning.

Mary

Right. No, that’s a great point. And maybe that is also playing into what we talked about earlier, like your fourth or fifth book being one that’s hard because you kind of know, okay, there are some things that will make actually writing this better and easier if I can figure them out. Now, what is this character’s motivation? What’s actually going on here? Let me figure that out first.

Kat

Yeah, that’s a great scene to think of at 11:00 p.m.. At night, but what are they doing?

Mary

Yeah, exactly.

Kat

Real angsty there. But I don’t know. So within the Book Incubator, do people have to come already with the book, like already with a draft? Or how do people approach you and be part of this?

Mary

So pretty much everybody comes with an idea because it’s an application based program, so people do have to apply and they don’t have to send a writing sample or anything. It’s much more just kind of we just want to make sure we’re curating our community. So people are like serious writers. So people will say we basically say, what’s your book idea and what are you hoping to get out of a writing program? Just to make sure it’s a good fit. By the time they are admitted to the program, most people have an idea. It may just be a little fledgling idea, but it’s like, okay, but I just had this thing about this, or whatever, and then we help them flesh it out from there. And then other people come in. Actually, a number of people come in with like part of a draft written, sometimes even a full draft written, which is great. So then we just start helping them with revision. I mean, we can kind of pick we we just pick up wherever somebody is.

Kat

Okay. Okay. Yeah. And is it like group classes? Like, do you teach classes or is it like what is the sort of structure what would somebody expect, when they’re applying for it, of how it’s going to help them either take the idea forward or maybe they need to finish the novel?

Mary

Yeah, it’s really customized. It’s a twelve-month program. Everyone’s in it for one year. So I kind of talk about it like a candy store. Like, you come in and you kind of pick what you want. I mean, I do teach a live writing class every week. I have a fellow teacher, Ruffy Thorpe, she’s also a novelist, but she teaches a revision class every week. And people are invited to come to both of those, but I encourage them to come to the one that they’re currently doing so that they’re not clouding their brain with irrelevant things because they get those recordings. They can watch all that later, but then they can submit. We have a couple of editors they can submit to editors for critique their work as they go. They can schedule one-on-one meetings with us or with a couple of other team members that we have to talk about specific things like troubleshoot a plot point, stuff like that. When they have a full draft, they can have the editor read their entire draft and give them notes. It’s very much like you take what you need when you need it.

Kat

It’s like turning a light on in a very dark world of writing. Because otherwise am I doing this right?

Mary

Exactly. And that’s why I started it, because I had felt like that I was, like, hobbling it all together for years. And then because I went the traditional publishing route, when I first came up with the Book Incubator, I included resources for teaching people how to do all that, how to query a literary agent, how to find a literary agent to query, how to read between the lines of their responses, what to do when you get one, all of that stuff. And increasingly, we’ve added other support for alternate publishing paths because I just feel like things are really moving, actually, in that direction, like I said before I even existed.

Kat

Yeah. So you don’t have to be a traditionally seeking writer, I guess. Okay. That’s cool. Yeah. Our art world is always changing. Who knows what’s coming down the line, right?

Mary

So how did you know you wanted to go indie when you started?

Kat

I got 50 to 60 rejections, but to be fair, I just didn’t know what I was doing, honestly. It’s one of those things. Like, I kept sending them out. I also lived in France, so I had to come home, buy the envelopes and the postage because you used to have to put the postage back in so that they could send you the letter, international.

Mary

It was snail mail!

Kat

It was snail mail. And then it sort of like into email a little bit. Like some of them started this was like 2010, I guess. They started some emails. And then I got a Kindle because I lived in Europe in 2011 because I wanted to read English. Yeah, this is pretty cool. Although a lot of it was traditionally published, people putting their ebooks on. But I think at one point, I was just like, I just can’t handle any more rejection.

Mary

Yes.

Kat

It could have easily gone anywhere had I gotten someone that was… there was no Twitter pitching or anything like that. Or maybe there was and I didn’t know.

Mary

Doubt it. Yeah.

Kat

Who knows what you know?

Mary

Well, it’s like feeling around in the dark. Yeah. And I was in the same boat. It just was like, I guess this is what you do and then you just keep doing it until and then.

Kat

If they say yes or something happens. Yeah. So my six years ended with me being screw it.

Mary

Yeah, basically. It’s really funny too, because sometimes writers will ask me if they are going the traditional route. They’ll ask, how do you choose between agents, literary agents who are giving you offers? And I’ll be like, I’ve never met anyone who has faced that choice, I think, ever.

Kat

It’s a nice dream, though. I went through the Author Accelerator program for the fiction, and you have to put together things for clients. And I was like, I’ve never seen anyone get two acceptance at once. Better that way. But if you do, I mean, that’s great. I guess you do.

Mary

If you do, amazing. I’m sure it’s happened to someone. Someone out there has had it happen.

Kat

If it’s happened to you, come on my podcast. Whoever’s listening.

Mary

Tell us what you did.

Kat

So with the Book Incubator. So you can be whatever, like seeking whatever publishing goals. What about writing goals? Like, do you only work with fiction? Do you only work with a certain genre of fiction? How does that work?

Mary

We work with all genres of fiction. But we have had a few memoirists come in and I’ve been happy to support them, but as best I can. But I’m trying to move away from that just because it really is tailored toward fiction. Our lessons are really so I end up feeling a little bad because I’m trying to explain to them how to apply it to memoir. And I’m like, I hope this works. Anyway, so we have had a couple that are coming in, but we’re really focused primarily on fiction, all genres. So we recently took a survey and we have kind of people just to kind of truly scattered across genres. I think literary fiction is our biggest genre, which surprised me a little bit. Women’s fiction is also really big. And then YA is pretty big too. And by big, I mean like 15 writers. It’s a pretty small group.

Kat

That’s all right. Are they categorized as women’s fiction or literary fiction or like a cross between them?

Mary

Mine are categorized as contemporary fiction. And then I think they’ve been categorized as women’s fiction too, just because I’m a woman generally marketing. They’re so weird.

Kat

I envy the people who write thriller, mystery, right? Where’s my book? I really don’t want to go literary because I want people to actually read it and not right. I’m not that good with turn of phrase. But I have a contemporary when people ask me, I was at a conference in London, they’re like, what do you write as a contemporary? That sounds so boring. What does that even mean?

Mary

I know same. And I always say that because it feels the most accurate. But you can tell people, they kind of look at you like, what?

Kat

What is it about? I don’t know. Okay, give me 2 seconds, and I’ll tell you what it’s about. All right. But you guys are working with I think it’s really cool. I talk even on the podcast a lot about brainstorming. So it sounds like you get to even come in and brainstorm something, because otherwise with your computer and you’re like, I think this works. I don’t know. And I don’t know how many times it’s, like, one in the morning. And I’m like, that totally doesn’t work.

Mary

Yes.

Kat

After the scene is written. So I think that’s really cool that people can interact. It’s not just, like, go home and write it.

Mary

Exactly. Because I feel like we end up having, as writers, a fair amount of interaction after we already have right. Because you can share and then get feedback. But yeah, I feel like the interaction can be the most helpful when you’re just talking before you even have written a word. Just like, let me bounce some ideas so they’re not just in my own brain.

Kat

Right. And other people can ask questions of, like, well, why would they be married in the first place? Why would she be in jail?

Mary

This conversation is making me want to do even more of that myself because I just think it’s so helpful.

Kat

It is. It is very helpful. And I’m, like, just encouraging people to find that I don’t know, wherever. But this sounds pretty cool with the Book Incubator. And do people mostly interact with you and those who work with you, or do you guys have, like, a Facebook group or where the writers interact together, or is it mostly just writer with the professional?

Mary

They all interact together, but we’re on Mighty Networks. I don’t know if you know what that is. It’s not Facebook, but it’s kind of like that. Like there’s a forum, a little more personal. And it’s separate, private. Exactly, it’s private.

Kat

That’s nice. I’m on two of those, but I kind of forget about it when I’m talking to other people.

Mary

There’s the downside. It’s not like somewhere people are already going, like, Facebook, that I feel like that’s the downside. They have to remember to go there.

Kat

Right? Yeah. But still, once you remember it I do think they came out with an app, didn’t they?

Mary

They do. They have an app. So that’s helpful.

Kat

Exactly. All right. Very cool. So people, we’re going to have the links in the show notes. Where do they go to look at the Book Incubator. And to apply. If they want to start with you.

Mary

They can just go to thebookincubator.com. Yeah, and they can apply there. And if they want to just kind of see a little bit of my teaching and stuff first. I also have a YouTube channel now. They could just search my name there, and it should pop up. It’s Mary Adkins with a “D”. And I do some teaching on my YouTube channel, too.

Kat

Awesome. Very cool. So we will have the links in the show notes for thebookincubator.com and then you guys can find out more about mary@maryadkinswriter.com and then I’ll have the link in the show notes to YouTube, especially for everyone listening and that doesn’t have a pen right now. Thank you so much Mary, for coming on and talking to us about the book incubator and your novels.

Mary

Thanks Kat. It was so funny.

The post Ep 190 The Book Incubator with Mary Adkins first appeared on Pencils&Lipstick.

Join me today as I talk with Lis Shaughnessy, found of the Writing Retreat Sampler. Lisa has taken it upon herself to not only find the writing retreats offered around the world, but to interview the hosts and bring all the links to one place, WritingRetreatSampler.com so that writers can have a better way of discovering the writing retreat for them! You can find interviews from the past and sign up to hear interviews from future writing retreat hosts (including me in July!) at her website https://writingretreatsampler.com/

You have one more day to sign up for the Write With Us! online retreat live. If it has passed, you can purchase the full seven workshops as a course here.

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Go here: https://pencilsandlipstick.com/support-the-show/

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TRANSCRIPTION STARTS HERE:

Kat

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Pencils & Lipstick. I am talking today with Lisa Shaughnessy. Hi, Lisa, how are you doing?

Lisa

Good, Kat. Thanks so much for having me here. I’m really excited to be talking to you today.

Kat

Me too. I’m glad that we’re not just on email. We’re talking, with voices. Semi see each other. So I will go into how I found you and how we set this up and what we’re going to talk about. But could you introduce yourself a little bit to everyone?

Lisa

Sure. So I am doing my current business. It’s been an interesting journey. So I was in the Air Force. I was military for 20 years. And then I joined the government after that, because that’s what people do in the DC area. So I’m in the DC area and you just naturally slide into that. Well, even when I was in the military and the government, I did my own thing. I didn’t realize at the time that I was entrepreneurial in this construct of ultra rigidness. So I try to do my own thing. And people let me for the most part, which was interesting. And then they stopped letting me do it. I got a new boss and she was like, no, no. So I said, well, maybe the government isn’t for me anymore. And I said, I’m going to start my own business. So in 2012, I started helping fitness professionals do their social media. It was all new. Everybody’s trying to figure out what to do social media stuff. And I did that. And then it segueed into where I’ve actually always been professionally, which is processes, process improvement, and customer relationships. So I started helping small businesses put their processes together, help them get their business in shape, and also help them with those important follow up messages that nobody does because that’s where the business is. It’s great to make connections, but if you don’t follow up with anybody, they’re not going to go anywhere. You’re not going to grow your business. So I did that for a couple of years until I really got burnt out on that. And in 2018, I decided to stop everything completely and write full-time. So I have been researching my family history for years, and I found some interesting stories along the way. So I started writing those. And yeah, that’s what led me into my current thing. But I really enjoyed writing and saw that there was… I had more ideas in my head. I had more stories, not just family stories, but it kind of sparked this creative juice I didn’t know I had.

Kat

That’s so cool.

Lisa

Yeah. And so I just started writing stories. And then I know we’ll get into it. But I did that for a couple of years until I realized I needed some help. And that’s what led me to where I am now.

Kat

Okay, that’s so cool. So I found you through a friend who found your Facebook ad. So I know I said this off recording, but I really want to put together writing retreats because I think that, I’m going to say especially women, because we’re always were working. A lot of women have the home life, the kids, whatever, and writing is very difficult to do. We all know that we can get our half an hour here, half an hour there, but wouldn’t it just be lovely to have a whole week? Isn’t that everyone’s dream where you don’t have to cook, you don’t have to do anything. And so that is my dream. And so a friend of mine found your Facebook ad for this writing retreat sampler. And so that was in March or February of this year, I think.

Lisa

February. Yeah, probably February.

Kat

So you put together all these speakers who run writing retreats. And I was like, There are so many. It’s amazing. So how did you fall into this writing retreat sampler? That’s the name of the blog, correct? WritingRetreatSampler.com, which the link will be in the show notes below. But how did you get into bringing people together to let writers know that this is a possibility we can have this time?

Lisa

Well, it came from my writing. So as I segued from creative nonfiction for the family stories, which the stories were written already, I just had to make them more like, readable. And I took courses. I don’t know if it exists anymore, but the creative nonfiction something had classes. So I was learning how to write true stories, but in a fiction way. And then when my other creative ideas came and I was writing actual books, stories, actually they ended up being novellas because I realized I can’t write a lot. I’m good at a novella, I said what I had to say.

Kat

That’s good. Lots of people only want to read a novella.

Lisa

But then I realized I didn’t understand the story structure. I didn’t understand how… My first writings, of course, everybody’s are crap, right? You just get everything down. They didn’t read very well. They weren’t very compelling. So I started looking around to find ways to help me with that. And there were some courses. I actually hired a book coach, which was great. She was wonderful. Actually, it was an author accelerator book coach. Yes. Years ago, this must have been… This was like 2018, 2019, and she was amazing. She helped me so much really understand the inside outline and all those things, how everything relates. But I needed a little bit more. I wanted, like you said, that concentrated time to really dig into this and learn from other people. And so I started looking for writing retreats, and this was fall of 2019.

Kat

Oh, no.

Lisa

I know, right? So the first problem was; I found all these blog posts that had lists and lists of the 80 best writing retreats. So I was a process person and I get out my spreadsheet and I’m plugging in the name, the website information, and then I’m trying to compare the ones that I liked, and it was still frustrating. I’m still looking at a spreadsheet and it’s not easy to compare or see which ones might be best for me. So I let that go a minute because then we’re coming into the holidays and everything. So I thought, okay, well, after we get back from vacation, I’ll start in the new year. I will find a writing retreat in the new year.

Kat

Well, we all had plans in 2020, to do so much.

Lisa

We did have plans. So I did find some and then March hit, everything shut down. So no writing retreat. But I still wanted to eventually go on one. And there was still the problem that it was really difficult to find one. There were a couple sites that had writing retreats, but they weren’t… I don’t know. To me, it wasn’t easy to use them, and there weren’t that many on there.

Kat

No, I agree, because when I was doing research to set one up, it was really difficult to just see, like, to find it, to Google it. And Google is like the number one search engine, right? So you’re just trying to find, I don’t know if we don’t care about SEO in the writing world or what, but I wanted to know, like, the veterans who have been doing it for years, what works, what doesn’t. I couldn’t find it. I found maybe five.

Lisa

So my first part of this was I decided to create a writing retreat directory, which is not up yet. It’s very close. It should be up, maybe even by the time this airs, it should be up. So I started working with a developer, website developer, and started going through that road. And it got delayed a couple of times for various things. But this past August, I was making connections with a few writing retreat hosts, but I was really ready to get ready. I wanted to connect people. I wanted writers to find these writing retreats. I wanted writing retreat hosts to be successful. So I was really frustrated that I had no way to do that. And I was talking to Kent Sanders, who was actually one of my retreat host speakers at the February Sampler. And back in September, I was talking to him and he suggested an online summit. And I was like, a summit? I’ve never heard of that. So I Googled it, like I said, I Googled it and found this online summit model. And I thought, well, maybe I could make it work for retreat hosts. Maybe I could do stuff that would help them with their business or something like that just to get started. And I was talking to one of my brothers who’s much more visually creative than I am. And he said, well, why don’t you not do that, but connect writers with the writing retreat hosts. Don’t connect the writing retreat hosts with people who can help in their business. Connect the writers. That’s what you want, right? And I was like, oh, yeah.

Kat

It’s always good to talk things through with another person.

Lisa

Yeah, the brainstorming. You get ideas that you’ll never think of on your own. I would never have thought of that in a million years. So after we got off the phone call, I immediately bought the website domain, WritingRetreatSampler.com, because that’s the only thing I could think of to name it.

Kat

Naming things is so hard, but I think it’s a good name. But it’s so hard. It’s so permanent.

Lisa

I know. I know. I was like, Well, that’s it. It’s done. And I made the website over the weekend. I just got some hosting and got a WordPress site going, threw up some general things, put a sign up box if you want to get notified. I’m doing the sampler thing. And then I just started cold calling, cold pitching retreat hosts. I didn’t know anybody. Kent Sanders was the only person in the whole writing retreat world I knew. But I was like, no, I’m going to do this. Okay.

Kat

You found 15, though? There were a lot of people in February. And there.

Lisa

Were more that were asking me if they could participate, but I had to keep it low because for one thing, I didn’t know what I was doing, and this was all very new.

Kat

And we all lose interest, unfortunately, life happens. You can’t.

Lisa

I contacted everybody in November. I had them lined up, and then I had the free event in February.

Kat

It was very good. It was really good. It was super informative. I was really excited about it because the lady that I’m putting together our retreat in Spain, we had been trying to find this information. And one of the biggest things that I learned on that one is we had a schedule set up for our writing retreat, and almost everyone that presented and had been doing it for years. It was like, no schedule, more than two things. And we were like, okay, scrap. It was so wonderful to listen and to learn from them. But it was also wonderful to hear how many retreats there are in different places in the world. And that to me, I was just like, oh, my gosh, I really want to go on one now. There are amazing places to go to.

Lisa

Yeah. And it was great because I had people who were present from all over the world and attendees. Well, not too much all over the world, basically North America and Europe. But yeah, I had somebody in France, somebody in the UK, somebody here, but her retreat was in Iceland. Yeah, it was amazing to bring all these people together. So that’s what I do. My whole career, my whole personal and professional life has been connecting and bringing people together. So it just comes natural to me. I find people who need to be together, I’m like, okay, you have to be together. Let’s introduce each other. Let’s build a community because that’s more what I’m doing, is I want to obviously help writers and help writing retreat hosts. But I really want to build this community where writers can get all the help that they need. They can find products and services that help them because I have sponsors. So for this next iteration, I’m having sponsors. And that way when people come to the event, they can visit the sponsor booths and they can interact with them. They can see what they offer, how that might help them, make them think of things they might not even know exist. Because we know there’s a ton of things out there for writers and it can be overwhelming.

Kat

It can be very overwhelming. And like you said, especially if we are learning to write or we’re starting a new genre or we just want that extra help. It’s amazing to me how many writers don’t… I don’t know if they have looked for help and they can’t find it. So then they just like, okay, never mind, I don’t need it. Or they think that they don’t need it. I think I need it. I think I need some help. But I think it would be lovely to be in a place where the atmosphere itself is writing. You know what I mean? The ideas are there already. And like you were brainstorming with your brother, even talking to another writer, What should my character do? I’m stuck here. And the ideas that they might come up with will lead you to what you need to do. That just sounds amazing.

Lisa

Yeah, I love that. And that’s why I like writing retreats. People ask me, Have you been to a writing retreat? Are you a writing retreat host? And I say, no, I haven’t managed to actually get to a writing retreat yet, but I understand the power of them. I know that, like you said, that in-person connection, that one on one time, or that alone time. Because like you said, even if you’re trying to get a 30 minutes in here, there, the way I write, that takes me 30 minutes to get back into the groove. What was my character doing? What was the setting? What was the scene? What happened? What happened up till now again, where you have to get back into that mindset. So by the time you’re back in the mindset, the laundry bell has gone off or you have to go to carpool.

Kat

You got to make dinner again.

Lisa

Again, right? Why do we have to do that every night?

Kat

Yes. And it’s lovely. I know when I started writing and I was with the kids and I finally got all three of them into school, all of them. I was daycare, every… And so I had four hours and I still had all the things but I could think about only my book because that’s all that I… The other thing that I was doing, all, it takes so much mental capacity. But now that I have a business and all the other things and then the book is in the middle, like you said, it’s difficult to spend all your mental energy on that book. So then when you sit down, you have to do it. And so what a retreat does is helps you just stay in that zone, I assume, because I also have not been to one yet.

Lisa

Because morning, noon, and night, you wake up and you’re surrounded by other writers, even at a breakfast table or lunch or just enough. Even if you go on an excursion, a lot of retreats have… Not a lot, but some retreats have local places where you can visit. Even going down some unfamiliar road in a town and talking about something can spark an idea. So you’re immersed in it, and that’s the difference. You’re immersed in this new environment with new people, different people getting just all these new experiences. And I think for a creative mind, that’s just like…

Kat

Yeah, it would be lovely, wouldn’t it? Yeah. So as you spoke to all the people for your first summit in February, was there anything that surprised you or that you learned or just kept you energized to keep going? But I guess that’s two different questions.

Lisa

No, it actually all ties in. Yeah. So having never done this and not knowing anybody in the field or the industry, I was very surprised that people said yes, they would do it, that they would speak, that they would not just put a presentation together and record it with me, but they would be there on the date and time of their presentation being shown and they would show up for the live chat. So just that commitment of time, because obviously they’re busy too, it was really nice. I just felt like such a generous community already. And then when writers, I know I’m going to… But when writers emailed me and said, Oh, this was so great. I’ve been looking for something like this. I had no idea that there were actually retreats out there. I didn’t know where else I could get help. Just putting this together has been really helpful for me. So that actually in some of these moments where I’m like, did I do the right thing? Because when you do something so completely brand new that there’s no frame of reference for and people don’t… Not that they don’t understand what it is, but they don’t have a set of frame of reference for it. They can’t compare it to something. So for them to say those really nice things, that keeps me going when I’m thinking, I don’t know, is this the right thing to do?

Kat

I think it’s lovely that you have a talent for bringing people together because I know in the writing world, lots of people have wonderful ideas. A writing retreat is a wonderful idea. You have to find the people. You have to get the word out there. And we’re writers and to be honest, we’re not awesome at marketing and we’re not awesome at business. That’s a whole new thing that has to be learned. And so to have you being able to like, let’s try to find this circle in this world to bring everyone together is an amazing idea. It’s very helpful for those who organize retreats and the writers, I would assume.

Lisa

Right. And that’s the thing. So what I like about the sampler is it’s not a pitch fest. It’s not retreat hosts giving up and just talking about their retreat. Obviously, that’s part of it because I want writers to see all the different kinds of retreats that are out there. But I have a specific format for the presentations, and their retreat information goes at the back. So the first thing I want them to do after telling a little bit about themselves is just tell the writers what a retreat will do for you. Why should they even attend a retreat? I want them to see the benefits and what they’ll get from it right off the bat. And then I ask them to talk about what to bring to a retreat because sometimes writers, they’re like, It’s new. I’ve never been there. What do I bring? What should I think about?

Kat

I always over pack.

Lisa

Right. And what’s nice about that is they talked about tangible and intangible things. So people are like, obviously bring weather appropriate clothes, but they’re also like, bring your imagination, bring an open mind. And if they have something specific to their retreat, we’re going to go hiking, so bring hiking shoes. It just gives writers more things to think about that they may not have. Then they described their retreat, the date location, all the things. And then I ask them to take the writers through a day. Take them through a sample day because, again, I want writers to get that feel for what it will be like. If they’re going to spend their time and money on something because retreats aren’t cheap.

Kat

They’re not cheap.

Lisa

I want them to know what they’re going to get. I want them to see that workshops are in the morning and hiking is in the afternoon. But if that’s not the retreat they want, then they should look at something else. So it gives them idea of what kinds of retreats are out there so they know what to look for when they’re looking for one for themselves. And then at the end, I ask them to tell writers how they can keep that momentum going. Great, you’ve got so much done at the retreat. You finished your manuscript. You’re all ready to do whatever. But then, of course, we go back to reality. Yes. So I want them to give them ideas and helpful hints and just all the tips they can about how to keep that momentum after they’re going. So whether you attend or are interested in the specific writing retreat at each Sampler event, you will still get something out of it because the retreat hosts are going to give you tips and ideas on before, during, and after a retreat. So it’ll just add to your list of things to think about and get in your mind what a retreat will do for you. So I would say even if you see the list of events and the specific retreat isn’t one you’re interested in, that you will still get a lot out of it and you will still get to visit the sponsor booths, which have a lot of good information as well.

Kat

Right. So you had one in February and now you’re having one again in May. So as this episode goes out, May 24th, so next week after the episode goes out, what prompted you to have one so quickly? Because that’s a lot of work. I know what work goes into all this and getting people and recording and putting it up. I mean, it’s a lot of work. So is there just that many retreats and many things to talk about?

Lisa

Well, what’s interesting is, talk about lessons learned. So when I did the one of February, like I said, it was the summit model. So I had, I think, five on Monday and six on Tuesday. And it was stack to stack and just bombarded. And if anyone’s not familiar with the summit model, you take away the replay pretty much after 48 hours unless people purchase your all access pass and they’ll get ongoing access to the videos and things like that. And that just didn’t sit well with me. I did it because I wanted to get this out the door, and it was a model that had information on how to put it together. So though I’m not overly technical, so I couldn’t have maybe figured it out. It would have taken me longer to do something different. So I went ahead and did the model. But the whole time I’m like, Oh, I hate asking for people to pay to just watch the dang replay. And also, as you said, it’s prerecorded. And then the live chat is underneath on the specific day. The prerecorded, I get it. It saves time and it’s not always easy to do live events. But again, the prerecorded, it just didn’t sit with me well. So these new iterations is it’s going to be one retreat host at a time. I’m going to do two a month and they’re going to be live. So we can do live Q&A.

Kat

Wow. Okay. So you’ve thrown away the summit model, which I think that we’re all moving away from summit model. Maybe not. Maybe I just don’t like it either. Very saturated. I don’t like it either because we all know what it is. And to be fair, you deserve to be paid. All these systems cost money, right? So I get it. People need to pay for things because systems cost money, software, time, all that. So you’ve thrown that away, though, and you’re going to just do every month do two live?

Lisa

Right. And I’m going to change out the timing. So I’m in the Eastern time. So I don’t remember if it’s the first. I have it somewhere. I don’t know where. So one Wednesday, I think the first Wednesday of every month, it’s going to be at 8:30 AM Eastern Time. And then the third Wednesday of every month, it’s going to be at 3 o’clock Eastern Time.

Kat

Okay. To sort of help out the world.

Lisa

Right. So the early morning ones, you can catch all the way up to through Europe. And then the later afternoon ones, we can go West Coast back. But the replays are always going to be available. They’re going to be available in Air Meet, which is the platform I’m using. They’re going to be on my website and they’re going to be on a YouTube channel. Nice. Yeah. So people will be able to go back. And even if the retreat’s over, like I said, you’ll still get a ton of information on how to prepare for a retreat and information. But again, you said things have to be paid for. So I’m getting sponsors.

Kat

Oh, wonderful.

Lisa

Yeah, which actually has been great. I love it so much because I’m now bringing another writing related businesses into the ecosystem. So I have three sponsors for the first one in May, and all of them are people I’ve either worked with or have researched and really love their mission. It aligns with helping authors and writers succeed, which is our mission, too.

Kat

Yeah, we all want to succeed.

Lisa

Right. So I cold pitch them. I obviously don’t have a long track record. I just have the one event. And I reached out to three different companies, three different businesses, and they all said yes.

Kat

Nice.

Lisa

So I have three sponsors for the first one, and I’ll be reaching out some more for the ongoing ones. So hey, if anybody out there has writing related businesses, services, hit me up. And if you want to be a sponsor on one of the events, just let me know because I always love to showcase more people who are helping writers.

Kat

Yeah. And I think that’s a wonderful place for those businesses, one more place for them to show because we can all do ads, but in that concentrated ecosystem, I feel like maybe they would have more success where writers would be like, Oh, this is sponsoring Lisa, and Lisa believes in them, and so I’m going to go and check them out, at least check them out because that’s what we all want.

Lisa

Yeah. And AirMeet has these great sponsor booths, so it’s a fun environment. It’s not just a static logo on a slide or something. So it’s actually, I think, more interesting.

Kat

Yeah, I think that’s a really interesting model. I do feel like it’s more work for you, though. I don’t know.

Lisa

Actually, it’s not because it’s one writing retreat host at a time. Instead of trying to get 13, 15 presentations, headshots, bio, all this stuff. That was a lot. And then I had to record them all before February. So having it spread out, it’s like you start one and then a couple of weeks later you start the next one because it’ll all be basically two weeks apart. So yeah, no, I’m finding it. And then, of course, I have my processes in place. So it’s just a matter of duplicating something I’ve already done. So once I got the first one down, it was just a matter of just repeating the process.

Kat

So you are getting some writing done outside of the business or not yet?

Lisa

I was. I am. So I do a cozy mystery on Kindle Vella, and I get episodes in. I try to get at least one episode in a week. So in the evening, I take my writing time. Our son’s out of the house. He’s gone and done and married and done his thing. So that’s my husband and me and the dog. So I just say, okay, I’m going to go into my office and write for a couple of hours in the evening and try to get that done. Because I still love to write. I still want to write. So it’s just a matter of thinking time for that.

Kat

Yes, it is. It’s like, we have these ideas and then, oh, yeah, I was supposed to be writing that. But I didn’t know you were doing Vella. How is that going? Do you like that model, the Kindle Vella? I do.

Lisa

I actually started it when it first came out. So I had episodes ready to go when it went live in was that 2021, April, June? I don’t remember. I feel.

Kat

It was during COVID.

Lisa

Which is a whole blur. I did like it. So I That’s where I put my family stories on under a pen name. And it was nice because you could write in chunks. You didn’t have to have a whole manuscript done before you had to put something out to the world. So I liked that I found an editor who did specifically Kindle Vella. So she was experienced in serial, that writing. So I’d send her my episode and she’d edit it and I’d get it up. So I did that for all my family stories. And then when I was thinking of something new to write, I always loved mystery. I always loved cozy mystery. I’m not a horror or thriller, blood and guts reader. But some ideas for a cozy mystery hit me. So I thought, Oh, you know what? I’ll just put that on Kindle Bella. And I have three seasons of that one up. So I’ve been writing that one for a couple of years off and on. Yeah, it’s fun.

Kat

So in the end with Kindle Vella, it’s almost like television. It’s a season. So there’s not… Do you have to finish it? Does there have to be an ending? How does that work?

Lisa

Some people do actually. For each episode, you mean? Or for the story?

Kat

For seasons? Is that technically a book? One season is one book?

Lisa

It is. Everybody does it differently, but it wraps up the initial whatever was going on the arc in that season. But you still have television. You wrap up whatever that season’s arc was, but there’s still going to be stuff in the next season that plays off of last season.

Kat

We still got to see if Ross and Rachel will ever get together.

Lisa

Right, exactly. So it flows through, which is why a series… And a lot of people use Kindle Vella for… I’ve seen poetry on there. People don’t necessarily use it for the serial, what it’s supposed to be. But I’m basically, every season is what would be like a book and it wraps up the mystery. But then stuff that’s going on in the protagonist’s life or the town or whatever, carry on throughout that. There’s a backdrop or a thread that goes through that they’re still working through.

Kat

And how are you plotting that? My biggest fear would I get out of first draft and then I completely tear it up, rearrange it and just mess it up. So I couldn’t put it out, like, episodically because it would end up being completely different by the end. So what is your process on how much do you know? How much plotting do you do?

Lisa

Very little.

Kat

This is very scary to me. Very little? Oh, my gosh. That’s so cool.

Lisa

Because it’s a mystery, right? I have to know the basics. So I know what the mystery is going to be, like who’s going to get killed. Well, actually, I don’t always know who’s going to get killed, but I know why.

Kat

Okay, why? That’s important.

Lisa

So what’s the mystery? What’s going on? Why is this going to happen? And what’s the outcome going to be? So I have to know the outcome sometimes. You’re going to laugh because I totally pantsed the whole thing. I have an idea, and then each episode I’ll make notes. And I use a story planner, an app called Story Planner, and you can do out scenes and you can do characters and you can do the plots and everything. And so I’ll plug my scenes into there. And if I had a character do something, I’ll write a note like, oh, make sure that I tie this up, that this comes back. And then sometimes I won’t know. I’ll be like, oh, man. Okay, have I box myself in the corner, what would happen now? So that’s what you lay back, you close your eyes and visualize. You’re like, okay, she’s walking down the street. Why would she do that? How would we get back to this plot point? And so I just make it up. And I’m like, Oh, okay. Well, they got together in the diner and talked it out. And I don’t know, next thing you know, they were in the cornfield.

Kat

Somehow. That’s awesome, though. Do you like that process where you use it? It sounds like you could stress yourself into a corner and then you’d get out of it. You brainstorm yourself out of it. I guess a little bit of pressure for the readers. Yeah, I do like it.

Lisa

I like it better than overly. And it cracks people up because I’m such a process person. I am a linear process person. But when it comes to writing, I think that’s why I like writing because it just allows this creative side that I don’t normally get to exercise. So I do like it because it makes me think. I like it. I’m like, oh, man, what would happen? Oh, why did that happen?

Kat

Yeah, you can’t really leave it. Yeah, you really have to get it done.

Lisa

Yeah. A lot of Google searching.

Kat

Your Google search is something the FBI would do.

Lisa

This latest episode, I ended up with… They were in the cornfield because this company was drilling for natural gas on this. It’s set in rural Pennsylvania, where it’s set and nobody knew. And so I had to Google, would there be equipment? Now that I’ve decided they’re going to be drilling for natural gas, okay, well, how would they do that?

Kat

Oh, my gosh. This lady is going to go out to Pennsylvania and drill for natural gas.

Lisa

Well, now she knows what equipment she needs.

Kat

That’s so like a writer. We think of these things and then we’re like, wait, how would that work? I got to not have it too fantastical. It’s got to have something…

Lisa

Right, a little bit grounded in reality. Yeah. So I have some general ideas, general things I want the plot to do and where I want my character’s arc to be. So I focus on her. Where is she going? What is happening in her life that moves her from more of an introverted shy person who hates her job to somebody maybe a little bit more risk taking, a little bit more outgoing, and she changes jobs and moves on with her life. So a lot of it that I do plan out more is how her life is going to be.

Kat

Her life, yeah. So you’re getting to know her really well if you have how many episodes? How many seasons?

Lisa

I’m in the middle of the third season.

Kat

Okay, yeah. So that’s fun. When Vella came out, it definitely was during COVID because I was moving to DC and I was in this tiny apartment and I was brainstorming and then I was like, no, I can’t do it. So I’m glad to hear it. I haven’t heard of anyone who is actually doing it. So how is marketing and things like that for it? Have you had time to do much? Does Kindle help you find readers or do people know what Vella is? How has that experience been?

Lisa

When I first started, I was more active on the groups and forums and things to promote it. I was all over Twitter and Facebook, and I have a website for my pen name, and it was just more active. And then once I got all the family stories out there and I just started writing, it’s Andy Schulbert cozy mysteries. Just do promos every once in a while through Free Booksy or Fuzzy Librarian. And those actually have a really good return. So Fuzzy Librarian.

Kat

So they have specifically Vella. Oh, that’s nice.

Lisa

Fuzzy Librarian does. And also every once in a while, Amazon will do a Kindle Vella thing. So if I get some spike… So I don’t advertise it at all. But if I get some spike in reads, I’ll be like, oh, okay, Kindle Vella must have been doing free token month or something. So it dribbles in. I just did a Fuzzy Librarian promo a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve had 350 downloads of my episodes this month without doing anything else. I haven’t mentioned it to anybody and people are finding it.

Kat

Maybe it’s like the beginnings of Kindle, basically, where there weren’t that many. So if you can write episodically, you might want to get in on it and see if you can find those readers. And it’s a fun idea. I just haven’t had time.

Lisa

Along with everything else, right? The podcast, the book coaching, the routine.

Kat

Add one more thing on there. No, but I can understand, especially city dwellers, your commute, especially if you’re using metro. Way back when, I would have definitely wouldn’t have to carry a book around if I could read a whole chapter. Anyway, well, that’s very cool. I’ll have the links in the show notes below so you guys can check out out. What is your pen name again?

Lisa

That’s Deena Bauer.

Kat

All right, we’ll have the links in the show notes if people want to check out your Kindle Vella. So let’s just get back to the writing retreat.

Lisa

Right. What were we talking about?

Kat

You could get three seasons on in a writing retreat. So this next May 24th is the kick off to this new set up where you’re going to have just one speaker.

Lisa

Yeah. So it’s going to be mainly memoir retreats. And this time it’s three women. They do, all three of them host the retreat. So it will be all three of them on there. But that will be the only time it’ll be a lot of speakers.

Kat

Very cool. And so how do people find the videos and sign up? And what is that process for you now?

Lisa

So on the WritingRetreatSampler.com, I have the events are on the front page, so they can just click on that and go through Eventbrite to sign up. And then from there they’ll get emails on how to enter the event once it starts and information from there. I’ll have the day before I’m going to open it up so people can visit the sponsor booths and get familiar with the platform because I think a lot of people haven’t used AirMeet. So it allows them to go in and get familiar with the platform before the day of the actual sampler.

Kat

Okay. And so then once they’re on your mailing list, will they get emails for every two weeks, like the new speakers?

Lisa

Yeah. So once they’ve signed up, they will be on my mailing list. And there’s options to opt into different types of email once you’re there. But I send out a weekly newsletter with blog posts, sampler updates. I try not to cram it too full of things, but I like to be able to be aware of sample updates, sponsor updates. I like to let people know about our sponsors and any blog posts that come up.

Kat

Right. And your blog is very nice. There’s quite a few blogs, not to brag, but I got to be on your blog.

Kat

That’s got a lot of hits, too. I was looking at my desk for it. Quite a few people have.

Kat

It’s nice, though. It’s another way that you’re bringing writers and their points of view and different things. So it’s nice to not have to do all the work, I’m sure, and to bring in other people’s expertise.

Lisa

Exactly. And that’s what I want. Like I said, the whole community, I want people to learn from each other. It’s not just me spouting from on high, like, this is it. This is it.

Kat

We run out of things to say if it’s just us, right?

Lisa

Yeah, but I do. I want people to get to know each other. I want they see you and your blog post, your guest post. Maybe they’ll visit your site and find out more about you or just your ideas. That’s my whole point. I want to bring as many writers, people in the writing ecosystem together. That’s my goal.

Kat

I love that goal. I am so on with that goal. So just to reiterate, everyone can find Lisa Shaughnessy at WritingRetreatSampler.com. We will have the links in the show notes. And we hope that you guys will sign up for the May 24th, Mainly Memoir. I assume that’s in May. That’s a very cute name. I like that. I highly encourage you guys to go to her blog. As I said, there’s lots of guest posts and Lisa posts there. Lots of information for writing. But thank you so much, Lisa, for coming on and sharing about the Writing Retreat Sampler with us.

Lisa

Well, thanks, Kat. Really appreciate you having me.

The post Ep 181 Finding a Writing Retreat with Lisa Shaughnessy first appeared on Pencils&Lipstick.

Chris K Jones decided to give it all up for his dream to write a story. What he found was that it wasn’t as easy as we all think it is. But after researching, courses and much perserverance Chris finished his first book. And now? He’s caught the bug and is writing another! Come hear about his journey to writing, marketing and learning this new business pursuit called being an author.

Find out more about Chris K Jones here.

