with Rhonda Douglas
Rhonda Douglas is a well respected Canadian short-story writer and poet. She has Welcome to the Circus: Stories, Some Days I Think I Know Things: The Cassandra Poems and How to Love a Lonely Man. She’s a writer with a day-call, an editor and writing mentor.
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Welcome to the Pencils and Lipstick Podcast, a weekly podcast for writers. Grab a cup of coffee.
Kat (00:14)
Perhaps some paper and pen, and enjoy an interview with an author, a chat it with a writing tool creator, perhaps a conversation with an editor or other publishing experts, as well as Cat’s thoughts on writing and her own creative journey. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. Well, hopefully not actually cry, but you will probably learn something. And I hope you’ll be inspired to write because as I always say, you have a story. You should write it down. This is Pencils and Lipstick. Hello, everyone. Welcome to episode 129 of the Pencils and Lipstick Podcast. This podcast has gone out on May 2, 2022, but today it is April 29. As I record this, I have with me a guest today. Her name is Rhonda Douglas. If you are anywhere in the literary area field online verse, you will have heard of Rhonda Douglas. She is a short story writer, a poet. She is a book coach. She has her Masters in fine Arts and creative writing. I’ve heard her speak in many places. I love listening to her speak about writing, about the art of writing, about poetry.
Kat (01:42)
So we will get into all of those things, all the things that she’s done and will be doing in the near future. If you love the show and I can see that the love is growing because the pencils and lipstick has gone up in the charts. It’s interesting because I don’t normally check the charts because, well, there isn’t a whole lot you can do about it, right? So I don’t usually check them. But I got sent an email from something I’m signed up for and it told me about where I was on the Apple podcast charts. And so curiosity got the best of me. I looked it up and it’s interesting because podcasts on the craft of writing are still under the subcategory of books, along with podcasts that are more like book clubs. So it’s an interesting group. I don’t think the category makes much sense. If you’re looking for a book club sort of podcast, you’re probably not going to want to come here. If you want to hear more about the craft and how writers find their way through the craft and things that they’ve learned along with their books, then you might like this show.
Kat (02:54)
But I just found that interesting. Thank you so much for your guys’ support. I really appreciate you and all the different countries where you listen to the show. You could support the show by subscribing to it on the app that you like the most, reviewing it on that app so other listeners of that app can find the Pencils and Lipstick podcasts and giving a review. It’s fun to hear back from you. And of course, share the podcast with anyone who’s looking for a writing podcast or just something to keep them busy as they take their morning walk. You can also support the show at patreon.com/pencils_lipstick. If you support the show, you can start out at $3 a month. If you support it at $5 and above, I will shout out your book on the show. I haven’t done a whole lot over there at Patreon. I am trying to get there, but there are some coupons over there for my courses and for my books. As I move a bit into trying to sell mostly from my website. I’m not quite there yet, but that is the direction that I will be moving at Patreon.
Kat (04:11)
If you’re a supporter of pencils and lipstick, you’ll be getting exclusive coupons on things. So tomorrow, as I record, this is my first Story Clarity workshop. Sorry, that just sort of like I transitioned really quickly there. But thank you all for being supporters of the show and patrons of the show. So tomorrow is the first Story Clarity workshop. I’m really excited. I have so many notes that I’m almost thinking I might need to have like a four hour workshop. So I’m trying to parse them down a bit so that I talk less and the people who attended talk more. It is a workshop. It’s an interactive time. I want people to see the value in being able to work out their story aloud. We’re going to talk about characters, mostly characters, about the what if statement about the background of the characters that really brings the story together. And I think it’s really going to benefit people as the exercises benefited me a few months ago when I was kind of stuck in the story that I was writing and even on the story. So I’m writing two stories at the moment. I know that I said that I would stick to one.
Kat (05:29)
I really do know that. But I started out just sort of outlining getting sort of the background of the characters on my historical fiction novel. I wanted to say replay, but that’s not it. The second book after Stepping Across the Desert. I don’t know if it’s really called a series. It tells the story of Dowser, Christopher’s friend. So I had never planned to make a series, but I really like Dowser. I really like his character. I think he’s fun and he’s the kind of man that doesn’t take too much seriously. And so I wanted to figure out a way where I could get him married. So it’s going to be a historical fiction romance. It’s going to be set between Spain and England. And I had sort of been thinking of that and working that out. And as I jotted down the backgrounds of the characters and their backstory and their misbeliefs and all that, I just started getting antsy and I just wanted to write. So I started writing and also because I needed some time to think about my contemporary fiction, which still doesn’t have a name, the one where the character’s name is Tread and we’re definitely going to have to change that.
Kat (06:49)
So thank you all. Side note, thank you all who have messaged me with different names, different options for names. I know I said I was going to go with Ati, might go with Clayton completely sorry, but I will let you know when I decide that. But anyway, I needed a break on that story because I just needed a minute to think, to sort of ground myself for what I wanted the middle, the middle kind of top of the arc to be. So I started writing. And yes, now I have like 10,000 words, and I’m excited about that book. And now I’m again, excited about Tread’s book. And that’s sort of how I roll. I don’t know. There’s something wrong with me. I can’t stick to one book. So that is sort of my writing news. So I’m excited about the story clarity workshop. I think it’s going to help those who come it pretty much filled up, so I only opened up five spots, and we have four filled. So I’m excited about that. It’s purposely small to keep it just a nice, pleasant space for people to be able to share and have enough time for everyone to share about their story.
Kat (08:05)
So next week, I’ll be letting you guys know how that went and when the next one will be. So the other thing I wanted to talk to you guys about is, as we, you know, you’ll listen to Rhonda, and Rhonda, and I talk about it a bit. But I want to ask you if you’ve taken the time to decide or think about what success in writing means to you. I know a lot of people talk about this. It kind of comes ebbs and flows. It becomes popular. It sort of recedes. This has always been something that I’ve looked at, and I have to say that the definition of success for writing has really changed, probably like every year that I’m a writer. So first I want to say that it’s completely fine. Even your goals as a writer can change. But I think it’s important to realize that even if you aren’t ready to publish, but you just have an urge to write, you have a story to tell, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, you’re a writer. I consider you a writer. I think most people I work with would consider you a writer, and you deserve the time to get words down on the page.
