The Real Writing Process of Caitlin Rozakis
Tom Pepperdine interviews The New York Times bestselling author, Caitlin Rozakis, about her writing process. Caitlin explains how she uses outlines for character arcs as well as the plot before she starts drafting, how her world building can sometimes change elements of the story, and why she needed to use her child's construction paper to solve a plot problem.
Caitlin's website is here: https://www.caitlinrozakis.com/
More info on her latest book is here: https://www.caitlinrozakis.com/grimoire-grammar-school-parent-teacher-association
And you can find more information about previous episodes of this podcast on the following links:
https://bsky.app/profile/realwritingpro.bsky.social
https://www.threads.net/@realwritingpro
https://www.instagram.com/realwritingpro
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Real Writing Process, the show that finds out
Speaker:how authors do exactly what they do.
Speaker:I'm your host, Tom Pepperdine and this month our guest is the New York Times
Speaker:bestselling author, Caitlin Rozakis.
Speaker:Her debut novel was called Dreadful, which is a delightful misnomer
Speaker:because it's actually brilliant.
Speaker:Her website describes her writing as fancy with a satirical twist and a cozy heart,
Speaker:and yeah, that's exactly what it is.
Speaker:It's also really funny.
Speaker:Uh, she's also written a romance novella under the pen named Catherine Beck.
Speaker:It's called Leah's Perfect Christmas and got adapted into a Hallmark Christmas
Speaker:movie called Leah's Perfect Gift.
Speaker:We discuss all of her writing.
Speaker:Including her latest novel, the Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association,
Speaker:which is a hugely entertaining story about parents navigating the supernatural
Speaker:when their daughter becomes a werewolf.
Speaker:This was a great chat and I'm a massive fan of her work,
Speaker:so this was a thrill for me.
Speaker:I hope it is for you too, because she has some great insights.
Speaker:So let's play a jingle and get on with the interview.
Speaker:And this week I'm here with Caitlin Rozakis.
Speaker:Caitlin, hello.
Speaker:Hi.
Speaker:Hi.
Speaker:Nice to meet you.
Speaker:Lovely to meet you.
Speaker:Really happy to be here.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:And uh, as always my first question, what are we drinking?
Speaker:Well, we are drinking cinnamon herbal tea.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:Uh, because we are recording this at 1130 my time, so I've already
Speaker:had my coffee for the morning.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And if I have anymore right now, I am going to be a jittery, useless
Speaker:mess for the rest of the day.
Speaker:Uh, I can have up to one more.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Uh, before three.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I, I actually, I had a boss who used to enforce it on me because I had,
Speaker:I, I went for a coffee break at like 4:30 one day, and I came back the next
Speaker:morning and I looked so like out of it.
Speaker:She's like, what happened to you?
Speaker:And I'm like, I got that coffee too late.
Speaker:I couldn't sleep.
Speaker:And then after that, she would always ask me every time, she'd always
Speaker:be with the mug after like, 3:30.
Speaker:Is that coffee?
Speaker:No, mom.
Speaker:Yeah, I get sensitive to caffeine as well.
Speaker:So I have a three o'clock cutoff, so yeah, cinnamon, uh, it's also, yeah,
Speaker:it's autumn, so it's a nice full festive.
Speaker:It's cozy.
Speaker:It is a cozy drink and it's a very cozy book.
Speaker:Uh, but we'll get onto, uh, your writing about that in a moment.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:What I first wanna know where I'm speaking to you now.
Speaker:Is this your writing spot?
Speaker:Uh, not really actually.
Speaker:This is sort of where my formal office spot, so for working day job stuff
Speaker:or doing interviews and everything.
Speaker:and it looks, it looks super professional.
Speaker:It does.
Speaker:You've got a nice bookshelf in the background.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:I've got like the bookshelf, I've got the marble fireplace.
Speaker:And what you can't see is if you turn the camera a little bit this way, we have the
Speaker:giant pile of board games and foam swords.
Speaker:And if you turn the camera this way, you get the drying laundry.
Speaker:Uh, so, but I could pretend that I'm very classy.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I tend to want to be in a somewhat less formal space when writing.
Speaker:I mean, I, I will write, I can write anywhere.
Speaker:'cause there's a certain amount of I'm, I am a working parent.
Speaker:I can't be too precious about this.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, I can't afford to be.
Speaker:I don't have enough time generally, that I can be like, oh, you know, I
Speaker:need my very special writing set up.
Speaker:but I, I tend to want to be in a slightly less formal space if I can.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Uh, my favorites, I, I love riding outside.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Like, I like to sit out on the porch.
Speaker:I've got a tiny little garden.
Speaker:I live in Jersey City, uh, so it's a very urban environment.
Speaker:We are in like a 16 foot wide row house.
Speaker:Uh, but I have a teeny tiny little backyard that's very adorable.
Speaker:Or I, I love to write in cafes when I can.
Speaker:And my favorites right now, I've got one that has a really nice outdoor space.
Speaker:And then the other one is an Italian place, run by an Italian family.
Speaker:And the reason why that's critical is because they have
Speaker:an Italian radio station on
Speaker:Oh, wow.
Speaker:Which means I can't understand a word.
Speaker:I don't speak Italian.
Speaker:Uh, so it's in the background and that's fine, but when the radio people
Speaker:start talking, it's just white noise.
Speaker:I can't understand anything they're saying.
Speaker:That's super critical for me.
Speaker:Uh, I find I am most productive if I can go somewhere where I
Speaker:don't have the wifi password.
Speaker:And I deliberately have never gotten the wifi password from
Speaker:any of my favorite cafes.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And, uh, when you write, it's, uh, always laptop?
Speaker:Um, you're not a pen and paper?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, I occasionally will diagram stuff on pen and paper.
Speaker:I recently y was experimenting with laying out all of the
Speaker:pieces physically on the floor.
Speaker:And I mean I played a problem with a lot 'cause there's a lot of different software
Speaker:that's supposed to be for outlining.
Speaker:And I honestly do most of my outlining in Excel, which is a ridiculous way to do it.
Speaker:But it, I like spreadsheets and it works for me.
Speaker:But I was having a lot of problems because the book that I'm working
Speaker:on right now, uh, it's got a couple different plot spreads, which is normal.
Speaker:Most books do.