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TRANSCRIPTION BEGINS HERE:

Kat

Hello, everyone. Today I have with me Chris K. Jones. Hi, Chris, how are you doing?

Chris

Hi, Kat. How are you? Thanks for having me on.

Kat

Of course. Thanks for coming. There are so many things to talk about today with your book Headcase. But before we get into it, would you just introduce a little bit about yourself to the listeners?

Chris

Sure. I am a recovering serial entrepreneur who always wanted to write and it was a sign of what I wanted to do, but I didn’t want to be a starving artist, so I went out and had a life as building companies and I was the chief financial officer of my company. So I was CFO by day and write at night and then finally got to a point, sold my company and I was able to focus on my writing and I wrote my first book. It came out a year ago, this month

Kat

Awesome. How does it feel to have the book? Like two different dreams, right? So you have your company that’s really cool to have built a company and then to be able to quit that and write a book and have it out, like, finish the book and have it out. Does it feel like a different kind of success?

Chris

Yeah, absolutely. Very different type of success, as well as just a very different experience of being. I kind of joked that I’m an extrovert in the world’s loneliest profession. I never realized that until we went into the pandemic, and my last day at the company I co-founded as chief financial officer, that was January 31, 2020. We went right into the pandemic. I kind of had a month to figure out how I was going to do with my writing and this and that, and then we went into the pandemic. So then it was really easy because I had nothing to do but write. Then I decided my attorney sent me a notice about Barbados, he’s from Barbados, and I’d been there many times and that they had this welcome stamp program. So in September 2020, I packed everything up and lived down in Barbados for close to two years.

Kat

Oh, that’s nice. They let you in during the pandemic.

Chris

Yeah, so they wanted people to come down because tourism was over. There was no tourists. So yeah, went down. I had a one-year visa, which I still have. I renewed the visa and I was able to write my first book from the beach. Yeah, it wasn’t too hard, but I did realize it was also motivating because I realized growing up with nothing and going out and working real hard and lots of sacrifice, I knew each day like, hey, this is the writer’s dream, so sit your ass down, get to work. So I had my process get up, exercise, meditate, and then sit down, writing. And yeah, I got to take a break and go for a swim and then come back. But that was the motivating factor because I knew other people didn’t have this opportunity that I did, and I had to take advantage of it. And yes, it was very great and motivating, and I had a lot of research I had to do. But with Google and Google Maps, there’s no excuse. If you’re a reader, if your reader is taken out by poor research, that’s on you, because there’s no reason for poor research. Everything is writing. I can use the searches that I did and found tons of articles was really amazing. So we’re very lucky as writers that we don’t have to sit in a library all day, that we just go out to Wikipedia, Google Maps for places where you’re getting pictures and images and things like that. And also fashion is, I do integrate fashion into my book about what he’s wearing. There’s pro athletes and he’s a psychologist, and I like fashion. So it was like finding the type clothes that they would wear. And women, I don’t know what women wear. So I had to research, like, label what the dresses were and make sure it was the right one and then check with my friends. I’m like, is this a good one? I think as writers, we’re really in a great place to be able to get all our research done so quickly. Well, you can write anywhere, in your home, you can be on the train, you can do anything, and you can really write anywhere you need to be.

Kat

Yeah, well, I love your attitude, though. Wherever you are, it is true that if you have the opportunity to write a book, no matter even if you’re writing it after work, if you have found the time to carve out that time to write, it’s awesome. Wherever you’re doing it from. And just having that, I think it’s the mental block more than anything to get over has like, seeing it as an opportunity and a blessing just to be able to get it out right. Write it down on paper.

Chris

That’s what I did. I know CFO by day and came home and wrote at night and yeah, it was hard. Luckily, I have a lot of neuroplasticity between both my right and left hemispheres of my brain, so I can make that switch from very analytical type of work. And then going into the creative, the interesting thing that I had to learn was my whole life as an athlete, coach, entrepreneur, I’ve been very results driven. Writing is process driven.

Kat

That’s true.

Chris

And that is not my best thing. So learning not just to create my spreadsheet with my pages per day and all my analytics and metrics and just say, just sit and write and enjoy the process, that’s very hard for me. So I’ve had to learn to reframe my brain and retrain it. And it’s okay that I only got 1500 words done today, that’s okay. Did I have a good experience? Did I feel that what I wrote was quality work? Do I feel that I’m continuing the arc of the characters and feeling good about what I did? And also working 12-14 hours days was routine. Six, seven days a week when you’re an entrepreneur. That’s the way it was with a startup. But I find that after 5 hours of good, solid, creative work, I was done. Dimishing returns after that point where it was just every once in a while I got in a real zone and I would put seven, eight, nine hours in. But it was pure joy, right? It was good, but I knew, like, after that 5 hours I could start seeing it and like, okay, I’m done.

Kat

Yeah, that’s true. And accepting that is really a battle as well. I’m really results driven, too. I need some way to measure what I’m doing and I can get almost addicted. So I have to put away the Google spreadsheet because in the end, like you said, if you put 5000 words down that you’re going to delete 4000 of them because you just push too hard, what’s the point?

Chris

You hit it on the head. The pushing part. Like, I can muscle a spreadsheet, right? I could just bang on it for however long. But you can’t muscle a manuscript. It has to just come, it has to flow. And you have to be willing to not just put the words down because you have this metric. The one thing I did have to do to feed, because I did have this constant CFO in my brain going, hey, what are you going to do? When are you done? What are the results? When are you going to make some money on this and this and that? And just to tell him to be quiet. I kept a timesheet. So, I logged my time every day. And so it took me when people say, how long did it take you to write? I can tell you exactly. 714 and a half hours.

Kat

Oh, that’s awesome.

Chris

Okay. From December 2020 to almost October, November 2021. So I started it in late 2020 and then finished it in 2021 and then published it in March of 2022. But it was good because I wanted to know, like, okay, how long does it take and what can I base the next one on? And be realistic. Also, versions. I mean, god, the published version was version 8.4, that many rewrites. Yeah, so I’m really big on version control that just comes from tech stuff. And it was really good. And I had two editors, designers, and my editors are great, and I learned a lot from them. But even then, I think the next time when I do this one, not only will I have my developmental editor and my line editor, I’m getting a proofreader too, because we all miss stuff and I think we got book fatigue. We definitely got book fatigue.

Kat

We know the story too well, right?

Chris

Yeah. And that proofreader you really need to find someone who is just… as one author told me, a friend of mine, he said, your proofreader should be annoying. If your proofreader isn’t just completely annoying and questioning you on every little thing, they’re not doing their job.

Kat

That’s a funny way to put it.

Chris

Yeah. They should be absolutely almost like on the spectrum type of just beyond anal. And that’s a good, good thing because they’re going to catch stuff that you’re going to like, oh, crap.

Kat

Well, it’s interesting because you’re an entrepreneur that takes a certain personality, but you seem very humble in like because a lot of writers don’t do well with editors, multiple editors. We just feel like, oh, you’re changing my baby. It feels very personal to people. So having a very anal proofreader, I can imagine quite a few writers would just be very upset about that and almost take it personally.

Chris

Well, I guess that’s part of the advantage because to me, best idea wins. And I don’t care where it comes from. I want Headcase to be in my series. I want it to be the best product. And I don’t have a problem calling my art a product and I want it to be the best product that it can, because I’m writing this to not only entertain and it covers… about the book real quick. So Headcase is about Dr. Andrew Beck, who’s the go to sports psychologist for troubled athletes. And there’s not a head he can’t fix except his own. So when his own childhood traumas and gambling addiction gets the best of him, he makes a bet using his insider knowledge on his athletes. And it leads him down this dark path of blackmail, mysterious murder and life or death bluffing. And while it’s a thriller, it also talks another part of his about mental health and sports as a competitive athlete, spending time around athletes and Olympians and learning just some of the issues that they go on their off field and just how many of them had traumatic and horrific childhoods growing up and being able to really talk about that. You are seeing in many places, like in shows where there is a psychologist, like in Ted Lasso, but you never see it in session, where you’re in session with Andrew and his clients. Where he’s very compartmentalized. He’s great with his clients, but then he can’t even see his own addictions and his own traumas and what they’ve done to him. Yeah. The mental health part is part of it as well. So I want this to be something that people, one, they just enjoy. They pick up 20 minutes before they go to bed and they had a little bit of enjoy. They get a break from their difficult life. And if I can do that, if I can entertain them, then I’ve succeeded. Whether I sell one book or a million, it’s really the people who, the emails I get back and saying how much they enjoyed it and they’re actually pretty surprised because I think no one had very high expectations, including my mom. So I have a quote on my website. So I bring my mom down to Barbados and she’s reading like, a draft and she’s going through it. And every time she finds like a little typo, she gets all excited. And then she’s about three quarters of the way through and she turns to me and goes, Chris, I didn’t think it was going to be this good.

Kat

Thanks, mom.

Chris

You want to restate that? So, yeah, a lot of my friends and people I knew and colleagues, they bought the book just to help me out, but then they wrote back like, wow, this was really good.

Kat

Oh, that’s nice.

Chris

Yeah, it’s nice to know because people never saw that side of me. Writing, it’s something I always want. I always say that was the best form of therapy I ever had and being able to be present with what I was feeling and how my characters can make me feel. And I’ve been in a cafe writing and get choked up. Is anyone seeing me because of what my characters are going through? And sometimes people have said, are these real people? I’m like, no, I’ve made them all up.

Kat

Right. But you drew from your experience of just 20 years in the business of sports and coaching and all that.

Chris

Yeah, I worked as a young man in professional sports teams, but it was a lot of my own competition and just I competed in judo. I was a wrestler in college and then competed in judo and then also coached soccer and just things I saw, things I spoke to research with other athletes, spoke to Olympians and other athletes, and just a lot of research. Michael Phelps’ Weight of Gold was really, you should watch that. That just tells how tough it is for even gold medal winners. I asked that to a lot of people, like, who do you think are the most happiest the gold, silver, or bronze winners? So who would you think are the most happiest gold medalist?

Kat

I feel like it’s a trick question.

Chris

So go with that.

Kat

I guess we would always say gold, but now I feel like you’re going to say silver.

Chris

The bronze medalist medalists, because a lot of times they weren’t even expected to win. So they’re happy they got a medal.

Kat

They got up on the podium.

Chris

Or, if they were expected to win and they just had a bad showing, they’re motivated to go back and go, interesting, next is a silver medalist. Because they made it. And even though they just missed that, it’s the same thing where they expect it or not if they’re expected. Okay, just came up short. I’m going to work harder. But the gold medalist, after all this fanfare, they go home and people have moved on, and there’s like this emptiness about 30 to 60 days after the games, where some of them, really, even someone in my own sport, he committed suicide. And it’s not unusual for a lot of athletes to commit suicide because of just the depression and just the let down. And like, what do I do now? What happens? I’ve hit the pinnacle. I’m 20 something years old. Yeah, it’s really quite interesting, all the research that came through about athletes, and, yeah, they go through a lot, and they’re starting to get sympathy, which is great, but they don’t get a lot because, wow, they’re rich, famous, they’re playing a game, they have everything they want. Why should I feel sorry for them? But everybody deserves compassion. Everybody deserves understanding, and it doesn’t matter where you came from, but what most of athletes had to come through in order to just be a professional. You’re talking about just small.

Kat

Like giving up their childhood, really, to become a professional, right?

Chris

Then even after. So I even cover that in the book about what happens when it’s all over and you’re in your 20s, maybe 30 years old, and your career is over.

Kat

That’s so crazy, isn’t it?

Chris

This is all you’ve done since the time you’re six years old. You don’t know anything else, right? That’s how dealing with that, and I dealt with that in the book as well.

Kat

It spans a lot of information then. So you had to do all this research, but at the same time, that’s a little depressing. How did you deal with that, just yourself as a writer, if it was just a tough day of research?

Chris

Yeah, I think it was my job as the storyteller to really tell what’s going on. And yes, there’s things like if I read them aloud or this or that, I get choked up every single time. And it’s interesting. It’s like I wrote it, right? Just like saying things I laugh at every time. I’m like, is that egotistical of me? Or like, I laugh at my own joke? But it’s funny. And the same thing. There’s things that just get me every single time that will bring a tear to my eye and choke me up. And it’s just hopefully the reader is getting that impact, too. When they talk about the things that happen in their families and how their childhood was. And so much really does go back to that and the generational trauma. So, yeah, I take it. No, it’s kind of hard to be depressed when I look up and 85 and sunny every single day. I will tell you this. There were times when after days of doing this, I would get up. I’m like, I need to see a real human being. Funny people in my head. Like, I need to see what a real human and go out and talk to people, because you do get caught up. And the same thing, while I was going through all the bookmarking stuff and readings and doing things, there was a time in the fall I was like, I miss my characters. I haven’t hung out with them in a long time. I actually remember feeling like, oh, I miss them.

Kat

Yes, writers are weird when it comes down to that point of like, I haven’t been alone all day, but I have been alone all day and I need yeah, we get a bit weird, don’t we? So I do want to ask you because you’re, you know, a CFO by day. Like, I’m married to a CFO, so that’s a lot of work. You guys are always working. I mean, now you get to write for a living, but how did you find the time to learn how to write a psychological thriller? I feel like that’s a big step right there. That’s not just like, oh, I’m going to write a short story, or I’m just going to write a memoir. I feel like psychological thriller that takes some plotting and some planning, and things have to come together, right? And research and all that. So did you wait until after you quit to really learn the structure of that, or did you do it before?

Chris

No, it was like 2016. I really started to take my writing seriously. I started doing playwriting. I got accepted to our local theater and I wrote a play called Twisted Metal about two Marines and their PTSD. I tend to write about mental health more than anything. And then I came up with this idea for Headcase. And I actually started out as a TV pilot, and I hired a screenwriter to teach me the business because I was way too busy running my company and teach me how to write that. And then I wrote it. Of course, you submit it to contest. It got destroyed. They just ripped the shreds and you do it all over.

Kat

They just love that, don’t they?

Chris

Yeah, that’s all right. And then we went into the writing, and I worked on that for a while as a screenplay. It started to do well. I won contests in England and Toronto and LA. So I won a bunch… of New York, a bunch of contests. I thought okay, great. And then the writer strike happened. And then we went into pandemic, and I asked a person in the business, I’m like, what should I do? Should I turn it into a novel? She’s like, yeah, do that. I’m like, okay, great. And so I had to learn now, after spending years of writing dialogue, I’m very comfortable with writing dialogue. I love dialogue. It’s a lot of fun. I had to learn to write narrative, and I was that’s probably why I went to screenplays over doing a novel in the beginning, because I just really enjoy the dialogue. But what I found was surprising was the narrative. I was dreading the narrative. I was absolutely dreading it. But it gave me a lot of freedom because now I can because in screenplays, the writer is not supposed to direct from the page, not supposed to say what the actor should do, what they should think, look. But now I’m the cinematographer. I’m the director, and I can tell how Andrew is feeling. And I take him through. So you really are with him all along. You know what he’s thinking, what he’s feeling in his body, what he hears, what he tastes sounds like. I really made it very experiential, so the person really goes on. And then the narrative was freeing for me because I was able to now really get into his head. I told it from a single point of view. It’s only from Andrew’s point of view. And that was a choice. I thought was also recommended by one of my editors, just do that. So you are really with him all the time. He makes bad decisions. And yet it’s interesting when he’s this flawed hero that people still feel for him, and he’s like, come on, what did you do? He’s always like because his trauma gets involved, and he just makes bad decisions, even though he’s smartest guy in the room or thinks he is.

Kat

That’s interesting. I mean, I talk to on the podcast all the time about this idea of learning the craft. So it really sounds like you were very open from the beginning to just learn, because I think that’s another ego trip. Sometimes that ego block that writers trip over is like, if I have a story in my head, I should be able to get it from my head to the paper with minimal intervention from experts. I just find that is pretty prevalent. But just because we have a talent of storytelling doesn’t mean that it can get from brain to paper easily.

Chris

Right. I am not concise. So having an editor that helped me become more concise, but also that just comes from years and years of martial arts training. There’s always someone bigger, better, faster, stronger. You’re always going to get your butt kicked at some point or not. So you learn humility pretty fast, especially in judo, where it’s a Japanese art and you’re just going in with a big ego, you’re going to get your butt kick. A lot of this just being in team, I think humility is really important. And again, if my goal is to produce the best possible work, if a five-year-old’s got a good idea, I’m going to use it. I don’t care, right? If you came up with like, oh, wow. Now, that being said, right? So if a reader is taken out and they tell me about it, I want to hear what they have to say, no matter what. Even though I think it’s the best bit of prose I’ve ever written in my entire life, if it took them out, I want to understand, why did it take you out? What happened? What was it about that would take you out? Was it the fact? Was it the feeling? Was it the wording? And I want to know that. So then I can go back. And if someone gets taken out now, if they say, Chris, you know what you should do with that character? You should do blah, blah, blah, blah. That’s your story, I’m going to write mine. You can keep that, right? There’s a difference. But any reader who says they were taken out by that, by anything, they were taken out of the story, I need to consider it. And I may say, no, that’s you, right? But more than likely, I bet there’s a way I can make that more clear. I bet there’s a way that I can make it more concise. I bet I can make it more powerful. So I see it as a challenge, right? As like, okay, that didn’t work for you. Let me see, can I go sharpen that tool a little bit more? And that’s just going to make me a better writer. So, yeah, going through it with a good dose of humility, I didn’t really think about it like that. I just want the best story and I’m hiring an editor to help me make it the best story. So, I mean, I spent the first part of my career, my first company was advising people as a consultant and kind of working with startups. And there was nothing more annoying when I could see stuff happening. And they’re paying me to give them advice and then they don’t follow it. So the same thing now. It’s the other way around. I’m paying people for their advice. I’m going to follow it. I’m going to do what they say because they’re the expert and I’m the newbie. I’m talented, I believe I can tell a story, but I’m still maybe a yellow belt. I still have a long way to go. And that’s the exciting part for me because I know I’m going to improve. I know book two is going to be better than book one.

Kat

Right. I love your attitude about it. I’ve heard that about martial arts because I think writing is, as you’ve said, a very solitary career, right? And so you don’t have that team aspect. You can get very shut in into your office or your space or at the beach, wherever you write, but that outlook is very correct in just like, seeing it as a challenge and seeing it, how can I get better? And I want to be better at this. We also have to realize that editors are experts and so they’re going to tell you the best, right? So just having that attitude. I love getting editing back now as an “older” writer, putting quotes around that everyone. And I think this is part of the journey also of just like hitting a certain part of life, right, where you realize, yeah, it’s okay if I don’t have all the answers. You spent years gathering all these answers, so please now give them to me and mark up my page and let me see what it is and just having the confidence to be able to take what I need to and learn and keep going. So you said that this is going to be a series or are you writing one? Is it going to follow the same doctor or how is that going to go?

Chris

Same guy, I leave it kind of a little bit of a cliffhanger where he’s in trouble. So now I’m working on book two, now. I was hoping to get it done last year, but definitely the book marketing side I struggled with.

Kat

Book marketing is rough, isn’t it? It takes time. Let me ask you this. Why did you choose indie publishing over traditionally published?

Chris

Because I was not what any of the publishing companies are going to look for.

Kat

Really? Why do you think that?

Chris

Yeah. I just don’t think the voice of a middle aged, white male they’re not looking for okay. Anyway.

Kat

And they’re about to collapse.

Chris

I think the other side, too, is from my research, they don’t do that much for you. And my friends who I spoke to, they didn’t help with the marketing. And one of my friends, they actually launched three other books the same week that his was coming out. They released…

Kat

The same house?

Chris

Yeah. And he wasn’t pleased about that. You still have to do most of the marketing yourself. I am fortunate that I have the resources where it wasn’t a big deal. And Amazon makes it really easy. They do make it super easy.

Kat

And you earn more money just to come down to the nitty gritty. You’re going to do the work anyway. You must be pretty comfortable with the idea of this is a business because you’re an entrepreneur. I think that all writers these days, even traditionally, but mostly us indie writers are entrepreneurs. That’s what you’re doing. You’re creating a business, right? An entertainment business.

Chris

Entertainment, yeah. Marketing was never my strong suit.

Kat

You’re learning writing and marketing.

Chris

Yeah. And I’m really bad at it. I don’t think that way. I’m a pretty smart guy and really good with analytical finance strategy and on the creative side. But when it comes to things on marketing, my brain just doesn’t really think about those things. And when I do, I’d rather you just punch me in the face than have to do it. It would be less painful, I think. So, everything to do with it now. I love giving book readings. I love being out in front of people. Like I said, I’m an extrovert. I can do Q&A all day, these types of things. I love doing this stuff. It’s fun for me. But if you want me to be the one to go out and get the people to be it in their seats, just break my finger. It’ll be easy. Yeah. So now in the next book, I’m going to do it a little bit better and find people who can help me. I don’t like social media. I don’t think about posting stuff. It’s just not something, although extroverted, I’m not a person who wants to broadcast my life. And I just don’t think about things that and then things that are actually useful, you know, where I’ve talked to other people and you know, it’s just it’s just not an area like so I’d rather not do it. So I just have to figure out a way. I did investigate in some ads. I thought that was a waste of money.

Kat

Well, and it’s harder starting out, as they say, with every book, it gets easier for people to find you. It’s horrible to hear, but when I was writing, way back when I was a student and my first manuscript got rejected and Orson Scott Card was sitting in my boyfriend at the time’s restaurant, and he was serving him. He didn’t know who he was because my husband doesn’t read. He reads nonfiction. So Orson Scott Card is there, and he was telling him her manuscript got rejected. What should she do? And he said, write another book. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I can’t believe he said that. But it’s true. It’s true, isn’t it? You just write another one.

Chris

I think I also had unrealistic expectations just because in that case, where my startup mentality came, everything goes pretty fast. You’re really moving light. And this is a glacial business. I have worked in 37 different industries, and this is the hardest to break in for the least amount of return on investment.

Kat

Oh, my gosh.

Chris

From my experience and the amount of money, I paid it right, so I don’t think I get paid. I paid it right, but I do think it’s still… so for me, I’m trying not to think of it as a business, because then when I started launching the book, I did, and the CFO creeped back in and kind of took over and really killed the creative voice. So I think the other thing is just producing a bunch of books. I saw an article in the Times about this romance writer. I forget her name, but she had the top seven books in romance.

Kat

Colleen Hoover?

Chris

Yeah, I think so. And then I looked at like, I said, all right, I’m going to look up each one of those books. I’m like, oh, 2006, 2008. So I’m looking at mine, I’m like, I’m six months into this, very unrealistic expectations that this takes time, it takes years. So I said, you know what? I’m just going to focus on getting the second one. Let me get my process down. Let me get my writing process down. Let me get better as a writer. Let me really improve in my craft. And I’ll worry about sales and things like that later, or just I believe that I’ll come across the right people in the right place. And who knows? It could be two years from now. And then all of a sudden it’s picked up as a show or an athlete reads and goes, oh, my god, you got to read this. And he’s got a gazillion followers. And then all of a sudden, you just don’t know.

Kat

I think Colleen Hoover got it because people were TikToking it, and she wasn’t. It was another reader. So I think you’re right, and I think this goes into mental health as well as for writers, is just really reminding ourselves, right? This is an art. Art is glacial, and it’s just like inch-by-inch and at the same time just keep writing. Because that feeds us, right? We want to write. We have the stories in our head. We want to get it out. And just knowing little by little, I mean, I think it’s great that Colleen Hoover got to that point, but not everyone is Harry Potter lady Rowling. They knew where this was going and what they could get from it. That’s after like, 50 rejections or something that she had, right? So just knowing that and reminding ourselves of that is always good, I think.

Chris

I think it’s so hard to tell when it’s going to get picked up and whatnot and when something hits the zeitgeist as mental health and sports is starting to get rich, people as athletes are coming out and talking about it, it’s really great. But who knows? So this year after feeling even and my best friend is great, and I wouldn’t know what to do without him because I’m so results. I’m like, oh, man, I really failed last year. He’s like, you put out your book, you put out the audio. You won several awards. How is that a failure? Because I’m looking at numbers, right? I got my first royalty check, and it was less than 1 hour of my consulting time. I’m like, oh my god. But then I said, luckily enough, I don’t need this to live on. I have other things to do. I can focus on it. And I know that’s not for every writer, but I also think if you go into writing, for the money. Unless you’re a nonfiction, if you’re a nonfiction author and you’ve done well in business and you have, like, a methodology, and you’re putting that in, and that’s going to lead to speaking engagements. And that’s your business. And your book is your calling card. Great. That’s awesome. And that’s usually where the top 10% of writers think there’s less than 10% who make over 150,000. And most of that’s from speaking, not from their writing. But that’s okay. That’s okay. This is your calling card. Love it. I love nonfiction, too. If you’re a fiction writer, if you’re going in it for the money, I think that’s a tough thing to do. I think it’s kind of like being a day trader and expecting to pay your mortgage with your day trading. I think that’s a very dangerous point. And I think also writing to market, one, you don’t know, you don’t know. And I honestly don’t think that anyone really knows what’s going to be a success, what’s not. I mean, for every Silent Patient there is. And I love his book. I loved it. Alex Michaelides, that just his first book hit. But that was so many years as a failed screenwriter and then his first book, boom.

Kat

Right? You always have to look behind, right?

Chris

But that’s the exception, not the rule. So one of the things I did for a series is I went and read David Baldacci’s first book, John Grisham’s first book, and Lee Child’s first book. And I wanted to compare where I was compared to where these wonderful authors that I love and adore, and I want to see, all right. Their first book, right? Same thing. All right.

Kat

That’s interesting that you point that out, though. Their first book. Not their latest book.

Chris

No, I went back to their first one, right, and see, like, okay, where am I compared to them? Like, okay, I think I’m holding my own. I think I told a good story, not kind of compared to what their sales did or this or that, but just like this story. Where were they in their journey? Where am I in my journey? And I’m just a beginner. And I think keeping that beginner’s mind is important because you stay excited and you stay motivated, and you want to just tell your story. And hopefully for me, how I want to measure success is that some person someday comes up to me and goes, Chris, because of your book, I changed what I was doing. I got help. I stopped whatever I was doing, whether it was drugs or alcohol or gambling, and I got sober and straight. If someone said that to me, I think, oh, my god, then I succeeded because I influenced some person’s life, right? And I made them make a change.

Kat

You went into this really thinking, and I think that’s great to have more than just the story, but mental health is really important to you, right? And you said, even for yourself, writing was a therapy for you. And I’ve heard several authors say that their first book was just, like, the best therapy that they could go through. So you went into this with that really focus of mental health. Was it mostly for men? Like, focusing on mental health for men or just mental health?

Chris

No, I mean, every character in there has got their issues, every character. Obviously, I’m coming from a male perspective, and I’m still working on my female voice. One of my readers, one of my readers, she said it was a very interesting look into the male psyche.

Kat

Oh, that’s cool.

Chris

This is, like, how men think. I’m like, Well, I didn’t write it like that. I’m a male.

Kat

I’m a male, and I think this.

Chris

How my character thinks.

Kat

Well, but you’ve been around a lot of sports, is dominated a lot by men, right? So, I mean, that’s cool because a lot of books are more female psyche.

Chris

That was interesting. It wasn’t my intent, right? But I think it’s very important to work on. But I have very strong female characters. I grew up around very strong women my mom, my grandparents. I grew up with very strong women in my life, and I like strong women characters. And I think the women in Headcase are also very strong. It’s very interesting when some of the guys would come back and one of their favorite characters was this very strong, feisty, redheaded, Scottish woman, Lori, and she didn’t play around yet. She had a good heart and was really trying to protect Andrew from himself in this gambling den, the Five Iron, where they were from her boss Fergus, and who was really getting him into a really deep, dark place where he could control him. So it’s interesting. One of the feedback that I got and people really like that character and yeah, she’s a badass. And I like writing strong female characters. I’m learning my female voice. I’m not an expert at it, I write males very good. And I write kids voices very good.

Kat

Oh, that’s awesome. Hey, we can’t do everything perfectly, but is mental health going to be a theme going forward throughout the whole series, do you think?

Chris

Yeah, definitely, with this and everything else, even other books I have that I have my list of things to do to get through. I think mental health is always going to be a part of it because I think it’s something that we all have. We all have our traumas and we all have our experiences. I had mine and helping work through it. I had eating disorders and from trying to lose weight for wrestling, and I was bulimic for many years just so I could eat and then make weight. And that did a lot of damage to my head, my body issues. I didn’t prepare well to go on because I just wanted to beat the scale. I was fighting the scale, but that’s why judo was so great for me. It was actually my Buddhist teacher was the one who told me to take judo and it changed everything for me because I went out in a very healthy way with a healthy mindset. I didn’t cut weight, I played my natural weight. I had fun with it and I really was focused on the opponent and I did really well. I won a lot and I won tournaments and it did quite well. So, yeah, mental health is always going to be a part of anything I write because I just think it’s so important that it’s something I work on every day on myself. I think that’s great, how to have a good approach to life and make a difference. At this point, I just want to be able to make a difference and hopefully I can do that with my writing. I want to ask your opinion on something. I’ve been thinking about this with this whole I know this is off track with this ChatGPT thing or IPT, whatever it is, and people now writing books through AI. I thought about writing in my next book. Like, none of this book was done with using chat or GPT. Yeah. None of this book was inquired using artificial intelligence.

Kat

We might have to start doing that.

Chris

Some people know. This all came from my brain. I don’t think an AI engine, which I actually have a company that uses AI, can write the characters that I can write.

Kat

No, I don’t think so

Chris

Don’t feel threatened by it.

Kat

No, exactly. Everyone is seeing, unfortunately, what it’s doing is it’s causing, especially in the short story world, it’s causing a traffic jam. So people have started to push send them in. And so all the literary magazines and that sort of world, they’re getting inundated with just this junk. And so now there’s this contest that I love doing, NYC Midnight. And they now have a whole terms and conditions there. If it even smells slightly of ChatGPT or AI, they’ll just toss it. And I think that’s good. But of course, there’s trolls everywhere now, so they’re just going to make this sort of traffic jam we talked about. You got to sell that book, man. Go ahead and get a ChatGPT to spit it out. Good luck selling it. That’s the rest.

Chris

Well, I think the next thing will come is just someone’s going to come up with just an AI detector.

Kat

Yeah, probably.

Chris

Right. So you have the offense right now. You’re going to come up with defense, right? So same thing. If this one person has this one move that you can’t beat no matter what, someone will come up with a defense to it. So the next thing that’s going to come out is an AI detector. Oh, yeah, we did. Because I’m sure the universities, they’ll sell it to all the universities because all the teachers are concerned about kids doing plagiarism. And to me, that’s an ethics issue. And I think that’s a failure in ethics that you feel like because of all these cheat codes and games and you hear about these hacks rather than this is hard, and it’s good to do very hard things in life. It takes sacrifice. I made a lot of sacrifices in my life.

Kat

It builds character, right?

Chris

Yeah. And I don’t think you get anywhere without hard work, sacrifice and skill.

Kat

Yeah. I don’t think you’re going to feel good about yourself either if you take the easy way out. Great. You wrote a book. ChatGPT wrote a book for you. Okay, what does that even mean? You didn’t write a book. You slapped your name on something that a robot created. And technically the robot didn’t create it. They took it from the millions of places that it sees on the web. So they took the words of other people to put into your book. So you’re right, it is just an ethics problem. And I don’t worry about it because people, if they want the magic pill, I can’t do anything about that. I would rather struggle with my characters and write. We miss our characters. We got to go write with them. I don’t know.

Chris

Write yourself into a corner and then.

Kat

Go into despair and then eventually have your mom say, this is good. I mean, that is like the best thing ever. Don’t worry about it, guys. Just keep going.

Chris

Just get through it. Just put in the time, put in the sweat. Like you said, Kat, that you’ll have something that you’re proud of. So I’m very proud of it. The audiobook, actually, the audiobook is amazing. The actor who did it, I had 60 different speaking parts, so I had to count them all. And he did all of them. And so I got New York accents, New England accents, two Scottish characters. All different people from different places. He was amazing. PJ. Oakland an award winning audio. And it was for me. I totally recommend it. If you can swing it, like hearing your work read by someone else, it’s really wonderful. And he’s a professional, trained actor, so he bought my characters alive. And the audiobook is absolutely fantastic.

Kat

That’s cool. That’s my next step. I’ll be doing a Kickstarter to get some audio in there. But I love I mean, there’s that other question, too, of using AI for audio. And I understand both sides of the argument. It sort of brings down the cost. But then I feel bad for the actors. I haven’t quite decided on that one.

Chris

I think what I would do for that is when I feel like my book was done I might use that AI audio for myself and my editor and like, all right, how does it sound? But then eventually give it to a real actor because there’s just going to be an energy, honestly, not to get too wooish, but there’s an energy that they bring to it that a machine does not and cannot. It’s not capable. And that energy is going to resound and connect. Think about the books that you’ve listened to, like Artemis from Andy Weir, that Rosario Dawson did. I can listen to that all day long because she’s amazing. Yeah, right. And you find those actors that you’ve listened to and they bring something to it. That’s true.

Kat

You can’t beat it. Honestly, a good actor on audio, there’s nothing better. Especially when they can do the accents.

Chris

Yeah, and mine were tough. And I think using it for yourself like I’ll use on Word, the read feature, because I want to hear it, too. And I think that’s a good thing. I think using it for yourself as a training tool. But as far as the publishing, I get it. I understand because money is money and this stuff isn’t cheap, it’s expensive. But I think if you think of your book, your art, that it has to be the best possible and bring out like you want it to touch somebody and affect them or just entertain them, right? And I think that’s what happens when you confuse the money part with I got to get it out there. I got to make it money and this and that with just this is the creation of something from your brain and your mind and sharing it. And that’s easy for me to say and I understand that because I don’t have to rely on my book writing. But it is something I think that’s important and it’s hard for me to remember that too, because it is because I have brain.

Kat

It’s good to be realistic as a writer too, though, that most people, if they’re on their own income, if they’re the primary income holder, the chances of quitting that job to become a full-time writer are pretty low. In fact, we interview people because of that. Those people who have made it that far, again, have been in the industry for a while, and in kudos to them, they work hard at it. It is a full-time job, and they’ve figured out a way to do it, but there aren’t very many. And so, just to be very realistic about, why are you writing? What do you want from it? Have your dreams, but also be realistic. And lots of people do other things. The majority of the indie authors that I know who work full time, me included, I make my money teaching over selling books. Now, is it still my dream to get to the point where I sell those books? Absolutely. But I need a couple more. I have three out, three more coming. But I have learned, I think, especially when you are starting out, of course, you have those dreams, like one book, and it will hit. At the same time even if it does hit, it will eventually fall off. It’s an art form. People move on, they’ve read the book. They told their friends, they read the book. Now they’re on to other things. There are people out there that read like 300 books a year. It will fall off. You will have to write another book, unless it’s the nonfiction calling card. So why are you writing? And so I always tell people that I coach, like, is this something that fulfills you just because you’re writing and you’re learning and you just love it, then it’s worth doing, even if it can sometimes make you want to punch a wall.

Chris

Yeah, absolutely.

Kat

I was doing my taxes and I was like, Look, I earned $15 last month. And it’s just one of the my husband was asking me, like, what what happened this month versus that month? I said I wasn’t doing promotions, I was doing something else. So it is one of those things. I know Kirsten Oliphant, she spends 5000 a month, or at least did to make 5000, so she would sell. So that it’s just all it’s a business. And once you get to that point, you have 20-25 books. It’s a business. You have to constantly be selling it. You have to be spending the money. And it’s just constantly changing that mindset.

Chris

If you think about the business model and why it’s so difficult and why I said this one is with many businesses, you have a subscription model, so right. Your book cost $20. They’re paying $20 a month for something. This person, you had this time and effort to acquire the customer, they buy one book. It’s only one book at a time. And now you got to do the whole thing again. Right? It’s not like they’re buying a book every month from you or it’s not repeatable where you get that customer and you have them forever. And the only bad thing about Amazon is you never know who your customers are. So you don’t have that type of relationship. And again, where I struggle with I’m like, build your mailing list. How? Every time I pray is like, how do you do that? Yes, I went through the people that I know and yes, they joined and this and that, but okay, how do I get people who don’t know me? So these are really hard things to do. And again, it’s a model where you get sell one book, you make $4 or $5 at most.

Chris

And you got to go find the next.

Chris

You can’t even buy one of Starbucks with that. So it’s very interesting. And you spent all this effort time, you did a reading, you did that, you may never see them again. They might not write a review.

Kat

And you’ll do a promotion where you’ll put it on sale, and then you’ll start getting emails of, well, the sale is over, but can you sell it to me for that sale price, or can you give it to me for free? Lots of people get books for free now. And so there are times that it’s frustrating where you just want to say, I put a lot of time into this book. And I tell people all the time, if you buy a print book, the author is getting maybe $3 from it. Maybe with paper prices going up and shipping fees going up, it’s gone down a lot. I had to up my book because one of my books is pretty long. Amazon told me it has to be up to $17, otherwise you will owe us every time somebody buys this.

Chris

That happened with me on Ingramspark and Lulu. So on ingramspark I was like, negative. I had to increase the price.

Kat

You have to pay them. So it’s just these little things behind the scenes that people don’t understand. And I get it. It feels like a lot to spend $18 per book, but you can get it on ebook. But it just goes into a lot. And it’s a rough industry.

Chris

Like I said, 37 Industries. This is the toughest to break into and make a good return of all the industries I’ve been in. But when we look at the reward, it’s pretty rewarding. And I get to live in my imagination, which is a lot of fun. These characters are…

Kat

You get to explore some really dark things without having to be dark.

Chris

Yeah. That’s another thing people ask, like, oh, are you like your character, Andrew? I’m like, no, we’re nothing in like.

Kat

I don’t want to gamble away my life.

Chris

What are you talking about? No, actually, but real quick story. So my friends were playing cards. We’re like nine or ten years old. So we go out, play card, and I showed up late, and we get done playing, and I was just having fun. They’re like, okay, Chris, you owe, like, $3. And so I’m like, what? We were playing for real money. You didn’t tell me. I was so mad. And I remember leaving, like, having to go get my money. I’m never going to gamble ever again. This is the stupidest day ever.

Kat

Yeah, it’s great. We get to walk in the shoes of someone we’re curious about, but we don’t really want to be. We don’t want to risk that, but we want to see what it would be like if somebody would risk it. I think it’s great.

Chris

Andrew’s favorite drink is scotch. And until after I finished the book, someone said, don’t you think you should? And I said, do you drink it? I’m like, no, I’ve never had it in my life. Why don’t you go try it? I’m like, okay. And now I like it. There’s so many things I had to learn how to play poker because I didn’t know, like, Texas Hold them, I learned for the book. So luckily, my editor was a poker player, so he helped me with some of the terminology. And honestly, I never play video games, but I downloaded a game on my phone, and it really helped me understand positioning when to fold, when not, bluffing. It really helped me understand the game by playing the video game. So I played that. I watched on masterclass, Daniel Negreanu, who’s a professional one, and how he reads people. And that’s what Andrew gets off on. He doesn’t care so much about the money. He’s a psychologist, and he wants to use all of his psychology to read someone and master their mind and own them. And that’s where he gets his thrill from, that he can predict to the point when they’re going to fold and what cards they have. Yeah. And that’s what he gets off on, and that’s why he gets that thrill. So, yeah, I can go to these dark places, these people that I see, and they’ve had horrific but doesn’t mean I would ever do any of this.