Kat (09:25)
And I think sometimes for me, success in writing is just being able to maybe write a couple hundred words a day. I have some higher goals, some monetary type goals that will Mark a certain level of success, some publication goals that, in my mind, will Mark a different level of success. So there’s kind of layers to what success means for us. I think that you have to be very careful, especially in the indie world. There are genres in which you can reach the $100,000 a year or people like to say six figures a year within the first one or two years of it. I just listened to a podcast today and caught myself sort of as she talked about hitting $100,000 in her first year. And to be fair, she talked about all the planning that went into it, but she specifically chose a genre which she really thought it was going to take off and she estimated it correctly. It really took off. So there are different ways to write. There are different genres to write in. And I think the level of success, especially when you’re speaking monetarily, has to be adjusted for whatever genre that is.
Kat (10:47)
So if you write romance and you market it well, while it’s an inundated field, if you market well and do your research well and you’re willing to write in the niche genre, that is probably a little bit more up and coming, you could probably hit 100,000 fairly quickly. That’s not to say that it will happen overnight or without a lot of work. It still includes a lot of work. It includes a lot of research. It includes marketing, it includes selling. But it’s doable. I think suspense is getting there. It might not be reaching six figures, but I think you could probably get a full time salary with suspense, maybe a couple of fantasies. But there are lots of other genres that you aren’t necessarily going to make that much money in. Or I almost said because the leadership is not that wide. I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s trickier to market it and the leadership is not that it’s not wide. It isn’t as voracious in reading. Now, the other part of the problem with romance writers is that they give a lot away for free. A lot. And I’ve heard a couple of romance writers starting to really be frustrated by that because writing a book, even if you don’t like romance, writing a book to the best of your ability takes time and effort.
Kat (12:22)
And I was going to say like sweat and tears, it’s not easy. And so feeling like you have to give a lot away for free or that you can’t sell it at a higher price, it brings some frustration. But just keep in mind every time you hear another author speaking what they did, giving steps, whether it’s me or someone else, keep in mind what genre they’re in and adjust accordingly to your own expectations. And what you thought was success before you listened to that person again, it’s not bad to have a different sense or idea of what success is. I mean, $100,000 a year on book sales is in my book success. That is definitely a layer of success that I would love to attain. And I do think it’s possible. I’ve seen it. Obviously people have done it. So obviously it’s possible. So not to knock that. I mean, I think every single person is worthy of being paid for their art. I hear the romance writers are giving away so much for free at such a low price because really when you spend $0.99 on a book, the author’s getting about $0.30 of it.
Kat (13:42)
So just keeping that in mind. Of course they’re trying to sell to a larger audience, but $0.30, and they still have to pay for all their marketing. So they’re kind of having that frustration there. But whatever genre you are in, it’s always good to listen to authors from all different genres. But just before you go ahead and do exactly what they did, make sure that you adjust for the genre that they are in compared to the genre that you are in. And regardless of all that, regardless of how well other authors are doing, your life is different from theirs. We all have our unique lives and situations. So I do think it’s also important that outside of the monetary or the long term goals or ideas of success, to have the day to day success and the yearly definition of success and the sort of different layers of it. Just this year when I started participating in some contests, I got to the second level on two contests, and I won second prize in one of them. So that already is like a level of success that I was shooting for. I think that it’s higher up than it was the beginning of the year or last year.
Kat (15:05)
So that’s exciting to me. I haven’t yet won a contest. I haven’t yet really sent them out. I’ve sent out two. But I will start sending my short stories out. And that will also mark a level of success for me where somebody wants to put it into their online magazine or their literary magazine. They don’t pay much. Sometimes they don’t pay anything. But for me personally, that will mark a sort of level of success. It’s almost like an onion, like one of those layers you peel back a different definition of success. So just keep that in mind. I don’t know if you’re somebody who likes to write things down, you write it down. It’s always good to write goals down. But I think it’s always good to understand what your idea of success is so as to not be swayed by other people’s definitions, if that makes sense. So you can let me know what your definition of success is. I am on Twitter, despite all the mayhem over there @pencilslipstick. I’m also on Instagram, @katcaldwell.author. I always give my author handle.
Kat (16:19)
Sorry, guys. So I’d love to hear from you. And before we get into the interview with Rhonda, I think you’re really going to enjoy it. So I just want to let you know that as you’re listening to this, it is May 2, which means that the creative writing community is open and we have already the next six months lined up. We are looking at six months lined up for expert chats. We are adding in feedback hours monthly. We’re going to have some book blurb work done. We’re going to look at book brush again. We’re going to have Nick Thacker back into the group talking specifically about newsletters and using newsletters. In 2022, I’m going to have Jesse Turner coming in and helping us with just mindset and centering ourselves in our work. We’re going to have Tiffany Clark Harrison is going to work with us. J Thorne is going to do a workshop. Yeah, we’re going to have tons of people. It’s going to be fun. And that’s all on top of our 20 hours of sprints or co-writing sessions, however you want to call them a week. Our marketing sessions every Friday, our just get togethers where we chat and check in with each other.