Speaker:And I was having a lot of trouble working out the timing on when the
Speaker:different plot threads were happening.
Speaker:So, I mean, I had my main plot thread and I knew like what
Speaker:was going on in the main plot.
Speaker:But at the same time, I've got, uh, relationships that are getting
Speaker:developed across two or three different characters and where they are, in
Speaker:how they feel about each other, and who trusts who at what point, and
Speaker:who knows which things at what point.
Speaker:And I just needed to see it all at the same time.
Speaker:And if you put anything on a computer screen, even if you've got a pretty big
Speaker:monitor, you can't get it all in one view.
Speaker:You have to scroll.
Speaker:And I kept getting myself lost somehow, as I was scrolling up and down.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I went super old school, uh, and I printed out my Excel sheet
Speaker:and I literally cut it into pieces.
Speaker:And then I had color, well, it wasn't even post-it notes.
Speaker:I grabbed some of my kids' construction paper.
Speaker:And so I had like different colors for each character.
Speaker:And so I had different swim lanes for each character.
Speaker:And then I drew on little icons where it's like, okay, this is how this
Speaker:person feels about the main point that it's a star and this is how this
Speaker:person feels about the romance subplot.
Speaker:And that gets a little heart.
Speaker:And then I had like the themes of, okay, at what point do these
Speaker:different themes come into play?
Speaker:All different colored piece of paper.
Speaker:I took up the entire floor of our living room.
Speaker:I just like laid out all the pieces so I could see the
Speaker:entire thing outlined at once.
Speaker:And then I was looking at, I'm like, okay, color what?
Speaker:'cause I could just sort of like unfocus my eyes and look at the color blocks
Speaker:and it's like, okay, there's way too much of this one color in this area and
Speaker:there's none of this color down here.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Let me move at what chapter this particular step in this relationship
Speaker:develops because there's, it's really chunky and there's a whole lot of stuff
Speaker:happening developing this relationship from three chapters in a row, and then
Speaker:nothing happens with the relationship.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:For like another four chapters, like, Hmm.
Speaker:Pacing wise, that's a big problem.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I'm gonna remove, I'm gonna move the big, like, oh, you know, first kiss
Speaker:scene gets moved down into this section, and then we're going to move this
Speaker:development in the relationship farther down and then move these things around.
Speaker:Uh, so I've never done that before.
Speaker:And I have to say it's a pain in the butt.
Speaker:Because like a lot was just like writing, physically, writing out all
Speaker:of these things that I'd had in my head and it felt very inefficient.
Speaker:I spent like an hour just like physically writing things and just
Speaker:like, this is a waste of time.
Speaker:This is a waste of time.
Speaker:Why am I doing this?
Speaker:This is the worst idea.
Speaker:And it was super helpful and I hate that.
Speaker:So are you now going to, um,
Speaker:I'll probably do it again.
Speaker:Yeah, I was gonna say it's sort of like the index cards.
Speaker:'cause um, I think, you know, sort of Scrivener has like a
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:A screen version, but like you say, with scrolling and not having it all at once.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I mean, like, I'm, I'm not a screenwriter, but I've worked
Speaker:with screenwriters, so it's like the whole beat board thing.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But I didn't have a big pinboard and I wasn't gonna go buy,
Speaker:like I wanted to do this today.
Speaker:I wasn't gonna go buy a pinboard, so I'm just like, floor.
Speaker:It's the floor.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Couple more novels in, you'll have the murder board, you know,
Speaker:like the whiteboard with all the like yarn linking things.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:The, the thing is again, with the, I live in the city.
Speaker:My house is very small and I don't, I don't have the physical room
Speaker:to leave something like that out.
Speaker:It wouldn't survive like, I mean, my kid and his friend would come
Speaker:running through with bober swords and there would go the whole novel.
Speaker:Okay, well, I wish you luck with, uh, finding a way to make that work.
Speaker:Um, and so you are, you are clearly a planner.
Speaker:You are someone who likes an outline.
Speaker:I am.
Speaker:Although I, joke, I've got like the worst process.
Speaker:'cause I, I need the outline.
Speaker:I can't write if I don't know where it's going.
Speaker:And it doesn't have to be exact, but I need to know where this thing is ending.
Speaker:I need to know where both, both in terms of a plot, but also in terms of emotional
Speaker:arcs of like what is the starting and ending points of the major characters.
Speaker:And I usually have like a couple big beats early on.
Speaker:So I, I usually start off with a very vague outline, and then I turn into a
Speaker:very specific outline, and then I write the outline, and then I get to the end.
Speaker:And then I realize that I totally messed up the back third of the book
Speaker:and I had to rewrite the whole thing.
Speaker:I, and I, I wish this wasn't my process.
Speaker:I thought I, but this has happened like three books in a row.
Speaker:So clearly this is my process.
Speaker:But it's to some extent, and it always ends where I think it's going to end.
Speaker:But the climax is often not what I thought the climax was going to be, it turns out.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And is that due to the characters as they develop through your writing of
Speaker:them, they have different motivations or what, what do you think it is?
Speaker:Not, not usually.
Speaker:I mean, I, you hear a lot about people who have characters sort
Speaker:of run away from them and the characters develop their own voices.
Speaker:And I don't have that happen very often, but look, get getting more granular here.
Speaker:So, uh, my debut novels Dreadful.
Speaker:That's the title for the audience.
Speaker:We should say.
Speaker:Yes, yes, the, sorry, the, the name of, of the book is in fact Dreadful.
Speaker:Um, and just side note, I, I'm so disappointed.
Speaker:I was expecting so more people to take up that pun in reviews and stuff.
Speaker:This is a dreadful novel.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It, or it's not dreadful at all.
Speaker:Like it's, it's a gimme.
Speaker:And I guess everybody thought it was going to be two hackney because
Speaker:very few people actually use it.
Speaker:I gave you a gift, people.
Speaker:Uh, anyway, so the, the book Dreadful is about this evil wizard who
Speaker:loses his memory, and he has fake way along with his own evil plan.
Speaker:And it is a fantasy farce.
Speaker:And I mean, there's, there's a lot of serious themes it deals with,
Speaker:but the writing is very light.
Speaker:And it, it wasn't written to be a cozy, but it has subsequently been
Speaker:tagged with the Cozy Fantasy label.