Kat

Exactly. Well, as we close out, how can people find you and your next if you do any readings or anything? And where can they find the book?

Chris

Yes. So you can go to my website, it’s ChrisKJones.com, and you can actually, for your readers, if you sign up for the newsletter, you can get the first seven chapters free. So happy to do that. If any of your listeners have any direct questions, they can email me at headcase@chriskjones.com and I’d be more than happy to answer any questions. My social media is headcase_novel on Twitter, Instagram. LinkedIn is Christopher K. Jones, and Facebook is Chris K. Jones author.

Kat

Awesome. We’ll have all those links in the show notes for you guys, seven chapters free is very generous. So I think everyone should go over there and check out this new book.

Chris

If you don’t like it after seven chapters, then don’t buy the book.

Kat

That’s true. I mean, I like that attitude too. We don’t really want to gather readers who aren’t going to really read the book, right? So we need something.

The post Ep 179 The Dream to Write with Chris K Jones first appeared on Pencils&Lipstick.

David Rocklin is a traditionally publish writer who s coming out with his third book. We talk about how he comes up with the premise and characters of his books, why he has chosen to run writing retreats, what it is like to be traditionally published and what keeps him going as a writer. You can find out more about David on his website. http://davidrocklinauthor.com/

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TRANSCRIPT STARTS HERE:

Kat

All right, everyone. Today I have with me David Rocklin. He is a writer and a teacher, and we’re going to get into all of the things, all of his books. Very exciting news because we have two things in common that we’ll get into as well. But hello, David. How are you doing?

David

Hi, Kat. Great to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

Kat

I’m glad to have you here. Would you tell us a little bit about yourself in case somebody doesn’t know you?

David

Absolutely. I’m a novelist. I live in LA with my wife, my daughters, and a 160-pound Great Dane who, as we speak, is taking up my space on my bed as if that’s okay. But you can’t argue with him because he’s 160 pounds. He’s by far the biggest creature in this family. I am a published novelist. The bucket that I generally get put in is literary fiction with a historical bend. I also host and curate a reading series in LA that’s been going for about 10 years now called Roarshach. That takes place in ECHO Park, if anyone’s familiar with the LA area. I am just about to launch a writing craft book called The Write Formula. And along with that, there’ll be both virtual sessions and a physical retreat that I’ll be creating in a beautiful space in Idyllwild, California, which is in the mountains just outside Palm Springs, where right now, as I understand it, it’s about 6 feet of snow.

Kat

Hopefully that will melt by the time you get there.

David

There’s a lot of outdoor seating spaces, so you may just want to bring a nice thermal blanket. We will see.

Kat

We shall see, right? We don’t know. There are two things there. I have daughters, but my dog is female. There’s that. I’m very interested in writing retreats. That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on because after COVID and all the things and huddling down, it’s nice to get out, right?

David

It’s funny. The reading series, we maintained it through COVID, but we did it virtually. And on the one hand, what I can say about it is it was lovely to meet readers and writers, both, who don’t live in LA, who wouldn’t ever be able to get to the series when it’s live. And that was great. But I really, really missed not only just the company of people, but the specific company of writers. Being in a room with people who intrinsically understand what the writing life is and just having that connection, having that vibe, having that sense of community. It wasn’t until we came back for our first live show when COVID started to… It’s still with us very much so. And at the beginning of each show, I always say, I am presuming you’re all vaccinated. If you’re not vaccinated, I’m presuming you have a mask. And if neither of those things are true, I’m presuming you’re leaving now. But that sense of community meant more to me than I think I realized. And that is something that also drove me to create what will be a physical retreat to give writers the chance to just be with others in a lovely setting and limited numbers so that nobody feels like they’re going to AWP and getting completely overwhelmed. But just to have that space, none of us get at home. Being a parent, you know your ability to carve out ‘you’ time to just simply dive into reading something, writing something, editing something, consulting on something without being pulled in multiple directions, without having distractions, that’s hard to come by. And so that was a big driver for me in deciding to create this.

Kat

Yeah, that’s amazing. I know most of us do write the novels in short bursts, possibly, probably shorter than what we wish that they were, whatever that ends up being.

David

At 4 a.m., because that’s the only time.

Kat

Yeah. So you hope no one else wakes up, especially the dog.

David

I know. I know. I’m actually 23, but look at what the writing life has done here, man.

Kat

It’s so stressful. Oh, my gosh.

David

I’m telling you.

Kat

So how did you start to write and decide that you wanted to write novels? Because it’s not an easy journey to get published.

David

I’ve noticed. So for me, the writing life, I think, writing has just always been a part of my life from as long as I could remember. I went through all the requisite phases of a young boy to a teenage boy should go through. There were times I wanted to be Bruce Lee. There were times I wanted to be a metal guitarist. There are times I wanted to be a champion MMA fighter. I went through all the phases. Let me just issue a spoiler alert. None of those came true. But the one common thread was I wrote about them. Early on, I began to realize one thing about myself, and that is that writing is how I understand and make sense of my world. My world doesn’t always make sense until I start thinking about it in a writerly way and start trying to find, what are the dynamics of this? What does it mean? What does it have to do with something that maybe happened to me last year? Are there connecting threads? Are there themes in my… That’s when I begin to understand things in perhaps a more depthful way. Otherwise, I’m just a blissful idiot just going along, making sure that the family is fed, making sure that there’s a roof and all that fun stuff. But I think I traced my formal start as a writer to my first encouragement received from someone who saw something in me, and then my first writing lesson. The encouragement came from a grade school English teacher named Mrs. Luxembourg, who told me that she felt that she was going to see my name in print one day. I thank her and acknowledge her in every book, I do. She’s still with us and I still keep in touch with her over Facebook. She is as feisty as ever. She reads my books when they come out, and that’s the loveliest thing in the world. Then my first writing lesson, honestly, which was that all… Oh, look who’s here to say hi. Come on in, buddy. My first writing lesson, which was all writing is contextual. When you read something, you bring your context to it. Whatever the writer thought they were communicating, it’s different now because of the way that you’ve received it and the life experience you’ve had that causes you to, hi, how are you? Thank you. And that was oddly, when I was little, I would sneak into R-rated films all the time. I should not have been there. Let me just say to anybody who’s listening, who is under the age of, say 18, R is for a reason, don’t get traumatized. But I would literally sneak downtown Chicago where I grew up, and I would just sit in these movie theaters and I would watch these R-rated triple features all day. It was my joy. And I think part of it was I was getting away with it. And so one day I snuck into a showing of the Bruce Lee film Enter the Dragon, which I was seeing for the very first time. If you haven’t seen it, don’t try to get in touch with me because I don’t want to know you as a human being. If you got to go see it, then let’s talk. But my mind was just blown apart by the impossibility of what he was doing physically. And he was just a very charismatic actor and martial artist. And so here I am, a very small child sitting in this movie, and there were two adult guys behind me who were entertained wildly both by the movie and by the fact that there’s a little kid whose head you couldn’t even see over the seat.

Kat

You were all by yourself?

David

Right in front, all by myself. I would sneak downtown. My parents were like, yeah, go, whatever, we don’t care. They didn’t even know where I was. And after the movie was over, they leaned forward and they said, what did you think? And I was like, that was insane. I’ve never seen anything like that. That was incredible.  They’re like, yeah, it’s really too bad he’s dead, right? And I’m like, what? They’re like, yeah, no, he died some time back. They replay these films, but yeah, he’s dead. And then he get up and leave. And I’m just sitting there like, oh. And so because he could do this at the time, I sat through it again. I just stayed there. But that time, the second time, everything was different. Every time he did something, every time there was a turn in the story, every time there was a development, my mind said, He can’t do that anymore. He’s gone. That’s the last time he’s going to do that. What I realized, looking back on it, was I just saw two extremely different stories. It’s the same film, but my context had changed. And over time, I began to realize that’s writing. Writing is never your story. Writing is always what does your character think about your story? The context is what separates just the movement of scene A to scene B to this is a story that’s taking me along because I’m invested. It’s the context. So that was my first real writing lesson, I think.

Kat

That’s a really amazing way to say it. What does your character think about the story? Because we think about it being the character’s story, but that puts a bit of a twist on it that you’re writing it, you’re the pen, right? But really, what is it that the character thought of this story being told?

David

When I’m leading sessions and I’ll be doing this on the retreat as well, especially when we get into setting, this becomes really important. I talk about this like ad nauseam because I’m pretty passionate about it. We’ve all read stories where you’re like, well, I think it took place in a small town. I mean, whatever, small town USA, or it was a little Dutch village or something. I can’t remember the name, but it didn’t really matter. Then there are stories where the setting is vital. The setting is a character. What’s Harry Potter without Hogwarts? There’s a reason. What’s Gone with the Wind without Tara? Even though Gone with them to me is racist and I just can’t watch it. But the setting is famous and there’s a reason for that because the setting is viewed through the eyes of a proud woman who shortly comes to such bad ends that she can no longer afford it. And you better believe Tara is different for her when that happens versus the beginning because it’s not the setting, it’s what the character thinks about the setting. So we go deep into this.

Kat

That’s so true. And that really makes the reader then be invested in it, doesn’t it? Where, like you said, Harry Potter is not Harry Potter without Hogwarts. Send him to an American high school and it changes the story. It’s a completely different premise. Everything’s going to change.

David

Yeah. Let’s put Harry Potter in the Amish country. You know what? Let’s not. Yeah.

Kat

No, my brain is going crazy at the moment.

David

There may be some fan fiction opportunities. Yeah, go with it.

Kat

You can see what happens.

David

Harry Potter and the Butterchurn of Doom. It just writes itself.

Kat

But it’s true. I can’t think of where the setting… I mean, we’ve all read those books where the setting doesn’t really play a part. And I think it does take away from it, from the story itself. But then there’s also when people get the setting wrong. And I think you can really see that in books where they’ll go on and on and on about something, and maybe it’s cool, but it doesn’t connect with the book. So what would you think that a writer is doing there? Is it just like putting in a description because they have to or something?

David

Yeah. There are they’re doing basically Wikipedia research and they’re just looking for it at a map and they’re saying, okay, so let’s see, my character needs to sail from Kiel, Germany to let’s put him in Spain. And so he sailed for a month. And then if you really do a deep dive, you find out, yeah, under a boat with a nuclear powered motor, you couldn’t make it that fast. Inevitably, for all writers out there, you What?

Kat

He wants to be part of the project.

David

He does want it. He’s like, Did you mention how much I weigh? I did. All writers out there, someone’s going to catch you. Somebody lives there. Somebody knows that route. I always think about it in terms of this old American film that everybody who went to my college had to see. It was called Breaking Away. It’s actually a wonderful film. I think it’s from the 70s or something. Basically, it’s set on the campus of Indiana University. And it deals with what’s called the Little 500, which is a tradition on that campus of a bicycle race. And it’s held every year and it’s like a big giant deal on the campus. And so this film, that was the backdrop of the story. It’s actually a beautiful film about friendship and growing up and figuring out who you are. But there’s a scene in the film that when you’re on campus, it was literally like Rocky horror. You’d go to the theater and when the scene came up, everybody would just start throwing things at the screen because the writers basically had the character leave his house, which is on a particular street, and he turns right on his bicycle and now he’s on a different street. Everybody who went to school knows that that’s about a 10-mile difference, and that right turn does not put you on that street at all. And everybody started yelling. And it’s funny, but the problem is when you do that in your novel, when you create a setting or create a scene, but it’s not grounded in the reality that you’ve established, and that’s different than the reality that exists. If you want to create an alternative universe in New York, as long as you’ve established it and established the rules of it, then you get to do what you want. If you want to basically say that the Empire State Building is actually horizontal, that’s fine. If it’s endemic to your story and you’ve created those rules, cool. But if you haven’t, if you’ve just simply shortcut it and it’s spotted, it’s not just like, oops, you got me. I didn’t do enough research. I’m out of the story because all I’m thinking about is I may not be conscious of this thought, but as a reader, all I’m thinking about is, Well, what else about your story can I not trust? Am I in safe hands because you haven’t brought your best to this, so should I be reading? It really has more of a ripple effect than I think writers sometimes think about. It’s like, get those details right or make them up, but make that making up an intrinsic part of your story. As long as you’re following your rules, whatever they are, we’re going to go to whatever alternate universe you want to take us.

Kat

Yes. I think you’re very right about that. It’s that disconnect that you suddenly feel and you’re no longer invested in it. And then you’ve lost trust with your readers and the chances of them picking up another book might not be very low at that point.

David

And especially if you’re talking about nontraditional publishing, self publishing. This is just the fact of the state of play with readership. The majority of readers are going to gravitate towards names they know. I mean, there’s a reason where if you look at the New York Times best seller list, I think is like eight tenths of it. I’m like, who is this person and how are they dominating all of this? But obviously there’s a strong sense of trust. There’s a strong sense of… And for some writers who are more pure, and we were talking about this, that demarcation between genre fiction and literary fiction, and I’m literary fiction, I’m above this. It’s like, so that means you’re starving is what you’re saying? All these demarcation points, there’s a sense of this writing is more worthy than that writing. All writing is taking root in the reader. The reader is different for having read it. The reader values the experience of those words. The reader is carrying those words forward. When the reader remembers a time in their life, it may be tied to a song, it may be tied to your book. And you don’t know that, but you don’t know how much your writing matters to someone.

David

But since readers tend to gravitate towards writers they already know, when a reader says, you know what? I’m not familiar with this Kat Caldwell, but I really like the cover, or I love the description on the back jacket. I’m going to give this one a go. I don’t want to pile pressure on people, but as a writer, it’s not just, well, I hope I convince you to give me another try. I hope you like this story. It is also, I hope you’ll give a try to other writers you don’t know. We have a bond with each other as writers. We’ve taken the unspoken pledge that drivers take when they hit the road. I promise to keep you other people safe. I’m not going to go crazy. I’m not going to drink. I’m not going to be stupid. As writers, we’ve also taken a little bit of an unspoken oath, right? I’m going to give this my best. I’m going to put forth the effort. I’m going to care about this book. I’m going to bleed over this book. Because if I don’t, then there may be writers who can transcend the hubbub and get their book known by an inordinate number of people. But for the most of us, it’s word of mouth. It’s whatever marketing our publisher puts into it. But it’s also, Kat turning to her family and saying, I read this book by this guy called the Night Language. You should really read it. That’s how we go. That’s how all of us go. So bring your best, man. Bring your best or find something else to do.

Kat

I’ve been talking about this for probably a year now with anyone listening to the podcast. They might be tired of me, but I know that writers, usually we have some talent or some draw to it. But at the same time, there’s a lot to learn about this. And I think that ties into this trust that we have between writers and between writers and readers. And they’re trusting us that we’re putting forth our best. And I try to encourage everyone to, of course, the book that you write in the moment should be the best that you can do at that moment. We can’t know everything. And if we waited until we knew everything, we’d never write a book. But at least put forth your best and understand the craft. I see things on Twitter where people are saying, Well, to hell with grammar rules or structure rules. And my thought is always, that’s fine if you understand what those rules are before you break them. But otherwise, it’s just this ignorant arrogance of like, I can break rules. I don’t even know how to say what they are. So that’s not breaking rules. That’s not knowing what you’re doing.

David

It’s funny. I think about this in two different ways. The first way is like in martial arts, there’s this concept, and I came up doing combat sports. That was a formative event for me, sitting and watching it through the dragon in so many ways. Oh, my god. But one of the concepts that I learned was learn the rule, master the rule, then break the rule.

Kat

Yeah, I think that applies across the board.

David

You don’t get to break the rule before you learn it. And the other concept is, and this is something all of us, all writers, we all do this, we all relate to this. It’s when you write that first draft and your impulse is, oh, my god. That came from my heart. It’s pure. It’s raw. It’s ready. I’m sending it out. We all do this, right? Hopefully, most of us either have an internal editor or a friend who says, you’re adorable. It’s a first draft. Shut up. Now the work begins. I fully, fully understand that impulse of, oh, my god. It’s raw. It’s ready. I’m so transgressive. I’ve crossed all the boundaries. My sentences don’t even make sense. They don’t even begin. It’s like, that’s lovely. That’s cool. But you may think you’re communicating something, but what are the chances that communication is going to be received the way that you thought? If it mattered so much to you to tell this story, whatever the story is, it might be a poem of two or three lines, or it may be a 600-page novel in parts, whatever it may be. If it mattered so much to you that an writer, as we understand this, right? You bleed over those pages. You think about them when you’re not writing them. You come back to them over and over and over again before you ever set pen to paper or finger to pad. If it mattered that much to you to do it, it probably matters to you in terms of how it’s understood. We all have put something out, given it to a beta reader, and they’re like, it’s the conundrum of the writing workshop or when you’re dealing with an editor or something where they hand it back to you and you get three different pieces of criticism on the same issue and they’re all different and you’re like, who do I listen to? What do I do? It’s like, No, that’s data. What it’s telling you is whatever you thought you were communicating, it’s not coming across the way you thought. Now you have a decision to make. But that decision should never be, I’m one and done. I threw it down on paper, it’s ready. Unless where you’re taking it is to your drawer, which is awesome. Make it pure. Look back on it when you’re 90 and go, look at me, I was adorable at 17, look at the thoughts I had running in my head. I found a journal of mine, like some months back, really old one. And it was basically the equivalent of I’m a lone wolf, nobody understands me, nobody’s ever felt like this before. Now you look at it and go, aww. But at the time, that felt very pure to me. Would I put it out? No. No. It’s terrible. I learned from it. I grew from it. But that’s not publishable. And that’s the thing. As writers, we all know we have no choice but to write, it’s in us. We can’t not write. The thought of not writing is unthinkable. That’s the need. But to publish, to read it out loud, to give it to someone, that’s not the same thing. That’s a decision. So if you make that decision, respect. Respect the world you’re stepping into. Make it the best you can.

Kat

Yeah. And that’s the only way that you can be proud of it, right? I’ve worked with authors. I work mostly with indie authors. But there is an issue in which you always have the nagging feeling if you didn’t put your best. And then they have a hard time marketing it because. They have that like, oh, I don’t really want anyone to see it. Well, then take it off and go fix it.

David

That imposter syndrome is real. We all feel it. I’m fortunate enough to have been published twice. I feel it.

Kat

It’s like with every book, right?

David

Yeah, I feel it at the beginning of every book. It always comes in the form of the question, am I good enough to tell this story? Am I up to this task? Am I the right one to tell this story? Do I have what it takes to do it? And then when you make that next step of sending it out, sending it to an agent, sending it to publishers, sending it to editors and waiting for their reply, you sit there with the quiet. The quiet, to me, is harder than the rejection. The rejection is at least an answer. The quiet is you’re sitting there going, What are they thinking? Have they even read it? You just start reading in the most negative stuff. Part of that is, well, this isn’t something I’m good enough to do. We all have that. Make friends with that voice., It’s not going away. It’s always going to be there. Use it as fuel.

Kat

Right. To keep going, keep learning. You have two books that are, like you said, typically more literary fiction with a historical bend. You have really interesting stories. One is called… Your first was the Illuminist, right? The Illuminist, right? The Luminist.

David

The Luminist, yeah.

Kat

The Luminist, I have to pronounce that right. And the second…

David

It’s a hard one. Yeah, it’s a hard one.

Kat

It’s a night language. How is your writing process? How do you come up with these stories? They’re very different if you want to give us a little blurb on each one. And then what is your process in research and writing and maybe if you’re plotting or all that stuff?

David

Yeah. What’s funny about how do I come up with them is I almost feel like I don’t. It almost feels like they find me among others and they say, you’re the home I’m supposed to be at. And it’s just up to me to recognize that they found me for a particular reason. For me, all my books, all three of them have started with… It first starts with an image. It may either be an image I’m seeing, like the Luminist started with an image that I saw at the Getty Museum in LA. And then the image is essentially married at some point to a little fact, a little kernel, a little nugget that’s of no interest to anyone but me. And somehow that image and that little fact collide and they start throwing off sparks and a fire starts and now I can’t look away from it. And that’s happened all three times. So the Luminist actually arose from a photographic exhibition at the Getty in LA of early Victorian era photography back when it was just beginning and nobody really knew what they were doing. They had an exhibit of a woman named Julia Margaret Cameron, who lived during the Victorian era. She lived for a time in Ceylon, which is now Sri Lanka. She was married to a director of the East India Trading Company. The images I thought were just gorgeous. I found her to be really transgressive and cool because she essentially stepped through all the boundaries that were put up for women at the time. She insisted on this as her artistic expression that was unheard of. I’m like, what a bad ass. I would love to know a little bit more about her, but I wasn’t really thinking about it as a book. I had my obligatory drafts of terrible books in my drawer and had begun them. The one thing I can say about myself is I’ve never not completed it, but I have my terrible novels that will never see the light of day because I like people and I don’t want to do that to them. But I hadn’t really found my voice, I think. Because I became interested in her, I read a biography of her. And out of all the pages of the biography, there was one sentence that was it. And the one sentence was, she lost a child at birth. And in that moment, that fact collided with these early images of her first attempts of photography. And what arose from that was the idea of this woman holding her baby who she’d lost at birth and realizing, in five years, I may not remember what you look like because memory is frail and memory is faulty and I can’t hold on to you. And then comes this art and science that promises the possibility of holding a moment still forever. And a woman who basically says, I will never lose a moment that matters to me again if I can help it. And that became the story of the Luminist, this early age photographic pioneer and a young tameel boy who becomes her apprentice in this burgeoning art. And then the second novel, The Night Language, arose from one of the images that she took in life, which I got to see as part of the Getty archives when I was doing research for the Luminist. And it was of this young black boy who was probably about 10-years-old. This was from the mid to late 1800s. It was one of the images she had taken. He was dressed in what a colonialist would consider African garb. It looked, to our eyes, looked stereotypical. It looked degrading. It was kind ofhorrifying. But his face, he looked defiant, lost, lonely, pissed. And I’m like, who is this kid? I need to know who this kid is. But I put it aside because I had to finish the Luminist. Then that happened, like a book tour and all that fun stuff. When it was time to think about what I was going to write next, I came back to that photo. I’m like, I need to know who this child is. I did research and out of the research, I learned who he was. He was the son of the Abyssinian Emperor, Abyssinia now being Ethiopia, and that he was taken forcibly by England after an invasion of Abyssinia and brought to be a ward of Queen Victoria’s Court. And in life, and this was the little fact that collided with the image, in life, he died very young. And so the collision for me there was, I need to write him a life that he didn’t get. I need to. I just need to. And so in the beginning of that book, the first few drafts, I was hewing rather close to what his real life was, which was there was a British officer who became like a father figure to him. But that dropped away because in one sequence in the third draft when he was aboard the ship, bringing him back from his home where he doesn’t know anybody, doesn’t speak the language, he’s surrounded by the people who essentially obliterated his country. He’s very much alone. He sees across the galley one day, another black young man who didn’t have a role in that draft, didn’t have a name. He just saw him. In that moment, he’s like, There’s at least one other like me here. And then in subsequent drafts, he acquired a name. And he came up to the deck and they stood next to each other on the rail. And they were just looking out the rail and they were both too afraid to say anything. And this young man actually basically was like the apprentice to a surgeon aboard the ship. And they were just standing there and they were looking at their hands next to each other and how they were like the same. This gradually evolved into they became the love of each other’s life. I didn’t see that coming. That was not the plan, but I let the characters find their way that is what ultimately became the Night Language, which was this love story that takes place in Queen Victoria’s Court, where the forces of politics and society conspire to keep them apart and essentially punish them for who they are. And so it became the story of what would you do for the love of your life if you had to? How far would you go? And so that’s the second book.

Kat

It seems like, and this might be just the way that you said it now, the Luminist, you almost had the premise right away, how she was going to hold on to that moment. But it sounds like the Night Language, it really took some digging into just writing that character to find it.

David

Yeah, I think that’s really insightful. I think that’s exactly right. I had to find my way. And as part of that, I think that I had to put to practice what I had learned, which was trust the characters when they start talking back to you, when they start telling you, I know what you thought I was going to do. I’m aware of your map, your outline, whatever you do. Your plan. I scoff at your plan. I’m aware of what you thought I was going to do towards the end of the book, but I’m not that person. That’s not who I’ve come to be. And you’ve come to know me. You know I’m not that person. That’s not the decision I would make. And so I had to put trust in that. Let them go where they’re going to go. Let’s see what happens. The worst that happens is I rethink it. But let me see where you guys are headed to. And that’s where it was headed to. And frankly, that’s what got it published.

Kat

I think that’s really interesting because there are times and there are stories I find, personally, where I could have the whole idea, and then it turns out that that’s just a very small seed. The rest of the finished book has nothing to do with it. I marvel at people that stick to their plans. I wonder always how did they spend five years thinking about it? I don’t know.

David

I marvel at them, but at the same time… It’s funny because… And this is actually a part of the Write Formula, the writing craft book. This is a very prominent part of what I try to impart to people. And in the retreats, we’ll be talking a lot about this. But imagine for a moment you and I have just met, which is not hard to imagine because we’ve just met. Because we just did. But imagine for a moment that we’re sitting there and I say, okay, Kat, so here’s how this is going to go. I’m going to write out an outline of our friendship each day for the next year so that when you check the outline in June, you can see that we are going for coffee at 10:30. I’ll be getting your coffee for you. It will have cream in it and you’re going to be drinking it and then you’re going to hurl it at the wall. That’s what you’re going to do, June at 10:30 a.m., count on it because you are not allowed to change it. You’re locked in and that’s going to happen every day. There’s going to be some decision I’ve made for you and you’re going to be like, you don’t know me. You don’t know whether I even like coffee. You don’t know whether I’m going to be in the same city as you. You don’t even know if we’re going to still be friends. You don’t know anything. That’s how I feel about writing an outline out and then sticking to it, no matter what happens in the actual writing. Let them breathe because they’re going to start making decisions. Who wants that friendship? Nobody wants that friendship. What you want is, let’s get to know each other. Let’s determine who we are in our various situations. Now, let’s talk about what we’re going to do in an informed way. That to me is where the writing process, the whole process of getting from A to B to C to D, that’s where it is. It’s not necessarily in that first plan. It’s great to have it because it gives you a little bit of a guide. But don’t be afraid to deviate from it. That’s where all the good stuff is.

Kat

So let’s talk about your craft book. It’s called The Write Formula, so W-R-I-T-E. How did the idea come about?

David

I think it came about in combination of having completed and being published twice, which is a lovely thing that I feel very fortunate about. And then particularly the reading series of watching writers come in, come out, go through the process of sharing their work in a public way, how it’s received, and hearing everything from, I want to expand this short piece into something longer, but I don’t know how, to, honestly, I didn’t realize that that’s how my piece was going to go over until I started getting the feedback from the audience and I go, oh, that’s what they’re hearing. I didn’t really get that right away. And all that coming together. And then writers just asking me questions because they knew I was published or that I was represented and stuff. And when I would answer those questions as best I could, just in terms of, well, here’s how I do it. Everybody’s got their own way, but this is what I find helpful. And then hearing, oh, it was really helpful. I began to realize, maybe there’s something of value that I can give back to writers. Not to say, this is the way. It’s more like, This is what I do. Let’s see if it works for you. That’s really the spirit of it is not to say, I have cornered the market on writing techniques. It’s more like, this is what has really helped me, and it gets me through those writing phases that we all go through, everything from I’m just not sure where to take this idea, or how much research should I do? I don’t really know where to drop a flashback in. How do I figure that out? How do I deal with criticism? How do I deal with rejection? I’ve been through all of those and like, Well, here’s what’s helped me. I hope it helps you, too.

Kat

I tell people all the time, anyone I’m working with and myself, there are so many ways to do things. This is an art form, right? But again, we have to look at the different ways that people do things and learn from them, I think, in order to find our own way. It will probably be a marriage between what you say in the Write Formula to what a writer is doing now to maybe what they find outside. Because in the end, it’s art and it’s just our brains and we have to get it. But it can be really helpful to see what other people have done.

David

Yeah. It’s an oft, repeated axiom of writing that if you want to be a writer, read widely, read outside your area, read everything. I’ve learned from so many writers of so many different types of writing. I had a writer friend who wrote on a contract basis for Harlequin. Just the techniques that she brought to the notion of keeping that pace, keeping the plot moving, incorporating certain elements. It was interesting the way that they did it because it was like, by page, such and such, you need to have this. You have this. It was very interesting. There’s got to be sex. I learned from everybody, and the cliches of writing is that genre fiction is usually written poorly, but it moves like lightning. The plotting and the pace is great. Literary fiction, it’s written beautifully, but it just sits there. It doesn’t go anywhere. It’s just somebody walking around New York for five days thinking about their life, and it’s boring as shit. And it’s like, those are the cliches and the truth should always be marry all of them. Marry them together. Put them together. And so it’s just a fascinating amalgamation to me that hopefully writers are reading and they’re picking up. And in fact, there’s just an approach that I’ve taken when I read that taught me how to plot because I wasn’t MFA and I didn’t have access to a writer’s workshop. So I really was trying to figure out how to plot a story just from my own sense of storytelling and reading other writers and asking myself, what do I know about the story and what are they doing to share that information with me taught me in almost like a blueprint way, this is how they approach it. Once you read like six or seven books, you begin to realize you have permission. There are so many different ways to structure a plot. There are so many different ways to drop in little things. There’s not a one formula that fits all that must be adhered to. You have freedom, and that’s a very freeing idea. It’s like, I can really approach this. One question I always ask writers to ask themselves when they feel stuck is, what am I afraid of right now? What am I afraid of doing that’s causing me to hesitate? Am I afraid that if I do such and such, it’s not publishable? Am I afraid that if I say such and such, it’s offensive? What am I afraid of? And then do that thing. And then do it.

Kat

Yes. So are you going to be using the structure of this book of the Write Formula at the retreat? Are you going to be asking them these questions? Is it going to be an interactive retreat? Is it going to be?

David

Oh, extremely. Yeah. There’s a few things I think I’ve come to believe about what makes a good retreat. Number one is make sure there’s lots of really delicious food and good stuff to drink, 100 %. And number two, make sure that there is the thing that we don’t get, which is time. Time and space to just do the work, whether that day the work is writing or whether that day the work is staring out into a beautiful vista, which this property happens to have, and it’s really lovely. The way I think the retreats are going to go, the physical retreats is that get together. I’m, first of all, not going to have people stay at the spot because my feeling very strongly is that at a certain point, you just want your own space. You don’t want to live, breathe and breathe with people for two or three days straight and then go beddy bye with them and then wake up with them. You want your own little space, so we’ll make sure that gets taken care of. But we’ll get together in the morning, have some food, get into a writing session, something guided with lots of really fun interactive exercises, talking a little bit about what we’re trying to accomplish and what we’re going to hopefully produce that day. And then space. I will be around. Everybody who wants to consult with me can run things by, bounce ideas around, but it’ll be writing space. And we come back together later in the afternoon with more food there and in between, maybe do something fun like take a little hike or do a little yoga session or just something a little physical, and then call it a day. So it’ll be like content, it’ll be guidance and interactive talks between each other and between us. And then it’ll be just that time and space where there’s no demands on you. There’s no distractions. Nobody needs anything from you. This is your time. This is your getaway. I hope to make that as cozy and as enriching as possible.

Kat

That sounds lovely. That’s very lovely.

David

You’re welcome to come. It’s a short hop from DC.

Kat

This is true. So when is it going to be? And do you plan on… You said you’re going to do one online as well?

David

Yeah, I’m going to probably do some virtual sessions to coincide with when the book is available. And I think the first writing retreat will probably be like the fall of this year.

Kat

Okay, that’s wonderful. I do think that sometimes we get really stuck in this day-to-day and we have this book to write and all the demands. And I found for myself, and I’ve been talking about it for a while, is the time to think about the book. Sometimes you have maybe an hour and you feel like you should go write the words. Really, what I found with myself is half the time, almost literally 50% of the time, I need to go take a walk and think about the words. Of course, then you get a little bit frustrated because then you don’t have any time left to put the words on the paper.

David

But that’s the thing. Absolutely, it is. Whenever writers say, Oh, my god, I feel really guilty. I didn’t do any writing today. I’m like, were you thinking about it? Were you thinking about a character? Were you interrogating yourself a little bit about what am I trying to say in that particular section? You were writing. You were 100% writing, you may have been doing better writing than when you were writing. It’s okay. It’s 100% okay. That guilt thing, which I think sometimes can be a little bit fueled by social media or some of these NaNoWriMo contests where it’s like, you need to put down 5,000 words. No, you do not. You need to write when you can, when you feel it. You need time and space and freedom to think about what you’re writing and really be able to focus on it. But when you start putting hard deadlines and minimum word count on yourself, I get it. Writers write, that’s what you, quote unquote, should be doing. But when you start weaving guilt and shame and that sense of compares despair when you look at other writers and go, oh, my god, they’re way more productive than me. Do you know what you’re doing? You are absolutely stopping up your sync. You are just stopping the flow of writing. You be you. If you got this far, it’s because you’re relentless. But relentless doesn’t mean I write for 12 hours a day until my hand falls off my wrist. It means writing is a part of your life. It’s a permanent part of your life, and it’s always there with you. You’re a writer. You’re a writer. Don’t punish yourself.

Kat

Yes, exactly. I love that. Will you tell us a little bit about the third book, or is that still, the third novel, or is that still under wraps?

David

It’s a little under wraps. It’s on submission right now. It is typical of me, odd. It, once again, started with a notion and then a little fact. That’s really cool. It really came out. I was just playing with some research on near death experiences just because they’re just super interesting to me.

Kat

Because you’re a writer?

David

Because I’m a writer. Yeah, exactly. It’s like, oh, this is so cool. There was a really cool story, I think, that took place in the 90s or something of this woman who essentially just keeled over on the sidewalk. She had a sudden brain aneurysm of some kind, and they needed immediate emergency surgery. She had a near death experience where she saw herself on the table and described to the doctors afterwards everything they did. It was accurate. All her senses had been blocked. They put noise canceling headphones on her because they needed a baseline of her brain activity and they didn’t want any extra stimuli getting in. So not only was she fully anesthetized, but they used surgical glue to shut her eyes so her brain wasn’t storing any images, but she still saw all of this. It’s unexplained. And I was like, this is the coolest story ever. My mind was running with it. And in the article, there was this footnote. And of course, I’m like, well, if you put a footnote, I have to read it. You went to that trouble. And so I found the footnote and it was because it dealt with the moment where she was hooked up to the EEG, the electroencephalogram, where they were measuring her brain activity. And the footnote said the EEG is largely credited to this German psychiatrist from the turn of the 20th century who himself had a near death experience that led to its development. I’m like, well, I need to follow this. Down the rabbit hole, I need to go. That’s what led to the new book. It was this gentleman’s experience where proving that it happened to him became his white whale. He chased it all his life. He never quite proved it. But he went from the turn of the 20th century straight into the rise of the Nazi party. And I’m like, This story is about the two things that are so powerful that they can be heard across great distance by somebody who’s not there. Love and death. This is a story. And so that’s really where this novel developed. It’s called The Electric Love Song of Fleyshaw Burgar. And I hope it finds a home soon.

Kat

That’s awesome. I think it goes back to what you said before, it’s read all the time. Read, read, read, because you honestly never know where it’s going to come from.

David

You never know where it’s coming from. It comes from the craziest places. It comes unexpectedly. Remember those fly strips that they sell in stores where the fly just gets stuck to it? They’re pretty gross. But I have a fly strip rule for writing because we get bombarded with ideas all the time. We’re always like, That’d be cool. And then it’s gone. Don’t worry about those. But if you find yourself 24, 48 hours later, it’s still with you, pay attention to it. It’s stuck to you for a reason, and it’s demanding your attention. So the ones that just come and go really quickly, they weren’t supposed to stay. Don’t worry about them.

Kat

Right. That’s amazing. I love that. So where can people find you if they want to get to the writing retreat, if they want to buy the Write Formula, if they want to see this new book coming out and your other ones?

David

Yeah, I would love to hear from everybody. The best places to reach me are on Instagram and Facebook. And on both of those sites, I can be reached either at my name, David Rocklin, on Instagram it’s @the.write.formula. So I respond to all the DMs and all the comments. Reach out to me. I’d love to hear from you if you think that I might be able to help you with what you’re working on. I’d love to hear from you just if you want to just say, here’s what I’m working on. Just wanted to share it with another writer. I love that. And I will get back to you because I know what it’s like to wait in quiet. I’m not going to do that to anybody. I just will not do it.

Kat

That’s amazing. So we will have the links in the show notes below, obviously. If anyone is looking for a retreat, this retreat sounds amazing. Definitely follow David so that you can find out when the new book, The Electric Love Song of Fleshell… Fleshell? I’m not very good at it. That’s a great title. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

David

I really appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me. This was fun. Hey, you’re still listening.

The post Ep 174 Traditional Publishing and Writing Retreats with David Rocklin first appeared on Pencils&Lipstick.

Troy Lambert is a serial Thriller writer. With 30 novels under his belt and many more edited by him, Troy knows what makes a story work. Today he and I talk about how he got into writing, how he learned the ropes around writing and how he has kept his career going for so long.

Find more about Troy Lamber at TroyLambertWrites.com

Find out more about thought my referral link at Plottr.

Want to watch the interview? Watch it on YouTube here https://youtu.be/2Haaz7IffsI

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TRANSCRIPT STARTS HERE:

Kat

Okay. Welcome back, everyone. Today I am with Troy Lambert as the author, not as the Plottr ambassador. So, hi, Troy. How are you doing?

Troy

Fantastic. How are you doing?

Kat

Good. I’m excited to talk to you today because you wear two different hats. We’ve had you on two different times, but this time we get to see your face, not the Plottr logo. So you are Troy Lambert, mystery and thriller author, correct?

Troy

Correct. Yes, among other things. But we’ll stick with that for now.

Kat

We’ll stick with that one right now. We won’t ask your wife. What she’ll add to that? So tell us a little bit about how you got into writing.

Troy

I’m one of those people that always wanted to be a writer. Like, I wrote books. I wrote my first book when I was like, six, when I was like, 14. In high school, I told all my high school counselors and everybody that I wanted to be a writer. And they all, because they were very smart, told me that that was an impossible dream, that there was nothing that wasn’t. They’re like, you write good stories, you’re creative, but you need to find a way to make money. That’s a whole road we could go down. But anyway, so essentially, I tell people I wasted, I believe them. And so I went out and tried to find various careers. I went to college for various different things, and 30 years later, at the end of a string of hair nets and name tags and various careers, I basically went, I should probably figure out this writing thing because otherwise I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. I wasn’t always a great employee because doing things I was told rather than something creative didn’t really work well for me, and neither did that work for my employers, although there are a few exceptions to that. And I had actually had some great experiences that helped me in my writing later. But all of that to be said, that’s how I got into it. Well, when I decided that it was around the 2009 time period, and indie publishing was becoming a thing that was a little less dirty, we’ll just say it was like before that, if you self published, you were the pariah. But, I mean, at that point, Mark Coker started Smashwords. KDP was on the rise, so people were realizing there is another path to publication other than traditional publishing. And there were a lot of small presses at that time that emerged kind of taking advantage of kind of a digital first type publishing model and that type of trend. So it was a good time for me to make that decision. Obviously, there have been a few changes since I started doing that. The industry is unfortunately just a little well, unfortunately or fortunately, it depends on how you look at your business and the business of publishing. So I immediately went to the default mode because I’d had all those jobs. The one thing that they taught me was I had certain amount of business skills and business savvy because I had to go through all those jobs. So when I approached writing, it was very much from not only a passion standpoint, but an economic standpoint. Like, how can I sell books and make this work?