Kat (17:33)
Our private slack community. We have lots going on over there. So if you are looking for a writing community, if you’re looking to develop that writing habit, if success to you means developing a daily or maybe even a couple of times a week writing habit, success means possibly just learning from others or being in a group where it’s other writers and they understand the trials of being a writer. Check out the creative writing community. You can check it out for two weeks for free. And you could always if it’s not your thing, you can cancel beforehand. If you pay for six months, you actually only pay five months or there’s a month to month payment. It is only $47 a month. And you get tons of support and encouragement and you’ll get a lot of words written, no matter how many sprints you come to. So I encourage you to find a writing group. It is a really wonderful way to navigate this life of writing. But now let’s get into the interview with Rhonda. Douglas. Rhonda. Douglas is an award-winning Canadian poet, fiction writer, and writing mentor. She’s the author of Welcome to the Circus, published by Free Handbooks, 2015, How to Love a Lonely Man, published by Apartment Nine Press, 2013.
Kat (19:02)
And Some Days I Think I Know Things, the Cassandra Poem, published by Signature Editions, 2008. Her writing has been published across Canada and has won awards from The Malahat Review, Art Poetry Magazine, Prairie Fire, and Room magazine, among others. In 2012, Rhonda received her MFA and creative writing from the University of British Columbia. Rhonda lives in Ottawa, Ontario with her Cocker spaniel, Mr. Darcy. Publishers Weekly said her short fiction collection Welcome to the Circus bubbles with originality and daring and is an exhilarating read. All right. Welcome, everyone, to another episode of Pencils and Lipstick. Today, I’m very excited to have Rhonda. Douglas with me. She’s a Canadian short story author and she also helps us get those short stories out into the world and teaches writers about writing. So thank you, Rhonda, for coming on and talking with us today.
Rhonda (20:04)
Thanks for having me. I’m so excited to be here.
Kat (20:07)
I’m very excited to have you here because for those of us who like writing short stories, your name is well known. At least I know you and all my friends know you’re a great way to start the day. Yes. Could you just tell us a little bit about where you are from and then we’ll get into how you got into writing?
Rhonda (20:30)
Yeah, sure. So I’m originally from Newfoundland, which, if anyone read The Shipping News, is that place. But I’ve lived in Ottawa, Canada, now since I came here to go to University.
Kat (20:44)
Okay.
Rhonda (20:44)
And that was a while ago. So I’ve mostly lived most of my adult life in Ottawa, Canada, but I’m originally from small fishing village in rural Newfoundland.
Kat (20:57)
Goodness. Are you one of the writers that got started early? You knew you like books, you wanted to start writing or how did that how did you get it?
Rhonda (21:06)
I was one of those book crazy kids like Bobssey Twins in kindergarten kind of reader. And so I’ve always been book obsessed. And then I can kind of put it to I think I was about nine years old, eight or nine years. And we had one of those assignments at school. Right. And write something about something. I don’t even know what the assignment was, but I wrote something about my brother. My brother. And I never really got on all that well, especially when we were super young. Right. And so I wrote this little essay about and it’s like half a page in my learning how to write script about my brother and how I loved him. But he really bugged me. And I got a gold star, and my mom has saved that. She’s got like a scrapbook of stuff. That’s the first thing I can remember. You get that Pat on the heads and the coveted gold star. And I think that’s what did me in. My dad was an English teacher, so that probably didn’t help. And then I was just crazy. So like Bobssey Twins, Trixie Beldon, gosh, Nancy Drew, of course, Hardy Boys when I ran out of Nancy Drew.
Kat (22:22)
Yeah.
Rhonda (22:25)
And then I discovered Anne of Green Gables. And as a redhead, that was transformative. Really? I still think that secretly I’m Anne of Green Gables. Yes.
Kat (22:40)
I heard from my newsletter about how that was my favorite. That was my first box, right?
Rhonda (22:45)
Yeah. I loved it from Anna Green Gables all the way through to Annabelle and Lee. And so I think that’s probably where I realized, oh, this is a thing like people do this. This is a way of being in the world. And so I was writing from definitely early teens. And then in my mid teens, like junior high, I won a poetry contest. And then I started winning other little things like, oh, you can do this. And they’ll take you for a fancy dinner and you can win $500.
Kat (23:23)
That’s a lot of money.
Rhonda (23:24)
Yes, I know, right. Like at the time we’re talking the mid 80s. That was real cash.
Kat (23:30)
I’d take $500 right now.
Rhonda (23:34)
True. Yeah. And also, I think at the same time, so there was a poem that won that award, but at the same time, my grandfather was dying and I wrote a poem for him and took it to the hospital and read it to him. And I can still remember how moved he was really a big moment in my life to realize, like, how much writing can convey and the power of writing. And so I was definitely writing poetry a lot in my team. And some of it was so bad. I have a journal that I’ve saved.
Kat (24:16)
Me too.
Rhonda (24:18)
I’m terrified. Like I’m going to have to burn it before I die. I’m terrified that someone’s going to find it. It’s all like bad poetry about boys, very angsty. And it rhymes. It’s great.
Kat (24:35)
I don’t know why, but there was a section of our class, I think it was sophomore year in which they use structure. And now that I’m older and they were like, yeah, you can do it in a different structure on the page. It’s like in a shape.
Rhonda (24:52)
Yeah.
Kat (24:53)
Right.
Rhonda (24:53)
About a tree. But shape, it like a tree.
Kat (24:55)
Yes. I have like spirals triangles, staircaps and things. It’s very funny.
Rhonda (25:03)
Did you keep them? Do you have your old.
Kat (25:05)
I have them. I have slipped through it, but I have not read not read it. And yes, if any work, I can’t bring myself to burn it, though.
Rhonda (25:14)
So I actually used it once in a short story. So I was I started really doing short stories in my twenties, and then in my 30s, I did a Masters of Fine Arts. And the woman I was working with, I was writing a short story about basically about an angsty teenager who also writes, anyway. And so my mentor said, you mentioned the bad poetry. Do you have like any bad poetry you can put in here? I was like, do I? I got lots.
Kat (25:46)
That’s amazing. I love that idea, actually. That’s really good. You can do that. So when you’re writing poetry, and I think a lot of people these days, I have interviewed a couple of poets, but it seems like a hard thing to get into and to make a living out of. I think we still have that mindset. We don’t really read it anymore.