Speaker:When I started writing it, that wasn't as prevalent a, a label anyway.
Speaker:So, it's this light effervescent thing, and I mean, people die.
Speaker:People die horribly.
Speaker:There's a whole lot evil wizards running around, what do you think's gonna happen?
Speaker:But it's not really like dwelt upon.
Speaker:It's dealt with, but it's not dwelt on.
Speaker:So the uh, climax, which I won't spoil, but leading into the
Speaker:climax is very classic farce.
Speaker:There's a lot of running around and slamming doors and people in costumes
Speaker:who you can't figure out who's in the costume at any given point.
Speaker:And objects being misplaced and people trying to find them kinds of
Speaker:very classic farce kinds of stuff.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I wrote it originally though, and the climax was a much more
Speaker:horror Emphasized kind of thing.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:It ended in the same place, but the actual main sequence was completely different.
Speaker:It was a whole setup of a besieging army.
Speaker:And the king and a whole conflict between him and his daughter.
Speaker:And it was just a completely different, like a way to get to this ending.
Speaker:The tone was completely wrong.
Speaker:Because like, I got to the end of this thing and I'm like,
Speaker:okay, I like the note it ends on.
Speaker:But the back third of the book was just not what I set out to write.
Speaker:Like I intended for this thing to be funny.
Speaker:And it started out funny and the middle was funny and, and
Speaker:the last third was not funny.
Speaker:Like it was really not funny.
Speaker:And there's nothing wrong with that, but that wasn't what I had wanted it to be.
Speaker:And in the process of writing it, I kind of was like, oh, this, this
Speaker:wasn't, this wasn't what I envisioned.
Speaker:And then the other problem was I had two characters.
Speaker:So one of the main characters of the book is this princess, who the protagonist
Speaker:has kidnapped and can't remember why.
Speaker:He's got a princess locked in a dungeon.
Speaker:Clearly had a plan for why he kidnapped for why he kidnapped a princess, and he
Speaker:has no idea what he was trying to do.
Speaker:And he is just like, oh shit, what do I do?
Speaker:Oh no!
Speaker:Uh, in the original draft, there were actually two people.
Speaker:There was the princess and there was her illegitimate sister.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Who had snuck in and gotten her, gotten a job as a valet to try to free her sister.
Speaker:And they had a whole back and forth and like it was, I
Speaker:liked both characters a lot.
Speaker:But the problem was that structurally what ended up happening was Princess
Speaker:had a lot to do in the beginning, and a very important bit at the very end.
Speaker:But she was locked in a tower, so she wasn't going anywhere.
Speaker:So she just physically couldn't be in most of the scenes.
Speaker:And her sister was running around and was relatively minor for the
Speaker:first, like third of the book.
Speaker:And then as you figure out who she is, she became more important.
Speaker:And so it was super unbalanced and they, they didn't, neither of them had enough
Speaker:to do over the course of the book.
Speaker:And it also ended up thematically in some places where I didn't like it being.
Speaker:Where, because this woman's locked in a room, she had very little agency.
Speaker:I mean, she, she had a lot of motivations and she had some influence on the
Speaker:plot through talking through people.
Speaker:But she just couldn't do a whole lot 'cause she was stuck in a room.
Speaker:So what I ended up having to do was I went back and I combined the two
Speaker:into one character, which was brutal because they were two main characters
Speaker:who had to become one person, which required substantial rewriting.
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:But it was so much better, and I'm really, really happy with how it came out.
Speaker:And people are very pleased with the character.
Speaker:Uh, so like both of these things really needed to happen and there a lot of where
Speaker:the strength of the book comes from.
Speaker:But oh man, it was so painful.
Speaker:It was terrible.
Speaker:So then I like set up to do the next one.
Speaker:And the next, the next book is a different standalone book.
Speaker:Uh, it's called the Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher
Speaker:Associations coming out next May.
Speaker:I'm like, okay, I'm gonna outline this thing, it's gonna be great and
Speaker:everything, and it wasn't as bad, but one of the subplots just did not work.
Speaker:And it was a ma very major subplot that ran through the entire book
Speaker:and was a driving motivation for like three different characters.
Speaker:Uh, and it didn't work.
Speaker:It just didn't work.
Speaker:Like it's, it worked in the outline, it made perfect sense in
Speaker:the outline, and then I got to the end and like, it logically worked,
Speaker:but it thematically didn't work.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I thought it would work out until I actually saw how it influenced
Speaker:the different characters.
Speaker:And I didn't like the people it turned them into.
Speaker:And I didn't like what it said about some of the relationships of the people.
Speaker:And it was also just way too stereotypical.
Speaker:And one of the, one of the things you do here sometimes is that when
Speaker:you're trying to solve a problem where your characters that, you know,
Speaker:the first solution you come up with, you should throw away immediately.
Speaker:And the second solution, you might also should throw that one away.
Speaker:You shouldn't, you should use like the third one because if you just do
Speaker:the first thing that comes to your mind is going to be so typical, and
Speaker:predictable and kind of boring.
Speaker:And that's what the subplot was, was it was too predictable and overused and
Speaker:stereotypes that I didn't actually want.
Speaker:so I had to go back with my scalpel and reassess that
Speaker:thing and completely do that.
Speaker:I also had too many characters running around, and I always had
Speaker:too many characters running around.
Speaker:I don't know why I'd do this to myself.
Speaker:Because I come up with all these cool characters and then none of them
Speaker:have quite enough things to do and people can't keep track of them all
Speaker:because there's too many of them.
Speaker:And so then I end up having to push them together and then
Speaker:it's always heartbreaking.
Speaker:'cause I would love these dozen characters that I need to be like six.
Speaker:And so it's like, okay, who do I have to kill without?
Speaker:Because at least if you, if you kill a character on page, then
Speaker:everybody will grieve with you.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And if you kill a character and remove them from reality, then
Speaker:no one else grieves with you.
Speaker:No one ever knows they were there.
Speaker:But I know, and I am sad.
Speaker:I do wanna sort of ask because of the nature of the story of Dreadful being,
Speaker:what it is to be an evil overlord and kind of deconstructing that also what it is to
Speaker:be a heroic prince is also poked fun at.
Speaker:So I was wondering with you know, all your books, do you look at a fantasy premise or
Speaker:fantasy trope and go, what's a fresh take?