Kat

Was it to quit the job? Can I do this?

Troy

Yeah, the biggest thing was basically to not have a day job, if at all possible, which for the most part since then, I’ve not really had a day job. Like I’ve had a couple of part-time things or whatever that I did temporarily, but for the most part my day job has been writing.

Kat

Wait, did you quit before you became published?

Troy

No, there was a transition.

Kat

Because a lot of people will wait, right? They’ll straddle that.

Troy

I straddled for a while. But part of that was I was working a day job where basically my job was to write. Now, there were other aspects of that job, but one of my jobs was to write because I got involved in the museum world, basically. And we were in northern Idaho and we had the EPA approach us and they were like, we have all these mine sites that we need to survey and we need tons of information from them. And the museum where I worked at had tons of the historical records from those mine sites and I knew where the rest of those records were because part of my background is even when I was a kid, I’m a researcher, right? You give me a topic and I get a hold of it like a bulldog with a bone, and I’m not letting you go until I get the answer right. Which is good for a mystery writer.

Kat

Yeah, I was just going to say.

Troy

Sometimes it could be very distracting, but for the most part it’s a good thing, right? And so what I discovered was I was like, we have all this information, I know how to write. And so there’s probably a way we can leverage this for the museum and for me. So I wrote a job description for a head of the research department and what was called a museum operations specialist for the museum. Oddly, it lined up almost identically with my own resume. Really strange how that worked, basically. Then I basically moved into that role. And what it taught me, the beauty of working freelance or doing journalism or things like that for writer is, first of all, you’re going to learn to write tight and to a deadline, okay? You’re going to have word count, but you’re going to have deadlines I mean, and the deadlines are hard deadlines. You miss the deadline, you don’t get paid, right? So for many of us, that’s a great motive. And technically, even if you’re writing fiction yourself, if you don’t finish the book, you don’t get paid. So it teaches you that mentality. It also taught me that my words were actually worth money. Like your tax dollars were paying me to write words. That was pretty cool. But I also found that writing was a skill because many times as writers, people think of this as like, this is a hobby or this is a passion thing or whatever the case may be. But I found that my writing was actually a skill. And there were people that were around me that had master’s degrees and 4 million letters after their name, right? But they couldn’t write. They couldn’t have written one of those reports. I could have given them all the same information. I had all the same tools, everything else. And they couldn’t have written those reports, but I could. And so it taught me that that skill was unique and that I could make money doing that. And so for me, that was the biggest lesson out of that whole thing. So that mentality and that inspiration enabled me to shift from working for someone to thinking about working for myself and how I can leverage this for myself.

Kat

That’s really great. I mean, I look at a lot of writers and we all have to sort of have our own journey, right? But if you haven’t been out in the world and done that deadline thing and the figuring out something for your boss thing, that’s kind of going to be a bit detrimental when you’re all alone in your office or wherever you write and no one’s there to say anything except for you. I find it a struggle for a lot of people. So even like young people who ask me, like, no, I’m just going to try to do it now. Like whatever entrepreneurial thing they do, I’m almost like, but you should probably do it at the same time because it’s just skills that you’ll find. I was talking to one the other day, a writer. It’s funny because you almost feel more productive when you are working two jobs because your brain is working on two different levels. Whereas you wake up as a full-time writer and you feel like you have the whole day until it’s 08:00 at night and you’re like, wait a minute, what happened to the day? So these are really valuable skills of learning the deadline, learning to write tightly, right, learning to research within a certain amount of time, all within your day job. And then I’m sure you wanted to go home and write. Your brain is just constantly active instead of sort of like, I got all the time in the world.

Troy

And also the other thing is that let’s say you come. Out of your writing program. Let’s say you went to college for writing, which most of the time for people is a terrible idea.

Kat

You’ve got lots of rules in your head.

Troy

It’s not even necessarily the rules. The reason is they teach you to write beautiful prose, but they tell you nothing about the publishing industry and how to actually make this work or a story. Walk out into the real world and you’re like, okay, what now? Like, what next? Right? There’s nothing. You have no background. The other thing is that you learn a lot by just being with people that are smarter than you. There’s just an incredible value to that. It’s really difficult to explain because that person is going to have some nugget that maybe inspires your story, but maybe if nothing else, gives you a business idea that says, hey, this is something that you should do, right? So coming out and just being going straight into the entrepreneurship part of things is first of all, super challenging in today’s market because you need some background, you need some information, and people constantly underestimate the amount of education it takes to be a writer full time. What I mean by that is going back to that doesn’t mean you need a college degree, but what it means is you need to be immersed and constantly working on your craft and improving the craft of writing because you’re never going to master it. You’re forever going to write horrible first drafts. They might not be as horrible as you go forward, but they’re still going to be bad first drafts. But there is so much more to it. Regardless of your path of publication, whether it’s traditional, whether you do self publishing, whether you’re like me and you do some kind of hybrid type thing, whatever the case may be, you still have to have a very thorough understanding and knowledge of the publishing industry, and it’s constantly changing. So you have to keep up. There’s not an alternative. You know what I mean? You need to be constantly educating yourself. That means conferences. That means hanging out with people in mastermind groups that are your peers or above, preferably. There is a place for you to mentor younger writers, and that is like this year I’m the president of Idaho Writers Guild. I’m giving back to the community, mentoring other writers, mentoring other people, and helping run an organization that helps them, right? So you’re thinking as you’re teaching, but I also need those groups that are my peers and above that challenge me and say, hey, this is what you’re doing, but this is how you could go to the next level because there’s always the next level. Always next level.

Kat

Yeah. You never want to be the smartest person in the room all the time. And I am smartest in that you know the most about that one topic, teaching, of course reiterates, one of my writers the other day asked me a question, and I said, that’s a very good question. Let me go figure that out. But I want to go back to you said skill a couple of minutes ago, and I think that what some writers miss, especially if it has been a passion since they were a kid, and they do have a talent for storytelling, for seeing stories in the world and in their minds. I’ve come across quite a few, especially young writers, who don’t think they need anything other than their talent. And I always try to very gently say, yes, you do. So you’ve said skill quite a bit, and you said that you have to be honing your craft. So what does that mean to you? And for when you’re working with writers?

Troy

So I usually use the analogy of sports or like some kind of a game, right? You can have an innate talent. Let’s say I have an innate talent for basketball, right? But if I don’t ever go practice the fundamentals, if I always just have a talent for it, I might be an okay player on the playground, but I’m never going to make it to the NBA. You know what I mean? Because I’m never going to learn those fine skills because you can see the difference. Go and watch your local high school basketball game, then go and watch a professional basketball game. The other night, my wife and I went and saw our local hockey team here, right? Which is they’re very good in their league, but they have missed passes that, you know, if it was NHL, somebody would score because somebody missed that pass. But it doesn’t happen in the lower leagues because that missed pass is okay, right? So as a writer, what happens is there’s a progression that you have craftwise and business knowledge, right? Where you go from being a hobbyist and an amateur to kind of a proam. You’re kind of in the middle. You’re making a little money off your writing. You’re not making a living off of it yet. And some of the reason for that has to do with that honing your craft, that fact of understanding that each story has a trajectory and has a path, that there are reader expectations and that you need to basically your reader is your customer in some ways, and you need to reach that readers and meet their expectations. So at the end of the book, they’re satisfied. But as a writer, it’s about more than that, because today, for you to gather a bunch of readers, you also need a relationship and an emotional connection with those readers. So you’re never going to get that from an AI-generated book, for example, to bring up the elephant in the room that everybody’s talking about that. There’s like two major announcements about today.

Kat

Everyone’s freaking out about it.

Troy

Everybody’s freaking out about that. But the couple of things that AI cannot do is first of all, intent is the number one. Like you sit down to write a story, you have intent, right? The AI has no intent. It does what you tell it to do. The second thing is it’s putting words in certain orders logically, based on what it has learned. It’s not doing them emotionally. And when you ask it for a twist, the twist doesn’t always make sense. Why? Because the AI doesn’t understand story the way you should understand story, right? So the ability to create that special twist at the end of your book that really hooks your reader and it also changes them emotionally is a skill that you must learn. And the longer you do this, the more proficient you become at that skill, provided that you are actually analyzing what you are doing if you are just writing lots of stories over and over again. A friend of mine started she’s a great writer now, and she’s in her 30s, which is fantastic because a lot of writers don’t come on into their own until their 40s, right? But part of that is she started writing fanfic online when she was twelve. And has written billions of words online, but also at the same time, she studied craft. She studied people along the way. So she has an amazing following for fan fiction, actually. And the reason is her stories are actually good because she refined them over time. So this is a skills development career. You must develop skills along the way. You can have talent. And talent is very helpful. But I know some writers who have less talent than others, but greater skill, and those writers are making more money and making a living at it.

Kat

Yeah, I’m trying to get across to some of writers that I talk to. I think a lot of the talent is in your head. And what is very frustrating to writers sometimes is getting it from your head to the paper is a really different process. Like, I was just writing this morning and I was like, I had this whole conversation in my head in the car. Two minutes later I’m at my computer and it’s different, there’s something missing. So I’ll have to put my finger on that later. But that’s the frustrating part. And that’s where your skill comes in, right? Because you’re going to, like you said, get your rough draft out there, it’s down, it’s on the paper. And I know there’s something wrong, but I know there’s something wrong because I’ve studied the craft of it and being able to say, okay, there was a twist there. And here you mentioned twists. And those aren’t just for mystery thriller writers, right? Like a twist for everything is for every book, right? So what do you mean when you’re talking about a twist? Like, why would a women’s fiction writer still need a twist in their story?

Troy

Well, a lot of that is there’s a couple of different phrases that we toss around. This is part of your skill as a writer, is learning the vocabulary. And a part of it is like at the end of each chapter that you create should be a hook. And the purpose of the hook is one thing to get the reader to turn the page to the next chapter. Now, you’re also going to use micro-hooks throughout your book, right? But the reason we need a twist is because life is twists. What a twist does for you really is, and the reason it works in women’s fiction and other fiction as well, is a twist is not about the events that happened. And this is a common mistake that writers make, is they think a clever twist is about throwing in a new suspect or throwing in a new thing. And no, a twist is about changing the emotion of the story and changing your character arc. So the character was thinking one way. The reason we talk about the midpoint in a story is the character was thinking one way. And for most of the time, the first half of a book, the character is reacting to things that happen to them, right? The midpoint and that twist and that change in the story is when the character is no longer reacting. And now they are taking action. They become proactive, right? Basic writing type things. But for them to switch, to make that switch, something needs to happen, right? And usually that is some kind of a twist. Their expectations were wrong. They discover that they’re actually something different. They thought that they needed something or that they wanted something. And they get to the middle of the book and they discover that’s not actually what they need, not actually what they want. And that’s the twist. And all that does is it turns your character around and makes them turn and face a different direction. And usually that also makes your antagonist face a different direction. They were pursuing, now they are being pursued. And this works in romance as well. Like romance, one of your romantic interests is the lead. The other one is actually the antagonist. Usually that’s the antagonist in your story, right? And that’s what creates that tension. And the twist is when the one that was the lead and was resisting or whatever the case may be, that flips. And now they’re pursuing, right? And you can see it in romance as you watch them, you can see it happen. My wife and I just watched that. It’s kind of a romantic comedy. You People that’s on Netflix or something last night, I thought, this is a classic romancing the beat for phase plot. As I was going through it, I could see each of those things happening.

Kat

But it’s satisfying, right, as the viewer?

Troy

Oh, yeah. It was absolutely satisfying because even though I knew I’m like, they’re going to break up right here, but at the same time, I wanted to see how the writers made that happen, why that happened, and because I was invested in the characters then I cared that that happened. And I wondered how they would bring them back together after that, right? So it’s still even though I know what’s coming and I know they’re going to get back together, but I want to know how. I want to know why. I want to know what their motive was for changing their mind after this huge radical change that caused them to split. Then what is the next radical change that causes them to get back together? I’m still invested in the story. I’m still invested in the characters, even though I know what’s going to happen. So your characters, especially, are really, in a large part, what drives your story forward. And it’s about the character twists, not the event twists.

Kat

Right. Yeah. I think one of the greatest twists is the Breakup with Jennifer Aniston. And he’s a comedy actor? The dude guy. We all know him, right?Yeah, I think that was one of the greatest twists, and that was before I was studying craft, because it’s really about him, like you said, it’s about the character, and it’s about him learning that it’s not about keeping her, it’s about loving her enough to let her go. And it’s just like it’s such a good twist because it changes him in a small like the small realization, and it changes how he treats every single person, right? I use that as an example because we tend to overthink things as writers, like the want and the need and the whatever. He wants the girlfriend to stay, but it’s not for the right reasons. And so that changes. And I think we make it so complicated when we’re trying to define what all these things are. We have to make it some philosophical something or other.

Troy

Well, yeah, it has to be some kind of philosophical discussion. It doesn’t have to be because it’s like, real life like, real life is very simple. The only difference between fiction and real life is that fiction has to make sense and it has to end in a satisfying way. Real life doesn’t always necessarily like, each chapter of your life doesn’t always necessarily have to do that, right? But one example I use is, like, Bohemian Rhapsody. Like, my wife and I went and saw that movie in the theater, right. And the guy who plays Freddie Mercury, I can’t remember his name either, but he’s absolutely amazing. And there was a moment, you know, how there’s the normal just kind of rustling in the theater and the normal kind of chatter, and then there was a moment when he’s talking to the one girl, I think it’s Elizabeth, I can’t remember her name, but anyway. And he’s talking to her on the phone, but he can see her window from the phone. And it’s a very emotional moment. Because you can tell that this is the moment when they really realize that this is not ever going to work. He’s not into her in that way, and she wants something different than what he’s offering. And he’s on the phone, but he can see her window, and he says, well, good night. And as he hangs up the phone, her light in her window goes dark. And the entire theater was silent, like dead silent for, like, a good 10 seconds. And it was like every person in the theater reacted the exact same way to that moment. Now, if you knew the story of his life, if you know the story of Queen, and if you understand story structure, you knew this was coming. Like, this was not a shock, right? But it’s still everyone held their breath for one moment because everyone hit that realization wall at the same time. It was a beautiful moment because you wouldn’t have gotten that at home, necessarily. When you’re watching it in a theater, you see the reactions of everyone else, too. But it was super amazing just to go, wow. Which is one of the reasons to go see some of these movies in a theater, is not to necessarily see it on the big screen or to burn $20 on snacks that you could have made at home for five. But it’s because you can feel and experience the reactions with other people and see that crowd and see their reaction to things. It’s a great way to study story because you can see instead of a reader telling you how they reacted to something, you can actually see it happen to someone. It’s amazing.

Kat

You can feel it with others, right? What is landing with people and what’s not? Because in the end, there’s two different skills, whether it’s writing and cinematography, but the storytelling, what works, what people like on Rotten Tomatoes and don’t like. It’s all about the story is the story hitting the beats that is satisfying to the reader, right? Let’s talk a little bit about your books. Did you always start writing out mystery, and how much did you work at mystery skill writing before you actually just pushed it out there?

Troy

When I was in college, I actually tried to write sci-fi, because when I was growing up, I read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy, and that was a lot of my escape. But I also read a lot of mysteries. It’s just like I was extremely well, I read everything I could get my hands on from the time I was really young. Everything they would let me check out of the library, there’d be sometimes I go to check something out and they’re like, that’s something that you’re not going to finish, that it’s too complicated for somebody your age. And I’m like, no, it’s not. Just give me the book. I read Black Beauty when I was in fourth grade. It was an amazing story. But anyway, but I read all of the Hardy Boys books, like all of them that were out at the time, the little hardback ones. There were like 50 some at the time. I read all of those, but I also read a lot of Isaac Asimov and stuff like that. And I started to get into Stephen King and those type of things. So I didn’t start out with the intent necessarily to write mystery and thriller, but what I found was that that just ended up being my author voice. I tried other things and there are some of my stuff that has little paranormal elements in it or whatever. But what I found was, first of all, when I came down and I realized what my first novel was and what it needed to be, I was like, okay, this is a psychological thriller. That’s exactly what it is. It’s mental, but it’s a thriller type thing.

Kat

When did you figure that out? Like, while you’re writing it?

Troy

Yeah, while I was writing. Well, okay, the first thing so when I first started out, the conventional wisdom was you released a collection of short stories so everyone can get used to your writing and then you release your first novel. This was just a thing. It was a thing that everybody said, this is what you have to do. And I was like, I don’t want to. And they were like, well, this is what you have to do. Anyway, so that was the conventional wisdom at the time. This was how to get into indie publishing, which worked to an extent. But what I found was when I gathered up a lot of the short stories that I had, they all had that same similar, dark, kind of sinister, psychological, thriller, mystery type theme. They were all different. Like, one of them I’m like, I’m rewriting, I took the story, I was going to put it in an anthology that I’m in with a person, with another gal. And then I was like, I need to rewrite this story because it doesn’t make sense this way anymore the way it did before. But it’s still the same story. Like, there’s a bank heist, it’s a thriller, there’s cops, there’s bad guys. And so as I started to put that together, I was like, okay, this is my thing, right? But then I wrote my first novel. And then there was a friend of mine owned a small press and he was like, I want you to submit some short stories and this one has to be about dragons. Well, I submitted a short story about dragons and it’s a thriller with dragons. I mean, that’s what it is. You can’t take it out of there. I worked as an editor for a publisher for a long time, and I was the managing editor of a steamy romance series. So I wrote the first book.

Kat

You looked like the quintessential editor for steamy romance.

Troy

Right? I mean, pretty much, right? I would always tell people, I have three kids. I’ve got to figure it out.

Kat

I know how this happens.

Troy

I know how this works. It’s all right. But anyway, so I wrote the first steamy romance because I wanted that series to be a mix, that there needed to be a plot. I’m like, I don’t want your straight erotica. It was around the time that 50 Shades came out, so we were getting submissions of 50 Shades of every color that you could imagine. And I’m like, what in the something’s wrong with you? And people were trying to write erotica. I had no business writing erotica. There were things they were saying and words and terminology and descriptions that I was like, no. Anyway, so I was like, I want this to be split. Plot and romance, heavy romance. So I wrote the first one in that series, which is a mystery thriller, steamy romance. There’s a murder. There’s a cop and his wife. There’s a dead body and lots of hot sex. But I mean, the premise, the idea was still the same. People have read my fiction before, will read that, and they go, that’s your author voice right there. And so the more I discovered that was just what it is. I can do comedy, but it’s always in the context of some kind of adventure or some kind of thriller. I did a rewriting of Don Quixote called Tilting at Windmills, right? It’s an action adventure comedy. It’s kind of one long junior high joke, you know what I mean? So everything that I do came back to that same thing. So I just eventually discovered this is my default. This is my author voice. So I need to just lean into that, right? So people that are deciding their genre, I recently had someone that submitted to every category of a writing contest, like nonfiction, fiction, poetry, everything. And I’m like, what do you write? What is your thing? Even my poetry has that dark, underlying theme, you know what I mean? There’s a voice there, and that’s helpful to develop a brand as you’re going forward as well. But it was kind of a thing that just worked. And then because I loved research so much, I would research all these different things. Like, I know all these different ways to just these various different ways to kill people and things like that. Hide bodies, stuff like that.

Kat

No one wants to check your Google search.

Troy

Well, yeah, at parties when somebody says, oh, yeah, we’ll see how they slit his throat there, and you’re like, no, that’s actually not how that works. And then you explain it to them. Then they go, I’m just going to go over here. First of all, I don’t need to know that. Second of all, oh, did you know that? Now that I hear it, it makes sense, but I didn’t need to hear it.

Kat

I don’t actually want to know this. I want to touch on one thing because I think it’s interesting that you first call yourself like, mystery thriller writer, and then you have other elements that you bring in. And I think that’s not necessarily a mistake, but one thing that people might not really understand is you can be above all, a romance writer. Maybe you always write something in which a relationship is happening, but if you’re coming up against just writer’s block, what do I write about this time? Incorporating in another genre can really help your story because you put a dead body in there and everything changes, right? You have this adventure, some balloon lands in the middle of your spy, balloon gets shut down in your backyard, everything changes. Like trying that out. And what I find interesting, you were writing stories, you were putting in the words, and then you saw what your voice is and then you move forward from there. So putting words on paper in different ways is probably a really good way to go about finding your pinpoint genre, right? Like your niche genre.

Troy

I mean, part of it is the other thing is being in touch with the short story market. First of all, you can make a little bit of money there. You can’t make a lot. You can’t, I shouldn’t say that, you can. It’s just a lot of hard work. But the short story market is a really interesting place to test out your ideas and test out your thoughts without having to write a full novel. Okay, so what would happen with I mean, think about, like, we look at some classic TV shows like Moonlighting. What is that? Well, it’s a romance with a lot of murder and dead bodies and cases. So it’s a romantic mystery type blend, right? But it works super well. So if you find yourself, like, I feel like you’re in a rut. If you’re writing regency romance, there’s a limit to what you can throw in there, right? There’s a limit to what readers are going to put up.

Kat

Regency fantasy.

Troy

Yeah, I mean, there’s kind of a readers are going to put up with a certain amount of genre blending there, but not a lot, almost any other romance genre. Or if you just want to switch romance genres, I’ve talked to tons of people who’ve written historical romance or regency romance and gone, you know what? I’m done with all the rules. I want to go play somewhere. Well, go write yourself a romantic comedy and throw in some jokes there and throw in some fun and see what happens, right? There’s nothing wrong with playing around within your genre as long as it somewhat resonates with your brand. And so that’s a part of the thing, too, is your brand as an author is you. It’s not your series, not your books, not your character. Now this is for me. Some people will like they focus on one series, that’s their series forever, or the same type of series, right? And that’s what they do forever. And that’s it, right? That’s where they are. That’s it. That’s fine because that becomes their brand. But for me, it should be more your brand is you and who you are. And that’s a persona that you put out in public, too. You don’t have to air all of your dirty laundry and tell the world all your secrets either, right? In fact, please don’t. Yeah, but I mean, your brand is you, so you can tell your readers, hey man, you like to laugh. Now some of your regency readers are not going to come over to that side. That’s all right. You’re not always going to get crossover, but you can get some. So you’re not starting from zero. But there’s nothing wrong with playing with your genre and exploring who you are and what you want to do. To have a sustainable author career, you’re going to have to add some variety over time. You’re going to have to find new and innovative ways to keep yourself interested in your work as well as your readers. But I mean, you have to be interested in it too, otherwise your readers will notice kind of what’s the point? Yeah, your readers will notice. They’ll notice that you’re mailing it in and it’s just not as good because you’re not emotionally invested. Your reader is not emotionally invested.

Kat

Right. So how long have you been writing now?

Troy

So really since 2009. Really? About 2011 is when I went full time.

Kat

Almost 15 years. Yeah, at least over a decade of full time writer. That’s very cool. And things have changed quite a bit. I mean, you got in on that kindle part, right? And I was talking with someone the other day, like lamenting a little bit because I was around. I just had knee deep in diapers with my kids at the time and wasn’t very active in researching the market. Kudos to you. There is a certain point at which writers who were smart or just saw the market or were lucky or whatever it is and got in. At that point she was saying, oh, they were so lucky, they really made their career at that point. And I said, yeah, but this is a career that every year you are having to put yourself out there. And the good thing is that your books are evergreen. They’re always there. You can keep pulling them out. People are still going to find them a decade later, but you have to put it out in front of them. They might have had a burst, but they still have to go out there. They still have to tell new readers about their books, right? So it’s still a full-time job. Correct? Or correct me if I’m wrong.

Troy

No, it’s still a full-time job. And for it to be sustainable, you have to continue marketing. Like, I have that original series that I wrote. Like, I haven’t updated the cover since 2013. I don’t sell those books at all. Well. I need to bring them out, redo the covers, make them more relevant for today. And it’s one of my things on the agenda for this year, right? But just because you have a backlist doesn’t mean that it’s not that those books never sell. Sometimes when they do, I’m like, oh man, please don’t read that. My writing has changed, right? And it’s not that they’re bad. It’s just that for me so I just have to get over that and bring them back into relevance in today’s market. But you constantly have to do things like that. You’re constantly updating your books, you’re updating the back matter. You’re changing how you’re doing business. We’re moving from people being exclusively on Amazon to lots and lots of people selling books direct to readers through their own website. It’s a great idea if you can make it work and develop that trust, right? And as Amazon and Facebook and all these other places go through all these changes, it’s good to have your own place for people to come to so that you kind of own that it’s your territory, it’s secure, it’s your own thing.

Troy

Right, right. Because before we were very dependent upon other markets and other people. And then things are constantly coming out, this whole AI thing, and talking about like, AI audio narrators and stuff like that, how people are. Some people are extremely opposed, some people are extremely in favor. And then yesterday it comes out that a major audiobook provider for indie authors basically has a clause in their contract that Apple can use your audio from your audiobook to train AI. Narrators unless you opt out of it. Now, this is news yesterday, the market has changed. So I have to decide, am I leaving my books on that platform? And is that okay with me to allow that to happen? Right? So there’s an immediate change in my career, my income, my next moves for my audiobooks. It changes everything if you decide to move. Announcement moving is a big deal.

Kat

Is a big deal.

Troy

And then you go, well, where do you move from there? There are a limited number of options of people who have a good foothold in the market for audiobooks, right? So this is part of the like, this has nothing to do with writing, but it has everything to do with a writing career. Everything turns on a dime. Like I say, it’s a part of this constant education and learning thing that’s a part of an author career to have something sustainable for years. You aren’t going to be Stephen King and release novels and finally get to a point where you just release one or two here and there and everybody’s just waiting for whatever you release next. And truth is, that isn’t happening. For him either. He has a huge marketing team and they’re doing all kinds of things to bring his books out because everything’s changing.

Kat

Yeah. Even the traditionally published well, I think it was no, it wasn’t Jane Freeman, but somebody the other day wrote a whole article about even traditionally published, you have one book deal. Don’t expect that they’ll pick up your next book, even if it’s in the same series, the same genre, you’re going to start all over again. Everything is changing. And as much as us writers only want to sit down and write, it’s no longer viable. That’s not going to be your life, right?

Troy

Well, think about what we saw, like when there was the big merger talk, right? And so there’s these two publishers in front of Congress for three weeks, and what they told us, if you listen carefully, is we have no idea.

Kat

No idea!

Troy

We don’t know how to sell books because here’s what happens, okay?

Kat

They don’t know the market, which is amazing.

Troy

You get a traditional publishing deal, right? You get your book to them and you’re like, yay, my agent got this through an editor, and I got published by a traditional publishing house, and I’m not selling any book.

Kat

They know what they’re doing, right? Wait.

Troy

Nobody in their marketing department like that book. And so if the marketing department doesn’t like it, you aren’t going to get the money and attention that you need to get your book anywhere in the charts. And it’s going to sit in language the same as somebody’s self published title. They uploaded to Amazon last Thursday with no marketing because the book that isn’t marketed doesn’t sell. And it doesn’t matter what the publisher name on the spine is, right?

Kat

Because they don’t know your ideal reader.

Kat

Which is amazing to me. They don’t understand it. They don’t understand all different sub-genres that are happening. They don’t understand social media. They don’t know and you’re not a big name. They also said something like, if you’re not a big name, you’re not going to sell. Like, if they have that mindset, why even publish other people’s books? What is going on?

Troy

And if you think about it, the only publishers that are like big publishers and they’re not even traditional, they’re not even part of the big five is the ones that are owned by Amazon. Now, why do those you can do really well with those publishers if they like your book, if the marketing department likes your book, why? Amazon understands the subgenres. Amazon has all the readers everywhere, so they know exactly where to send your book so that people will buy it, right? Now, can you learn those things on your own? And yes, there are things you can do so to help your career be sustainable. But anymore, you have to be thinking about those things as well as what you’re writing. I wrote a great book. Congratulations. Step one, many yeah.

Kat

Whether you go indie or trad.

Troy

Wether you go indie or trad, it’s still the same thing. The way you’re going to get the marketing department in the traditional publishers to notice your book is you’re going to market it yourself until it sells a whole bunch of copies. And then somebody in the marketing department is going to go, what’s this book we published a year? Oh, it actually is selling. And then they’ll put their power behind it.

Kat

What do we do about it? Oh, wait, yeah.

Troy

What do we do about it now? Now that it’s selling? And then they’ll put their power behind it. But if nobody notices it in their department, they’re not going to put their power behind it. And you’re going to be in the same boat as every indie publisher that’s out there. Only when it comes to royalty time, you’re getting 11% maybe of what the cover price is, and I’m getting 70.

Kat

Yeah, that’s true.

Troy

My website, I’m getting 100. Well, not 100, but I’m getting 85% maybe, something like that. But you know what I mean? I’m making money from my work.

Kat

Yes, exactly. The closest to 100% you can get. You do a lot of things. You write, you’re still writing your books. You help authors with Plottr as well. You are the guy that teaches us how to plot. So let’s talk just as we wrap up a little bit about how you help authors. Are you still out there helping them edit and things like that?

Troy

So I do editing. I don’t do as much editing as I used to, which means that I book, like way out, because I can’t do it as much. So I refer people to other editors in general more than I.

Kat

So what are your thoughts on why we should use an editor? Because there’s also a little bit of a trend in indies of I don’t need an editor, I know exactly what I’m doing.

Troy

So here’s the deal. In indie publishing, let’s say you use Pro Writing Aid and AutoCrit, or maybe Marlowe, whatever the latest thing is, right, to edit your book. Can you get it edited well enough for some readers? Sure. And if you’re a skilled marketer, you can sell mediocre book, and that’s fine if that’s what you want. That’s not what I want. And so there are certain steps you can take to work on editing your book so that costs you less for an editor, but you need other human eyes on your book before it goes out into the world, regardless of what that looks like for you and for me anymore. What I do when I do edit for people is I do an evaluation first, a manuscript evaluation. And the reason is you will tell me all I need is a copy and line edit of your book. Yes. And I will go, no, that’s not what you need. Or I might say, yeah, that is what you need, and, hey, that’s great because I can do that one fast, and I like that. That saves me all kinds of trouble and time, right? But for the most part, that rarely ever happens. Usually you have some passive voice going on. You have some showing or some telling not showing. You have all kinds of other stuff happening in your book that you don’t see anymore because you’re too close to it. And so you need those other human eyes on your work to make it better. And don’t go into Marlowe and pro writing aid and all those things and just accept all the changes that they offer. No, please don’t do that, because they’re wrong. They’re wrong. They’re going to put commas in the wrong place. They’re going to substitute words that you did not mean for it to substitute. And it’s going to read just like a machine editor.

Kat

It’s going to read like AI, right? It’s going to read terribly.

Troy

It’s horrible because even people are using AI heavily, and I know a lot of people that are using it, but even those that are using it heavily understand that the AI generates ideas, outlines. It helps you with certain types of writers, block or whatever, but you are still the writer. You still have to take what it spits out and make it into your story.

Kat

Yeah. Don’t cut corners.

Troy

Can it help you? Sure. Maybe like any other tool, it can be a help, but like any other tool, it can also be your downfall. Because when you start to trust a machine too much over your human instincts, your human emotions and stuff like that, just like with anything else, you’re going to have problems. Nobody yet. Even with Tesla’s, full self driving mode, just goes back to make theirselves a sandwich in the backseat while our car drives them around. We’re not there yet. And a big part of the reason is that thinking and that decision making and that intent, right? We’re just not there yet, right? With machines. And hopefully by the time we do, and they’re sentient writing their own novels.

Kat

At least they’ll be able to keep us on the road, but I’m not sure they’ll be able to still edit your book. What I like about editing and working with an editor, and I tell everyone all the time, I know that it’s an investment, it is. But it’s cheaper than going back to college because it’s really and not that I have my own feelings about going to get an MBA, and it’s great for some people, but what you’re doing is really looking. At the story from the point of view of a reader like fresh eyes and somebody, especially, who has experience and understands storytelling and understands what should be happening. You’re getting a whole education right there. It’s really a relationship. It is not meant to judge you. It is meant for you to learn more and more and more. And like you said, there are times you might get to the point where all you need is a line edit because you understand and you can see the mistakes and you can follow through. Maybe if you’re smart enough, that’ll happen in a few edits. I still really love to send off short stories and get feedback on them and pay for the editing and to see what they’re seeing, right? If you, Joanna Penn, people who are up there are still working with editors, that’s what I tell my writer.

Troy

It’s a hint. First of all, you’re getting a lesson. You’re getting a writing lesson every time because you’re getting somebody else’s perspective. There’s also things that writers just do, right? Like, you will repeat certain words and phrases in your book. Your editor will point unbelievable. Your editor will point that out, right? And you go, oh, man, I used some way too much.

Kat

I loved beautiful that day.

Troy

I loved beautiful.

Kat

Everything was beautiful.

Troy

Everything was beautiful. So you’re like, in my next book, I am not going to repeat that word. I’m not going to do that again, right? And you’re right. You won’t. You’ll just pick a different word, and you’ll repeat that one over and over throughout your book. And your next book, you’ll pick a different one. And I mean, I’m telling you, 30 books in I’m like I have cycled through some words, right? Sometimes I come back to one because I kind of like that, apparently, and I come back to it and repeat it again, right? And your editor catches those things and can tell you patterns, can tell you things that you’re doing that you’re like, oh, I didn’t even realize I was doing that, or I didn’t realize I missed that until you said it. And it’s not something that an AI is going to catch. It’s not something that your editor and Word is going to catch. It’s something that a human reader is going to catch. And you need those eyes, whatever that looks like for you. You need those other eyes on your manuscript.

Kat

Yes, absolutely. I love that. So your website will be in the show notes below it’s. TroyLambertWrites.com, there’s a lot more here on your website that we didn’t even touch on, so I encourage everyone to go to .TroyLambertWrites.com You’ll find out even more. You have some cool book trailers here as well, which we didn’t even get into those.

Troy

Yeah, those are super fun. Super fun.

Kat

They’re very cool. So I’ll have people go over there. But thank you so much, Troy, for coming and talking to me. I feel like we could talk for another 3 hours.

Troy

Yeah, we could do several of these on different topics if we would stay on topic. It would be really good if we could do that next time. We’ll stay focused. That’s what I say every time.

Kat

Exactly. Thanks, Troy.

Troy

All right. Thank you.

The post Ep 173 Thrillers, Plotting, and Writing Craft with Plot Master Troy Lambert first appeared on Pencils&Lipstick.

Do you struggle with writing new and fresh body language and emotional description in your stories? Today Stacy Juba is bringing us some tips to freshen and liven up our character’s emotions. Don’t miss it!

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TRANSCRIPT STARTS HERE:

Kat

Hi, Stacy. How are you doing today?

Stacy

Oh, very good.

Kat

Hey, everyone. We have Stacy Juba, my friend, with us today. She is my favorite editor in the whole world. In case anyone’s new to the podcast, could you give us a little rundown of who you are?

Stacy

Yes, I’m a fiction author of mystery and romantic comedy and some young adult books. I’m also a freelance developmental editor and line editor and the founder of Shortcuts for Writers, where I teach online courses for writers to help them simplify the writing and editing process and fit writing into a busy life.

Kat

Yes, which is everything we need, basically. You have an awesome course on self editing and getting ready to push out the manuscript, which I think is amazing. And I tell everyone about it. We’re going to talk about something else today, but just talking about that course a little bit with editing. I saw the other day that somebody was putting out memes about writers being all frazzled because they’re editing, or like, I hate editing. I hate all that. And it’s so funny to me, this journey that we have of like, you get something on the page. And I think what we hate about editing is that, A, we don’t really know how to do it. So that’s why I like your course, because it goes through a lot of… because it’s more than just finding the missing periods, right?

Kat

It’s the big things, the big structural things down to the word choice and sentence structure down to the periods and the little things like that. It’s a big all encompassing endeavor. So you need to have some system.

Kat

Yeah, because I think that helps that you’re a developmental editor when you put together that course. It was not just about like, do you have the Oxford comma or not? Developmental editing, can you tell us what the difference is with developmental editing? You also do line editing because you know all your grammar, but there’s a big difference.

Stacy

Developmental editing. I created the course based on seeing my editing clients make the same mistakes over and over. I was writing the same comments in my editorial letters, so that’s why I decided to create the course as a stepping stone to hiring an editor so that they can save some money, submit their manuscript when it’s further along. But developmental editing is where you give a broad overview of everything from the structure of the plot and is there enough conflict and obstacles and satisfying conclusion to the character development from the major characters to the supporting characters? Do they have a character arc? Does the reader understand their motivations? To the point of view, are you getting into the narrator’s head deeply enough? If you’re writing third person, if you’re writing first person, are you doing it skillfully so it’s not coming across like a diary? The dialog and the pacing, the timeline does everything, add up that you’re writing it. Is it following a timeline so that the date… If you say something happened next week, is it really happening next week? Did you figure out how to put this story into a timeline so that readers understand how much time is passing? And then line editing, which I also go into the course, I also do is… I like line editing because it’s very creative, it’s different from copy editing. So line editing is more like just punching up sentences to make them more vivid and to tighten them up, so they’re more active than passive, make them more colorful. When I work on a client’s meeting script, I do developmental editing in some degree of line editing together, but it depends on how far along the manuscript is because obviously if a more advanced writer submits a manuscript that they’ve done several drafts and it’s further along, then there’s less structural issues. And as I’m going along reading it, I can punch up the word choice and everything, strengthen the sentences. But if it’s a beginner writer, they’re going to have to make a lot of big structural rewrites. They’re not getting deep enough into their character’s point of view. They have a lot of plot holes. The writing is very passive. Then obviously doing the line edits, they would be obsolete because they have to do so much rewriting anyway. So in that case, I’ll do line editing just as an example, this is how you make a sentence more active. But this is an example of how you’re overusing certain words and we can make it more vivid. And then copy editing is really the nitty gritty Oxford comma kind of thing, the grammar and punctuation, and then that’s the last step.

Kat

But it’s interesting how as writers, we seem to think we all go through this, I think, or maybe it was just me, where you start out writing and it takes so much to get that story on the paper that by the time you hit the end, you think you’re done. Maybe there will be commas and dialog tags and things. Your first run through with an editor is just like, oh, it’s so eye opening to be like, that everything that’s in my head that I thought was on the page, is not necessarily clear to anyone else who’s not in my own head.

Stacy

Right. The first editorial letter can be a shock. It could be a 10-page single space letter, telling you all these different things and the first reaction could be, oh, no, I’m not going to pull off the rewrite.