Rhonda (26:10)
Right.
Kat (26:10)
I mean, as a society, Unfortunately, yeah.
Rhonda (26:14)
It’s a very obscure art form now. It’s like meeting someone who says, oh, yeah, I do opera. It’s very obscure, more so, but it’s so rewarding, like at the level of the word. If you’re someone who loves words, the economy that’s required in poetry, I think it is really great training for editing short story, for even working with a novel. And working at the line level, and you want to have fresh verbs and fresh nouns and write things that no one has seen before.
Kat (26:49)
Yes.
Rhonda (26:50)
Poetry, right. I think it’s really good training.
Kat (26:53)
Yes. And I think it’s a great way to even explore your own feelings. Like what? Our emotions. We’re not really taught that. We’re, like, angry. He shrugged.
Rhonda (27:07)
Yeah, exactly. And also observing the world, the world of the poem is the world of the image. And we’re so rushed, we don’t slow down to observe the world. And so if you don’t do that, how are you going to find the way to describe the look that crosses your main character’s face, just that fleeting look that goes across their face in a conversation that they’re having? Poetry also, I think, is a really good way of observing the world around you. And I think that’s probably the language play and then the observing the fine observing, both in terms of what I’m thinking and feeling, but also what’s happening around me in much finer detail than it nearly would for me. That’s what poetry gives me when I don’t get a good poem out of it. Like why I do it if you’re not able to write the next great poem and I hope to write one really good poem before I die, God knows I’m writing enough of them if volume can do it. But even without that, I think the practice of poetry for me, I would say it’s almost a spiritual practice as well, just because it requires me to slow down, be still, do that.
Rhonda (28:34)
Observing the space from which I write poetry. And it always feels a little woo woo to me. And I don’t mean it to sound that way, but like, the space from which I write poetry is a very different space from the space from which I write fiction.
Kat (28:49)
Yeah.
Rhonda (28:50)
I can sit down in the morning. I could get off this with you and go and write some work on some fiction. I couldn’t get off this with you and go work on poetry. I would have to be still for a while. I would have to read some poetry. I have to settle my being in a way that for some reason I don’t with fiction.
Kat (29:13)
That’s true.
Rhonda (29:15)
Weird.
Kat (29:16)
That’s true. I’m reading a book I’m actually reading in French, so I don’t know what the name is in English, but it’s written in the 50s. And the way that they play with language, the way that the writer plays with language. Let me see. Yeah, it’s Carlos Saffron, anyway, not well known in the west. The way that he plays with language, you can tell that the writers in the past not only read a lot, so we can tell writers these days read books, but they read poetry, they read in a way that they can play with words. And it’s not overwhelming. Like there are some classics where we remember being a 15-year-old and you’re like, I have no idea what’s going on in this.
Rhonda (30:05)
I don’t know what that was. Okay.
Kat (30:09)
It’s not just tons of adjectives. It’s like you said. It’s the ability to say what is moving in their eyes more than he shrugged or. She squinted. I’m trying to think of all the tropes I fall into, and then I go back, what is that sound that you make when you’re like, I don’t know. You don’t want to answer.
Rhonda (30:30)
Exactly.
Kat (30:31)
It’s very clear that they studied this more than just read it. That stuck with them. Yeah.
Rhonda (30:39)
And poetry for me, is a very. It’s an ongoing practice. So I’m always trying to stay immersed in poetry and writing poetry, even if, let’s say, like, I just finished the draft of a novel, then I’m taking a break before I jump into revise it. I don’t really take a poetry break in the same way I’m always engaged in poetry, and I feel like I’m constantly learning, constantly, all the time, and I just want to learn more and do more with it. And that’s true for other areas of writing as well. But I don’t know. There’s just something about poetry, and I think some of it is that the stakes are so freaking low. Like, you think about being an author generally. Right. But with poetry, it’s only other poets who actually really read poetry. Some people go to it for inspiration, but a very small group that you’re talking to, like your audience is always going to be tiny. There’s zero pressure to make a living. Zero. I’m not wondering how my book is selling on Amazon.
Kat (31:48)
Like marketing for poetry.
Rhonda (31:50)
Yeah. There’s a lot of the pressure that comes with being a writer is not there with poetry. And you can just engage with the art form for the sake of the art form in a way that you can still do that. Of course, you can still do that with fiction and nonfiction, but the other stuff is harder to bat away with fiction and nonfiction. I find that the idea of the market is hard to escape poetry. I think it’s a little easier.
Kat (32:19)
Yeah. I think it’s interesting, too. I interviewed, her name is Lenaty, and she’s from South Africa, and she writes poetry. And I think it’s a really interesting and fairly accessible you don’t have to read a full novel, but you can get a taste of different cultures, how they write poetry, what they observe in the world because it’s different from our Western eyes and what they’re in that just love it.
Rhonda (32:47)
Yeah.
Kat (32:48)
Yeah. I mean, all of our myths way back when, we put them all the rhythm.
Rhonda (32:52)
Right.
Kat (32:52)
Because that’s how we could remember them orally. I would always encourage people to pick up something new, but I do think you make a good point about practicing that there’s no pressure. But you can even get off just keeping the Journal. You don’t have to publish it.
Rhonda (33:11)
Yeah, exactly. To get to my first book of poetry I wrote. So there’s about 60 poems in that book.
Kat (33:18)
Oh, wow.
Rhonda (33:18)
I had about 120 and deleted. Like, I properly deleted twice within the book. I haven’t deleted them. They’re somewhere. They’re probably in the cloud somewhere. Hopefully no one will see them ever. But they’re there. And I have the practice of writing them. So, yeah, not everything needs to be published. Sometimes you can use poetry as a way to process something, a way to learn, way to observe. Doesn’t all can be true. I mean, the novel is a little different because you spend so much time on big projects, so much time.