Speaker:how can I deconstruct this?
Speaker:What's a different view?
Speaker:Is that your starting point or does it actually start with a character?
Speaker:How, how does your stories begin?
Speaker:That's a good question.
Speaker:I mean, I, was talking to another author recently, who was pointing out that
Speaker:I, I tend to have very strong hooks.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:Uh, and I, and I think that's a lot of where I tend to start with a hook.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, so what happened with Dreadful, and this one, I don't get credit
Speaker:for the fundamentals this is actually my husband gets credit
Speaker:for the seed that started this.
Speaker:In that, we both play roleplaying games.
Speaker:We've been playing a Dungeons and Dragons game that he was DMing and he started,
Speaker:and the starting point was basically the, the beginning of this book where,
Speaker:my character woke up without any memory in this scary like lab, and figuring
Speaker:out gradually that I wasn't being experimented upon, that I was in fact the
Speaker:evil person who had started all of this.
Speaker:And like I had to deal with my major demo, uh, where he clearly thought I knew what
Speaker:I was doing and I did very much, did not.
Speaker:And then stuff happens.
Speaker:And we played exactly one game.
Speaker:And, you know, life happened and we just didn't come back to it.
Speaker:And like two or three years later, I was like, Hey, remember that campaign,
Speaker:like, so what was the deal with this?
Speaker:And he's like, I don't remember.
Speaker:And he went back and he tried to find the notes and he couldn't find the notes.
Speaker:He couldn't find it.
Speaker:He couldn't remember what it was.
Speaker:And it bothered me.
Speaker:Like I needed to know what the heck happened.
Speaker:Like how did this person lose his memory?
Speaker:How did this happen?
Speaker:What happened next?
Speaker:Like how did he get outta this?
Speaker:So I really didn't have any choice other than to make it up.
Speaker:so it's that one very much started with this image of, you know,
Speaker:somebody waking up in mortal peril.
Speaker:And realizing that you're not actually mortal peril, you're the
Speaker:evil person who put people in mortal peril, and what do you do with that?
Speaker:Uh, and so then from there, then it spins out into what do you do
Speaker:with this trope where you know that you are a trope and you know what
Speaker:you're trying to fake your way along?
Speaker:Because like, obviously if you are super evil people usually have a lot of enemies.
Speaker:Uh, both good people and fellow evil people, they're not
Speaker:known for coalition building.
Speaker:And so you can't possibly afford to show any weakness, so
Speaker:you're going to have to fake it.
Speaker:So then you're trying to go off the trope that you know, and, okay,
Speaker:how do I make myself continue to be sufficiently scary that people will
Speaker:not realize that I'm totally helpless.
Speaker:So it, it kind of just leans into farce very quickly.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:So when you were developing that, was that an Excel
Speaker:spreadsheet of going Right, right.
Speaker:What are the super villain tropes?
Speaker:Not so much actually.
Speaker:Uh, it was more plot driven.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I mean like, 'cause it, it started with a question like, who is this person?
Speaker:How did they do this to themselves?
Speaker:How are they going to get themselves out of it?
Speaker:So I think that's part of why it works.
Speaker:Because I think if you start with just tropes, then you don't
Speaker:have a lot of places to go other than ha ha that trope is funny.
Speaker:It, wouldn't it be funny if that wasn't a thing?
Speaker:I think part of why Dreadful works as well as it does is because
Speaker:the deconstruction of the tropes is not the fundamental purpose.
Speaker:It is the expression of where a lot of the humor comes from.
Speaker:But there's very little that I put in specifically to say, oh, this is a trope.
Speaker:Let me deconstruct it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It was more that I would come up with either, like as I was working
Speaker:my way through this, either what needs to happen next to it, like what
Speaker:is the answer to these questions?
Speaker:What needs to happen so that we as readers discover the answer to these questions.
Speaker:Who are the people who we encounter along the way?
Speaker:But one of the things that I think is core to the story is the idea
Speaker:that no one is just a stereotype.
Speaker:And so it's one of the fundamental themes of the book.
Speaker:And so as part of that, everyone that you encounter, there needed to be
Speaker:a little bit more to them at least.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That no one could be left as a cardboard cutout.
Speaker:That each of the people have an interiority and each of them have things
Speaker:that are stereotypical, but they also have things that are very individual to them.
Speaker:But as I was encountering each of these characters, each of these characters
Speaker:is in a very high stakes point.
Speaker:I mean, like, this is a place where people regularly get impaled by
Speaker:adventurers turned into creatures by evil wizards like this, this
Speaker:is a very high stakes existence.
Speaker:Of course, they're going to try to manage their image so that they
Speaker:don't get turned into some sort of horrifying abomination unless that's
Speaker:what they wanted, which some people do.
Speaker:and so I just found it more and more interesting as I was exploring these
Speaker:to start giving us glimpses into, okay, well, yes, this person is a stereotype.
Speaker:Why?
Speaker:Why are they a stereotype?
Speaker:They're playing into the stereotype to some extent.
Speaker:Why would you do that?
Speaker:Why would you let people think that you are this way?
Speaker:Most people do have rational reasons for why they choose how to protect themselves.
Speaker:Sometimes they're not always the smartest reasons.
Speaker:Sometimes they're self-defeating, but there's usually, there is a reason why
Speaker:they're doing the thing they're doing.
Speaker:And I find it interesting to explore that.
Speaker:uh, So our protagonist wakes up in this castle and it is very evil coded.
Speaker:You've got the throne that is all like sucubi carved into.
Speaker:It is not comfortable throne to sit on.
Speaker:And his bedroom is not a comfortable place.
Speaker:His clothes are, you know, over the top and kind of uncomfortable
Speaker:and a little ridiculous.
Speaker:And he's thinking to himself like, why did I pick something so ugly?
Speaker:Like, this is tacky.
Speaker:Why did I want this?
Speaker:And he's discovering over the course of it that, oh, okay, I
Speaker:don't agree with my past self.
Speaker:I don't like what my past self was doing.
Speaker:But he wasn't wrong for the goals he was trying to accomplish.
Speaker:That people take you seriously when you have the correct trappings.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But it turns out everyone is like that.
Speaker:And are these sort of questions that you are asking your current writing project?
Speaker:Yes, very much so.