Kat

Exactly. I remember getting my first and this was in 2001. So the internet was a baby, and we were all told at that time not to trust it. There’s nothing out there that’s good. And things were not blocked off, let’s say, things that nobody wants popping up on their screen. Now I look back and somebody was kind enough, I say the word kind now, to send me like five pages on really telling me why it wasn’t good enough yet, but then pointed out the good things about it. But it was so disheartening to me because I thought, oh, I spent like 19 or 20, 21, or something like that. Then I spent a year and a half. Now you have the internet, you can go out and find out. Like you said, you put together the course because you kept seeing the same errors. We make the same errors. We’re not alone in this. We all tend to think that it’s an easier process than it is. But we could talk about the full structure, but today we’re going to talk more about body language and punching up the sentences like you like to say, which I think is fun. And punching up the description and emotion. That’s a big job to do without not… I feel like we can either not do it or we become really angsty. So how do we do it without becoming super dramatic? I’ve gotten that edit, too, way back. Maybe it still happens. I don’t know. We’ll see with the new one. But I remember getting that edit. It’s like, this person is really dramatic. Could you notch down on the dramaticism or whatever? And I think that’s because I was overly describing every reaction that they might have to something. So what do you think are the misconceptions first, of when we’re writing and we’re trying to get the story onto the page and the characters’ reactions? Let’s talk about the misconception of putting too little and then putting too much.

Stacy

Yeah, I think you know as a writer what your characters are feeling.

Kat

Good point.

Stacy

And you have tendency to write that in dialog, but it’s hard for the reader to understand where that character is coming from. Why are they saying that? Why are they reacting that way? If you’re a narrator, you might not have gotten into their head enough. So when they have this big explosion, like yelling at someone, we’re like, where did that come from? Because it’s just, you can describe it enough, how they were feeling. Or a lot of times I’ll see a lack of body language and nonverbal communication and details in a scene where that’s a dialog scene with a few different characters. Writers have a tendency to make it dialog heavy, and we’re not seeing as much of what is the character doing before they say the dialog. In the case of the narrator, what is the narrator thinking? Or if they feel like their anger rising in them and embarrassed their faces, like pinkening or turning a shade of pink, just little hints to show what the characters are feeling. You need to learn how to weave that in to your scene in a fresh and unique way. Because the other problem is that we have a tendency to see the same words over and over again.

Kat

We do latch on to certain words that we were writing.

Stacy

Well, there’s a couple of things. First, it’s beginner writers have a tendency to just tell us how the character is feeling rather than showing us. So it could be like, he looked mad or he looked embarrassed, or she felt, is another word, she felt scared or she felt a little uneasy. So telling us rather than showing us. And then the other component is the repeating of these same words throughout the manuscript. I actually created a looks and gazes guide for writers, a free guide, because the number one overused word I see in the manuscript is look. She looked at him, he looked at her, she looked upset, he looked mad. And she looked up, she looked down. He gazed to her, she gazed to him. And that’s just not very fresh writing. If you submitted five pages to an editor and they told you, you overused a word like look in those five pages, you’re probably doing it through the whole manuscript. So if you did a search for that word, you’re probably going to find that you used it 300 times. Or another popular one is eyes. She looked into his eyes. He gazed into her eyes. She lowered her eyes. So you want to… there’s nothing wrong with using eyes or using look sometimes, but you don’t want to overdo it. And you want to make sure you’re not just relying on one or two aspects of body language and just overlooking everything else or nonverbal communication because there’s other emotion categories you could draw upon when you’re writing. So just becoming more aware of that.

Kat

Yes. And I think that takes work. Working with editors, people who are a little more advanced, people who aren’t in your own head, so they’re really reading it. You’re reading it coming at it fresh. You don’t know anything about it, so you’re reading it like a reader would. And if the reader doesn’t understand, they don’t see what we see in our head. And I remember some of the best advice was from this one editor who was kind enough to read at least the first 30 pages or so, and then immediately knew because she was a professional, what was wrong with the book? And she said, you cannot give us every description of what’s going on with your characters. You have to allow and let go and let the reader fill in the blanks. And that was really eye opening to me because I thought that what I was reading when I read good books with good description was full description. But what I was doing was filling in the blanks. And she told me, go back and read books that you love and realize that they have very few description and your brain, your imagination is taking off.

Kat

So it’s interesting how then when you start to write, you think you have these weird misconceptions of what you should be writing or even what you have read.

Stacy

Right. You know exactly what’s going on in the scene as you’re writing it, but your readers might not make the same connection. So just like you don’t want to… Like you were talking before about overdoing it, you don’t want to overdo it either. You do want to let readers fill in some of those blanks so you don’t have to… One thing I noticed is that once writers become more aware of nonverbal communication, the importance of weaving it in, they start stringing together a lot of nonverbal communication in one paragraph.

Kat

Oh, right. I do that.

Stacy

I think off the top of my head, yeah. If someone was nervous, they’ll go overboard with describing it.

Kat

Their palm started being sweaty and their knees were shaking. And yes, I have done that. I have done that as well. I went way overboard.

Stacy

Yeah. You just need to take too many of those nonverbal queues and put them together. And I was like, okay, we got the point. We don’t have to… Maybe two of those would work, but we don’t need five of those queues in the same paragraph because then that’s just telling the reader, Hey, did you get the point? She’s nervous. Did you get that? So like you were saying, you want to show it, but you don’t have to go on and on about it because your reader is going to get the message. If you go too overboard with it, they can be like, okay, yeah, I got it, she’s nervous. Let’s just get on with this scene.

Kat

That’s a good point. I guess that’s what I call the inksiness of over dramaticizing the… Is that even a word? I don’t know.

Stacy

And sometimes I think with the inksiness, writers go overboard with the dialog where instead of saying, she felt sad or something, she’ll just say it in the dialog. It’d be like a long, almost telling.

Kat

Especially if ft’s first person, right?

Stacy

Yeah. Or just telling the other person, I’m so sad and this is what… And it’s really, even though it’s in dialog, she’s still really just telling the reader. It’s not coming across as the reader isn’t really feeling it. That, oh, she says, not really. And I think that’s the thing. You want to make an emotional connection with your reader so that they can feel what your character is feeling and relate to them and be like, okay, that’s why she’s reacting this way. But if you just go on and on, I’m so sad. It just go on and on. And dialog, it can come across as angsty. And it can actually have the opposite effect of having your reader get frustrated with the character because she comes across as too much. And we don’t really understand. It’s different if it’s your narrator, we can get into her head and somebody says something and it just, maybe somebody gives her a criticism. And it’s just like she gets a sharp pain where it reminds her of something, or it reminds her of when her mother used to criticize her. So we have that context of why she’s reacting this way. And then it just becomes more three dimensional and believable where if it’s just thinly portrayed and it’s a lot of angst in the dialog without the context. Then it can just be harder for the readers to relate to your characters because they’re not really connecting on an emotional level. You’re just telling rather than showing.

Kat

Yes, I think that’s a really good point, though, because if they can relate it back to why they’re acting like that and weaving in that back story a little bit of like, I don’t know, this will probably be bad. But John said it was becoming more critical with old age, just like her father used to constantly pick on her mother’s blouse, unbuttoning at the top or something. That bringing back the back story of why that would bother someone so much is so much more personal because you start thinking, oh, I know what that person’s like. That’s just like Uncle Joe, who would constantly complain about everything. That’s much more grounding for the reader, I feel like, and much more personal. Because our minds are weird, they can think of 50 things at once. As we’re reading, Uncle Joe can pop up or Grandpa or whoever who was critical or maybe nice or whatever. And you’ll actually have a sweet or weird memory while you’re reading it because the writer has really brought in the fullness of life, the fullness of the richness of what it is to be human. I’m reading Louise Urdrich book, I think that’s how you say her name, The Sentence. And there was one really beautiful line where she’s talking about one person, but she had already introduced another character. She’s talking about this one young man there, who’s there to study the O’Gibbey language. She says, who, Penn, the other character she had already introduced, both admired and resented. And it’s a really short sentence, but it makes you think back to the other character, and it gives you more insight into how complicated relationships are, right? And humans. And it just added another dimension to both of these characters. And it was like this long. And just really cool.

Stacy

Right… And even if you have a scene where it’s going to escalate into anger, where they have this outburst, if you can just weave in a little bit of the nonverbal communication queues so you can see it building. The thing is you can’t get into every character’s head. You don’t want to headhop into what they’re thinking or what their back story is. So you can do that for your narrator of that scene. But for the other characters, you’ve got to rely on what your narrator is observing them do. So it can be these different categories of nonverbal communication. We already talked about the eyes and the eye contact. But then there’s their facial expressions. Is the jaw clenching? Are they frown deepening or biting the lip? Movement, is someone showing dominance by moving forward and stocking forward and looming over them. Or is somebody feeling defensive, their arms are crossed, touched. If you shook someone’s hand, is it a firm hand shake? Or is it like, I think we talked about clammy, limp, sweaty. Because that implies nervousness or uneasiness without coming out and saying, Oh, he looks nervous. The reader just gets that from the limp, clammy handshake.

Kat

Yeah, gross.

Stacy

The gestures, if someone is getting mad, you might see their hands tightening or at their sides. If they’re impatient, they could be drumming their fingers on the table, or foot can be tapping up and down the way your character sits and holds himself with their posture. Is it someone who’s just really casual, just sauntes into the room and straddles the chair. Or someone who is slouching as they’re feeling like they’re being reprimanded or criticized and their shoulders are slumping. If someone interested in leaning forward and wants to hear the next word, or they just look like they’re not even listening.

Kat

They’re just trying to put their earbud in.

Stacy

Yeah. are glancing down at the phone.

Kat

Trying not to have their eyes. What’s interesting about that is it gives… You said that the narrator, so when you’re talking from the… Let’s think of a romance, I guess. Maybe he’s talking, one of the romantic and we’ll just say him. What you’re saying, especially for new writers, he can’t tell the reader what she’s actually feeling. He can only say what’s happening that he can see physically. Let’s say they’re having a conversation, so he can’t say she felt this way or she was thinking she thought something. I do see that.

Stacy

Yeah. You can get into your narrator’s head if you’re having a scene of dialog or something, like we were talking before, you could have them remember something, or they react a certain way because it just triggered something, an emotional trigger for them. You can get into the physiological things like their stomach just getting queasy. or that they can feel the heat rushing up to the back of their neck. But for the other characters, you can’t say how they’re feeling because we’re not in their head. We have to stay close in your narrator’s head. So it’s like what your narrator is observing. So I’ll see this mistake a lot where the writer will unintentionally headhop by saying that even for the narrator, they’ll say her face reddened, but the narrator can’t see her own face reddening. She can see everybody else’s face is reddening, but she can’t see her own. So she can feel the heat creeping up. That’s a common mistake, though, right?

Kat

It is, yeah. Especially in the beginning. And I have also seen the person might stock off, and then suddenly the writer is writing about what that person sees, but they haven’t changed scene. So the person who’s still narrating is still in the house, let’s say, and the other person stomps out the door and down the stairs and past the tree. It’s like, well, how are they seeing that? Are they at the window watching them? Then we need to know that they’re at the window. So it’s like these easy mistakes to make because you as the writer see it all. It’s like an aerial view of this whole movie.

Stacy

Right. Because sometimes I’ll see in the scene where the character actually turned around or something, but then she’ll observe that the other person’s eyes widened or something. And then I’ll put in my track changes, well, how can she see her eyes widen when she turned around? When she’s facing the other way so she can’t see. And it’s tricky as a writer, you have to really visualize it as a movie in your head. And sometimes that just doesn’t come through on the first draft because you’re just trying to get it down, understandably. And the first draft doesn’t have to be perfect. But the problem is when you send the early draft to an editor and you’re paying someone hundreds of dollars to edit an early draft, there’s a lot of mistakes. If you know what to look for, you can catch them yourself so that you can save your money and get an edit on a work that’s much more further along. So the body language and the nonverbal communication is just something every writer needs to pay attention to when you’re in the editing process. Even if you just want to get the scene down fast while you’re writing, and that’s fine, but you have to come back to it and really do editing pass in your book, just looking for the body language and are you showing rather than telling? Do we understand why these characters are acting this way? Do you have a good balance of these different elements? Like, are we getting into your narrator’s head? Is there a balance of what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling physiologically? Are people just always looking at each other and their eyes meeting? Are you burying that and using gestures and head movements and posture and how they’re sitting and standing, facial expressions? And I think just read some good books and really observe how other authors are doing it, really successful authors. Now, with that said, I’ve read a few traditionally published books lately that you could tell were just turned out because I was appalled at how everything came through. But the first chapter was, she looked at him, he looked, he looked at her and I…

Kat

Now you can’t not see it, right?

Stacy

No. And I was like, oh, my gosh, how did this… But it was a big name author who has several books coming out a year.

Kat

They just missed it.

Stacy

But I think they were juseztt trying to get it out and people bought it. It was like this cozy mystery series that has a lot of fans. And I think the earlier books in this series, they spent much more time on and were much more well developed. And then the later books, the writing just kept editing. And I think that’s the thing about editing is that the traditional publishers don’t have as much time to spend on editing as they did in the past. So if you’re a big name author with tons of books out, maybe you can get away with that because we have fans. But most of us can’t get away with that. And you really have to have fresh writing and see these things for yourself. So read a book that you really enjoy and that’s getting a lot of positive reviews and establish authors and really observe how they’re doing the body language and nonverbal communication and internal thought. You’re sure they’ll go and look at each other and it’s fine for them to gaze into each other eyes?

Kat

Maybe once or twice.

Stacy

Right. But you’re going to see a lot of just really nice turns of phrases. It’s like, oh, wow, what a fresh way to say that, or what a unique way to convey that same thing. It’s just see the twist they put on it and just let yourself really just be creative as you’re writing. And if you see yourself writing something that’s cliched, just, again, pretend like you’re watching a movie. What’s the fresh way to describe it?

Kat

What else can I say about that moment other than her hands were sweaty again? Because it is true that we tend to get into this, I don’t know why, but we trip into the same phrases or the same gestures or whatever. Even four, five, six, seven books down the road, for some reason, when you’re just in the book, you end up saying the same thing over and over again. So like you said, sit back and think, okay, where are they? But you really have to have a pretty critical editorial eye at that point. You can’t just be the writer at that point. You really have to be looking and thinking critically of like, what else can I do to deepen this story and maybe have her observe something else or remember a memory or back story, but not sweating palms again? What other senses could I use? Reading other books, I mean, going back to, it’s the one book I’m reading right now, The Sentence, her husband, like the character, rubs his hands together and puts his hands on her face. And she said if she leaned into the warmth of his hands, that’s not t’s not saying she felt secure.

Kat

She’s not saying that, but that’s the sensation you get, not just because of that sentence, but because of the surrounding sentences as well. The dialog that they’re having, he’s reassuring her. Then he puts his hands on her face and she leans into it. You understand as the reader that she feels safe with this man because somebody else could put their hands on your face and it’s a threat. Understanding that a gesture doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It’s whatever you’ve put around it. Shrugging can be perceived as many things.

Stacy

Right. You could just not know. You could be bored or you’d be like, I’m not don’t care, annoyed. I think another thing to do is just observe people and keep a journal. Just watch what people do in different situations. I like that. If you’re in a coffee shop or something, just watch people and how they act, listen to conversations, and even how your friends and family, just pay more attention. That can inspire you to come up with new ways of describing things. And a couple of authors that I think do down for both communication well are like, Jody Cole, something like that, who just writes these really intense, in depth stories about all kinds of really original subjects. I think her writing is really original. So if you could read someone like her. I’ve been reading a lot of Leanne Moriarty lately. Just try some different authors, even outside your genre, to mix it up a little bit and see how they are describing things and just become more aware of it and become more aware of what your crutches are, what are the phrases that you tend to overuse the most and just become more aware of them. Like, eyebrows, I see a lot of eyebrows raising. Every writer has their phrases that they go back to again and again.

Kat

Well, it’s interesting how we suddenly make our characters trained psychologists almost. And I think it goes into we really are intimate with all the characters, or we should be as the writers. But whenever I’m talking to any of my writing clients, it’s like, well, why would they know that that’s what they’re doing? Half the time, we don’t know what we actually feel until it’s lead up to a big blowout. You don’t start out super angry. You start out frustrated, and then another scratch comes, and then another, and then this, and everything starts falling apart. Making our characters so in tune with their own emotions and everyone else’s emotions is just unrealistic. They have to have observances that aren’t always correct, almost. Or they just can’t be super deep all the time. That would be really annoying to be friends with that person.

Stacy

Right. Characters have to be flawed, too, and they can’t understand it. Well, he said that to me because, well, he’s got rejection issues. You don’t want your character like psychoanalyzing everybody. Unless they’re a psychologist. But yeah, I think it’s just coming at it from looking at your own life and people and how everybody has this different perspective. Two people could just have this totally different perspective. And that’s why they’re arguing because they both have experiences that shape them. They both have trigger points that maybe one person gets defensive because it always feels like people don’t listen to her. And the other one could have a history of being criticized or takes anything as criticism. And then when you put those personalities together, they’re going to clash. So the characters might not be aware of why they’re reacting this way because they don’t understand the other person’s perspective. But you as the writer can think about that as you’re writing the book and before you write the book and do some research into different personalities, types and archetypes. And I know you talk a lot about this thing. I think different personality types have positive traits, and then they also have negative traits associated with them. I’m trying to think of an example, someone is really nurturing. You could have a mother character who’s very nurturing. So the positive aspect of that character that she’ll do anything for you and she’s really protective. The negative aspect is that she could be too overprotective and annoy people, annoy her kids, annoy her husband. Maybe she’s too controlling because she just wants to take care of them and wants them to be safe, but she’s discouraging them from what they want to do.

Kat

Yes. Especially if the other character is more of an independent and now they don’t understand each other and she thinks she’s being disrespected and the kid thinks she’s being smothering or whatever. Yeah. Do you see that quite often where they just have a character reaction? I always like to use James Bond because he’s not very conscientious. He’s not very emotionally attached, let’s say. And then you have that character who, when a woman burst into tears, will then have compassion and hug her. And you’re like, no, that doesn’t work. You have to continue with your character, even as they’re learning. But they can’t do a 180 degree turn on how you’ve set them up in the beginning. Or suddenly in a fight, they’re still, even if they are becoming more balanced, they’re still going to react how their personality is. A nurturing person isn’t going to suddenly be like, Well, I’ll abandon everybody because nobody wants me to do anything anymore. I mean, a crisis mode, they’re still going to react exactly as they are. They’re going to go mother hen. So do you see that a lot where people aren’t consistent then with the characters?

Stacy

Is that? Yeah, they’re not consistent because they didn’t really decide early on exactly what the dominant traits are. Or they just changed too drastically at the end. I mean, you definitely want the character to grow and evolve. Everything about them isn’t going to change. What do you want to focus on? What’s their character arc? How do you want them to evolve in the book? They’re not going to become another totally different person. You have to build up to whatever the change is going to be. You have to build up to that. Then some books, some manuscripts, like by beginner authors, you don’t see that build up. It’s just they got from point A to point C, but point B is muddled about how they got there. I think a lot of times that’s just like the lack of clarity when you’re writing about what your character’s personality traits are. So I think when I’m writing a book, I do a lot of free writing from the character’s point of view, just like journaling, like, tell me about yourself or tell me what bothers you.

Kat

Sounds weird to non writers.

Stacy

It sounds weird, but yeah.

Kat

And then writing their trigger points. I love writing. What is the story behind the trigger point? Why does she no longer trust men? What happened?

Stacy

Right. And sometimes it can just be helpful to look through books of archetypes or personality types and looking at the positive and negative traits associated with them. I’m interested in astrology. And there’s an astrologer I follow who talked to Deborah Silverman, which is interesting because she always talks about even looking at the different signs, how they have characteristics associated with them. And she’ll talk about the high road of that sign, the low road, which is the same thing. You know, like a cancer, someone who’s like, I’m a cancer, someone who’s like, again, like the nurturing and homebody and like to take care of people. But then the other, the low road of it might be like being too never wants to leave the house, never wants to do that thing. So it’s just think about whatever personality traits, wherever you get that inspiration, whether it’s from Astrology, whether it’s from archetypes or personality books, wherever you get that inspiration, think about what the high road of that trade is and the low road. And then that will drive how your character reacts in different situations. That will drive what nonverbal communication and body language your characters can use. I think it’s just helpful to think about all of that before you start writing the book, or if you’re already writing the book, then just stop and think, okay, what am I trying to get across with this character’s personality? And how does it come into conflict with this character’s personality? Why is this character acting this way? And just really think about that. And then that’ll help you get a better understanding of them. Because if you’re vague in your mind about their personality, it’s hard to make the reader really understand. Because if you don’t understand it, the reader is not going to.

Kat

The reader is not going to. That’s so true.

Stacy

Right. So you have to understand it as the author, why they’re doing these things and why they’re acting that way. Even though your characters obviously aren’t going to be like psychoanalyzing each other, you’re deliberately putting them in these situations because this is the way you created them and you’re deliberately having them act this way because you’ve created these personalities for them and your job is to show it to the reader without just telling them, this is why she did this or banging them over the head with it, like going, oh, well, you just have to weave in these reactions with the dialog and the storytelling.

Kat

Yeah. So sometimes when you get to the end, you know them so much better, which means you have to go back to the beginning. And then just probably rewrite it. And I have found as a writer, sometimes the beginning scenes, they just don’t work. They were just exploring the character at some point, and they’re just not going to work because of who they’ve really become. Then you just have to chalk it up to practice and write a different scene. And all of that’s going to help you. It’s just going to make the book so much better. It’s going to connect with the reader better, and people are going to love it more. And I have the next book. So can you talk to us about this writing toolkit? What can people expect? You have so many different options. We’ll have all the links in the show notes below. But you have a writing toolkit that is really created to help writers. What we talked about is a lot. Okay, now you guys expect me to go back to my witing toolkit. You’re scared to remember everything you said. So you create things just like the editing course for writers to not have that overwhelm. So what is in this toolkit?

Stacy

So it’s called the Energiser Writing Toolkit: Cheat Sheets for Character Emotions. And the early draft of this was something years ago I created for myself because this was… Nonverbal communication was always an area that I found challenging as a writer. So I would brainstorm different ways to express anger or arrogance or boredom and things like that. And I made myself these cheat sheets just so that if I… As I was going, I’d write my scene and then I’d be like, okay, I want to go back and pump up the scene of it, and that’d go through my list of prompts, and that would just get my memory and my inspiration going. So that’s why I created it initially for myself. And then once I became an editor and I was working with a lot of clients and I saw that they… It wasn’t just me, it was everybody. They’re all having the same issue. I’m seeing these same issues in almost every manuscript I’m editing, so that’s why I expanded the toolkit. So it’s It’s a mini-course, but it includes a 100-page PDF, and it talks about nonverbal communication, what is body language, and gives a lot of examples. And then it’s broken down by category. So there’s different categories like anger and arguments, annoyance and frustration, compassion, confidence, contemplation. I’m reading some from the table; excitement, fear, happiness. And it’s just different ways to express those emotions. So you can just copy and paste some of the prompts, but I encourage you to use it as inspiration just to get your brain thinking of like, oh, okay, I could say it that way, or I could say it this way. It just gets your brain thinking. It’s like, it has you focusing on this. This is what I want to show. I want to show she’s embarrassed. I want to show he’s afraid. But instead of just when you’re writing or you’re editing, you’re sounding like, Okay, I want to show he’s afraid, but how can I… I’m getting a little stuck. I can’t think. You referred to the pages on fear, and it’s broken down into different ways. Some of the gestures, like touch, facial expressions, eyes and eye contact, different ways you can show fear through those kinds of emotional prompts. It just gets your mind… It just gets you focused on that. And then it can make it easier. A lot of people instead just refer to it all the time because they don’t have to remember all the common reaction or lying, or if somebody’s feeling relieved, I have pages on that. They don’t have to remember all the ways that the little tells that people might have if they’re lying, that they can just look at this and be like, oh, yeah, they might do that or do this. And how can I maybe put that into context? Use some of the details of my scene and setting? And how can I even put a pressure spin on that? So that’s basically what it is. And then I have some videos that shows how to use it and then a lot of different bonuses, like tweet sheets on developing your character and a little color wheels that have the different emotional categories. So you can keep it near you as you’re writing just to jog your memory so you don’t have to remember all the different categories of number of communication.

Kat

Right. And remember how many different emotions humans have. Sometimes it gets happy, sad, angry. I don’t know. And remembering that they are, they’re supposed to be emotional, right? So that sometimes I write a scene, I’m like, What is their emotion in this scene? Maybe we should go back and put an actual emotion in. Yeah, sure. Sometimes we can just be like, okay, you know, flatline, but probably not a whole book. That’s probably not good.

Stacy

I encourage, even though it’s like a reference book, I encourage people, I have on the left side of every page with the prompts, I list the different prompts and the different subcategories for that emotion. But on the right side, it’s blank lines. So I encourage people to print it out, put it in a binder or something, and then add to it. You know, if you’re reading a book and you saw a really fresh way somebody describes something, write it down. And not that you’re going to use that or copy it, but just like, oh, it’s just for inspiration. Just to increase your awareness of all the creative ways you can have your characters express these emotions and show how they’re feeling. Or sit down and one day, just sit down and brainstorm, okay, this is Stacy’s list for showing romance and showing chemistry between people. Let me brainstorm a list of my own, and I’ll write it. And that way, you just have it. It’s just you’re always adding to it. And then you’ll just have this great reference thing that you can pull out as you’re editing or if you’re stuck on a scene and it just becomes your own.

Kat

You don’t go to Google rabbit hole.

Stacy

You just make it your own. This is going to be a good starting point with a lot of… I think I have more than 4,000 prompts. I’ll give you a good starting point, but now you make it your own, you add to it. And then some emotions might be harder for you to show than others. You might be a romance writer and you’re great at writing the romance scenes and the romance and attraction, but you have trouble writing the argument scenes or something like that. So just becoming aware of what your strengths and weaknesses are and then trying to build that list. So it’s like a cheat sheet that you can.

Kat

Refer to. Go out and observe people. My favorite is to take a walk and listen to couples. That’s what I’m doing. And sometimes I’m like, Wow, they’re mad at each other. That’s the writer in me. And then it makes me think. I’m going to add that.

Stacy

Go write it. You’re going to go pull up my binder and I’m going to write what you do.

Kat

With my pen and paper, look at how she did that. I see that. But that’s great. I mean, this is what we’re trying to do, right? We’re trying to capture the human essence of different things, and we can’t hold everything in our head. I think a cheat sheet is great because it helps the writing go faster. A, I don’t want to go down the Google hole when I’m trying to write, and B, sometimes my brain just gets stuck. I need to pull this out of my binder and look at it. And it has helped me honestly to remember how many different emotions there are and to actually think when I pull out your cheat sheet, it’s like, okay, he’s afraid, but he’s actually not going to admit that he’s afraid. And so that might come out as shame. He’s ashamed of being afraid. And so how could I show… The reader is going to realize he’s probably afraid, but what’s his personality? And so I look over that and that might take me five minutes instead of going down the Google rabbit hole, it takes me three hours. And then it’s like, okay. And it really does when you’re still thinking about your story. So you’re not outside of your story anymore. You’re still thinking about your characters. I find that I then can get out 500,000 words no problem, because I haven’t left that story. I haven’t gone down, oh, look at this new disease they have on the sideline of the Google thesaurus that I’m looking at. So it won’t take you out of the story is what I’m trying to say. When you pull out these cheat sheets, it’s still part of writing. It’s still part of that process, right? You’re editing and you’re in it and you’re just getting deeper. It’s just all part of learning to become a better writer.

Stacy

Right. Just helping you to focus on this area more. And even it sounds like a small thing, like a nonverbal communication and body language, but it really makes you think about the bigger thing is why are they doing that? And help you just flesh out your characters and make sure that you understand their motivations. And then, okay, so that’s why they’re acting like this way. And this is how some ways I can show it on the page to the reader.

Kat

Yes, I love that. So we’re going to have the links in the show notes below as well as links to finding all things about Stacy Juba and her courses. And thank you so much, Stacy, for coming and talking to us today about nonverbal communication.

Stacy

Thank you. Always a pleasure talking to you.

The post Ep 172 Body Language and Emotional Description with Stacy Juba first appeared on Pencils&Lipstick.

Emma Dhesi is my guest this week to talk about Launch Pad: The Countdown to Writing Your Book. It’s a collaborative craft book between Emma Dhesi and Grace Sammon to help writers write their best book. Grace and Emma chose 11 other writers to write one chapter each to create this book plus a 10 Countdown PDF for writers to use to put into practice everything in each chapter. I was asked to write about Character Development and you can download here: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/6bpe78uj52

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TRANSCRIPT STARTS HERE:

Kat

Hello, Emma. How are you doing today?

Emma

Hello, my dear. I’m very well. It’s lovely to be here with you.

Kat

Yes, thanks for coming on again. In case anyone is new to the podcast, would you introduce yourself?

Emma

Yeah, sure. I’m Emma Dhesi. I am an author and a book coach, and I’m based in Edinburgh in the UK. In my own writing, I write domestic suspense and thriller. Then in my coaching, I work with debut novelist, with first time novelist, which is a real thrill and a joy to be part of. Yeah, that’s who I work with and what I do. You’ll find me most places hanging about.

Kat

Yes. We were talking about last names. You have a great last name and that no one else has that last name, as far as I know. So if you want to look up Emma Dhesi, you will find it. Sometimes though the spelling, as we were talking about before, sometimes there’s an H in it.

Emma

 It’s definitely a tricky name for people to get. It’s D-H-E-S-I. And not many people have it. And in fact, in Scotland, we are the only ones. My family, we are unique.

Kat

Nice. It feels good to be unique. I thought that I was unique because in Wisconsin, I knew no other Caldwells. And then you get out into the real world and Facebook becomes a thing and you realize there are like a million. Maybe if I’d grown up in English. I think so. It sounds English, right?

Emma

It does.

Kat

Somewhere around there. So maybe they even put something together, but it’s not unique. So there’s even more Kats out there, Kat Caldwells, anyway.

Emma

Like you, I did a Facebook search and a Google search, and I’ve come across seven. So there’s at least seven of us.

Kat

Really? That’s interesting.

Emma

Okay. It must be related somehow as well.

Kat

Yeah. All right. Well, we’ll leave it aside, the family DNA. We’ll do that on another show. But as we’re recording this tomorrow, Launch Pad: the Countdown to Writing Your Book is coming out. I guess it will be out by the time this goes out. So I wanted to talk to you about this book Launch Pad: the Countdown to Writing Your Book. I’m going to just say Launch Pad from now on. Tell me a little bit about how this book came to be because it’s a really interesting and I think unique concept.

Emma

I think so too. Yeah, I do. So a mutual friend of ours, Grace Sammon, she came to me and said, I’ve got this idea for a trilogy of books, and I want you to be the lead author on the first one. So Launch Pad: the Countdown to Writing Your Book is the first in a trilogy. So then there will be Launch Pad: the Countdown to Publishing Your Book, which is going to be coming out soon. And then a few months after that will be Launch Pad: the Countdown to Publishing Your Book. So it really is a one-stop shop, really, for anyone who’s wanting to write, publish and market their book.

Kat

Which we all do. Very few of us want to stop at some point in that line.

Emma

I know. Once you get sucked in, that’s it. You’ve got to keep going through to the end. But the reason she wanted to put this together is, Grace is one of these amazing women. She has so many wonderful ideas. And not only does she have the ideas, but she makes them happen. And so Launch Pad is the name of one of her… she calls it a radio show. And it’s an opportunity for writers to come in and talk about and let people know about their, I don’t think it’s specifically debut novels, but their new novels coming out. And if I remember rightly, this came about because through COVID, so many things for authors, the opportunity to go and market their new books that were coming out, it was completely put a stop to because everything was shut, of course. And in fact, I’ve got a friend who’s only now, she published her book at the end of 2019, I think it was, and is only now doing her marketing tour. So it was just an opportunity for writers to come in and talk about their books and try and reach a new audience. And through the course of that and the conversations that Grace was having with her guests, she realized, Let’s take this, take what we’re learning here on this show and put it into a book so we can reach more people and help more people. So that’s when she reached out to me to do the writing one, and she reached out to a lady called Stephanie, who is the owner of Red Penguin Books, and a lady called Mary Helen Sheriff to do the marketing as well. So it’s been lovely working with all of these women. It’s been really great. But for me, two of the things that were the most interesting for me and why I thought this was really something special was this was going to be an anthology. And I had just finished reading an anthology on how to write called Swallowing the Whale. And it’s a beautiful, beautiful book. And the contributors come from many, many different backgrounds, whether it be novel writing, poetry, art, graphic novel, a whole mix. And one of the things that I really loved about that was that you got different people’s experiences, different people’s approach to writing, and how they explained things was different from one person to the next. And I really appreciated that. And of course, there are some that you resonate with a little bit more than you do others, but you’re getting a really rich, diverse approach and level of experience from all of these different writers who come together and share what they’ve got. So it was just serendipity that I just finished reading that book and it really seemed to me.

Kat

Were they writing about the same thing in Swallowing the Whale?

Emma

It was different topics, different areas. Some of it was more about the writing life, i. e. how do you tap into your creativity? Some of it was about how do you do the actual writing? Some of it was, which I love. I think you love too, Kat, the mindset stuff, the confidence issues.

Kat

Yes, that’s half of it.

Emma

Because it’s so important, isn’t it? Managing your mind is half the battle to finishing the book.

Kat

Oh, yes. And marketing.

Emma

Yes. So I really appreciated that. So that was serendipitous and just worked in perfectly. But the other thing that I really loved about what she said is I want this to be really actionable for our readers because as you and I know, it’s all very well to read a book and go, oh, that’s really interesting. Oh, yeah, I like what they’ve said there. But actually, you don’t take it in. You don’t absorb that knowledge fully until you put it into action.

Emma

And when you start implementing what you’ve been learning, that’s when you really get to make it a part of your body. You make it a part of your writing process, and it starts to become second nature to you. So you stop thinking about it, you just do it automatically. And so at the end of every chapter in this book, there is a top 10 countdown, keeping with that Launch Pad theme. There’s a top 10 countdown of things that each contributor of the chapter thinks are the most important that you need to and would recommend that you really put into action. Those are the things to do if you want to see progress in your writing, progress in your publishing, progress in your marketing. So for us, and I’m delighted as well because you very kindly agreed to be part of this project and have written a fabulous chapter on how to develop characters. We cover all sorts of things. And if someone reads your chapter and they do the things and go through the top 10 that you have recommended, they’ll make real leaps and bounds in how they think about their characters, create their characters and as you say in the chapter, that’s what keeps someone reading. It’s what that person is experiencing, feeling, going through how believable they are, how flawed they are. And that’s what really a reader is invested in. If they love that character. They’ll follow them anywhere.

Kat

Yeah, it’s true. That’s what we’re all trying to do, right? We want to create a world, too, a lot of genres, but the world can be great. And if you don’t like the character, you won’t continue watching, reading, whatever. But I really like this countdown idea because I don’t know about you, but I will read craft books and I’ll get really antsy about wanting to put into practice what I just read. I actually get annoyed when the craft books are like, don’t pick up the pencil yet. And you think, okay, I’m a writer and you’re telling me not to pick up the pencil yet. And I don’t particularly have time to finish a book in one sitting or even five sitting. It can take me quite a while to finish, especially a nonfiction book. So I’m just like, I want to pick up my pencil. I don’t understand why. So I love that there’s different themes for each and adding more suspense, there’s a chapter on that. And that’s really conflict, right? And making that cliff hanging feeling that you have to keep turning the page. Well, I want to learn more about that. I want to read this chapter and then put it into practice, okay, think about my characters or the book ideas I have and how can I really do these exercises so that when I sit down, maybe it’ll just flow, or maybe I’m just learning how to add more suspense. I cannot wait to read that chapter, pretty much every chapter in this book because I haven’t been able to read them yet either. Maybe by the time this goes out, I’ll have my copy. But I think that that is one of the key components to this book is those ten countdowns.

Emma

And I think that’s a brilliant point that you make that we don’t want to read the whole how to book before we start delving in. We want to be able to apply things straight away. And I think it’s in my introduction that I do say to people, read each chapter, read it again, do the countdown, and you can delve. And what I love about it, too, is you can delve in and out. So each of you listening knows what stage you’re at with your book and where you’re needing the most help with right at this moment in time. So you can go straight to that chapter and read what the contributor is saying, say about scene structure. I love scene structure. And it’s Joe Bunting from The Write Practice who has contributed that one.

Kat

He’s one of the best.

Emma

Yes. He really knows his stuff that way, doesn’t he? So I was thrilled when he said, yes, he’d be part of this. And that structuring your scene is so fundamental to that cause and effect trajectory path that you want to be leading your readers down. And when you understand how it works and how you can break a chapter down or a scene down into small bits that one naturally leads to the next to the next, which then the magic of it then naturally leads into the next scene. Not only will you have an ‘aha’ moment now, I see how I get to make sure my readers turn the page, but it makes your life so much easier you should hear.

Kat

Wow. I was just going to say, as the writer, you’re not like, Wait a minute. How do I get them there? And why are they not there yet? Because somehow, all right, we can have tons of ideas, vague ideas, and you sit down to write and you think, okay, I guess I don’t really… you can put a lot of words on the page that say, and not really know where you’re going. And scene structure is one of those things that you and I started writing at the same time and not in the States. So we didn’t have access to writing workshops that were local or community colleges or even, you weren’t in the UK. And so we were just stuck with whatever internet there was in 2010. And there wasn’t that much. I don’t know about you, but it felt very not close at hand. I couldn’t really grasp the hold of why I needed scene structure. I had a story in my head, and it was just a mental job just to get it on the page. But if I had been able to not pay $600 for a class that didn’t work with my timezone, maybe, or whatever it was, I think even at the time I talked to my husband about traveling to California, and he was like, That’s going to be $5,000 in the end for a class. If I had had this book where I could just at least grasp the concept as a new writer. And then even now, I consider myself not a new writer, but I’m going to be reading that chapter because it’s just putting it inside of us. And if I had just had a little grasp, I wouldn’t have gotten to 140,000 words and had an editor tell me to cut 50. That’s what I was trying to get to. As the new writer, there are different mistakes we make as we go along, or there’s more to learn as we go along. But that, especially if you’re new, that’s what I’m talking about, that you don’t overwrite, that your scenes really are concise and they’re moving to the next one that’s relevant, not just that’s beautiful in your head. And then even as one I’m working on, I’ve finished, it’s now in the drawer, the fifth one, and I’m working on the sixth one, I’m still thinking about what I’ve learned, and now I still want to learn more. How do I go into this scene? What needs to happen? Because I don’t know about you, sometimes I have the grasp of the scene, but I still have to think that question, what are they going to do and what happens next? That and so, or so what? What decision are they making? And it’s great to read 3,000 words and be like that’s right, okay, let’s go.

Emma

Yeah, because it simplifies. It’s like anything. It’s like we have story structure. It’s so that we have that skeleton to hang it on. And it just makes our life so much easier rather than scrambling around in the dark. And so when we have that, somebody once said to me, Oh, isn’t it a bit formulaic to have a structure for your scene? And I was like, I don’t know. I thought about it. Then I was like, no. I was thinking to myself later, it’s not formulaic, it’s the guidelines, it’s the rules, it’s the boundaries that we need to make us more creative. And it’s the boundaries that we need to know that we’re doing the right thing and we’re on the right path and we’re learning our craft in the right way.

Kat

Yeah. I think there’s rules to every art. And for some reason, writers think that they don’t need to learn their rules. But I think you need to know the rules in order to break the rules.