Kat (33:56)
Right.
Rhonda (33:57)
So it hurts when that doesn’t get published.
Kat (33:59)
Yeah. Deleted.
Rhonda (34:03)
Yeah. I feel that way about short stories. So you can write a short story that doesn’t get published. You’re just playing around.
Kat (34:08)
How did you get into short story writing?
Rhonda (34:11)
I think it’s funny because I don’t think I was reading a lot of short stories. I had read short stories, but it was more through school. So I decided to do an English literature degree. After flapping around with other things, I think at one point I wanted to do politics or whatever, I don’t know. So I finally settled on an English literature degree and reading some short stories through that and just fell in love with the forms that have been in my mid 20s and started reading more. And then a lot of the workshops that I was able to take, I would say my late 20s, I began taking workshops, writing workshops where I could. And a lot of them focused on the short story because it’s easy to work in, let’s say, over the period of an eight week writing workshop, you can work on one or two stories in a way that’s harder to do with a novel. I also have a single mother at the time, and so I had no time.
Kat (35:16)
Right.
Rhonda (35:16)
So there was no way that a novel, it just didn’t feel doable to me. But short stories and I just kind of got obsessed. And I started writing a lot of them. I was in a writing group. That was for a while, not the case now, we’ve been going for a long time in different iterations, but everyone was working on short stories.
Kat (35:38)
Okay.
Rhonda (35:38)
So just felt natural, like we meet once a month and go through each other’s short stories. Oh, fine. That was so great. It just kind of evolved that way. And I’ve gone into a graduate diploma program with someone who her name is Elizabeth Harbor, and she’d had short stories in The New Yorker, and she had had award winning collections. And so I worked with her on some short stores. That was a bit of a shock the first time, like a real writer worked with someone really knows the form, and you send them your precious little short stories and they tell you how boring they are. That was a bit of a shock. But.
Kat (36:24)
What is it about short stories? Because I do think just like poetry, short stories used to be that way, that every writer who was serious wrote them, at least whether they practiced them. You can go back and find short stories by well known classic authors. They would publish them in the newspaper, they had to make a living. Right?
Rhonda (36:45)
Right.
Kat (36:46)
They were writing all the time, and we seem to have really left that behind. I mean, I don’t see a lot of people spending the time writing short stories. So what is it about short stories you think that is worth looking into and maybe spending some time with?
Rhonda (37:04)
I mean, I love the power, the emotional power of a short story in 1012-1014 pages, like how it can just gut you or illuminate some aspect of life in such a short amount of time. And my favorite short story writers do that. So that’s what I love about it. So I’m always trying to figure out with the form what is it about that such a short compressed space and amount of writing can have that impact on a reader? And I think the thing about it having kind of gone out of Vogue.
Kat (37:46)
Definitely.
Rhonda (37:49)
Writers who consider themselves literary writers who have aspirations to be considered great, to hit the Canon, or win the Booker, or the Nobel Prize, or the Pulitzer. Those writers, writers who want to be engaged in the conversation of so called serious literature, are still looking at short stories, are still writing short stories. So it’s not quite as obscure as the poet, but it’s getting there. And the writers that back in the day, like from the day of Hemingway, Dorothy Parker and folks who were publishing either in newspapers or in journals, The New Yorker back when they were able to live. Right, because you published a short story in The New Yorker and you’d get $2000 or $3,000, and that was a lot of money. It’s still a lot of money today, but outside of a very few spaces like that anymore, there’s nowhere else to make that kind of money. You can’t make a living on either poetry or short stories. If you look at any of the great poetry and short story practitioners today, they are not making a living with their writing. Like if the forms you love or poetry and short stories you release the idea of writing, you can teach it and make a living, but you can’t write it and make a living.
Rhonda (39:21)
Especially the last short story that I published in the literary magazine, top notch, Canadian award winning literary magazine for which I won a prize, $300 to publish it. The prize was it’s a literary contest? The prizes are usually $1,000, $1,500. So in the end, that makes it worth of it if you win a prize, but not many of us are going to win a prize. It’s hard enough to get published in their literary mags.
Kat (39:48)
Right.
Rhonda (39:50)
You can’t make a living with it anymore. And the readership has shrunk as well. So I think that’s why people don’t spend the time on it. But I just love the form. And I love also the elasticity of the form. Like, there’s the Alice Monroe short story and there’s the George Saunders short story.
Kat (40:12)
Right.
Rhonda (40:15)
They’re different. They’re doing different things. Arguably, those guys have something in common, but every writer is able to do something different with the form. And so I just feel like it’s a really exciting form for that reason, in terms of what’s possible to achieve. And also, if it fails, let’s say you’re working on a short story and you just can’t get it to go. Well, it took you a weekend of Compass time.
Kat (40:44)
It wasn’t a novel.
Rhonda (40:46)
Yes. And also, I think for writers generally, because they’re quick, relatively quick and easy to write, you can write a lot of them. And what you get is a lot of practice writing scenes. And if you don’t know how to write a scene properly, you are not going to be able to successfully write a novel.
Kat (41:10)
That is so true. That is very true. I think one of the hardest things about a short story is the ending. And some of my fellow writers, short story writers, they don’t struggle with that. For me, personally, it is the ending that leaves you satisfied. And just like in that floating space of like, with that character standing there with them, because it doesn’t have to be the end of a novel. Everything has come together, and we have to explain. I really feel it’s just like you’re in this sort of space of like, okay, I like the end of this. Of course, you know, that the life goes on of this character, whether fictional or not fictional. And so I find that I struggle with that. Personally, I think the difference.
Rhonda (42:03)
The short story ending is an open-ending. Like the best short stories leave you. You’ve had an experience. This experience is now over. Whatever happened in the story has come to some form of resolution. But there’s a sense of openness to that ending, whereas with the novel and particularly, I think, the commercial novel, for sure, you’re tying up all those threads, God forbid somebody finds a thread and the next thing they’re on Goodreads about this Omen thread. You know, you’re like.