Speaker:Uh, so Grimoire, the, the one that is complete and we just finished copy
Speaker:edits and it's coming out in May.
Speaker:Similarly there, there's a lot of like, why are people doing these things?
Speaker:And again, like it's fun, it's fun to explore the weird nuances of people
Speaker:because most people are complex.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And sometimes that's not great, but it's also fascinating.
Speaker:Like part of what's interesting about people is that we are complex
Speaker:and people do have interiority.
Speaker:And as much as we like to reduce things, there is usually some reasons why people
Speaker:are doing the things they're doing.
Speaker:But it's also just the characters are way more fun when they are
Speaker:layered and have bits behind them.
Speaker:So I, I, I tried very hard to give characters contradictions because I mean,
Speaker:I think you can get very stereotypical with those contradictions too.
Speaker:And those get also boring, you know, and some of are fun, but it's like,
Speaker:you know, where you've got like the big burly biker dude who secretly
Speaker:has a teddy bear kind of stuff.
Speaker:Uh, it's fun, but it's also like, that's kind of like doing
Speaker:exact opposites is boring.
Speaker:It's more interesting to have stereotype and then stuff sticking off the sides.
Speaker:Uh, rather not orthogonal, but like 75 degree angle.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Nice.
Speaker:And, uh, when you are developing characters, do you keep like a
Speaker:separate notes folder for it, because obviously you said earlier when you
Speaker:put everything out on the carpet, you had everything sort of color coded.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Um, but I know some people like to almost interview their characters and they have a
Speaker:file like a biography on their characters.
Speaker:Do you go that deep in or do you just kind of keep it in the head space
Speaker:and just it develops as you write?
Speaker:It's more in the headspace.
Speaker:Most of the characters tend to have a short description.
Speaker:And I'll keep notes on specific things, but like, a lot of times I do develop
Speaker:these things as they become necessary.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:it's really easy to get sucked into world builder's disease.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, so there's a certain amount of building out a framework and then you need
Speaker:to just let it go and see what happens.
Speaker:And I do have stuff that I'll put in because it fills the
Speaker:need of a specific scene.
Speaker:And then I'll be like, oh, oh, let me readjust things.
Speaker:a good example, that is only very minor spoiler in Dreadful
Speaker:is there are moat squid.
Speaker:Uh, they live in the moat.
Speaker:They like to eat your face.
Speaker:But they don't have interiority, they're moat squid.
Speaker:They just like to eat your face.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Um, and I created them.
Speaker:Literally just because I needed another way to give Gav the
Speaker:protagonist a really bad day.
Speaker:Like I specifically, this one day needed to be a really terrible day.
Speaker:I wanted him to be miserable.
Speaker:I wanted to have every possible thing go wrong that could
Speaker:possibly happen on this one day.
Speaker:So one of the things was that he gets presented with a bag that he doesn't
Speaker:know what's in the bag, and it turns out that it's got moat squid in it.
Speaker:And they try to eat his face.
Speaker:That's, that, that's what they do.
Speaker:But then I had a bag, a squid.
Speaker:It's a bag of squid.
Speaker:That's, that's, that's a gift.
Speaker:That's, that's Checkov's bag of squid.
Speaker:There's a bag of squid hung on the wall.
Speaker:So I realized, part of the way through, like, oh no, I, I need to change, I
Speaker:need to change some key things later on.
Speaker:Because you can't introduce something that potent and not have it pay off again.
Speaker:So I, I did actually rewrite, uh, a couple critical scenes to bring the squid
Speaker:back and have them do the thing again.
Speaker:Uh, and I have found out that that's a thing that happens to me.
Speaker:Like I, the characters don't run away with me.
Speaker:Like, I usually have a pretty good control on the characters and where they're going.
Speaker:But weird details will get invented.
Speaker:I mean, I'm halfway through a book.
Speaker:We're in the process of negotiating right now, so I'm not gonna
Speaker:say too many details about it.
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:Uh, but I literally had a scene where it was just description and it was not
Speaker:supposed to be critical description.
Speaker:And I mentioned a detail and then it just suddenly spun out
Speaker:like, there, there is a statue.
Speaker:And it suddenly occurred to me that it wasn't a statue, it was something else.
Speaker:And then it just became a little anecdote and it was just like a
Speaker:little world building anecdote of how the statue ended up in this thing.
Speaker:And then I was like, oh wait, I just, I just introduced like a type of creature
Speaker:to this world that wasn't here before.
Speaker:It's not on the outline and I can't drop that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Like the fact that this kind of creature exists in this world has actual
Speaker:implications for what kind of world it is.
Speaker:Oh, sh Like this was supposed to be window dressing.
Speaker:It was literally just to be like, these two characters are walking through a park
Speaker:and they pass something just to like have them pass a thing and suddenly I'm like,
Speaker:oh dear, that has to come back in climax.
Speaker:I think this must be the first time I've come across someone who it's
Speaker:not the characters that run away, it's the world that runs away.
Speaker:I think that's amazing.
Speaker:It is.
Speaker:But I think some of it is because I've realized that it's, it's very
Speaker:satisfying when things pay off.
Speaker:Mm. It's very satisfying when small things pay off.
Speaker:And it's part of my process has to be like I know the plot beats that are
Speaker:going to happen in every chapter, but I don't always know how they're going to.
Speaker:So it'll be like, I know in this chapter they are going to have
Speaker:a meeting with this party, and I know by the end of this chapter,
Speaker:protagonist needs to feel this emotion.
Speaker:And I've got that.
Speaker:I've, I've got like two or three lines of okay, you know, this is the descriptor
Speaker:of the main action of this chapter and then possibly, you know, one or two
Speaker:little details that are just like, also I really want the demon dogs to remember
Speaker:that they're allergic to chocolate.
Speaker:'cause I think that's funny.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:That also needs to show up in this chapter.
Speaker:Cool.
Speaker:Demon dogs are allergic to chocolate.
Speaker:And then also, the, the protagonist needs to fight with her husband.
Speaker:But need to leave it a certain amount of loose when I get there.
Speaker:'cause if it's completely plotted out, then it's kind of boring and I don't
Speaker:wanna write it 'cause it's already done.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, so I, I think I am discovery writing on a beat level, if that makes sense?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I need to know where I'm going.
Speaker:But then how I get there is the discovery.