Emma

100%. And it can feel frustrating when you just want to go with whatever is in your head and just be creative and let it all hang loose. And you can do that, of course, but no one is going to want to read that. They want to read something they can follow and that makes sense to them. So that’s when we have to bring either start with the structure in the first place or we can bring it in in revision, which is off the mind.

Kat

Thank goodness. We have options.

Emma

We have options. But talking about doing planning ahead, in the book, we’ve also got the wonderful Lewis Jorstad, who has contributed a chapter on outlining. I know we’re both a big fan of Lewis, he’s fantastic. And he introduced all of us to a new phrase. So of course, we all know pantsers and we all know plotters. But he introduced us all to puzzlers. And maybe someone’s listening and there’s something that drops, a penny that drops and goes, ah, that’s what I am. I’m a puzzler.

Kat

I think we all raise our hands at that point. We’re like, Wait a minute, I’m not a pantser or a plotter. So when Lewis said, what is a puzzler? We were all like, what is this? Tell us, what did he say a puzzler is?

Emma

So a puzzler is somebody who they have… they don’t write linearly. So I write, I don’t know about you, Kat, I write very linearly. I don’t plan it ahead, the discovery writing, and I started at the beginning, and I worked my way through. But a lot of people, more than we thought, it seems, certainly in the meeting we had the other week, most people were puzzlers whereby you have a very, very strong image in your head, a very, very clear picture of a scene or a moment in your story, and you get to writing it and you get it all down. And then you have another very clear image or idea for another moment in the book, and you get taken away in the moment and you write it down. And then there’s another one, a third one. Now, all of these scenes, they’re all taking place at different parts in the book and the storyline. They might be one scene from the second act, then one scene from the third act, and then one scene from the first act. And that is how the book for puzzlers comes together by piecing all those jigsaw piece puzzles together little bit by little bit until eventually you get the whole picture. And when we were doing a call the other week, and it turned out that the majority of people on that call considered themselves a puzzler.

Kat

You might be the only suspense author that’s not a puzzler, honestly. We’ll have to poll people. It makes sense, though, right? Especially if you’re busy. This makes sense on so many different levels. If you have an idea for a scene, you’re going to want to write it out because you’re a writer. You need to get it out. So I can see why. And when he said that, I have suggested this to some people when they’re stuck in one spot to actually… And they say, I know where they need to go to be at the climax. And I have told writers, write out the climax, because then maybe you’ll see, maybe they’re not that far away, or maybe you’re going in the wrong direction. You’ve just written scenes that are out. And last year, when I had to toss my manuscript, I actually took my own advice, which is funny enough, many times we don’t take our own advice. We claim it’s for the but not for me. So I took my own advice and wrote the the climax, and it didn’t end up being the same. But I did realize there were certain things that I was stuck on because I had written the scene. And then I thought, well, it just doesn’t go. He doesn’t really need to do this anymore because what he needs to do is this, this, this, and this. So it did help. And then I went back to linear. I was like, I need to bring him through because I like holding the hands of the character. But I think it’s a great thing to have another name for people that they don’t feel like they have to be plotters or discovery, writers.

Emma

Yeah. And I think just back off the back of what you’ve just said there about your own experience, I think that’s wonderful for people to hear so that they realize there is no formula way of doing this. There’s no one set way. Even when you find your process, you might take two, three, four books for you to really understand your own process. And you most of the time you write in the way that your process has evolved. But there are times when there’s exceptions. And just like you, I’ve had that moment when one of my books, I got to the halfway point, and then I had no idea what happened next. I couldn’t figure out how am I going to get to the end of the second half. So very similarly to you, I went to the end and I wrote the end, but then I just wrote backwards and joined it up in the middle. I don’t know why, but for that particular story, that was the method that worked best in that. So nothing is absolutely set in stone. And that’s why it’s great to know about how other people write and ideas might come to you when you’re feeling stuck. And then you can go, oh, yeah. I remember Kat said that she’d go to the climax and write that, and that can unlock a lot of the steps in between. I think it’s important for people to know that you find your own process, but within that process, because you’re an artist, there will be variations within that as well.

Kat

Yeah. There’s so many things, like going back to scene structure or outline. Lewis is awesome about outlining, and I’ve read his books. They’re really great. And I’m trying to be more of a putting my ideas down. I’m not sure you can call them outlines, but still. I’m not very conscientious. If you read my chapter on characters, I go into the personality, so I’m not very conscientious, I’m very disorganized. My world, I know where everything is. I’m one of those people. I know where it is, but no one else knows where it is. It doesn’t make sense to anyone else. So that’s low consciousness. I’m not very organized.

Emma

Let’s talk about that because your chapter is great. A few of us commented on how you brought a new perspective into that and a new way of looking at your character development and how you, even at the very beginning, how you approach who this person is going to be.

Kat

Well, and you know that all came out of that book I was trying to write last year, which I’m pretty sure I will be calling Bended Loyalty. But as anyone’s listening to the podcast, it’s changed like five times. So we’ll see. But it was trying to find that character because I had taken him out of another book, which I was going to write a pretty straightforward romance, her, his perspective, and decided he needed a whole book and thought that would be easy. So let’s just get that out of the way it’s not easy. How much we fool ourselves. And realizing at one point that he had no personality, and that’s a killer. No one’s going to read a book with… I started seeing him as very victimish and whiny, and that’s like, no good. So throw it out.

Emma

We don’t want to read that.

Kat

Nobody wants to read that.

Emma

No, they don’t. But how intuitive of you to notice that. Because it’s hard to… the characters that we create, it’s hard for us to be objective about them and admit that if they’re not working, or something’s got to change or we scrap them. So I think it’s credit to you that you are professional enough to say, I don’t feel this is working. I feel I need to change things up.

Kat

Well, I feel it’s been enough books that he’s looking at me. Him as a person hasn’t changed in my head. But he’s like, just come on, you make me a little bit more. And I think that goes, I mean, I really struggled with the needs and the wants and the desires last year of getting that right with him because creating a male character who doesn’t understand himself and is a bit lost and needs to learn to make full decisions for himself, I found really difficult because of not making him tip into the victimhood whiny person. And I definitely don’t want readers to be like, Oh, gosh. I don’t want that. For some reason, I think we’re still with the sexes. We have less patience for that in a male character. We want to have these inward expectations of what they should be doing.

Emma

Yeah. And we want them to have agency, don’t we? Even if they can be whiny and they can be, but they’ve got to be doing something about it. Even if it’s to act in a victim way. Just amplify it.

Kat

Yeah. And so I think taking those, which we know our characters should have a want, they should have a goal in which the plot interrupts, they should have a desire, they should have a moral need. They’re not within their own world and their own moral structure. They’re not quite hitting the mark there. Otherwise, there’s no story. We’re all living our lives. Our characters live on in our heads a lot of times, but we’re only writing the story about one particular event in their life. A memoir is not a biography. A memoir is about a particular point. That’s why they’re a little more fun to read. Biographies are only for famous people because the rest of us are like, And I made breakfast again. So I looked into personalities because I love personalities. It helped me understand myself and my husband because we are opposites. And I thought, okay, here’s the problem. He’s this and this and this personality, and therefore he would only make this decision. What he wants is this father figure in his life. So what is he going to choose then? He’s going to think he has agency.

Emma

Is this your husband or your character?

Kat

My character. He’s like, What? My husband. But my character, he thinks he’s making decisions, but what he’s really doing is accommodating everyone else by like, he’s a people pleaser. And he doesn’t know it, but I know that because I did personality test for him and made sure that he would make the correct decisions and then made sure that he would grow that way. And so I wanted to write the chapter to give another tool to writers because there is a little bit more sometimes to creating that personality because you’re creating them out of thin air. It’s just a person that doesn’t exist and they have to be a certain way. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve read a couple of books and my mother, especially ever since she retired, she reads a lot and she’ll come to me and be like, why did this author do this? And why did this author do that? And she came to me quite a few times and I’m like, The characters didn’t make the decisions they would have made. And so she was very adamant about it. And so I looked into these books and I am convinced now that what happened is the author didn’t really look into how human personality is and how we might become more balanced in our personality, no longer freak out at our kid coming home five minutes later, whatever it is, and we’ll be more balanced about things. But really, we don’t change that much. We just become more balanced. And so when we’re talking about change, we’ll have our characters just have a 180 degree change on us, and it just doesn’t feel right. And the reader doesn’t know why because they’re not a geek like me and study mythology and human anthropology. But you get it. I’m sure you’ve read a book where you’re just like, I just don’t think they would do that. I don’t see why they would. It’s not satisfying. And it’s that feeling. But I want to give writers the ability to do the best of their ability because even I don’t do it 100% of the time, perfectly, right. But to the best of our ability, not have the reader leave unsatisfied. We want a satisfied reader.

Emma

Yeah. It’s such a strange choice of words, isn’t it? Satisfied. We do use the jargons used, but your reader is satisfied. It makes it sound so unexciting.

Kat

Doesn’t it? Well, David Gawker makes it exciting. It’s like they shut the book and they light their cigarette as though it’s like a post-orgasm.

Emma

That’s much better. That’s much better.

Kat

It’s a nicer view. But yeah, you don’t want them shutting the book halfway through because the person did something else. So this book of the Launch Pad: the Countdown to Writing Your Book is really trying to help the writer write the book or edit the book, I guess. I’ll be using it for editing as well. So that the reader leaves satisfied, right? That’s really the whole point that we’re trying to help people with.

Emma

Yeah. So you find the way to best put the story on the page. So what do I mean when I say that? I mean that often as writers, we have this vision in our head, we picture it in our mind, and we have that curse of knowledge. We know it so, so well that we forget that the person reading the book doesn’t know what’s going on in our brain, and we tend to skim over things. And I see this time and again, especially with scenes that are difficult, that we speed through them. And then actual fact, the bit that’s missing is the bit that we want to read. That’s where all the juicy stuff happens, that difficult conversation or that moment of doubt that your character has. And then that’s where they get to think through the change that they are going to be making over the course of the novel. And we see that that happen on the page, not just that one day they do something different. And as you were saying, Kat, then we go, huh, wait a minute, why have they done that? But rather that we see that slowly evolve over the course of the story. And one of the ways that we’re helping people do that is with the chapter of Show and Tell by the amazing Heather Davis. I just love this was just eyeopening for me in so many ways. We all hear that phrase, Show, Don’t Tell, and we have it drilled into us. We’ve seen it everywhere. There’s memes everywhere, but none of us actually know what it means. And we’re hazarding a guess. And we think, well, what does… if I’m showing, then I’m showing the entire room that this person is in, every detail of the room. But actually, what Heather helps us realize is that we do get to show key moments, key things that are in that room, but we also need to tell the reader what’s going on and predominantly tell them what’s happening inside your character. So the show element of it is the external stuff of what’s going on in the outside world, but the telling element of it is what is the internal dialog going in within your character’s head? And that’s what we put on the page. We tell our reader what the character is thinking so that the reader can keep up with the thought process. Why are they making the decisions that they’re making? What’s running through their head to make them decide this is the action I’m going to take next. And that is something I see again and again and again in new writers. And I hold my hand up here that this absolutely, definitely me in those early days. When I work with my coach and she reads my pages, she says to me, you haven’t put it on the page Emma, you’ve got to put it on the page. So it’s something that we still do even further down the line, even when we’ve got more experience, we’ve got to be vigilant for that. And Heather gives us some great ways of doing that for ourselves, of catching ourselves not putting it on the page.

Kat

Right. I mean, it’s one of those catchphrases that we hear a lot. And then we have to scramble to figure out what everyone else is talking about, especially as new writers, like, I feel like I should know this. And the truth is, nobody knows what they’re talking about. Because Heather is not the first person I’ve heard frustrated with this and saying, actually, you do have to tell. And if you pick up a book that’s well written that you love, there’s telling in it because it’s impossible for a reader to just intuitively know everything. And a lot of times what we’ll do is show what everyone’s doing. But I was talking to EditElle, and she was… I say EditElle because that’s what her Instagram handle is, I’m sorry. But she was talking about, then she gets a lot of new writers, especially, but even seasoned writers, telling what the body language and movement of the person is. But that can mean different things, too. Eyes widening can be in surprise, it can be in fear. A grimace or a half smile could be mocking, it could be pain. Now you’re getting into this weird thing where you’re trying to show, but the reader could be receiving that information in such a different way. And so there are times in which you do have to tell the reader what these movements or things mean to the character. So yeah, we can go way off balance on that, right? I won’t tell anything. It’s like, well, then nobody understands what your book is about, or only tell and not show. So it’s all about balance, isn’t it?

Emma

Yeah, totally. All about balance. You need both in order to paint that full picture for your reader. Yeah, I think that’s beautifully put. I’m thinking about a manuscript that I’ve been looking at recently and some lovely description in there, but it’s all description. And so I don’t know what the character is thinking, why they’re doing… yeah, the author needs to tell me, or the character needs to tell me, why they’re going to go and throw someone out the house, or why they’re going to lock the door, or what makes them think that action will help them and get them where they want to be in that scene.

Kat

Yeah. And I think it goes back to what we said in the beginning, we need to understand the rules. We need to understand what this means. And really, who was the Russian writer that we all claim said this? He didn’t actually say it, Chekhov. I’d be like, It’s a Ch. But he didn’t say that. What he said is, don’t tell me the moon is beaming. Show me that it’s glinting off of the piece of broken glass. So he didn’t even make this hard, fast rule that we’ve made into a hard, fast rule. We’ve just taken it so far. But again, we need to know the rules if you want to break the rules. We need to understand them. I wish we would stop talking in jargon. And I think that this book, Launch Pad: the Countdown to Writing Your Book, is really going to help break down that jargon so that new and seasoned writers can be like, That’s what everyone means. Okay, I’m just going to do it. And just be empowered to write the best book that they can.

Emma

And we have been very careful in the book where we have used terminology that is specific to the writing world that, especially if it’s been used in a shortened way like POV or WIP. We have been very careful to make sure that we’re telling people what those phrases mean, so that if you are new to them, it’s one you’ve not come across before, then now you will. You’ll have that. You’ll be part of the jargon, too. You’ll be able to use it comfortably.

Kat

You won’t have to go Google it. Because I think sometimes we do forget there are new people, but there are also people outside of America or the UK. We might have our own English jargon, and there’s people all the time coming into this business from different languages and different countries. And I had to look up WIP at one point in my writing career. I remember specifically being like, what?

Emma

And it took me a long time. It’s funny you talk about jargon. I do remember there being a time where I kept… I’m just trying to think of one that there would have been now. I’m thinking about James Scott Bell, who I love. I love his writing. He would talk about these doorways. And I said, oh gosh, okay, what are the… I’ve not come across that before. What are doorways? Is this something I should know? It took me a long time to realize that he was talking about the break between Act 1 and 2 and then between 2 and 3. Other people just call them act breaks.

Kat

He had to call them doorways.

Emma

A lot of writers come out with their own jargon, which I know from experience can be confusing when you’re brand new to this. So we do not do that in the book. We use very standard phrases that you will find just about everywhere, and we do definitely make sure that we explain what they are and write them out in full so people know. But, Kat, I want to just jump back. So you said you started the next manuscript?

Kat

Yes, because it’s a duology, so I’m bringing it out at the same time. So it has to be finished.

Emma

You are on fire right now. It was worth all that work you put in last year.

Kat

It was because now he appears in the next book, so he better have a personality. He’s got to woo the girl. Yeah, it was completely worth it. Completely worth it. I wish that this book had been out, the Launch Pad book had been out, but I’m still in editing, so I can still use it. But actually working with him did force me to really look into characters. And so I am grateful for all the trouble my character put me through.

Emma

You won’t forget him in a hurry. All the agony. I was just going to say, another chapter I do want to make sure that we mention is Stacey’s chapter. Stacey’s chapter on grammar and punctuation. Now, for some of you listening, this will be easy for you. It will be something that you get, you understand, makes logical sense to you. And you might not need this chapter, although I still think it’s worth looking at. But there are other people like me, putting my hand up, for whom this is not natural, for whom this is not run of the mill, and we miss things and forget as well. We might do punctuation and grammar one way in one chapter, and then we forget that we’ve adopted that style in the next and do it differently. Stacey’s chapter is… She’s such a wonderful teacher. She has made what could be a very dry topic, not dry. She’s explained things in really simple, easy ways. She does this with everything that she does, Stacey, gives fantastic examples and highlights very clearly what you put where and why you put it there. I’ve been cheating and using this chapter a lot, even before it’s been published.

Kat

I can’t wait for this chapter. I’ll probably print it out.

Emma

And using it a lot. And it was one of the chapters I was very adamant about having in because it is something that I do find tricky and I do… I’d rather get it right first time when I’m drafting, if I can, then then have to go through a whole manuscript and make those teeny tiny changes through the whole thing, which is so tedious. So if I can learn to get these things right and just take two seconds to go and look at Stacey’s chapter, know what I need to do, and then come back and put it in my draft as I’m going through it, as I’m writing it, that just makes my life so much easier. And I don’t think the other books have these things. I don’t remember ever seeing a craft book that included this. Yet, there are whole books on style guides and punctuation and things, but I don’t want to look through a whole book.

Kat

Who wants to read that?

Emma

Exactly. So this is just for writers. This is what we writers need to put for our books. And then done. We just need one chapter.

Kat

I love how judgmental she is. Is that a word? She’s not judgmental at all, Stacey. She knows this, like the back of her hand. She knows grammar, she understands it. And yet she completely understands it. It’s almost a misnomer to call us writers, we’re storytellers. We’re not Grammarians. And I swear grammar has changed since they taught it to me in fifth grade because I put commas where everyone says I shouldn’t. I specifically remember a teacher telling me every time you take a breath, well, that’s all the time. At first I had commas everywhere. There are specific rules, and it really does make it so much easier to do it from the beginning. And it’s nicer to not get that much red back on your manuscript because it’s hard to do this. It’s hard to get your manuscript out to the editor and have it back. And just like, do I know anything? As you said, our mindset. So just knowing specific rules and having a guideline for them, it’s empowering and it feels good to get the comma where it should.

Emma

Yay. And she’s highlighted the 10 most common mistakes that she sees. And you mentioned mindset again there. So just by having the 10 most common and that she can identify those tells me that other people are making these errors as well. I’m not alone. So that helps my mindset as well. It helps my confidence keep going.

Kat

Absolutely. This book has everything. It’s upping our confidence. So where can people find Launch Pad: the Countdown to Writing your Book?

Emma

So you can find it in all the usual places. It’s Barnes & Noble, Amazon. Where else is it? Cobo, Apple. It’s in wherever you buy your books, you will find it. It is out wide.

Kat

For everybody. And is it ebook and print?

Emma

It is ebook and print, yes.

Kat

Okay. And the countdown, is that a whole separate workbook or is it within the book? Do they have to buy two different things?

Emma

No, the countdowns… I’m so glad you mentioned this, Kat. So if anybody wants to get a feel for the book and one of the countdowns, you can download Kat’s Top Ten Countdown for free and we’ll put the link. I can’t remember off the top of my head, we put the link in for that?

Kat

Yeah, we’ll put the link in the show notes, absolutely.

Emma

That will give you a flavor for what you will be learning. And then if you buy the book at the back, there is a special link and it will take you to a special resources place. There’s some bonus downloads, which does include downloadable top tens so that you can print them out and put them wherever you need them to be handy. But there’s also some more details about all of the contributors. There’s also a resources page where you can find out more on any particular topic that you’re interested in, including things like podcasts, blog posts, YouTube channels, all kinds of places that are going to help you take things to the next level if you need it. Awesome. So you can get those bonuses as a special code in the book there for that. But it’s a wonderful resource. I’m so proud of it. I’m so delighted to have been participating in it and being able to work with all these amazing writers. And I genuinely believe we have a phenomenal resource for not just new writers, but maybe writers too, who are just looking to jump start their writing again and just need to get their mojo back. This book will help you do that.

Kat

Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much, Emma, for coming and talking to us about Launch Pad, the countdown to writing your book. It’s always great to see you.

Emma

Yes, and you, thank you.

The post Ep 171 Craft Book Anthologies with Emma Dhesi first appeared on Pencils&Lipstick.

Daria White is a writer of sweet romance, christian ficiton and cozy mysteries. With over ten novels she knows what it takes, and doesn’t take, to get that book written. Which is why she started the group NoTimeWriter Mentorship program to give writers the support and encrouagement they need to write and finish their book!

Find out more about Daria and her courses, podcast and NoTimeWriter mentorship here. 

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TRANSCRIPTION STARTS HERE:

Kat

Hi, Daria, how are you doing?

Daria

I am great, Kat. How are you?

Kat

I’m good. You are in Texas, right? And I am on the East Coast. We’re all getting cozy. We’re waiting for weather to impede our interview. But other than Texas, would you let the audience know a little bit about yourself?

Daria

Well, I am a Christian and fictional author, podcaster, course creator. A little more personal, I am definitely a huge fan of classic Hollywood movies. So like 1969 and prior is my era. I will watch modern films, but I love the classics. I indulge in chocolate now and then and I use pilates to keep in shape. But overall, I love writing. It’s something that I started back when I was a teenager, maybe around 2003, but I kept it as a hobby. I kept it to myself for a long time and it wasn’t until 2013 that I self published for the first time. But even then, I wasn’t still too serious about it. But I decided to go all the way for it after some encouragement from my family in 2018. So that’s what I’ve been doing and I absolutely love it.

Kat

Yeah, getting that family encouragement is pretty big. Not everyone gets that because most people think that writing is not a full career, let’s say. I was going to say waste of time, but that’s not fair. It’s a hobby to most of our parents, right?

Daria

Yeah. And I think that’s when things shifted because since I kept it as a hobby, my family didn’t really see it that way, as a business. But then when I started taking it seriously, that’s when things shifted. So I was like, hey, I need this time to write. And I started setting those boundaries in terms of what they expected for me, like, hey, I can’t do that., Like, I’m taking this seriously. So that really shifted things for me. So now they’re like, oh, you’re writing. And they’re my biggest supporters, so.

Kat

So how did you how did you get to that mind shift from 2013 to 2018? Was it gradual or was it something that hit you, one day?

Daria

I think it was gradual because, even though I self published in 2013, I was still like, can I really do this? It was just a lot of back and forth, but writing has always been there. And even though my degree is in something totally different, my degree is in health care management because I love science. I love science, and at one time I consider going into the medical field. So I thought that that was it. But writing, this seems to be what I’m passionate about. So when I came to that conclusion, I was like, you know what? Let’s just go for it. And then the conversation I had with my dad is like, well, that’s what you want to do, then go for it. If you really put everything in, I believe you can do it. It’s like, you know what? Yeah, it’s like, yeah, I got my degree. I worked hard for that, but my heart is here.

Kat

Right. Yeah. I mean, I have a degree that I never used. I don’t know if you use you. Teaches us stuff, something? Responsibility, maybe? I don’t know. I can tell my kids they should go to college. So you went back to writing. What was your first book? What genre was it?

Daria

I started in sweet romance, and it wasn’t even a novel length. I would say more of a novella, but I called it my ‘What If Christmas Wish.’ So it kind of had a fantasy feel to it, where she kind of goes into an alternate reality of what her life could have been. I kind of wrote it from that angle. And I got a book cover designer and I was able to find, I think I updated the cover in 2018, I found another designer, and she really just nailed it with the images. That’s another thing I love is book covers. Like, I know when a story is going to get finished, is when I get a book cover because I love the visual. And it has to be right, so that was my first one. It was probably maybe no more maybe around 30,000, 40,000 words, but that was the first one.

Kat

Okay, all right and did you read Sweet Romance? Is that why you chose that?

Daria

It is one of my favorites. I do like a classic romance. Maybe that’s just me. And I started to think, you know what, if I like them so much, why don’t I write them? So I started to write them myself, and then it branched out into other genres later, but that’s where it started.

Kat

Okay, all right and when you started to write it, you decided that you were going to write a full story. Was that the first time that you had written that big of a story? Like, you write short stories as well, but what was your journey like on writing that big of a story? Because sometimes writers are like, I’m a writer, but a novella is a lot like 40,000 words is a lot more than a 1500-word short story.

Daria

And I’ll let you say that because when I first wrote back in 2003, I wrote in, like, a loose leaf notebook by hand, and that was, like, 70 pages. So I really didn’t have any type of structure with my What If Christmas Wish, I just wrote it. It wasn’t until I started to get better at my skills, like, okay, we need story structure. This needs more of a solid plot. We need more character arcs. And I just learned as I went, but I think I just let it flow at the time. So it came out to that particular word count. But now with more experience, now I plan like, okay, this is the word count that I’m going for. But back then, I was like, I’m just going to write until it’s finished, right?

Kat

Yeah. I had no idea what story structure was like, this is a book, and I’m going to write to this end, we’ll see. I tend to overwrite, so I had an editor tell me to cut 30,000 words.

Daria

And I underwrite, so I sometimes have to add more description here. No, put more here. Like, okay.

Kat

It’s funny how different writers can be, right? So between 2013, the Kindle was around at that point. So how was your launch? I mean, were you timid about putting it out? Did you tell anybody? Did you just sort of sit back and wait, or what was that, once you hit publish?

Daria

I think the only people that knew were my immediate family, so I didn’t even think of a launch. I just put it out there. Let’s just see what happens. Because, again, back then, it was still somewhat of a hobby. It’s like I did it just to see if I could do it. Those fears, like, okay, get my writing out there so other people see it besides me. No launch plan, nothing. I think maybe my sister’s read it. I don’t even know if they did, it’s here. I think that’s how it went. I think I kept it a little bit more quiet. I still wasn’t quite ready to say, okay, this is what I’m doing.

Kat

Yeah, but did you expect anything from it? Were you secretly hoping that you just like, no, I’m working.

Daria

I don’t think I did. I think I had hope, like, okay, let’s see who likes it. And I did get some reviews. I think I did reach out to a couple of bloggers at the time that I knew about to read it and review it. I think I put it on Goodreads as well. But other than that, I was like, let’s just see.

Kat

Yeah, it’s hard to remember, but 2013, there wasn’t that much information out there. The Internet was there, but anybody ten years younger than me doesn’t believe me, and beyond. But 2013, blogs were big. They were a huge deal back then, nobody reads blogs anywhere, like, forums. I think Twitter was a baby. Nobody really knew about Twitter at that point. I remember, in about 2014 being on Twitter, and I could talk directly to Tessa Dare because that’s how small Twitter was. Courtney Milan and I got into it one day, on this argument. I only remember that because I was talking to Courtney Milan about romance books, she doesn’t remember me, but that’s how small Twitter was. And the information I think we had, Writer’s Digest, was giving out information, but no one else. I remember desperately looking for, like, what do you do when your book is done? And there was still kind of a stigma of like, oh, you self published. Okay, you’re not really a writer. I don’t know about you. But I didn’t really tell anyone because I was like, well, nobody’s really going to believe me because I couldn’t sell it to the one of the big guys.

Daria

And that’s the route I went, because I did consider querying at the time, but I went the self published route, just in case this doesn’t do anything. I have to worry about being rejected, in that capacity

Kat

Right, those rejection letters. So once you got that done, did you start right away on something else, or were you kind of like, well, I did it now. Time to go be in the medical field?

Daria

Well, I kept it to myself. I still wrote. I was still writing my journals, and this is how old school I was, you can probably remember this. I had a three floppy disk that had all of my material saved, and I ended up losing that. So I don’t even know what was on there. I was able to remember some things, to write it down. Now I have a better backup plan. But with that, I’m like, man, I think it’s because I use it so much, that little metal clip just malfunctioned on me. But I still kept things saved. I still wrote. And I decided as it got closer to 2017, 2018, I was like, you know what? Let’s go back through my What If Christmas Wish, because I did have a writer that reached out to me from Goodreads that read my book, and she had more experience, and she’s like, you know what? I think the story would be stronger if this went through a series. Yes, I edit the book, but it needed a little bit more work, so I went more into that process of editing. Yes, I was a reader, but I started reading even more to learn story structure and how other boxes plotted.

Kat

Yeah, that’s nice of her. Instead of trashing, like, these days, Goodreads is all about trashing.

Daria

Yes. I was very grateful to her for being willing to even read it and then just to give me that helpful advice because she saw that, you’re a newer author. So let me give you some advice, some tips here, and then from there I begin, okay, let me really study this and really get better at the craft.

Kat

Okay. So that’s kind of when you thought, well, if I want to write more, maybe I can keep going. All right, so what was your next book?

Daria

I think that’s when I started to write Match-Made Christmas, and that was going into 2019, and I started to get more involved with the writing community on Twitter. And I met another author there who was in the same genre as me, and we became critique partners. So I read her book, she read mine, and she helped me again, just because she had more experience, she helped me comb through it, helped that. So Match-Made Christmas was the next release. It’s a little bit longer, maybe a little over 50,000 words, maybe close to 60, somewhere in there. But that was the next one that I wrote, and I did query that book. I did decide to query that. It wasn’t accepted, but I went on ahead and self published it. Like, you know what? Just because no one took it, that doesn’t mean that I can’t still put it out there. So I put it out there. This is before Smashwords and Draft2Digital combined. So I put it out on Smashwords, I did Amazon, and I started to build an author website, started to build a presence on social media. So I started to gain fans. So I would say Match-Made Christmas was kind of like the official breakout book.

Kat

Okay. And that was sweet romance as well.

Daria

Right.

Kat

Okay. So then how did you break into mystery?

Daria

That really started at the height of the pandemic.

Kat

Everything changed.

Daria

Yes. And my sisters and I mean, I’ve always watched the show kind of here and there, but I never really watched Murder, She Wrote like that. But we just went on.

Kat

You were part of the binge.

Daria

Yes, we went on a Murder, She Wrote Binge, all twelve seasons. And I’m like, I think I want to write a cozy mystery. So I used that show as a way of inspiration. And then I did research on how to write a mystery. I started reading mysteries and like, you know what? I think I can come up with something. And so I created my character, Bianca Wallace, and because I’m based in Texas, I put the small town in Texas, and so she is a graphic designer, but she’s also an amateur sleuth. So right now I’m currently on book three, but when I did that, I was like, so the first book in that series is called Photobomb. But yeah, it started with A Murder, She Wrote, and we really have nothing to do at this time but this A Murder, She Wrote.

Kat

Hey, it’s better than whatever would have come out of Tiger King. Got a Tiger, maybe an elephant now, I don’t know how we’re going to get this into Texas. That’s amazing, though. I was talking to somebody else the other day about how writing, like, you have to have a passion for it. But the truth is, I think what holds us back sometimes is thinking that it can’t be learned. For some reason, people think that they just have this magical talent and those who write just wake up one day or maybe they’re born with it or whatever. But the truth is you can learn story structure and you can learn how to write a book. Like, you just have a whole story about how you look into cozy mysteries. How do you put together a mystery? Because it’s going to be different than a romance, right? There’s going to be similarities with differences. So did you enjoy that process of learning a whole different genre? How was that for you? Was it easy or not so easy? Where there are ups and downs to it?

Daria

I think the only thing that I had to really have a mindset shift about was now, as opposed to romance being the main thing in my sweet romance. In cozy mysteries, the mystery is the main thing, romance can be the subplot. So I had to shift from romance a little bit and have the mystery, trying to find out who this murderer is, the focal point. So that took some practice and it took me a while with Photobomb to kind of get into a rhythm of writing in a different way. Okay, yes, there’s a romance subplot in Photobomb and of course throughout the series, but the focal point is, okay, how do we set up the murder? Who are going to be the red herrings? How do I leave clues, not give the killer away? And then the big reveal at the end where my readers like, oh my gosh, I did not see that coming. Keep them on the edge of their seat. So that I definitely had to practice, which is why I am a big advocate for reading in the genre that you want to write in. So that was interesting, but it was fun to me. I’m like, this is very interesting. I kind of like this set up, it’s still the same. I still use the same outline process with Save the Cat. And so I just insert like, okay, I need to insert a red herring here. Okay, this is what’s going to happen here in the subplot. So it all just comes together. So, yeah, it can be learned.

Kat

Yeah. And there’s a lot more thinking to writing than sometimes we want to admit. Trying to figure out, you could have your character, you can have your plot, more or less, but you might take a few days to figure out the red herring, or you might take a few days to figure out, oh, no, that’s too easy. I have to put it this way. I don’t know about you, but when I was first starting out, I really thought that a writer had like, everything in their head or maybe if they did it, it would come and all they did was write. Like, they’re going to sit and I’m going to write. And if I couldn’t sit and write, then what the heck was wrong with me? And now I try to tell people, like, no, sometimes you have to go think about what your character is supposed to do, and that will help you get, like, deeper, whatever genre it is. But I find mysteries really impressive because you’ve got to figure out how to keep the reader on your toes, more than anything, and just because it’s cozy, it can’t be cheesy. You are writing for readers who read mysteries all the time. That’s really challenging. I would say intimidating to me. But you did it.

Daria

It can be. And at first I wasn’t too sure about it, but again, I couldn’t get the thought out of my head. I had like, you know what? Let’s just work on it. Let’s work on the characters. And now I’m like, wow, I’m on book three. People really took to the first one, second one, okay.

Kat

So in two years, you’re on book three. So the third is coming out, or it’s already out?

Daria

I’m in my revision cave. My plan is to have it out early next year, and I’m about halfway through the revision. So once I have, like, okay, halfway, then I can go ahead and announce it to my readers, and they’re loving it. And it was interesting because I told my readers ahead of time, since they were used to be writing speed romance, and, like, I got into other genres. You’re more than welcome to read it, but this is something else that I’m doing, and they really took to it, so they so they love whatever I write.

Kat

Nice. So even changing genres, you didn’t have to switch reader group, really? That’s nice. See, I really believe in readers, and I think that they read more genres than just one. Some people disagree with me, but that’s great. I’m glad that your reader stuck with you, because that makes me right, basically. Just kidding. I’m just kidding. So people have time to read the first two, and this is going on mid January, so if you like cozy mysteries or even if you want to give it a try. I gave cozy mysteries a try this year because I had never read them, and I really enjoyed them. I thought that they were great. So you have time to start reading, before the third one comes out, and we’ll absolutely have links in the show notes or to your web page, and they can find it. So in two years, you wrote two and a half books, more or less, or three books, I guess, and you started a podcast, and you have a whole writing group. So besides writing your own groups, tell us about your podcast, and then we’ll go into No Time Writer as well. You’re a very busy woman, Daria.

Daria

As you were saying, I think is it more than that? I think it’s maybe a total of over ten books, probably, now that I think about it, I thinks. So the podcast started in 2019, and I just found myself giving out tips and advice to new writers who are probably in the same boat as me. And I also shared my writing journey, I shared encouragement. And that really began the following. So I think the last time I checked the analytics, I think I have listeners from everywhere. I don’t think I can even name all the countries.

Kat

What’s the name of your podcast for people?

Daria

Writer in the Making.

Kat

Writer in the Making, okay. We’ll have a link to that as well. So do you mostly talk about writing tips, like the craft?

Daria

It’s a mixture. Writing tips, maybe I saw a post that was writing related that I thought was helpful to me. I share that if I learn something in my own journey, I share that, again, my personal journey. Like, I let them know, hey, this is what I’m working on. I’m in the revision cave. If that’s the process, you’re going through anything. Even when I was querying at the time, before I decided to self publish, that was my decision. I share about the querying process and how I went through how I did that. So it really is a mixture. So it basically is my journey. But I do share tips about writing craft along the way to help writers that may need that.

Kat

Yeah, that’s wonderful, though, because it really breaks down that wall of like, oh, look, here’s a book. And some people can feel like, oh, she’s putting out all these books. It must be easy. And that can have problems both ways of like, well, if it’s not easy for someone, maybe they’ll give up because they think it’s supposed to be easy, or maybe they won’t start because they have no idea how to compete. So I love that you sort of break down that barrier and let people glimpse behind the scenes for you.

Daria

Yeah, I know what it felt like when I first started, and I think it probably sparked too, from the writer that helped me, like I mentioned before on, Goodreads, and I liked how she was just willing to share. You know what, I’m willing to share. If this is something that helped me, maybe it can help this other person. And I didn’t even plan for the podcast to go that far, but I think I have probably over 300, it may be close to 400 episodes. I lost count with that too.

Kat

You just keep going. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my gosh, you are so prolific. Because I think I started this podcast at the same time, and I have half the amount of episode. Do you sleep? Oh, my goodness.

Daria

Yes, I do.

Kat

A little bit, sometimes, maybe. All right, so you have a podcast. You’ve written several books, both in cozy mystery and sweet romance. Do you have another genre?

Daria

I have some Christian fiction titles that I am working on as well, so I’m hoping to have at least one of those out by next year. That’s one of my goals, but so far those are my main three. But I kind of use it as my motto. I write what comes to mind. So if I have an idea and it may be fantasy, then that’s where it’s going. Or if it’s more in sweet romance, then okay. But those right now are my main three speed romance, cozy mysteries and Christian fiction.

Kat

I’m going to give you a high five, like, digitally, because again, I write in three separate genres, and I constantly tell, I fight against all those who tell me to only write in one, because, you know what? The decision is already made. I am not going to go buy new ISBNs. Just say it again. So you have the podcast, you have several books out, and then I know you because of No Time Writer. I think I found you on Instagram, but the Internet is big. Maybe through a summit. Did we do a summit together? I don’t even know. So you have No Time Writer, tell us about this course and this mentorship that you do for writers.

Daria

Well, No Time Writer, I launched it this past summer, and it really stemmed from the fact that, I know that time management is still a challenge. Whether someone is brand new well, let’s say they have some experience, but they haven’t yet found their rhythm. And I just decided, like, you know what? I found my own pace when it comes to writing, and I personally don’t believe in writing every day. Now, if someone is brand new and they kind of want to develop the habits and fine, I kind of compare it to, if you’re looking to lose weight, you may be intense at first, but as you reach your goals, you may not have to be as intense. Now it’s just a point of maintenance. And because it’s part of your lifestyle, now you know what to do, because you know because now you know your body. I think of the same concept with writing. So I personally don’t write every day, roughly four to five days out of the week. And I know my writing average, so I know in 20 to 30 minutes I can roughly write about 500, up to maybe 1300 words, so I know what to expect.

Kat

What, wait a minute. Back up. 1300 words, you can get out in 30 to 40 minutes?

Daria

Roughly.

Kat

Wow, okay.

Daria

That took time and practice.

Kat

That takes time and practice. Is it also a matter of knowing what you’re going to write? Do you have an outline? Do you just sit down and start writing? How did you come into that? Because that’s fast. If people don’t type very much, they don’t know that that’s fast.

Daria

I really don’t even consider myself to be a fast typer. But how I usually start with a story is I start with an idea. So and then I’ll go ahead and I’ll fill out the Save the Cat outline, with my 15 main beats. So I kind of have an idea generally of what the story is going to be. So all of those slots are filled out, but I also leave room for creativity, so I’m not so rigid with the outline. But I personally, and I teach this to my students, how to customize my schedule. So I’m now not thinking, okay, I need to be writing now for okay, I have this time pocket to write here. It may be early in the morning. Okay. I have this time pocket here in the afternoon. Or for some of us, for those of us who may write late at night, I have done that before. So it’s just a point of me customizing my schedule to fit around my life, my responsibilities, and when I see that time pocket, okay, this is my focus, time to write. Everything’s been set up. It’s in my schedule.