Kat (42:32)
I’m going to write another one. I’m sorry. My mother still can’t forgive Maria. The one. Yes. For the time in between, because she left the mother behind. That’s hard her as a reader. She can’t stand it.
Rhonda (42:50)
Funny how readers because I’m a reader and I feel like I’m pretty forgiving, but I definitely have thrown books across the room. I have left books in the garbage, did he throw I’ve had really strong reactions, but I’ve never gone online to complain about it. I’ve never like DMed the author to tell them what a shitty book it was. And that kind of stuff happens way more now. Especially for indie authors, I think get more of that. Like they get a nasty Goodreads review. They get people talking trash and Facebook groups or whatever. Yeah.
Kat (43:40)
I think the reviewers have made a business now of a platform of themselves. And so now they really think that they’re who are those guys that would review movies in the 80s and 90s, those two men anyway, Cisco and Ebert.
Rhonda (44:00)
Yes.
Kat (44:00)
You know how they used to rip it apart.
Rhonda (44:02)
Yeah. But you know who came to mind is those two guys from the Muppets sitting in the balcony. That’s your Goodread reviewers right there. Yeah.
Kat (44:15)
They’re pretty harsh, especially because these days you have to really go looking for teaching. Right. Like storytelling. The thing I love about writing and learning how to write better, the short story is it’s about storytelling. And I feel like that is an art form that we’re kind of not really focused on. Even as millions of books come out every year, it’s actual storytelling. There is a difference. And you might not be able to articulate when you read it and throw the book in the trash. But really, what’s wrong with it is the storytelling story that doesn’t know.
Rhonda (44:55)
I would say there’s the story that doesn’t work, and then there’s the inauthentic author where I don’t believe you. You are trying to put words down on paper that say because any time I think every author is doing this, the minute you pick up a pen, you’re putting words on paper, you’re saying this is what life is like if I don’t believe you and I think you are faking it, this isn’t truly your view of what life is like and you’re just faking it. I have no patience for that. Life is too short. I don’t have time for an inauthentic author. Yeah.
Kat (45:39)
That’s interesting. Yeah. Because that’s an emotional response, too. Right. I’m not going to spend my time writing a review on there. But there’s something like I don’t. Yes, I can see that now. I can list the books in my head. I won’t say that it depends on the reader.
Rhonda (46:01)
Yes.
Kat (46:02)
But with short storytelling, I think what you said is very true. Like how to write a scene, how to follow through this sort of story arc, something’s happening, the character is responding. And I also think it’s a way that we might consider going back to this because there are so many things happening in the world and it’s so emotional. Right. We know so much stuff. And instead of processing through it or exploring a way to respond to it through a character, maybe put my shoes in somebody on this side, what would they see the world as? We just go to Twitter, but I think it’s a really interesting practice to bring a character through something and might even open our minds to like, oh, what would it be like to be bombed over here in this country and we care just like exploring this or putting yourself in your neighbor’s shoes if you don’t get along with them. I wrote a short story about my reaction when I couldn’t get my vacuum to work and the chain supply and all this stuff. It’s kind of silly, but it was a way to process through. Like, what was I thinking?
Kat (47:26)
I almost ended up with three vacuums because I didn’t have a piece, but that was my thought process. What is wrong with you, Kat? But going through and writing that throughout was like, this is interesting, my thought process on this.
Rhonda (47:42)
And I feel like every story does that. Every story says, here’s a human having an experience or here’s a group of humans having an experience and invites us into that. And it expands our view of humanity, it expands our view of life. And in a short story, it’s not a huge commitment. Right. You can sit down and read in half an hour, put it aside, process at it, and come back and pick up the book and read the next one when you’re ready.
Kat (48:13)
Right. I agree. I would love for indie authors to continue. And I think the workshops might be coming back, possibly, hopefully.
Rhonda (48:25)
I just did an in-person workshop in Manchester, England. I’m here for my day job and I have some students in the UK. I said, hey, why don’t we just do it well, like vaccinated and all the things, but let’s just get together and do it in person. It was fantastic. It was like summer camp. I hope they come back.
Kat (48:44)
Yeah. Seeing humans. Yes. So you have published your short stories and then do you have a novel out or is this the first novel that’s coming up?
Rhonda (48:55)
I am just finished the draft of a historical mystery that I started at the start of the pandemic.
Kat (49:04)
So you did write during the pandemic?
Rhonda (49:06)
Oh, yeah.
Kat (49:07)
No, I did. Okay.
Rhonda (49:08)
Yeah, I definitely did. So that I’ve just finished and I’m taking a break, and then I’m going to dive in and revise it with the holy mess, like every first draft. So my two published books are a book of poetry and a book of short stories. And then I have another manuscript of poetry I’m just finishing. And the novel that the draft that I just finished that I need to revise. Yes.
Kat (49:32)
You’re very busy. So between writing, you also teach like, you were just over in Manchester. How did you get into teaching writers?
Rhonda (49:49)
So I was very active. I made a conscious and very intentional choice to build up a literary life. So I looked around in my community and I saw their reading series and where you can go. And people come in from out of town and they read their writers festivals and so I volunteered and I ran a reading series and all of that. And I just really became entrenched in a very intentional way in my local writing community.
Kat (50:22)
Okay.
Rhonda (50:22)
And so as a result of that, I guess, and of being known, and I was a poetry editor for Canada’s National poetry magazine, Arch Poetry, for a while. And so someone at the local library reached out to me and said, Would you do a workshop, a poetry workshop? And I said, sure.
Kat (50:41)
Okay.
Rhonda (50:41)
That sounds fun. I think there was a small honorarium, and then they did all the promotion, and you just kind of showed up and did it. This was probably 15 years ago now, and I have never taught until that point.