Speaker:And because I know where the protagonists are going, they don't
Speaker:usually surprise me very much.
Speaker:But the minor characters usually don't have a whole lot of plans attached to
Speaker:them, and the setting doesn't usually have a whole lot of plans to attach to 'em.
Speaker:And that's where things do surprise me.
Speaker:And I mean, I also have had stuff where I've written it and it's
Speaker:like, that's a really cool idea.
Speaker:No, I can't actually fit that in again later.
Speaker:You know, we're just gonna take it out, put it back in the folder.
Speaker:I mean, I've got, I reuse stuff constantly.
Speaker:Writers are magpies.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, we steal things from everywhere.
Speaker:Uh, and I have a folder full of unpublishable short stories
Speaker:that, you know, nobody wanted.
Speaker:And I pull stuff from them constantly of like, okay, this actual story didn't
Speaker:work, but this character was really cool.
Speaker:I mean, I had, I had a whole story that really didn't work, about
Speaker:a siren running an ad agency.
Speaker:And the story didn't work.
Speaker:It wasn't good.
Speaker:But the idea that, okay, you know, you are on an immortal siren, what
Speaker:would you, well, in the modern world, obviously you'd run an ad agency.
Speaker:That seemed like a very natural thing for a siren to end up doing.
Speaker:So she is a, now a minor character in Grimoire.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Uh, she's one, one of the other parents is a siren who happens to own an ad agency.
Speaker:Because she was just too cool.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, I wrote a story during lockdown, that was entirely the
Speaker:text messages from the school.
Speaker:Of a magic school.
Speaker:And again, it didn't sell.
Speaker:But it ended up also with some themes that I didn't love.
Speaker:Because I needed a plot arc.
Speaker:I ended up not liking the plot arc. 'cause like in, in the original story, they have
Speaker:a intrusion, like a, a slayer alert that go, goes out and, you know, the parents
Speaker:are all freaking out about the alert about the slayer who was coming to school.
Speaker:And one of the extracurricular groups fends off the slayer, uh, which is really
Speaker:cute until I thought too much about it because I'm in the US and school
Speaker:shootings are a thing that is horrible.
Speaker:We aren't gonna go into that.
Speaker:And the degree to which I'm appalled by it.
Speaker:But I realized that the theme of this story could be interpreted as being
Speaker:pro arming the teachers as a way to which I'm know that that's not how we
Speaker:should be dealing with this problem.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:So like the plot didn't work for me.
Speaker:I wasn't happy with the plot, but modern parenting is wild.
Speaker:Yo.
Speaker:There's a WhatsApp and there's like a, a different app from the school.
Speaker:They send you all kinds of reminders through, and the reminders are
Speaker:often just out of context, bonkers.
Speaker:And the way they have to phrase it to try to keep it all the parents happy
Speaker:is always extremely weird and passive.
Speaker:And they're just inherently ridiculous.
Speaker:So I loved the form, so I, I took that, and those are the chapter openings.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:For the entire Grimoire.
Speaker:Each one starts with a text from the school about a thing you need to do.
Speaker:Nice.
Speaker:That sounds amazing.
Speaker:But it's, it's a magic school, so the things you need to do is remember
Speaker:that witches and vampire costumes are considered to be culturally
Speaker:offensive and that you cannot send a child to school on Halloween wearing
Speaker:in culturally appropriated costumes.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Such as witch costumes.
Speaker:And that we're going to have a mandatory cultural sensitivity workshop as a class.
Speaker:Amazing.
Speaker:And also just, as a parent and also someone with a day job, where do
Speaker:you fit in your writing schedule?
Speaker:Is it that you assign like a day of the week?
Speaker:Is it just like hours in the evening?
Speaker:I write like a boa constrictor eats.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Giant chunks.
Speaker:And then go, and then go torpid for like two weeks.
Speaker:Oh, okay.
Speaker:Um, I usually sort of shoehorn in, like an evening or two a week, and then on
Speaker:weekends a little bit here and there.
Speaker:And then I will have, when there isn't a school event or uh, family stuff,
Speaker:I'll get like an entire block of time.
Speaker:I was like, okay, uh, child, husband e entertain yourselves.
Speaker:Bye.
Speaker:I'm gonna to a cafe.
Speaker:I'll be back in five hours.
Speaker:I know that doing the very regular writing thing is really important to some people.
Speaker:Like some people need to do the, okay, I'm going to write 20 minutes a day, steadily.
Speaker:And I love that theory and I cannot sustain it.
Speaker:And I think one of the keys to adulthood in general is realizing that there
Speaker:is no rule that works for everybody.
Speaker:Like some people, their approach to exercise will make
Speaker:you want to cry and throw up.
Speaker:Uh, and some people's approach to like, what foods work for you.
Speaker:Just because gluten is terrible for this person and this person's fine with it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:There is no universal.
Speaker:I kind of wish that I was like one of those, get up in the morning and write,
Speaker:you know, for 20 minutes kinds of people.
Speaker:Uh, I am incompetent in mornings.
Speaker:Uh, I I, I am so bad at mornings.
Speaker:It's comical how bad I am in mornings.
Speaker:I realized this morning, I was supposed to return a rental car at 10:00 AM
Speaker:and I realized that at 10:00 AM uh, that was a super fun little paddock.
Speaker:Fortunately, we were like a couple blocks from the rental car place.
Speaker:Uh, it was not a thing that occurred to me.
Speaker:I mean, in my perfect world, I love going late morning to like a cafe.
Speaker:Like right now there's a certain sort of a ness to like going to
Speaker:the cafe where they're starting to recognize me and, and typing away.
Speaker:Uh, but that's not, that's not going to be a long term sustainable thing, I think.
Speaker:So it's more about shoehorning it in.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well, I, I think a lot of people beat themselves up if they don't
Speaker:write and or because they're told, you know, little and often.
Speaker:Try and hit this word count or, you know, and everyone seems to have a regular
Speaker:schedule that if you don't have a regular schedule, people might sort of feel
Speaker:like, well, I can never be a writer.
Speaker:But then there's you, who's a New York Times bestselling writer
Speaker:who doesn't have a set schedule.
Speaker:So it's useful for the audience and I think for other writers to
Speaker:know, it doesn't have to be perfect.
Speaker:Uh, if you, as long as you can get words on a page when you can.