Daria

So I’m focused, I have my outline, and then I set the timer. Like I said, my timer is my best friend. When I see that timer go like, okay, I only have 45 minutes, only have 30 minutes, and it just shifts something in my brain. And then there are some days where I may not make that full 1300. So in my opinion, it still adds up. So if I have a slower day and it’s like 200 words, that’s fine, because the following day I may do over 1000. But it’s all adding up. And I have used that system to a point where I can write up to 10,000 words for the week, just by that consistency.

Kat

Okay, all right, so it’s enough to keep you thinking and in the book, but it’s not stressing you out that, oh, I have to write, but today I can’t write. And getting that, I don’t know, making yourself, like, the victim of your own time, right? So I like that. And I think I agree with you. I think 200 words is better than zero words. I mean, a sentence is better than zero words. At least you’re continually in that story, right?

Daria

Right. Absolutely. And it relieves so much pressure. And even with my last draft, with this third book, in my cozy mystery series, there were slow days. Even though I had my outline, like you said, thinking about a scene, I needed a little bit more time with some scenes, but I still made the effort, like, okay, I’m going to just go ahead and do it. Yes, I took time to rest, again, I don’t believe in writing every day, but I still got it done. So just having that determination, having that discipline, I was able to finish that first draft in 60 days. And that was like, maybe a little bit over 50,000 words. So it is possible.

Kat

Yes. So you believe in outlining, too, though? Did you say you do Save the Cat?

Daria

Yes.

Kat

Okay. Do you teach that with No Time Writer, or do you sort of let do you distinguish between discovery writers and plotters? What do we call them? Plotters and pantsers.

Daria

Pantsers.

Kat

None of us are like, James Patterson writes out like 80 pages of outlining. Like, nobody does that, but you have the beats. I guess that sort of helps you really get the full picture of the book. Okay, and for your characters, do you have them fully flushed out? Do you fill out something or do you sort of allow yourself to get to know them? I mean, I guess now that it’s just following Bianca is the name. Is that the same character throughout? So maybe by the third book is that you know her and you’re ready to jump into it.

Daria

Yeah, I think by now I know Bianca pretty well. But to answer the first question, I do include my methods inside No Time Writer. So Save the Cat is mentioned, but I also let writers know, too, that if this is not something that you do, that is completely fine. So I’m never going to tell someone you have to outline. Some of us like, hey, I’m a pantser. I just let it flow. Perfect. But I do have it there just in case if someone wants to have the general idea of their story but still leave room for creativity. So I’m definitely a pantser, in the middle. Because I’m not doing lines for line for line. If that works for some people, awesome. But for me, I’m like I like to leave some room because I may have had someone be a red herring in my book, but then as I write, I’m like, you know what? They would be the least likely person. Let me make them the culprit of the crime. I leave room for that, as well. But yeah, I think it’s just a point of, again, a writer. I think the overall theme of the course is helping writers come into what I call your true author identity, learning your unique pace, learning how you write. And then that in turn is going to translate into your book because you’re being yourself. You’re embracing that, and that’s what’s going to connect with your readers, your authenticity.

Kat

Yeah, I really like that. Yeah, because there’s no point in us stressing out. And I love that you have this beautiful picture. Like, don’t compare yourself to others. I think that’s one of the biggest problems in the indie author world is like, everywhere you turn, every podcast you turn to your advice, it’s always about being more prolific and more and more, like, putting out more and more and more books. And I feel like if you’re a newer writer or if your lifestyle just doesn’t line up with that. It can be frustrating to the point of where you don’t even try, which is sad. I really want people to get their books out. So I love that you talk about not comparing yourself to others, and take 20 minutes, on Instagram the other day, you’re like, just take, like, it’s 20 minutes. Just do it and sit down. And I love that message that you have. So how has the response been from the indie writers out there? Are they able to calm themselves down?

Daria

Well, I tested it out before I officially launched it, and my beta group testers, they’re like, wow, I never thought about it like that. So basically, it had some eye opening moments. And I did a Black Friday deal with the course recently, too. So I’m getting newer students come in, and they’re like, this is just so encouraging. Again, I never saw that like this. And I shared in the reel that I did about one student tell me, I learned to give myself grace, which is why I did that reel. To remind authors is like, okay, yes, be disciplined. Yes, have a game plan. But if you miss it, if you can’t do it on particular day, if a family emergency comes up and you can’t write, that’s okay. Again, this is about you coming into your own, embracing your process. And everybody’s process looks different because we’re all different. So they’ve really taken to that, and they’re like, you know what? This relieves that unnecessary pressure that we may feel sometimes.

Kat

Yes. And I think, like you said before, it allows you, if you’re not under stress, for your voice as an author, to come through your story. Like, we are putting our own pressure on ourselves. We can take as much time as we want. This is to be fair and to be honest. And anyone who listens to my podcast knows, I’ve had to learn this. I am somebody who is always going, I am ready to go. I want to get things out there. And I’ve deliberately taken time this year to wait to launch my books. It’s very difficult. But I think that your message is, like, being yourself and, like, taking that stress off will actually make your books better. And I fully, 100% believe in that. I think that’s a message that more of us should be telling each other. The traditional world does not put out that many books, and it’s okay. If you can put out four books a year and they’re your best work and you’re not killing yourself, that’s awesome. But I would say most people can’t do that, without killing themselves or, like, never talking to their family again, which is not good. We want to live our life right? We want to enjoy life and not be stressed out because we have to go get an oil change, and how dare it and impede our writing.

Daria

Life happens. Life happens. I definitely do appreciate because again, these were things that I learned in my own writing journey. And even recently there was a family emergency and I had to stop what I was doing. But because again, I have developed my system, I know my rhythm, I know my patterns. I dealt with the family emergency, but I was able to pick back up and keep going with the writing. So No Time Writer does teach, like, hey, life happens. You can still pivot, you can still adjust and you can still finish the goals that you have for yourself. And I tell this to my students too, even if the date changes, that’s fine. The goal is still the same. So it may not be the end of this month, but you can go for next month. It’s totally fine.

Kat

Yeah. So is this course in person, is it online? Is it a hybrid? Like what are the details that way?

Daria

It is currently online.

Kat

Okay, but do you talk to them or do they do it like self paced? That’s what I wanted to say. Is it self paced or is it like a meeting?

Daria

It is self paced, but I do have a community that comes with it. I love the host platform that I’m using because they just launched another way to build community. So those that may not be on Facebook or as active, they can still get that community aspect. So I will show up and answer their comments. If they have questions, they can always email me. I go live in my Facebook group to answer questions. I’m going live today as well later on this afternoon just to answer any questions about the new platform that just launched, with that community. So I also have it to where they can write live with me. So group sprints together. And then I also have it on the calendar too, for this Saturday, actually, check ins. So they’ll come again, live with me and they can let me know, hey, how’s your goals coming along? What did you accomplish for this year? So this will be the last one for this particular year, but hey, let’s go ahead and just share what we did, let’s be proud of ourselves and then set new goals for the new year. So it is self paced, but I am still a part of it. So they feel connected. And of course with it being a community, they can connect with one another and support one another.

Kat

Yeah, that sounds wonderful. Yeah. So they can do as much as they want, but they have that like, accountability, I guess, in that community and other people going through it with them. So do you have launches or can people join whenever they find you?

Daria

They can join whenever they find me. I do have an application process just to make sure it’s the right fit. And then I’ll be able to determine like, okay, this is what you’re looking for. And this will fit you because it may not be the right fit for them. And that’s okay. I totally get that. But I will go live, in a sense and do a training. I probably do that every few months. So I’m planning on doing that maybe in the coming new year to where I teach a different concept about the course, and then I’ll be able to share with them. And if they’re interested, great, you can go ahead and apply. And if they’re not ready, there’s even a mini course available that kind of gives them a hint of what the course is about. They can learn more and make the decision from there.

Kat

Okay. All right, so where do they find you for those lives? Is that Facebook?

Daria

I usually post it on my Instagram. If they’re on my author mailing list, they’re definitely going to hear about it because I get to them that way. But also I will put the event on, like Eventbrite. That way, if someone’s not but they’re still looking for a type of event in that capacity, then they can find me that way. But I always announce it via social media, my mailing list, and then I usually use Eventbrite to bring new people.

Kat

All right, so we will send people to your website and they can get on your DariaWhite.com and they can get on your mailing list, which they should. And they should follow you on Instagram because it’s always nice to get some encouraging message on Instagram and not just adds to, like, finding you there. And then your third what is the title of the third mystery coming out?

Daria

Lather, Rinse, Murder.

Kat

Oh, your titles are so good. Oh, my goodness. So those are coming out as well, which all of that they can find DariaWhite.com, right?

Daria

Right.

Kat

Okay, perfect. Thank you so much for coming on and talking to us. We’re going to have to have you back, but I love what you’re doing, and I think that it’s really encouraging for writers and it’s probably just what they need, as the world really opens and goes back to normal, and everyone’s life is no longer watching Murder, She Wrote, unfortunately.

Daria

Thank you, Kat, for having me. I appreciate it. I love being able to share and again, not just about my personal journey in writing craft, but again, just be able to help authors discover their own.

Kat

Yes, absolutely.

The post Ep 165 NoTimeWriter with Daria White first appeared on Pencils&Lipstick.

Sally Stevens is a singer/lyricist/choral director who has worked in film, television, concert, commercials and sound recording in Hollywood since 1960. She sings the main titles for The Simpsons and Family Guy and her voice can be heard on hundreds of film and television scores.  She has put together choirs for John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, and many others for film scores, and was choral director for The Oscars for 22 years. In the earlier years she toured with Ray Conniff, Nat King Cole and Burt Bachrach, and she has also written lyrics for Burt Bacharach, Don Ellis, Dominic Frontiere, Dave Grusin, and others. 
 
Her short fiction, poetry and essays have been included in Mockingheart Review, The OffBeat, Raven’s Perch, Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, Los Angeles Press, The Voices Project, and Between the Lines Anthology: Fairy Tales & Folklore Re-imagined.   I Sang That: A Memoir From Hollywood is available from Amazon. 

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TRANSCRIPTION STARTS HERE:

Kat

Well, hello, Sally Stevens. It’s so wonderful to have you on the Pencils & Lipstick podcast. How are you doing?

Sally

I’m doing great, thank you. It’s delightful to be here.

Kat

Wonderful. Before we get into your book, I Sang That from the Sound of Music to Simpsons to South park and beyond. I’m very excited. Will you tell everyone just a little bit about who you are and where you’re from?

Sally

Sure. Well, I’m talking to you from Studio City, California, which is generally the area where I grew up and was born, I was born in LA. And I have worked in music, film score music, television, sound recordings, commercials, all of that, what we call session singing and some concert work for a long, long time here, and I’m still active. I don’t know how that has happened, but it happens.

Kat

They won’t let you go.

Sally

So I know I’ve been very lucky. I’ve had a wonderful long journey, and it’s rainy and lovely here. I’m looking out at my garden.

Kat

So I’m glad you guys are getting rain. You guys are always sort of needing rain. So you were born and raised in LA? So you’ve sort of been around the Hollywood, the American sort of, I guess, it was a big dream at some point, to be an actress and to be in the Hollywood scene.

Sally

Well, you know, both my parents and my stepfather were singers, they were all singers. And my mom, they both also worked in film, but in the 40s, late 30s, 40s. They were not vocal contractors. They were not influential in the session world. But I knew that there was such a thing as a session singer. And we are the people that are rarely credited. Unless we’re very lucky. But it’s not what I wanted to do originally was just what you described. I had dreams of being Lucille Ball. She was my icon when I was a kid, and I wanted to be a songwriter, singer, artist. And I started in that path a little bit, or very early on while I was still at UCLA. But I had a chance to do some session work through people that I would need along the way. And it was such a fascinating business and it was so competitive, that there was a lot of activity in those days, much more sadly than there is today. But if you didn’t show up for something, the contractor or the producer might find someone they liked better. So you just had to be there.

Kat

Wow.

Sally

So it was very intense in the 60s and 70s, I came across some of my old calendar books, state books from 65, 69, 72, when I was looking for specific information about the memoir. And there were days, most days we would work, like from nine in the morning till ten at night, six days a week.

Kat

Oh my gosh!

Sally

And they were not all big projects. You know, you do a demo for a commercial and get paid $43 or something. But it was all union work in those days. And it just one thing kind of led to another. So it’s been a very interesting journey.

Kat

So what’s interesting to me is that there is a lot of times, maybe it’s only in America, maybe it’s everywhere. Where we start out with a really big dream. And the majority of the big names are probably what attracts us. But underneath those big names are all the other people who work really hard to put together all of the arts. I’m kind of thinking of, as you said, the people who don’t get as much credit. So when did that become enough for you? Was it just working, working, working. Like, this is paying the bills, and one day I will be Lucille Ball? Or did you come to accept?

Sally

Well, I think I was pretty sure that I never was going to be Lucille Ball.

Kat

That little voice is so terrible in the back of our minds, like, no, actually, there’s only one.

Sally

I wasn’t that brave. You have to put yourself out there and be funny and assume you’re not embarrassing yourself. I never really had that courage much later in my life. The first entry into the business while there were kind of two, and I write about this a little bit in the book. When I was at UCLA, there was a producer in New York named LeRoy Holmes who produced a do-op version of over the rainbow, which for some reason took off and started to be a big hit. And he had done it with a pickup group, which was just session singers in New York. So he needed to have a group that could go out and be the Baysiders. And that happened through a fellow student friend of mine, Jack Walker, Jackie Walker, and it was a group of three guys and myself, and we recorded the rest of the album, and then we did record hops, which in those days were events on I don’t even know what the spaces were. I know we were in El Segundo once, but it was where kids would come up, show up and dance to the DJ, and then they’d have usually a featured act, which sometimes would be us. And that was fun. And then a manager took me to see Herb Alpert. Are you familiar with Herb Alpert? Herb Alpert is a fabulous musician, producer, wonderful guy, who also has had many hits himself with the Tijuana Brass, and he started with M Records. And Lou Adler produced The Mamas and the Papas and all the big artists at one time. Before they had hits, they were partners in a little office above Sunset Strip, and they were looking for a young artist to sing a song that Herb had written. And somebody brought me in to meet with them, and they thought I would be okay. So he said, you have a song for the backside for the B-side. And so I went home and wrote one and brought it back, and he liked it better than his. He said, go write another one. But I had been writing songs all through high school. So he produced a single, two songs of mine, and it was released on Dot Records, and it got to number ten in Connecticut, but that’s as far as it got. But by that time, I had taken my first group job, and I was going on the road with Ray Conniff for his first celebrity tour. And I met people in that first little tour that were doing session work, and when I got back, I was called once in a while. And then we did my husband and I, who I met on that first tour, did a 47 one-nighter bus concert tour with Ray Conniff all across the country, and it was what took me out of my senior year at UCLA. But I learned so much about the business I wanted to be in.I just figured, okay, this is what I’m going to do.

Kat

Yeah. So you were writing music before that, like the music part and the lyrics?

Sally

Yeah, I have a bunch of song. About twelve years ago or ten years ago, I did a CD included about nine songs that I’d written and four other writers that I just loved, just to feed my soul. So I’ve always enjoyed writing. And along the way, I had these few, just a handful of really bucket list events where I had an opportunity to write lyrics for a film, score, or a project. I wrote lyrics for Bert Bacharach at one point, so I’ve had a chance to dabble in that along the way, but I haven’t had to rely on it as my living.

Kat

Okay, well, songwriting fascinates me. I know one other songwriter, and it’s incredible to me how you guys can hear music in your head and start putting words to it. I think it’s fascinating to me, probably because I can’t do it with beans. But is that something that you just always remember doing, or was there one specific thing in your childhood that sort of brought you into writing music and lyrics?

Sally

Well, I think the artists that were big artists when I was in high school were pretty much Peggy Lee and Sinatra. I can’t remember who all of the other artists were, but I always listened to music and loved music, and I think I was just drawn to sitting at the piano and writing it. And for me, writing a song happens at the piano, that the words and the music kind of come together. Writing a lyric for another composer is different, and it happens two ways. Like, the first film music that I got to write the lyrics for was a film called On Any Sunday, and it was sort of a documentary, a Bruce Brown documentary about motorcycling, of all things. But Steve McQueen was the attraction of the film. And I had ridden on a motorcycle once, when I was engaged to a vice cop in college, briefly, and I’d ridden a motorcycle with my brother who had one. I was on the back of it, but other than that, I didn’t know anything about motorcycle writing. But for some reason, I must have captured the vibe because the composer Dominic Frontiere had seen some of my songs and gave me the chance to write this. And they liked the lyric. And just coincidentally, that film has kind of become iconic in the motorcycle community. I’ve done about three interviews in the last couple of years, with people who just discovered who the singer was. We never got credit for the singing. I got credit for writing the lyrics. So that was a fun project. And that happened, I wrote the lyric, I think I wrote the lyric first and then Don Rot, I can’t really remember specifically, but most often the lyrics I’ve written for other people have been setting a lyric to a melody.

Kat

When you’re writing a song, I mean, they’re kind of like mini-stories, right? You kind of have to have a story arc in them.

Sally

Yeah. It’s funny, most of the songs that I’ve written were heartbreaking love songs, except for one, that I can remember. But there were a couple of words, but they always came out of an actual emotion that I was living through at the moment. The songs that were written for projects obviously have to be shaped around those projects.

Kat

Sure. But you’ve sort of made, like, mini-stories or written mini-stories throughout the years. But is I saying that is that your first book? Like, full book that you’ve written?

Sally

It is. Actually, I put together a couple of collections of poetry, about ten or twelve, no longer 13, 12, 13 years ago, of poems that I had written. And this was with a local publisher, here in the Los Angeles area that did self publishing. And I just did it because I wanted to be able to gift it to family and friends. I didn’t even market it, but this is actually the first. And I have had short stories in fiction, flash fiction, and a personal essay and some poetry land in literary journals and in a couple of hard copy collections. But this is the first book that I read.

Kat

Did you find it a very different process, or did you find it how did you find that between short fiction or short writing?

Sally

Well, the short fiction, I’m terrible about submitting stuff. My passion for writing, I finally gave myself the gift of pursuing it in a more serious way, by going to the University of Iowa writing workshops, and I went through that.

Kat

When did you go there? That’s like everyone’s dream. It’s my dream.

Sally

What I did was I accidentally applied to the Writers Program, the MFA, because I was writing a note to inquire about the Writing Summer Writing Festival workshop, which you don’t have to submit to, get into. And then I got a response back and they said, please send blah, blah, blah poems. And so I did, and I got a letter from oh, what is that amazing man, Frank Conroy? The man that ran the writing program for a while there, that I was accepted into the program, but that wasn’t what I was trying to do, because I couldn’t stay away from LA long enough to do that. But I did finally get into the writing workshop. Then I went back every summer for 20 summers. These last couple of years would have been my 21st and 22nd summer if they hadn’t been canceled because of that.

Kat

Terrible thing called Corona.

Sally

Yes. And while I was there, that’s when I would just go for a couple of weeks and be a writer, and I didn’t have to think about session scheduling or anything. And a lot of the courses that I took were generative. So I would work with writing work prompts and stuff. And most of the short stuff that I’ve sent off came primarily out of those workshops. Some of it, the poetry was just my own. But the best talk that I ever saw there, they had what they call the eleven’s lectures in the morning, and each week one of the instructors who was doing a leading workshop would give a presentation. And one morning this gentleman walked out with a cardboard box that was about 2ft long and a foot wide, and it was jammed with envelopes. And he said, until you get this many rejection notes back, you haven’t even tried. And I have not. I’m terrible about submitting, so I get discouraged if I sit down and say, okay, I’m going to send these three songs out to a few places and I don’t hear back. Or I get a response, we loved your writing, but it doesn’t work here. So the book was something that I was determined and I’m so grateful for the encouragement of friends and family. You know, when you do those workshops, you get to know people and what they do. And so often when folks learn that I’d worked in the music business so long, they say, oh, you’ve got to write a book. So it was in the back of my head. And I had written chapters along the way that were maybe part of a memoir workshop or something, but the pandemic period of time, when things just locked down, it was a wonderful time for me to go through all the material that I had and try to organize it and expand it and add. And I had two wonderful writers that I’m so grateful for. One was Gordon Meninga, who  headed the writing program at CO College, but he also taught workshops in the summer at the University of Iowa. And he was so encouraging, always. He was the one that encouraged me to send off my first submission, and I got a note back the next day, that it had been accepted, I was grateful to him. So he looked through the memoir and made a few suggestions. And then another wonderful writer, Laura Munson, who’s had two very successful books. I did a workshop with her in Montana, and we kind of started talking about the memoir when I was at the point of wrapping it up. I sent it to her, and she sent me back comments, and she encouraged me to put more of being in the moment in the book, in conversations and stuff, which sometimes when you’re writing, you kind of get into, this happened and then this happened and then that happened. So that was very helpful.

Kat

Yeah. You always sort of need someone to give you feedback on it, right?

Sally

Absolutely.

Kat

Especially something so personal. You have, I’m sure, many more stories than what’s in this book. So did you find it difficult to sort of choose what to put in there? Because I’ve heard from many memoirists that that’s their hardest thing.

Sally

It was hard. And I keep thinking, I remember stories that I didn’t remember to put in the book and sometimes I have to scratch my head and say, wait a minute, did I put that in the book? But yes, there are stories that will pop into my brain and I don’t like, maybe I better write part two sometimes.

Kat

So you spent really, the lockdown putting words on paper and getting this together. I mean, just two years and it came out. I mean, it’s published in October, so it only took two years.

Sally

Well, a lot of it was already written, Kat. I had done some workshops along the way and I’d saved a chapter or two, I had everything in my computer. So I would run across things and think, OK, I’m going to develop this chapter. And then I talk about the same thing in several chapters that I found. So it was a matter of trying to, I didn’t always succeed, but trying to get that material only just in that one chapter. I found myself, I’m sure that this is true for a lot of people, you reach the later years, and if they’ve done something in their life that they love and for the last 25 years of my life, up until about two years ago, I was single, I still live alone. My work and my singer community really became my family, kind of. And when things started to change, as they do, especially in this business, I’m remarkably lucky to have lasted as long as I did. But I would see posts on Facebook for projects where someone else had contracted the choir, for a composer that I’d worked with a lot, and it was painful and it was like not being invited to the party. We didn’t used to do that in the early days, we were very careful not to talk about other jobs among our colleagues, you know, and now it’s just out there. So it was hard. And when the pandemic started, you didn’t see that every day because it couldn’t happen. And it gave me a chance to kind of step back a little bit and say, oh, my god, I have so much to be grateful for, I’ve had my turn. And it was a wonderful time to focus on the book, but I found myself writing a little bit in the beginning about those feelings of, is it over? Is it wound down and how do I feel about it? That is expressed in a couple of the early chapters in the book, and then I go back and start with childhood and work my way forward.

Kat

Yeah, both of the industries that we work in, I think creative industries change and I think they’re changing even quicker these days.

Sally

Technology is doing it all and social media.

Kat

Right. So this is really a memoir about your life. You wouldn’t say that, it’s called a memoir, but it’s not at all sort of showing people how to get into the business, as you would say.

Sally

No. And, you know, I’ll tell you why it’s not in that way. It’s more of a history of the business and how it has changed over the last 50 years. I get calls and outreaches today still from young people that want to get into the business. And I can tell them who the busy contractors are and make suggestions and tell them how important the union is, which it really is. It makes the difference of survival for a long time and it brings you the benefits. And you don’t have to negotiate your own contracts. They’re just out there. So I can help in that way. I heard recently that TikTok is where a lot of recording artists are getting started and discovered. Okay, so very different.

Kat

That is very different. The world is changing. I think it’s really important for people to write their memoirs or write their experiences because the world, like my kids’ world, is going to be so starkly different from the 1967. They asked me questions, and to them I can see in their eyes, like, how very far away that feels for them. They were born after September 11, so they celebrate that and they’re kind of like, that’s very distant for me. We all have very vivid memories of that day, of course. And so their life is going to be so different and the technology is going to be different, the job opportunities are going to be different. And it’s important to realize not so long ago, it wasn’t the same, there was no TikTok, the work was different.

Sally

Yes, the world was different and long before you, but we studied history when we were going through school and everything. And history was progressing at a slower pace over the centuries. But now it’s just like I mean, there’s so much that we’ve got to do something about it. We better wake up about the environment and the world peace challenges and all of it that is causing so much grief. I pray to God that the younger generation is more on top of it than my generation has been.

Kat

Unfortunately, they’re on TikToks. We have more faith in them. So how did you transition from singing? So we left off sort of like your touring and then the title of your book is I Sang That from the Sound of Music to the Simpsons to South Park. I mean, I know the Simpsons and South Park. I know the Sound of Music because I grew up funny compared to everybody else. But how were those transitions in your life? Because those are very starkly different.

Sally

Well, they happened over a period of time. The first film score that I worked on was How the West Was Won. And it was the first cinerama film, I think, and that was 1961. Our business is a community kind of networking. Not that you consciously go out and network, but if you’re singing in a group and you’re standing next to somebody and that person sings really well and reads the music really well, someone might ask you, gee, you know, what a good alto? And you recommend that person. And that happened for me. People would recommend me, and I’d have a chance to fill in maybe once in a while for one singer in particular who was really more of my mother’s generation. But she was still singing beautifully, loulie Jean Norman was her name. She’s sang the da-da-da-da-da, and once in a while, if she couldn’t make a session, people began to call me because I had made a similar sound. So that kind of work grew. In the 60s, Variety television was going on, and I worked on the Danny Kaye Show for three seasons.

Kat

I love Danny Kaye!

Sally

Oh he was amazing, I got some great stories about him. And Red Skelton and then the Smothers Brothers and I had gone to high school with the Smothers Brothers, but they’d moved before we all got out of high school. In the late 60s into the 70s, commercial work began to move more out to California. It had been primarily in New York and Chicago. But all of a sudden we were getting a lot of commercial work, and that was wonderful. And then the film work grew and I never wanted to well, you know, talking about the different styles. The Sound of Music, I think, was that in the early 70s or late 60s? It was late 60s.

Kat

I think it’s late 60s, yeah.

Sally

That was traditional, wonderful music. And the twelve singing nuns were off camera. We recorded at RCA Studios. We sang for the people who were on camera. And then the Simpsons. I had done some film work for Danny Kaye. Along the way, I contracted some of his early films, the vocals for Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice. So when he got the opportunity to write this little main title for some little video thing that Fox was doing, we did it. You never know whether those things are going to go or not. And that main title has been airing for 33 years now.

Kat

I was just going to say it. Hasn’t it been like 30 years?

Sally

And for many years, for the first 28 years on the show, actually, for me, 30 years, I was the vocal contractor. So when there was a little funny song for the Village People to sing or something, I got to do it. Or if they needed a little sound alike for their end credits, I got to do some solo stuff for them. It was a wonderful connection. And I did the same thing with Family Guy. We sang the main title for that and it’s been airing now, I think 13 years. The music business kind of evolved and the style of music evolved and the new opportunities evolved. But what session singers are known for is their musical skill, their sight reading skill, their ability to adapt to different styles of music. So you kind of move along with it, you know, if you’re fortunate. And I never wanted to do vocal contracting, which is the person that knows the community and hires the singers, puts together choirs for composers or projects. I never wanted to do that because it felt so political to me and I thought if I did that, the other contractors wouldn’t want to work with me and well, that was not the case. And about 20 years into the singing business, I did start to do some contracting. I’m sure it’s kept me going so long.

Kat

It sounds like session singers get to experiment a lot and get to see different things. As you said, you’re kind of known for being able to adapt, whereas, like, if you become the Lauren Bacall or you become the big name, you really have to embrace that one brand, right? Where your life sounds like fun, like you get to sort of dabble in different things.

Sally

Kat, you’re so right. And I’ve often thought about that. I thought, okay, if you become a record artist in the 60s, you would have had a five-year career most likely. And in this journey, my gosh, I’ve gotten to work with some of the most amazing people in the world. I’ve contracted choirs for John Williams, who is just incredible. I was the choral director for the Oscars for about 20 years. I had worked on the show for other singer contractors in earlier years and a couple of shows more recently. But that was fabulous because I got to be a part of putting the show together. They would do all the songs that were nominated from films and scores and they were often of many different styles. We did a song from South Park on camera one year when the song Lame Canada was nominated. And that wonderful gentleman that just passed away not too long ago, the wonderful comedian that was in Mork and Mindy, Rob Williams.

Kat

I can see his face and I can’t remember his name.

Sally

Anyway, he did the lead role on camera, was fun. Robin Williams!

Kat

Robin Williams! Oh my gosh. Trying hard to figure out. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like you get to do a lot of work with different names and knowing a lot of people this collaboration behind the scenes. I’m sure there’s a way to be grateful for every life we have, right? But I don’t think you missed out on fun by not becoming that famous person in the 60s, and a lot of them ended tragically. But you kept going and you wrote us a book. I mean, you have some really interesting stories. You have gone from the 60s, which was a time in America where women were treated a certain way, right? You have those experiences. I mean, one of your first stories is being told to, “go get married.” You could rip that person apart on Twitter these days. They could get canceled.

Sally

Please don’t let me get you off track, because I want to hear what your questions and thoughts are. But it was so funny, this is not in the book, but my husband and I were married on the second Conniff tour. I was 20 years old when we got married, and I got pregnant right away with my daughter. I was 21 when she was born, but I went to a session with him. He was also a singer, a very excellent singer, and he wanted to be another Andy Williams, but that never happened. But we were at a session where he was singing a demo of a song for a songwriter, and I was with him, and the wife of the songwriter said, oh, did you used to be a singer? And I was 21 years old. So when you transition from the wife and mother, it was over in those days, in terms of what they thought.

Kat

So you did all of this being a mother as well. That sounds like a lot.

Sally

It was. My daughter is the one who suffered because of that, because my husband and I were divorced. Her father and I were divorced when she was about four, and that was about the time when things were really starting to get busy for me. I was doing a lot of record sessions. She didn’t have brothers or sisters, so she was alone much of the time with caregivers. I had wonderful caregivers for her, we were lucky, but it was hard. And she told me in her adult life that she felt invisible when she was little, and it’s hard to make up for that. There’s not much you can do after the fact.

Kat

Well, I think that’s the burden mothers carry. Like, whether we stay at home or we go to work, it feels like it’s never enough. And we definitely make our mistakes. I have daughters as well, been told they have not waited to tell adulthood to tell me. But what I find interesting too is you are a singer, you’re a musician, and yet part of the thing that seems to have filled you creatively is to do entirely different creative outlet, which is writing. And I know you write songs, so that’s kind of writing, but then because I advocate a lot for writers to go out of their writing closet, as I call it, because most of us have like a corner in our house, and to indulge in something that’s creative, that’s not writing. Did you specifically seek out something that would fulfill you or maybe give you rest? And you found that in writing. What are your thoughts on that?

Sally

Well, I really had both passions, Kat, very early in life. I was writing poems as soon as I was old enough to write. And I can remember going around the corner to the gentleman that lived in the neighborhood where the lady that was looking after me when I was really little lived. And he would staple together these little paper things, little books, and then I would go home and write the book. And so I’ve always loved writing. I’ve always loved poetry. I even found while I was digging through these date books and stuff, I found a journal with stories, that I’d written when I was about ten. And one was called something like St. Peter and Petrol. And Petrol was the representative from below, the Devil, and letting people into heaven. And they had a big conversation about what they did.

Kat

It sounds like the oil industry.

Sally

Early insight. I’ve always loved writing, and I’ve always written poems for years. And when I traveled with Burt Bacharach, I would carry a journal because I was uncomfortable sitting in restaurants by myself. So if I sat there writing, it looked like, oh, she’s doing something. And I’ve always kept journals, I’ve always written poems, I’ve always written down my dreams. And I also have another writing project, by the way, that I actually started in 1985 as self defense with the psychiatrist that I was seeing who was crazier than I was. And that’s a novella length piece. That’s basically the interaction between Mrs. Billingsley and her therapist. But there’s some magical realism in it, and it was a way of expressing my mental journeys along the way. So it’s always been a part of what I did. But until I sent those first submissions off, which probably was 13 or 14 years ago, I never really tried to do anything with the writing. And when I started in my work life, I had sort of a series of five-year plans. I said, okay, the first five years I’m going to try to do on camera stuff if I can. I’ll audition for commercials, I’ll do whatever. And then when I’m 24 and I’m too old to be back onto the off-camera stuff and I’ll do session singing and then five years later. But writing was way down the road because I figured if you were gray haired and stuff when you. So it’s not something that I really ever focused on, but I think that your suggestion to your followers of finding other creative endeavors is great, because it gives you a fresh view of what you’re doing, kind of. And then you can transition. I think it’s great. I wish I were better at explaining how they relate. But, you know, another passion of mine that I started to develop in my late 50s was photography. And I took some workshops, and for my 60th birthday, I gave myself three presents. One was to go to New York and do a cabaret symposium, because I hadn’t done that much live performing with my own name. The second was to do a photography workshop in the Loire Valley, which I’d taken some classes prior to. And the third was to start the Iowa Writing workshops in Iowa. So all of those have sort of mixed together. I’ve done some photographic exhibits where I’ve used the captions for the film, for the photos, where they were lines from some of the poetry, from the poetry. And the photographs, I did a series of photographs of film composers at work in the studio. And it was not a day when I was there to sing, I was just there to photograph them. And those have been exhibited in the Motion Picture Arts, inside the business building here in several other places. So they’ve all crisscrossed kind of the material that they dealt with. But I think each artistic pursuit that you have, kind of broadens your whole view of things.

Kat

Yeah, I find it very encouraging. You’re not the first one who I’ve talked to that has sort of started a new passion later in life. And I think we’re still so obsessed in America with youth, with the 20-year olds, and it’s great to encourage them in their life, but we are living a long time. And I think a lot of our fears are, like, at 50, we’re too old. At 24, we were too old. So of course we’re too old at 50, or at 40. And I work with several writers who have to battle that a lot, that they’re too old to do this. No, you actually know something.

Sally

Oh, my gosh, I’m amazed to hear that, because it makes perfect sense, I guess, if you’re pursuing a major publisher, they want to know you’re going to be able to write the best selling novels for the next 30 years, and so they don’t want you to start at 50. But I never thought about writing, as restrictive in terms of age. And yet I’m so grateful for Google, because now when I sit down and try to write something, I’m scratching my head for word. It used to happen a few years ago. So I’m very grateful that I can find my way into remembering this name or that name.

Kat

Yeah, me, too. I was trying to write for this whole other project. I’m like, I just watched this movie, and I can’t remember this name, this person. It’s everyone, but I think it’s really important to know that life doesn’t end at 24, or 40, or 50, or 60. Like, we can pursue new things, our curiosity. We’re not too old to be curious, every time.

Sally

Absolutely. That’s so, so important to remember. The more things we learn a little bit about, the more curious we get about I want to know more about it.

Kat

Right? I think we should all do a cabaret at 60.

Sally

There you go. No, I was just going to tell you something tragic and funny. I mean, I have found some recordings that I did and a ton of lead sheets and stuff from my early songwriting. And I found a couple of demos that I cannot swear that I wrote. I think I wrote the lyric, but I can’t remember whether it was a Tom Snow, was a writer that once said one of my poems to music so beautifully. And it was not written like a lyric. It was written like a poem about my sister in our childhood. And he just wrote it gorgeously. Didn’t change a word. And this one may be another one of his songs, because I know I’m not playing the piano on this demo, but it’s so I don’t want to put it out there as something I wrote and then find out, oh, my god, I didn’t write this. But it’s a vindictive song of that, it’s called, Baby Was a Dancer. And the story, danced into his heart, quickly he romanced her, he had well rehearsed his part and so the story goes, and he finally gets tired of her, but she goes away.

Sally

And then he wishes she hadn’t gone away. And that’s a song that was an unusual topic in the 70s or so. I don’t remember what made me think of that. Something that you were about to ask, probably.

Kat

I can’t remember either, but that’s alright. You have these demos, though, you have these agendas that you’ve talked about in your journals. How important was that to have those references as you were writing this book?

Sally

Well, I think, I hadn’t really thought about them as being part of the process until I found myself wondering, no, wait a minute. What artists were we singing with in the 60s or whatever? And then that’s what made me dive into the boxes in the garage. And I didn’t realize that I had all of these calendars. The unfortunate thing was that in those days I was just showing up and singing. So I would have the name of the studio, and the name of the contractor, and the time of the session, but not always the project or the artist. And then I would write when the check came in, I would make a note of the amount that we were paid, which was stunningly small, like $3.97 after taxes. But they were very, very useful when I realized that they were there. And it helped me understand. I read some of the journals about my travel years with Bert and with Ray Conniff, and those were helpful to read, to just remind me of how it felt there at the moment. Yeah. I think journaling is great, even if it just helps you get through the day or the moment.

Kat

So true. I’m a very big advocate of journaling. I’m not sure anyone will read my journals ever, but so how much of it when you’re writing your memoir, because there’s in the writing world, at least, there’s a lot of advice that people give writers, and you should sit down and you should write. But I’m a big advocate of getting up and thinking, before you go back to writing, probably because that’s my process. So how much do you think, for you, was sitting down and writing actual words out, versus trying to remember, reminiscing, reading things? How sort of was that process?

Sally

Well, in this particular project, the book, I can remember being seated at the computer writing something and then getting up and going into the other room to look for a particular journal, a particular year. So it was kind of all mixed together. I have beaten myself up always for not being disciplined like some writers arem, they would get up and they sit from seven to ten in the morning, and no matter what happens, that’s where they are. I’ve never been able to do that. I’ve mostly been propelled by whatever I’m thinking about or whatever. But I did try, and it was very helpful to be in touch with Laura and with Gordon, my writer mentor kind of colleagues. I was getting some feedback from them. I was getting, if this works, this doesn’t. So that caused me to go dive back in, which I am not very good about doing. I’m not good at editing. Once it’s on the page, it’s kind of there in stone. But I was able to really go back and expand and add the conversation that happened there or add how I felt about that moment. So that was very helpful, just to broaden what you were writing about, as you are encouraged to do so, I guess.

Kat

So did you do that sort of sending them parts of the book, or did you send them the whole book?

Sally

I sent the whole book. And both of them sent back comments chapter-to-chapter. This worked really well, love this chapter, I want to know more about blah blah here. So, it was so helpful.

Kat

Yes, feedback is very important. I say this all the time.

Sally

Yeah, it really is. And as wonderful as Zoom is, and it’s enabled the world to keep going during these last two years. For me, even, I serve on a lot of boards, and committees, and stuff with the unions, and even for those, as well as for the feedback from the writing, it’s a different thing to be in a room with people and get the feel, the vibe of what they’re thinking by the look on their face, or finger tapping, or whatever it is. I’m looking forward to being back in those workshops again. I’ve done a couple of Zoom workshops, and, you know, it’s better than stepping away from it all together.

Kat

Will you go back this next summer, if all things have settled?

Sally

Yeah, I would, mostly because I’d like to do a book reading at the Prairie Lights bookstore there in Iowa City.

Kat

Oh. Maybe I should go to Iowa. Got to go that way.

Sally

This is a wonderful little city, because it’s so renowned as a writer’s haven. It’s got plaques, brass or iron plaques in the sidewalks for the two main streets of excerpts from novels and author’s name and stuff. It’s just and there’s a house there that Kurt Vonnegut lived in, available for rent. It began to feel like my hometown because I go back and spend sometimes two or three weeks there a summer. I would like to go back just to be there.