Kat (50:54)
Okay.
Rhonda (50:55)
I had certainly done lots of workshops. And in my day job, I deliver workshops all the time. I work in international development. I do capacity development. So, like workshops, I can pull workshop together in a couple of hours. Workshops is almost like a second language for me. But I had never done a creative writing workshop, and I did that one to the library. And I loved it so much. I remember after thinking, why did nobody tell me how much fun this was to engage with other writers in very specific ways about their work? Why didn’t nobody say anything? Because all I heard at that point is a lot of folks who taught creative writing did so to make a living. And all they did was complain. Like, I can’t tell you how many people I knew who were teaching creative writing, and all they did was complain about their students. And I was like, wait, this isn’t that. And then I realized it’s because my students are not college students. They’re not university students.
Kat (51:57)
They’re not forced.
Rhonda (51:59)
They’re adults paying out of their own pocket, choosing to show up because they’re committed to their craft. That’s a curious, different person. Right?
Kat (52:11)
Right.
Rhonda (52:12)
So I teach those folks all day long. I love it. I just love it. So a couple of years ago, I decided this is maybe three years ago, I decided to create my own course. And this actually came out of my experience with my master’s program as well. So I did my Masters of Fine Arts and Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. And you’re in workshops with people who are so good, and you read their short stories and their novel excerpts, and you just realize, wow. And then we graduate and a couple of years go by. And I graduated in 2011. And then I realized that I would say only about 30% of folks who finished the MFA may be a little higher, but not by much published a book, went on and published a book. And when I looked at it and I looked at all the writers I knew, who I thought, frankly, were more talented than I was, better writers than I was and I looked at the folks who had not finished, whose stories I loved, and they were all women. And there’s something about women not finishing books that I was really interested in.
Rhonda (53:26)
So I created a program called First Book Finish that basically works with women to get you through the mindset aspects as well as the craft aspects of finishing that first book.
Kat (53:38)
Right.
Rhonda (53:39)
Because so many women just don’t finish. They start lots, but then they don’t finish. And there’s all kinds of reasons for that.
Kat (53:48)
Right.
Rhonda (53:49)
But, yeah, it really struck me. So that’s the thing I’m most interested in, and that’s why I teach is to help women finish books and also have writing lives that they love. Like, why be miserable in your writing life? It’s not a badge of honor, you know, to like writing so hard, and it has to be like that.
Kat (54:17)
Yeah. I think it’s very interesting what you say about mindset, because that will affect so many things. Because even if you finish your book, if you don’t think it’s worth the time you put into it, because your mindset is still stuck in it’s not good enough. Whatever. We put everyone first. Everyone else is first. It’s easier for us to promote a friend’s work than it is our own. Your mindset is so important.
Rhonda (54:49)
It’s everything, honestly, everything. You can write the best themes in the world. You can have the greatest grasp of storytelling. If you can’t get your mindset right to finish the damn thing, no one will ever know it’s everything. I really can’t say enough about how important it is. So I really wanted to create something in my teaching that addressed the mindset piece of it as well as the craft. Writers love to talk about craft.
Kat (55:24)
Right.
Rhonda (55:25)
Like I say, come, let’s talk about dialogue. Yes, let’s talk about dialogue. But perfectionism, self doubt, self sabotage, why are you putting everybody first ahead of your writing dreams? What’s that about him? That’s a little harder.
Kat (55:44)
And there’s a lot of pressure these days. I would say, even if you finish your book, if you don’t feel like publishing it. It’s still a huge feat to finish. Oh, yeah, it’s huge. It doesn’t have to be. You don’t have to go along with all of the things and bringing out a novel every month.
Rhonda (56:05)
Yeah. I’m in some writing groups where I just lurk that are Indie authors who are trying to make a living from their writing. I think it’s really important for everyone to have their own definition of success. What is going to be a rich and rewarding writing life for you? When you’re on your death and you look back at your life, what do you want to have experienced? And that’s going to be different for everyone. And some writers are happy to be on the treadmill of getting out a book this month, getting out a book next month, working six months ahead of my Christmas novella, all that stuff. They’re happy to do it. And that’s the writing life that they want. Other people, they’re going to be happy to have written the poem for their grandfather.
Kat (56:59)
Yes. And I think mindset is everything on that one. Like you said, it’s knowing what kind of author you are, what kind of writer you are, what will make you happy setting those success goals, whether it’s finishing publishing, whatever that is, and then not falling prey.
Rhonda (57:20)
Yeah. Not falling prey. Like really standing in your own self and knowing yourself and standing in it. But at the same time, I think not being rigid about it either. Like, I can think of a time in my writing life, probably a decade ago. Well, I was a serious writer, very serious writer. I was writing serious things about serious subjects. And there’s a point at which that just got boring because what was happening as I was reading all these really great books on the side, like, I had my literary fiction. Who won the book this year? Okay, I bought that one. That one is sitting in a pile. Meanwhile, I’m burning through this mystery series as a reader. I’m like, let me read more of that. So I think that self publishing and Indie publishing has completely transformed what’s possible for a writer’s life. And that’s exciting. A bit of it is crazy, right? Like, if you feel like you’re on the treadmill and it’s a book a month in order to be the breadwinner for your family and you can make that work, and that’s what you wanted to do. Amen, sister, go for it.
Rhonda (58:28)
But I think the great thing that it’s done is opened it up. I’ve got a few students now who are at the querying stage. So they’re researching agents and sending queries out to agents, and they’re going to try the traditional publishing route. And then if that doesn’t work, they can still get their book out into the world.
Kat (58:44)
Yes. That’s what’s great about it.
Rhonda (58:46)
Yeah. They might even do better. They certainly will have more control. Right. Like, they’ll get the coverage they want. And so everything is possible now. And in that way, it’s almost more important to know yourself and to know what is going to make for a rich and rewarding writing life that you can create for yourself and sustain over time.