Speaker:It is.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And that what I want this show to be.
Speaker:Some words are not no words.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I mean, I am by nature a perfectionist, and I beat
Speaker:myself up a lot over everything.
Speaker:Some things which deserve it, some things which don't.
Speaker:So I am constantly reminding myself that something is better than nothing.
Speaker:And perfection is the enemy of good.
Speaker:I mean, I know my career would probably be farther along.
Speaker:My debut novel came out when I was 41.
Speaker:Maybe if I had been more disciplined and regular, that
Speaker:would've happened 10 years ago.
Speaker:The thing that I will recommend is when you finish a thing
Speaker:and you start shopping it.
Speaker:Let that go.
Speaker:Like the shopping is now a different activity.
Speaker:It's not writing at all.
Speaker:Do something new.
Speaker:because one of two things is going to happen.
Speaker:Either you're going to get picked up or you're not.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Or the third thing is you can self-publish, but that is,
Speaker:that is a choice that you make.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:Uh, whether you do that is under control.
Speaker:You can make that choice yourself.
Speaker:But if you are, if you're trying to do traditional publishing, then
Speaker:you no longer have a whole lot of control over what's going to happen.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So Dreadful is the fourth book that I've written.
Speaker:One of them is actually dreadful.
Speaker:It's awful.
Speaker:Uh, no one will ever see it.
Speaker:It lives in a file for me.
Speaker:And I mean, it's not like destroy upon my death levels of terrible,
Speaker:it's just, it was a NaNoWriMo novel that is so hackneyed.
Speaker:It's it's not even terrible.
Speaker:It's just aggressively meh.
Speaker:It's a horrifying, like Mercedes Lackey, George R R Martin pastiche
Speaker:and the world doesn't need it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, sorry.
Speaker:Uh, you were gonna talk about your steampunk novels and I do
Speaker:want to go into those, but, yeah.
Speaker:With NaNoWriMo, I think there seems to be a pushback on that,
Speaker:or, you know, as far as I'm aware.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:That, that's unrelated to the practice of writing a novel in November, so
Speaker:much as the NaNoWritMo organization managed to shoot themselves in
Speaker:the foot so spectacularly and yet repeatedly that it clearly could be a
Speaker:masterclass in how to destroy a brand.
Speaker:It's horrifying.
Speaker:I mean, like, the actual stuff is horrifying.
Speaker:And we don't have to go deep into that particular scandal.
Speaker:The internet has adjudicated that so thoroughly.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Oh, it's sad.
Speaker:Like I, I did it twice.
Speaker:It was very valuable to me at the time.
Speaker:Mostly because the emphasis on finishing a thing was in fact valuable.
Speaker:And I mean, like, I found the writing schedule brutal and unsustainable.
Speaker:Uh, but it's not supposed to be sustainable.
Speaker:It's supposed to be firm up.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Like, you're not supposed to take that as a model of how to live your life.
Speaker:It's not for most humans.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Not everybody.
Speaker:I mean, you know, Sean McGuire seems to be able to turn out like three
Speaker:novels a year and they're good.
Speaker:I, I am not that level of talented, and she's cool.
Speaker:But where I was going with that is the thing that I found valuable from
Speaker:it was the emphasis on finishing a thing and knowing that you can.
Speaker:Because your very first time out, it is intimidating as all get out.
Speaker:That's a huge number of words.
Speaker:And the thing I liked about the philosophy was that you don't have time to edit.
Speaker:And it, as I said it's just not good, but it let me know I could
Speaker:do, It was coherent, like it, as I said, aggressively met.
Speaker:It had a beginning, a middle and end.
Speaker:It had character development, like it, it worked.
Speaker:It's just, it's just not actually good.
Speaker:Is it harvestable/.
Speaker:Is it, has it got characters and scenes?
Speaker:It has some concepts that I like and I may go revisit at some point.
Speaker:There's definitely, there's some, I mean, there's some interesting
Speaker:bits in it, but it would have to be rewritten on both a beat by beat
Speaker:level and also on a sentence level.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Like if I were to use the stuff, it would be, it would be lifting
Speaker:stuff into something else.
Speaker:The amount of work it would take to rewrite that thing.
Speaker:It would be better for me to rewrite it from scratch now going off of my
Speaker:memory of it without looking back at it.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And the two books after that are steampunk novels.
Speaker:They, they are steampunk novels and they were completed far too late
Speaker:after the steampunk wave had passed.
Speaker:And no one wants 'em.
Speaker:It'll come back.
Speaker:We'll see.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, they are very different tone
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Than what I'm currently becoming known for.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Uh, and that's another thing also that's an interesting thing to be
Speaker:aware of as a pre-published author, is that it may take you a couple books
Speaker:to settle into a voice, and there's also the, okay, well, what hits.
Speaker:When something hits, then do you lean into that or where do you go from that?
Speaker:So I am definitely becoming known for a certain amount of humor, a certain
Speaker:amount of satire, and a lighter tone.
Speaker:Like, I mean, I'm, I'm not currently doing horror.
Speaker:I'm not currently doing like open door romance.
Speaker:So I've written other stuff that is in different tones and it'll be
Speaker:a thing that I'm going to have to think about if I want to go into
Speaker:that of like, okay, people expect a certain thing from me as a writer now.
Speaker:How do I want to manage that?
Speaker:At the moment I'm having a lot of fun writing in the voice that I'm writing in.
Speaker:And I mean, I've got, as I said, like I've got one book out.
Speaker:Next book is I. Literally we're just, we're, we're past the copy editing stage.
Speaker:The next one after that is halfway done, and we're in the process of
Speaker:negotiating out potential deals there.
Speaker:Um, and I know what I will write after that.
Speaker:And they're all in this mode.
Speaker:I'm having a really good time in this mode.
Speaker:Like part of part of why I ended up going with the fantasy humor in
Speaker:the first place was this, Dreadful was not what I initially intended
Speaker:to write in that block of time.
Speaker:I had another thing that was completely outlined.
Speaker:I had multiple characters.
Speaker:I had a whole dossier of world building and everything, and it was heavy and
Speaker:kind of dark and not a happy place to be.
Speaker:And I. I mean, I still think there's some really interesting stuff there.
Speaker:And I may go back to some of it at some point, but I could not get past
Speaker:the first page, which is not a problem that I've ever had before since.
Speaker:And I'm just like, what is going on?
Speaker:Like, I kept rewriting like the first two pages over and over and over again.
Speaker:I'm like, what is going on here?
Speaker:Why is this so hard?
Speaker:I know.
Speaker:I know what's supposed to happen this first chapter exactly.
Speaker:I know what's gonna happen in the next three chapters after that.
Speaker:I know what the basic arc is.
Speaker:I know all of these things about these people.
Speaker:I know their childhoods.
Speaker:I know their hair color.
Speaker:I know their favorite foods.
Speaker:I, why, why can't I write this?
Speaker:And I realized, so this was, I guess 2018 ish.
Speaker:It was not a happy time.
Speaker:Not that I'm super enjoying the era that we're in right now.
Speaker:And it was not a fun place to be.
Speaker:And one of the things you need to think about when you're committing
Speaker:yourself to a project is that you are gonna spend the next, like five
Speaker:years of your life in this place.
Speaker:Because you've got the writing part, which you know, probably
Speaker:will take a year or two.
Speaker:And you've got the querying part, which, it's less active,
Speaker:but you're still in that mode.
Speaker:Then you're going to go through multiple rounds of edits.
Speaker:Possibly, like if you get picked up, possibly round of edit with your agent.
Speaker:Then if you get picked up by a publisher, you're going to have at least one
Speaker:developmental edit, and then you're going to also have at least one copy
Speaker:edit and probably a proof read edit.
Speaker:Like you're, you're gonna be coming back this over and over and over again, and
Speaker:then you're gonna be in promotion for that for the next two years after that.
Speaker:You're gonna be in this world for a really long time.
Speaker:And so it better be a place that you're interested in spending a lot of time.
Speaker:And that does, this is not saying that you shouldn't write horror or stuff like you
Speaker:should, but you're going to have to spend a lot of time with these characters and
Speaker:you're gonna have to spend a lot of time in this head space, and you're gonna have
Speaker:to all spend a lot of time in this world.
Speaker:And I realized that I was reading the stuff that I was
Speaker:reading was all much lighter.
Speaker:That I was shying away from heavier books at the time.
Speaker:And I mean, I've come back and been able to adjust to our world on fire situations.
Speaker:Uh, and I'm reading plenty of like interesting deep, heavy, dark stuff.
Speaker:But at the time, like I was reading like fluffy romances and I was rereading
Speaker:Terry Pratchett and I was reading a lot of like lighter stuff and I'm
Speaker:like, oh, my head space is here.
Speaker:So that's, I mean, I, I took that hook from Dreadful, but you, that could have
Speaker:gone, I mean, that could go full horror, that could have gone full romance.
Speaker:Like you can take that hook and you can go anywhere.
Speaker:You know, it could be a thriller.
Speaker:And where I wanted to be was kooky goblins and hijinks.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, so I, I went with the hijinks 'cause that was where emotionally I was at.
Speaker:And I apparently write hijinks well.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And people seem to like my hijinks better than they like a lot of my heavier stuff.
Speaker:So I was like, okay, well apparently I'm doing hijinks at the moment.
Speaker:And that's not a complaint, by the way.
Speaker:I'm, I'm thoroughly enjoying hijinks.
Speaker:And, uh, I want to move on to sort of talk about your editing.
Speaker:'cause uh, obviously you've put in, before it goes out to querying, you've,
Speaker:you've edited and drafted it as much as you can, and then you've got your
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Um, you know, once it's sold, like those development edits.
Speaker:And so if you take them as they come, when you are drafting your manuscript,
Speaker:do you come to a writing session and edit what you've written before?
Speaker:Or do you just plow through to the end and then do a full
Speaker:review of the whole manuscript?
Speaker:Or is it as you go?
Speaker:I don't know whether it's changed over time or is a one book versus a different,
Speaker:like, I, I, I know what I've done in the one I'm working around now is different
Speaker:than what I had done previously and I am unclear whether that is a long-term
Speaker:change or specific to this project.
Speaker:Okay, so what are you doing now?
Speaker:So what the, sort of backing up what my general process is, is I will usually
Speaker:write like five or six chapters.
Speaker:And then I'll take those five or six chapters to my writing group and I will
Speaker:have them read like this first chunk.
Speaker:And from there I want to know like what things are working and what things aren't.
Speaker:But also I find it really useful to find out what other people
Speaker:think the promises I have made are.
Speaker:Because that one I sometimes find I have trouble being objective about
Speaker:'cause I know what I think I have promised readers, and they definitely
Speaker:have come back sometimes with like a, I can't wait to see this thing happen.
Speaker:I'm like, oh, oh, oh.
Speaker:Um, oh.
Speaker:And it doesn't matter whether I was planning to do the thing that they
Speaker:think is gonna happen or not, but I've had them come back with where I had
Speaker:not thought about that thing at all and it's like, okay, well I clearly promised
Speaker:the reader that something is going to happen with this character and I can
Speaker:either fulfill that promise or subvert it, but I can't leave it dangling.
Speaker:Uh, so I find it really really helpful to get that early read.
Speaker:So do you have a select group of friends as beta readers?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I, I, I'm part of a writing group.
Speaker:Nice.
Speaker:Um, that I've been in for, oh boy.
Speaker:Oh, more than a decade.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:That's scary.
Speaker:I'm not, I'm not okay with that.
Speaker:Um, and I mean, like it is a set group where people have
Speaker:flowed in and out over time.
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:Most people are, most of the people in the group have at least several short
Speaker:stories, publications under their belt.
Speaker:Uh, like it's, it's a midlevel group.
Speaker:Um, they're folks who are pretty serious about it, which is very useful in that
Speaker:they've been in the trenches for a while.
Speaker:They are all really amazing writers in their own right.
Speaker:Uh, and so I really value opinions and that's really helpful.
Speaker:So then once I've gotten their feedback, then I'll go and
Speaker:I'll go back and finish it out.
Speaker:And usually what I'll do is I'll edit that first chunk based off the
Speaker:feedback and then kind of go from there.
Speaker:And then, then I bring it back to them, get another read.
Speaker:And then I actually usually bring it to a different friend who is not part of
Speaker:that writing group, writes a different style of thing and get her feedback.
Speaker:