Kat

I think I’m going to have to convince my husband to give me more allowance, everybody support the show and send me to Iowa. I’m just kidding. So your book is called well, your first of several books, right? Because we’re going to get that novella. I need to read that novella. That sounds very Virginia Wolf, like we need that out in the world. So the book is called I Sang That from the Sound of Music to Simpsons, to South Park and beyond a memoir from Hollywood by Sally Stevens. And we’ll have the links in the show notes. Is there any way to hear, do you have any audio with this?

Sally

I don’t yet, but I’m hoping to do that. I’d like to do it myself. I’ve done enough voiceover work that I think I could do it. I think that books, when the author reads them, you get a slightly deeper take on them.

Kat

Oh, well, we’re looking forward to that as well. We’ll have the links in the show notes that you guys can read, and then you can follow Sally and meet her in Iowa in 2023. Thank you so much, Sally, for coming on the Pencils & Lipstick.

Sally

Thank you so much, Kat, for inviting me. It’s really been fun. Thank you.

The post Ep 159 I Sang That with Sally Stevens first appeared on Pencils&Lipstick.

SARAH ELISABETH SAWYER is a story archaeologist. She digs up shards of past lives, hopes, and truths, and pieces them together for readers today. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian honored her as a literary artist through their Artist Leadership Program for her work in preserving Choctaw Trail of Tears stories. A tribal member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, she writes historical fiction from her hometown in Texas, partnering with her mother, Lynda Kay Sawyer, in continued research for future works. Learn more at SarahElisabethWrites.com and Facebook.com/SarahElisabethSawyer

Find Sarah’s American Indians Course here: http://americanindians.fictioncourses.com

Check out her mom’s jewelry and art plus Sarah’s books here: https://www.choctawspirit.com

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TRANSCRIPTION STARTS HERE:

Kat

Hello, Sarah. How are you doing today?

Sarah

I am doing really well, Kat. Thanks for having me on your podcast.

Kat

Thank you. I’m excited to talk to you, and I’m excited about this next part. Will you introduce yourself first in Choctaw? Because that’s so cool, and then you’ll have to translate for the rest of us.

Sarah

Absolutely. Halito um Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer, Choctaw sia. Okay. Hi, my name is Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer, and I am Choctaw. And for all your listeners out there, including you, Kat, if you’ve ever said the word Oklahoma, you have actually spoken Choctaw.

Kat

Oh, that’s really cool.

Sarah

That’s a combination of two Choctaw words, meaning okla, meaning people, or tribe, and homa, meaning red. So land of the red people is how some people interpret it as

Kat

Oh, nice. That is amazing. I love America. I love that part of America where you can go and you can be speaking several different languages and not even know it.

Sarah

Absolutely. So it’s a wonderful land we live in.

Kat

Oh, that’s wonderful. So you’re a writer, out in Texas. Will you tell us a little bit about where you’re from and we’ll get into how you started being a writer.

Sarah

Sure thing. I was born and raised in Texas. My mom’s family was mostly from Oklahoma. Her dad moved down, my papa moved down to Fort Worth, Texas. Whenever he was a boy, his mother moved down there, and he moved down there to be with her. But he was born in Oklahoma, which is where our family’s original land allotments were during the Dawes Commission around 1900 when the tribal lands were being divided up. And so his land allotment was around there, and that’s where he grew up for most of his life. And then my mother was born in Fort Worth, so we make a lot of trips to Oklahoma. Like I said, I live in Texas, but we go to Oklahoma quite a bit for tribal events. We have our big annual Choctaw Labor powwow and festival that we go to in September each year. We have our annual Choctaw Trail of Tears commemorative walk, which is always a significant time for us in the spring.

Kat

So you grew up doing that, always going up for these different celebrations?

Sarah

Yeah, I did. I was always known I was Choctaw, and my mom grew up in a time when she was shown prejudice, even though she didn’t necessarily grow up in the culture, specifically with being in Texas and being a bit disconnected there. But she was darker skinned, and so the kids at school thought she was Hispanic. The white kids really didn’t want anything to do with her. The Hispanic kids, when they found out she couldn’t speak a lick of Spanish, so, yeah, they didn’t really have anything to do with her. And so she would tell her dad, and he would tell her to be proud, be proud to be Indian. And so he passed that on to her, and she passed it on to all of her children.

Kat

That’s wonderful, I like that. Everyone has a different experience. So whether some were told to hide things, some were told, my stepmom is Mexican, and she was never taught Spanish. Her mom was like, no, you will learn English. Knowing your heritage, I think, is important. I think that’s wonderful. I honestly I’m one of those white Americans that has no idea, where I’m from.

Sarah

Pretty much all we know is what we grew up with, watching the old movies and TV shows. And that’s just such an inaccurate portrayal, often, not always, but for the most part, that’s where our stereotypes are born, and we don’t know these things. And that’s a lot of feedback I get on my books, is people are like, why didn’t I learn this in school? Why isn’t this taught?

Kat

Yeah, well, we can go down that trail, right? I mean, you started writing. You have quite a few books out there. And do all of your books include Choctaw people, or is it a mixture of different people or how do you write your book?

Sarah

Yeah, that’s a great question. It is mixed races. There’s all different races. In my Choctaw Tribune series, I have a Jewish family, even from Russia, and I have just a diverse cast of characters. Most of my I call them my Choctaw Heritage Book. So those are specifically the main characters of Choctaw. And then my Dockback Western series features Omaha Indian woman doctor who was inspired by the first American Indian woman doctor in the 1890s, Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte. And this book is not in any way to portray her life. But it was really inspiring, her story that she was an American Indian woman doctor in that time period, to even be a woman doctor in that time period, and then to have grown up on the Omaha Indian Reservation in Nebraska, and to go on half of those experiences. So I’m branching out to some other first American characters like that. But my first books were all Choctaw main characters, and I will always continue to write those.

Kat

Yeah, I think that’s important to understand, things like that. I was just talking to another, a Canadian Native woman, and she was talking about how when the different Europeans came over to do hunting, all that different thing that would happen in Canada, they, of course, don’t have lemon trees, and so they once again started getting scarvy and how hard tribe didn’t know what their problem was. Why are they sick? Because they eat a ton of blueberries. It’s just like it was ingrained in their culture and how they ate to be a healthy society. And so they realized, oh, the blueberries help them. And it’s amazing to realize how intuitive and smart our ancestors were. I think modern day people tend to, like, chalk up our ancient ancestors as not that smart when you’re like, oh, well, they survived a lot of a lot of things though. It doesn’t really surprise me that it would be a Native woman that would be a doctor, and yet we don’t learn about that. So I think that story is really cool.

Sarah

Yeah. And she incorporated her traditional tribal medicines and herbs, and she was all about whole health and not just medicine, modern medicine and her traditional, and she did both, and she was a tremendous healer for her people. But, yeah, the blueberries we know today are superfood, and we’re like, our ancestors are like, great. You’re figuring it out.

Kat

Yes, exactly. And then, funny, if we could just sort of mesh together the old knowledge with the new knowledge, and we’re all trying to get back into whole health.

Sarah

Right? Not a bad path.

Kat

You’re bringing her story to light. So how did you start writing? Like, for a lot of people that I know who are Native, storytelling is a big part of their culture. Is that the same in Choctaw?

Sarah

Oh, absolutely. We have tons of storytellers, and my papa was a storyteller. He wasn’t a professional storyteller or anything like that, but he knew how to tell a story and pass that on to my mom. And so I feel like I’m carrying down that tradition. But even going back to the ancestors that I didn’t know, storytelling and writing, even literature, was a big part of Choctaw culture. The missionaries, we invited them in the 1818 is when they established the first mission school. And our people wanted both. They wanted the Christian beliefs brought in and they wanted education. And so all of our people, not all of them, but a lot of the children began learning English, learning to read and write English. So that within a few decades, there were many fluent English speakers and writers in the Choctaw nation. And that’s a tradition that’s carried on.

Kat

Oh, that’s wonderful. So storytelling to you comes pretty naturally.

Sarah

No, yes and no. Storytelling does, I started whenever I was five. I wrote my first story because I knew I would be too shy to tell it. I had a story on my heart about kindness that I wanted to share, and I was like, I know I would be too shy to do this. So I wrote it on five little sticky notes and my mom saved it, my brother illustrated it, and then she saved kind of that final product that we produced at five and seven. Yeah, so I started then and I really got into oral storytelling. And I actually don’t do a ton of oral storytelling. I did really I thought I was going to go that direction, but writing is my jam, so I’m going to stay with writing. But I went to a conference, a storytelling conference for about five years, Native Storytelling Conference. And they just blew me away with their talent and their ability to hold an audience captive for 20-30 minutes, or an hour telling stories, because I think we think of telling oral stories as something we do at the library for kids and that kind of thing. But this was for an adult audience and just really impactful. That really got me on the trail with being inspired by the native storytellers there.

Kat

Yeah, that’s a whole different talent right there is oral storytelling. I used to think that if I’m a writer, I should be able to make up stories for my kids at bedtime. And I quickly learned that my mind didn’t work that quickly. To be able to interact with the audience and know, kind of like you have to think two sentences ahead than what you’re saying and know the intent. It’s not easy.

Sarah

It is incredible. Yeah, it is another skill set.

Kat

Yes. And we don’t do it enough. So you decided to do more writing. When did you start writing and when did you kind of know? Are you a full-time writer or do you do other things as well? How is that journey?

Sarah

Yeah, I am a full-time writer now. It took a little bit to get there. But I am a full-time writer. Like I said, I started whenever I was five, but I didn’t take. And I wrote through my teen years and early 20s, but didn’t really grasp onto it until I was about 23. Some people are like, that’s the baby. It took a long time to figure it out and to figure out, this is the gift that God has given me, and this is the direction I’m going to go in. So I began taking it seriously, taking the crash seriously, and really honing my skill as a writer because I quickly learned it’s not all about talent. It is really about developing that skill and writing a lot, getting critique, getting feedback. I had some really wonderful writers that were willing to give me feedback every week on this writing challenge that I was entering, and that began really honing my skills. In 2012, I was accepted into the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian Artisan Leadership Fellowship. So that’s what took me to Washington, DC. So when you said, you’re living in DC now, I was like, oh, that was my first trip out there. And we spent two weeks my mom went with me and just a tremendous time of doing research. We got to see the original Choctaw treaties. Yeah, it was incredible. I mean, only three people have a key or access to this fault at the National Archives, and it was a tremendous honor to get to do that. So I brought that back to my community in Durant, Oklahoma, which that’s kind of my adopted community. Again, I’m in Texas, but we do a lot of stuff in Oklahoma, especially Durant, so we had a workshop there. And out of that I had several Choctaw authors submit stories. And that became my first book, Touch My Tears: Tales from the Trail of Tears to preserve Choctaw removal stories.

Kat

Yeah, we’re moving further and further into the future, and that is, unfortunately, in America, history sort of becomes this thing that happened, and we lose the stories. We need to not lose them, right?

Sarah

Yeah, absolutely. That’s our heritage. I look at it as my ancestors walked the trail for us. So we’re honoring them with telling their stories.

Kat

Yeah. And how can we avoid doing that in the future if it’s not close to us, if we don’t really see and let it touch us, even if it makes us uncomfortable, which history usually does make us uncomfortable.

Sarah

Yes. But it’s so important to remember those stories and tell them.

Kat

So you put that together as kind of an anthology?

Sarah

Yeah, it was a short story collection, an anthology, and I indie published that. That was the route that I ended up going. I kind of hoped the NMAI, the National Museum of the American Indian, would be able to publish it through their house and then I found out they only do non-fiction, and we were doing historical fiction, short stories. And they’re like, you know, we trust you. Go for it. So we ended up doing that collection ourselves and launched it. And when I say ourselves, me, my mom, graphic designer, and we got it done. And then I’ve decided to stay with indie publishing because I just deal with so much culturally and spiritually sensitive material. I just want to always maintain that control over it.

Kat

All right, so what do you think? So because you’re doing things that people might have different opinions on, because I’ve noticed that you’ve used several different words to describe your heritage, so American, Indian, Native. So we were kind of talking about this beforehand. Do you think that would sort of be tried to bring, like, the East Coast publishing ideals to it? Are you afraid of that? Or do you just kind of not even want to go there? Have you heard stories that people are sort of made to change it, or is it just more of a I don’t even want to deal.

Sarah

It’s a little bit of both. When I started out, it wasn’t as polarizing as it is now, but there was that sense that it was coming. And now I’ve heard a lot of traditional publishers won’t even accept a manuscript that has a Native main character if you’re not Native, if you’re not a tribal member of a tribe, and even specifically that tribe. So they’re really clamping down on a lot of things. There’s a lot of words that they don’t want you to use even in a historical sense, like Indian, which is a very controversial word to even speak out loud in today’s climate. And even when I say it as a Choctaw tribal member, people just their eyes pop open and they’re like, did you actually say Indian? And I’ve had people come back on social media or by email and be like, oh, please don’t use that word. You can’t use that word. It’s so derogatory. And it is and I go over this in my course quite a bit because it is a controversial topic, a controversial word, and really it is more of an insider term. You need to know how and ways to use it. And so in a historical sense, though, they even want to eliminate things like that, that’s history. And so, yeah, I spoke to someone from I guess I won’t say the state, but on the East Coast, they were at a museum, and I was getting some historical information from them, and I put in my email that my story takes place in Indian territory. And so whenever I was talking to him on the phone, he said, well, I understand you have a series set in Native territory, and dadadadada. And I was like, Native territory? Oh, Indian territor!. You can say Indian territory. It’s okay, that’s like legally, that was the name of it before the state of Oklahoma. It was Indian Territory. It’s really getting that more and more. So, that’s where we’re at now.

Kat

So wouldn’t you feel, though, that’s almost whitewashing history, like, that we’re not describing people in their discomfort, and they’re like making up an ‘other’ of people. If you give them the proper terms of 2022, doesn’t that make them look better than they actually were?

Sarah

Well, and you just you lose the context of that time period. It was a different time. And as a historical fiction author, you know, there’s some things that we may kind of skirt around or I don’t want to soft soap, so but we just want to give a, I don’t even want to say a gentler view, but sometimes we are a wall between our readers and the history. And I did that with, I had a great discussion with a fellow military author. We both did a World War I book, and I was like, what was that experience like, actually feeling like you’re on the battlefield? And it was just so gruesome and, you know, do we put all of that in our books? Do we put that in there for the readers? And that was really the description she had, is we’re kind of this barrier from the real history and the reader. They can find that real history, but we just put it in a different way that they still get the full experience that this was a gruesome time in our history. So we don’t want to whitewash it, like you said, because war is awful, and we don’t want to glorify it in any way. But at the same time, how harsh are we being for our readers in that? And I think it’s a case-by-case basis in a sense, but I’m not for whitewashing. And just give the whole context, though. Don’t get in one ditch or the other of I’m going to show how bad people were in the past, or I’m going to show how good they were. Just study the history from an unbiased perspective and bring it out the best of your ability, right?

Kat

Absolutely. So you have a course to help people sort of navigate this whole thing if they want to. Is it pretty much for any Native tribe? Well, tell us about your course, why you made it, and what people can learn from it.

Sarah

Absolutely. My course is called Fiction Writing: American Indians. And I’ve wanted to create it for years because I always have authors contact me, asking specific questions or asking, as a non-Native, can I write about Native people? What do you think about this? And I’ve had writers almost in tears and just so scared of, one, the climate that we’re in. Two, they genuinely want to accurately portray American Indian people, and they’re afraid they get it wrong and they’re like, I’m just scared of being disrespectful. You know, they genuinely, they have that heart. They don’t want to be disrespectful. And I found most writers are that way. You always have the outliers that are, I’m going to write whatever I want, I don’t care what anybody thinks, but the course isn’t for them. But this is for the people that are working hard, the writers that are willing to put in the work to accurately portray Native people. And so, yeah, I created it. I wanted to do it for years. I’ve taught at It, live at workshops and at conferences, and finally got it put together in an online course. I have students now in the UK. So it’s really an international appeal and it’s for Native and non-Native authors.

Kat

Of course. Because sometimes, depending on where you grow up, you might not know. I mean, I’m sure I’m part English and I feel whenever I write my historical fiction, I got to go and look it up because we can’t know everything, right? So I think this is pretty amazing. There was a sort of a blank space, I guess, in this area because I haven’t seen anything that’s specifically about writing American Indians in fiction and how you go about that, how you go about researching, because Google can be a big black hole. I don’t know. It usually comes up with a lot of Harvard written papers, I feel like, every time you go down that hole. So what is it that people can find in here? Because I looked over your blog and you answered tons of questions on that blog, which I think is really awesome. If people want to check out Sarah’s blog, we’re going to have it in the show notes below so people can get started there. But how long is the course? I guess what’s? A little bit of the topics that you cover in there?

Sarah

Yeah, so it’s broken down into three parts. I wanted to because it is such a heavy topic and people I want them to be able to take their time and absorb it and really process it. So I broke it into three parts of getting to know the people that you’re writing about, learning how to research the people you’re writing about, and then we go into kind of the post, how to become a trusted author and the publishing options. So it’s about a total of 4 hours video content. I’m adding transcripts of the video as well so that people can follow along that way if they want to. But I broke it into modules, so each part is broken into modules and then each of those modules is broken into lessons. So we have a stereotypes module that actually has twelve lessons in it. When people go to americanindians.fictioncourses.com, they can see a breakdown of those parts in the modules, so they know exactly what topics are being covered and it is a comprehensive course. I will add some workbooks and things like that. Have that available for people. But at this point, I’m not planning to create another course. This is everything that I can offer in a comprehensive course that will get writers on the road to writing about Native Americans.

Kat

That’s wonderful. And you have a ton of feedback, which is really great. I think this is instead of Americans avoiding putting people, different characters, different people into our historical fiction or even contemporary fiction, what we need to do is learn. And you’re offering this way for people to learn a different culture, a different ethnic group, different and like you said, the stereotypes, sometimes we don’t even know what is a stereotype, because it’s just been absorbed by us. Or if you grew up in, I don’t know, Pennsylvania, or I’m trying to think of a place.

Sarah

Pretty much anywhere in the world, even Oklahoma, where there’s many tribes. Yeah. Stereotypes are still prominent.

Kat

Right, I’ve heard a lot of people complain that they get mistaken for Hispanic people.

Sarah

My brother, we’re full siblings. Same mom, same dad. We don’t look anything alike. But if you check out my books, Touch My Tears and Anumpa Warrior, which is the Code Talker book, he’s on the cover of both of those. He has a lot darker skin. I picked him because he was cheap, Choctaw, and handsome. He’s my model. But he’ll go, he’s been to Nicaragua and Mexico, different places, and he always people just immediately start speaking to him in Spanish. Even he landed in Florida, coming back, and the agent was like, welcoming and greeting him in Spanish. And he was like, I’m in America, right? I was like, oh, I’m sorry, sir. Yes, yes. Welcome. Come on.

Kat

You should just talk to them in Choctaw. And they’ll be like, I don’t understand.

Sarah

He does that, too, sometimes. That’s funny. We’re not fluent speakers, but we know we know a few phrases.

Kat

Yeah, that’s wonderful. It is funny how we just sort of make a lot of assumptions. So that’s cool. There’s twelve different modules, you said on that.

Sarah

Yeah, twelve different lessons. And also, when we’re talking about genres, I talk a lot about historical fiction because that’s my primary genre. But this topic touches all genres. Contemporary, romance, thriller, fantasy, I have a lot of fantasy authors that send me questions because they have these fictional people groups that they want to create in their stories, but they still want to, and they’re basing them on Native people, Native Americans, but they still don’t want to be stereotypical. They still want to do that research. And so I answer a lot of questions from fantasy authors.

Kat

That’s wonderful. I’m glad that this generation or a couple generations that we’re sort of learning to ask the questions. Like, it’s much better to learn about it than to assume that the Westerns you watched on PBS when you were a kid, rightly portrayed all different people, right? We don’t want to go there. I do want to. So we will have more information about the Fiction Writing: American Indians course in the show notes below. If you guys are part of my newsletter, Sarah and I are going to get together and collaborate soon. We will also have Sarah’s links in the show notes below as well. But I don’t want to let you go too quickly, because I want to talk about your, let me see if I can say this. Anumpa Warrior? Did I say that right?

Sarah

Yeah, very close.

Kat

Okay. We’ve all heard about the Navajo Code Talkers, but I hadn’t heard about the Choctaw Code Talkers. So can you tell us how you knew about this story and what it was like to write the story?

Sarah

Oh, absolutely. I have always known about the Choctaw Coat Talkers of World War I, I don’t think there was a time that I didn’t, because of growing up, going to our Labor Day festival and different events, they were always honored, starting in the 1980s, which I was born in 1985. So that was always a part of my upbringing, and it really surprised me whenever I would talk to other people that they didn’t know about the Choctaw Code Talkers. So it was reversed for me, and I would go speak at libraries and museums. I knew I wanted to write the story, so I would ask that question, who’s heard of the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II? And everyone would raise their hand, and then I would say, who’s heard of the Choctaw Code Talkers?

Kat

There was a movie! I saw the movie.

Sarah

Yeah, which for me, it was like, a long time later before I actually saw the movie. I think I already put my book out before I saw the movie.

Kat

That’s funny.

Sarah

But so, yeah, everyone I saw the movie, I know about the Navajoes. And then I would ask, Great, who’s heard about the Choctaw Code Talkers of World War I? And I would just get these blank big eyes stares, and I was like, okay, so we need to tell our story. We’re Choctaws. We need to tell our story. And rather than doing, like, a history book, which is great, and we have a history book now that was done by Dr. Meadows of Missouri State University. Really grateful for that. But I wanted to hit the mainstream. It’s like, that’s how most people learn. How do people know about the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II? Because of the movie. So I wanted to do a novel to hit that entertainment value and be able to share it through entertainment and also entertainment that just makes it more accessible for a lot of people, and they learn, and we remember stories, right? We remember when we read a story or someone tells us a story versus reading just the facts of something. So I wanted to do it as a story. And in 2016, it kind of because World War I, for the most part is forgotten anyway. So not just the Code Talkers, but World War I itself. And so I kind of woke up one day and I was like, we aren’t we in like the 100-year anniversary years of World War I. And so I checked it, and sure enough, the armistice was signed in November 11, 1918. And I was like, that’s just two years away. And the Choctaw Code Talkers really need to be a part of that commemoration and that recognition. So I got busy researching. It did take me that whole two years. And we barely got it out for the anniversary. We released October, at the end of October, which is when the Choctaws actually did their code talking. But that spring, I got to go to France, my first international trip. Walked the battlefields and went to where they actually do their code talking. Spent a couple of days in Paris, went to the Army Museum there. And one of the Code Talkers, who Otis W. Leader, he was selected he was in the first division. He was selected to represent the American Doughboy. Whenever he first landed in France, the artist was like, who better to represent than an American Indian? You know, the American Doughboy. So his portrait was painted. He went on to fight in almost all the major battles, was wounded and cast twice. So he truly became the ideal American Doughboy. And I’m currently writing his biography with Chickasaw Press. And so I’m excited for that project. But when I was in France, I went to the Army Museum and got to view that portrait that was done of him. So it was just, that was a tremendous trip. And just talking to all of the descendants. And some of them knew the Code Talkers. They were children, but they had a few stories and memories of them because I think the last one passed in the 1970s. So, of course, that was way prior to my lifetime. But there’s still people alive today that knew them. That’s why I call myself a story archeologist. I’m always digging up these things and putting them into a story.

Kat

I mean, I think this is incredibly inspiring to dig up those stories of your people, whoever your people are, any listener listening, like, that’s an amazing story. Even though you know about Code Talkers, how did you narrow down how to tell the story? Did you just sort of make one up and base him off of many? Or how did you because that would be my biggest thing. I’d spend two years like, I don’t know.

Sarah

Oh Kat, you hit it right in my heart. That was exactly my biggest problem in starting the project and why I put it off for so many years, because I wrote a flash fiction about it probably in 2011-2012. And I selected one of the Code Talkers to kind of tell the story from. And it was just this really brief 750-word story but that hung me up for years. It’s like, who do I tell this from? There were 19 or 20 that were credited as Choctaw Code Talkers, how do you pick one? Number one. Two, as writers, we know we get deep into the skin of the main character, and we’ve got their internal conflicts and all of those things going on. And I just didn’t feel comfortable with doing that with any of these guys who went through combat. And I didn’t want to put any feelings and emotions into them that I don’t know. And like I said, their descendants are still alive and they knew them. So it was really complicated. I was like, how do I tell this story? How do you even approach something like this? And I had never done anything like this. And I finally came to the decision to create a fictional character and write it in first person and just basically make him a composite, in a sense, of the Code Talkers and their experiences, but while also having all of the actual Code Talkers. So they’re all his buddies. He’s just a part of the gang of Choctaws who a lot of them went to Armstrong Academy in Oklahoma, a boarding school, and they enlisted straight out of there when America entered the war in 1917. So I just made him a part of that group, and he’s one of the Choctaws and becomes one of the Choctaw Code Talkers. So once I landed on that, I was like, okay, I can write the story. And then the real work began. And then, honestly, I think it was my subconscious, too, though, because Joseph Bruchac, who, again, fabulous oral storyteller, he had written a book about the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II. And that’s what he did. He did a fictional main character, wrote it in first person and had him be a part of the World War II Code Talkers. And so I didn’t specifically, like, read that book and go, oh, that’s how I’m going to do mine. But I think it was in my subconscious. And then whenever I decided to do it and I got into the research, I was like, oh, I need to go back and look at that book again. And then I saw it, and I was like, this is where that came from.

Kat

I think it’s a brilliant idea. I mean, a lot of stories that are based off, just like you said, you have a lot of different conflicts when you base it off of a true person. So really following one person or making it like their descendants would recognize them. But then you have to have internal conflict and you have to have external conflict. And if you make that part up, that could cause a lot of issues. Yeah, or maybe people will believe it. And I’m sure you’ve been asked this, but half the time I get people being like, are the characters in your book based on you? No everything’s fine. So trying to make sure everyone knows it’s fiction is just easier if you create one character and then have them. Did you have to ask permission to use everyone’s name or how does that work historically? Were they honored to be part of it?

Sarah

Oh, yeah, they were honored to be a part of it. And I didn’t use any of the people that are alive today as far as part of the story, the actual Code Talkers, they’re historical figures. So you’re free to write about anyone in history, some family, if you’re slandering, they may come after you.

Kat

Maybe don’t do that.

Sarah

I mean if you’re going to be slandering, talking bad. Go talk to your lawyer first. Don’t take this as legal advice. Yeah, I’m not a lawyer. That’s my disclaimer. My other disclaimer with that Kat, what you were saying is we need t-shirts saying caution, I’m a novelist. Bystanders may be written into the story.

Kat

And killed off later.

Sarah

That does happen. But, yeah, as far as the historical figure, people are still writing biographies on George Washington and all of those things. So at this point, they’re historical figures. If it’s a living person, I don’t know how they get by with that, with writing about the royal family and things like that. So, again, talk to your lawyer if you’re going to go down that path.

Kat

Yeah, definitely. Let’s not go down that path, on the podcast. So what else do you have? You have a couple of series I’m trying to get over here, on your shop. Here we go, different books. So you have one World War I book, but then you have a different series with the Choctaw Tribune series. Is that it?What year is that set in?

Sarah

That’s set in the 1890s. All Choctaw nations. So prior to Oklahoma statehood, right before all of the upheaval with the Dawes Commission, that divided our tribal lands because we had communal lands, and with the Dawes Commission, it was divided up into individual land allotments, which the tribes were really split on that on whether or not they wanted to do that. So there was just a lot of controversy, a lot of political upheaval, shootouts. It was kind of that true grit time period, too. So you had a lot of outlaws that would come into Indian territory because the Indian police or the like the Choctaw Horsemen, couldn’t arrest someone who was non-Choctaw. They would have to call in the marshals, and the marshals some jurisdictions, they couldn’t arrest someone that was Indian. So there was just this. And it’s like, where do they get tried at? And all of these things.

Kat

And everyone else is in the middle. Trying to say alive, geez.

Sarah

Literally, so it was a bit of the Old West during that time period. So my main characters are Matthew and Ruth-Anne Teller, they’re fictional. So all of the events, I based it on that history, but it’s really character driven with those two, they’re brother and sister, and they’re out to report the truth in the newspaper, no matter what the threats. And they are always threatened. And there’s just like life and death kind of threat. A little spoiler, the newspaper shop gets burned down, just all these things that are happening. But they have that determination and drive and family relationships and values just comes out really strong in that series.

Kat

And is that based on a real newspaper? Was there a newspaper?

Sarah

It’s not based on an actual newspaper, but there were Choctaw run newspapers during the 1800s. And there were also newspapers like The Indian Citizen and a few others that were Indian run newspapers. And a lot of those newspapers were printed in both languages, which is in the Choctaw Tribune. It’s printed in English and in choctaw. And so that series, Anumpa Warrior that we’re talking about, the Choctaw Code Talkers of World War I, is a standalone, but by the way, ‘Anumpa’ meaning language, or words in Choctaw, so Language Warriors, I would like to clarify that. But in that book, it’s kind of a second generation because it’s actually Ruth Anne’s son who is my fictional character. So to add that in there, as far as, like, how I developed this, I was going to do a fictional character. Then I was like, I’ve got his whole back story, his whole family and everything with this. And in the Anumpa Warrior, the other fictional main character is Matthew. So this is a few decades later, but he’s still a reporter, so he’s now a war reporter. And he goes through the entire war as a war reporter. So I’m doing a different perspective. I switched between those two points of view. So that’s his uncle. In Choctaw tradition, we’re a matrilineal society. And so the mother’s brother would actually take on the main role of helping raise his sister’s children. And so that’s a really strong connection. And Anumpa Warrior is Matthew being the main character’s uncle and going through the war.

Kat

What a good idea, I’m not sure I would have thought of that. Yeah, if we spend a lot of time thinking about our projects, I don’t think people know how much time we spend thinking.

Sarah

All the time, it never ends. And for me, it’s good to have a couple of projects going because, like, I got a little stuck with book five of the Choctaw Tribune series. So there’s four books out, currently. I’ll get six books total. But book five, I’ve just been stuck on some plot things and some character things and the historical aspects. So I also teach historical fiction, and I have to I’m having to hold my feet to the fire of some things that I though of. Don’t fudge and really stick with the history as much as you can. And there’s exceptions to that. But I’m really having to grind my way through some issues with the plot and the character and the history and making it all mesh together. So I’ve been a little stuck on book five. So back to Doc Beck I go, back and forth.

Kat

And it’s funny how you can have several books and then you’ll get to one where it’s just like, I don’t know, you just like spend so much time. I think a lot of people think that it gets easier and easier and easier, but it’s really like book-by-book basis.

Sarah

I thought it was going to like I don’t know who promised me that.

Kat

I think it’s in our head, that little voice in our head said, if you just keep going, some people get easier. But talk to us a little bit about the Doc Beck Western because there are eight books in that. So what is the difference there and where is it?

Sarah

Yeah, the difference with that is I wouldn’t call it like a more of a cultural book. So with the Choctaw Tribune series, Anumpa Warrior, Touched my Tears, and then Tushpa’s Story, which is a continuation of the short story I did and Touched my Tears. And that’s based on a true story. So those are more my heritage and my cultural books that I’m really trying to preserve the history, one, and then to share it. Because here in America, it’s our shared history, Native history, Choctaw history, and American history. It’s shared, Choctaw fought alongside Americans in every war since the Revolutionary War. And so sharing that history, that’s what I want to capture with that. With the Doc Beck, I needed a little bit of a break because that is a lot of heavy research and emotionally draining at times and not saying that Doc Beck’s easy, Doc Beck Westerns. But I did want to return to Westerns and in writing, I grew up on Western. So we were knocking TV Westerns and old Westerns a little bit earlier because that is where a lot of our stereotypes about Native Americans comes from, is the old Westerns. So I’m going back and watching some of those with a different perspective now. But my dad was born in 1946. He grew up when Gun Smoke was still on the radio, it was still a radio show. It was the longest running TV series of any. And that actually wasn’t like, his favorite. We were Bonanza. That was our favorite. Everybody’s, like, got that in their hand. I loved all those characters, really. Matthew Teller, he’s kind of a mashup of the Cartwrights. That’s a whole other rabbit trail. But I did want to return to Westerns. I’ve always wanted to write Westerns, but I was at this crossroads of, I’ve done all of this research on Native America, and it’s just a different perspective that I wanted to bring to it. So I kept a lot of the traditional Western tropes that we have, the shootouts and the gunfights, fist fights, all the stuff that people expect in a Western and just action packed adventure. But I wanted to have a First American main character. And that’s another term. That’s actually my preferred term when we’re talking about Native Americans as a group is First Americans. So just a little aside to our terminology thing, but I wanted to have a First American main character. And because when I was thinking about doing a Western, I was like, literally, what do I do with the Indians? You know, it’s like, I can’t just go with the tropes that we have a lot of times and that we still see today in Western when dealing with that. So I wanted a main character. And I had heard about Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte several years ago, her being the first American Indian woman doctor. And so that stuck in the back of my mind. I was like, I want to write a story about her sometime. And then I was like, what if I have this intrepid Western doctor who travels the west on these medical missions, and she’s an Omaha Indian woman doctor, and that became Doc Beck or Dr. Susan. I’m getting confused. Dr. Rebecca La Roche, who is my fictional character, who again, I always emphasize it’s not a representation of Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte’s story. She had her own incredible life story. People can read about that. But I did take some of her background as far as going to medical school and about the Omaha Indian Reservation, all of those things. And I put that into my character. And so Doc Beck and she’s called Dr. Rebecca La Roche goes by Doc Beck. That’s what she’s known as in the west. And she’s actually been banned from her reservation for reasons that we reveal as the book series goes on. But she has a sponsor who sends her out basically on medical missions. And so she the first one, Palo Duro Canyon. We go to New Mexico. She gets kidnapped and goes to Mexico. So all of the old Western things, she’s got a sidekick that has totally stolen the show named Jimmy. He’s a young kid, about 16 years old, but he’s really almost serving as a mentor role for her, even though she’s almost old enough to be his mother, as he works out at one point. But he’s a great character. He’ll probably get his own spin-off series because he’s just become so loved. So then it goes to Wyoming, and the four books that I’m working on now will be set in Nebraska, primarily on the Omaha reservation.

Kat

That what a good idea. I love that. And I love how you take a woman or a story from history and sort of spin it off. And that’s really all we can do, right? Because, again, going back to Google, you could Google, how would a person, a woman go to medical school? It’s like, you’re not going to get anywhere. So you have to use someone’s real story. How was she educated? How did she get there? As your research. That’s what we have. Unless I don’t know, I go to the archives here in DC and see if somebody will give you something, but I mean, really spinning it off of somebody’s real life, I think it’s actually a tribute, too, of, like, how much that story is impactful. There are female doctors and that’s amazing. She must have been super brave, honestly.

Sarah

She was a very gentle woman. The real doctor, Picotte. She was a very gentle woman, but she was strong. Like, she would not she didn’t take any guff off of anyone, but she was very gentle, very kind, just heart as big as the state. I mean, she was just incredible. And I love what you said. It’s really a way of honoring her and the inspiring story that she had. But yeah, if we’re just starting from scratch, it is hard to put together when it’s history. Because that Google is a black hole.

Kat

Yeah. And then if it’s not based off of something, then people could claim it’s really going into fantasy. There were no female doctors back then. What are you talking about? No, there was. Right?

Sarah

Read my author notes.

Kat

Yes. I love that. I love that idea. So you have eight books of that out already and you’re working on four more.

Sarah

And that’s a novella series. So they are short books. They’re a couple hour read for most people. And that was the other reason why I went with that medium, because novels can take me years to get put together, put that together with plot and history and the culture. So I was like, I need something that I can write faster and put out to give my readers more options to read instead of having to go three years between a novel or something. I won’t say it’s easy to write. But it is easier to write than the novels. So they do bring in about a fourth of the size, and so they’re almost like TV episodes. So that’s kind of like referring to his old TV western series and people can just enjoy a short read, shorter read.

Kat

That’s wonderful. I like that. Maybe I’ll start doing novellas because I’m so stuck on mine.

Sarah

There’s actually a market for novellas, which really surprised me as well, so I really enjoy doing those.

Kat

Well, you know, there are certain topics or stories that don’t need 400 pages. And I think sometimes we get bogged down with the, like, fluff of trying to make it a full novel, you know? Yeah, we get these weird rules that we have to follow. The 80,000 words, like, well, if it doesn’t need that many words, why write that many words? I like that indie publishing as you and I are part of is sort of breaking open those walls. You know, moms, we don’t have time.

Sarah

I do, seriously, I have a mom that I’ve known for years, and she’s homeschooling her kids. And literally, this is the first series that she’s read since high school. And she’s like, I love it because it’s short. I can just catch some reading here and there and not get lost in the story. So, yes, she’s being able to actually read because it is shorter. But, yeah, as authors, we write the story the length that the story calls for a number of warriors. We should I thought it was going to be a novella. I was going to make it more of the length of Tushpa’s story, which is a novella as well. I was going to go for that length, and as I got into it, I was like, this is a novel, it just is.

Kat

Yeah, sometimes it changes like that, too, doesn’t it? Well, that’s amazing. You have all of these books and more about yourself on your website, SarahElisabethWrites.com. Sometimes it’s hard to read the URL, right? I was going to go read Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer, and that’s not what it is, SarahElisabethWrites.com. But we will have the link in the show notes below. And I would encourage everyone to sign up for her newsletter, go see her course, sign up for my newsletter because we are going to do something soon together, because that’s what indie authors do. We collaborate.

Sarah

I’m excited about that Kat. Thank you. And I also want to plug ChoctawSpirit.com. As far as people buying direct, they can get some of the books on my website. I’m still working on that. But my mother is a Choctaw artist as well, and we launched her fine art prints and jewelry on ChoctawSpirit.com. And she’s like, Your books are going on there so readers can get the ebook directly. I’m working on some audiobooks as well for them. So, ChoctawSpirit.com, we have that available for people to buy direct. And for the authors that are writing about Native Americans, I also have a free ebook for you guys. It’s five stereotypes to avoid when writing about Native Americans. And you can get that on AmericanIndians.FictionCourses.com.

Kat

Okay. We will have those links in the show notes as well, because I’m sure we have just scratched the surface of what different issues or questions that might come up. If people now feel like, great, I can have this character, and I’m sure they’ll write and then be like, wait a minute, I need more help, because that’s how our life goes.

Sarah

Yeah, it’s complicated. But I’m grateful to offer this resource because, like I said, it’s really not out there. There’s really not much help for authors in this niche.

Kat

Yeah, and like you said, it’s our whole history. Everyone together. The past history and yesterday history, the tomorrow history.

Sarah

Yeah, for sure, history.

Kat

Yes. All right, so are you going to say goodbye in Choctaw?

Sarah

I am. We do not have a word for goodbye in Choctaw language, we just don’t I don’t. But we say I will see you again soon. And I’ll also add, Yokoke. Thank you, Kat, for having me on your podcast.

Kat

That’s wonderful. You’re so welcome. We’ll see you again soon.

Sarah

Thank you.

The post Ep 156 For the Love of Heritage and Writing Authentic American Indian Characters with Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer first appeared on Pencils&Lipstick.