Kat (59:11)
Yes. And I think going back to mindset, too, like you said, they’re doing the querying phase. That’s tough.
Rhonda (59:19)
That’s a hard phase.
Kat (59:20)
It’s very tough. I went Indie because I lived over in France, and I kept querying and it got overwhelming, honestly. And, you know, back in 2010, there was like writersdigest.com. Right. Not much else. I just didn’t stumble onto any of the forums. But Indie writing, you’re going to get the Goodreads reviewers. So your mindset of renewing and having those friends, that community. I mean, I got this scathing review I had sent in a book, and I really had to step back and remember, oh, no, you actually like, there are people who like this, right?
Rhonda (59:57)
Exactly. Yeah. That’s the thing, too. There’s a book for everyone. There is a book in the world for everyone. And there’s someone who needs the book that you’re writing right now. I do believe that. But also we’re not for everyone. And so there are going to be people who hate your book and leave it in a trash can. And Heathrow, the book that I left in a trash can and Heathrow won a publisher, won a National Book Award. And I just thought like, no, it was not for me, but it was not for me. It was not the reader. Hopefully someone issued it from the trash can and it found its reader, but it annoyed me.
Kat (01:00:38)
Right.
Rhonda (01:00:39)
So I’m not that reader now, I didn’t go trash on Goodreads because Karma, baby.
Kat (01:00:44)
Yes.
Rhonda (01:00:44)
But that is so true, that art is objective and there’s something for everyone and you will not be for everyone. And so don’t beat yourself up when five people on Amazon or Goodreads misread, because often also those reviews are like, did you read it? Because that’s what’s going on. So don’t get caught up in the stupid. And the more you know yourself and what really matters for you.
Kat (01:01:20)
Yes.
Rhonda (01:01:21)
The easier that is not to get caught up in the stupid.
Kat (01:01:25)
Right. And that’s why I do like to encourage people to find those groups like you have if you want to, because those are going to be friends for life. They’re going to encourage you to be writers so important, build you back up throughout the process, learn how to take critiques and reviews and all that stuff.
Rhonda (01:01:45)
All of that is often writers get agents through other writer friends. True.
Kat (01:01:52)
Right.
Rhonda (01:01:52)
Or did you learn somebody says, oh, I was talking to so and so, and they run a writing festival and they’re looking for this kind of book. So I mentioned yours. It’s a small little community and we have to help each other out.
Kat (01:02:11)
Yes. And when you have the right mindset, you want to do that. You not only value your friend, but you value yourself. I love that. Do you have your workshop? Is it open all the time or are there certain times throughout the year? Do people need to get on a mailing list to find out about it?
Rhonda (01:02:30)
First book finish? I do a couple of times a year. And so people can get on the waiting list for that because it will be later this year. I don’t have a firm date yet. That particular program, I give so much to it, but I really can only run it a couple of times a year because it takes like a chunk of my heart every time.
Kat (01:02:50)
So it’s not just a video course. It is like live.
Rhonda (01:02:53)
Yeah. No, they’re working. It’s like Live weekly coaching, critiques. It’s a full meal deal. I have another program called the Writers Flow Studio. So this is a monthly membership for writers who want to go from a state of fear and anxiety to a state of flow. And so it tends to be writers who have struggled with mindset and have found it getting in the way of consistent practice. And so we do, like live monthly mindset master classes. We do community writing sessions. We have visiting writers come in to talk about craft. So that’s open all the time. And you can find more information about that on my website at resilientwriters.com.
Kat (01:03:36)
Okay. I’ll have that. rhondadouglas.com you have. And then I’ll have resilientwriters.com.
Rhonda (01:03:43)
Yeah. Resilientwriters.com is the site. So by the time this is live, it’ll be there. But I’m transitioning from rhondadouglas.com to resilientwriters.com Right.
Kat (01:03:54)
Just as we were talking before. There are so many facts and so many things.
Rhonda (01:03:57)
There are so many things.
Kat (01:04:00)
So many things. So I want to stress for people to go to. Rhondadouglas.com. I was talking about this with my other writing group. You have a great blog post on how to enter and possibly win Lip Mag contest. But you have some really great blog posts about writing that will really open, I think, people’s mind and ideas to short story, but also just a different part of writing if they’re kind of in the grind of indie novel churning.
Rhonda (01:04:31)
Yeah. There’s a whole series I did on entering literary contests, how to research them, how to go about entering them. And just also outside of contests, getting published in literary magazines, which is where you would publish the short story. And there’s definitely lots of stories of folks who got agents through publishing a short story.
Kat (01:04:53)
Yes. Ross McMicken, who was on the show a few months ago, he got his agent through there. So it’s definitely something to think about. It is not a waste of time, as I have been told by a few people. No, it opens up the doors. And like you said, it’s finding community. It’s not working with different people and across the world. But I will have the links in the show notes. Great. But thank you so much, Rhonda, for coming on and talking to us about poetry and short stories and the work that you’re doing with writers. Thank you so much.
Rhonda (01:05:22)
This was such a fun conversation. So it was lovely to meet you, Cat, and I hope we’ll talk again soon.
Kat (01:05:41)
Hey, you’re still listening?
Kat (01:05:43)
Since you are, could you do me a favor and head over to the app that you’re listening to this episode on and hit the subscribe button and then rate and review the show. It would really help the Pencils & Lipstick podcast get out into the world. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, well, then there might be more people out there who would enjoy it as well. If you want to find out more about me, you can head over to katcaldwell.com. I have my story over there, my books, my interactive journals, my one on one coaching information and information on my creative writing community membership group. If you’re looking to write a book or you are a writer and you just want to find out more about how to write, how to publish, how to format, how to market and all the things that go into being an author these days. Check out the membership group. There is a 14-day free trial that you can try it out, get into the mastermind, find out all the goodies that we are talking about in the group. I would love to see you there.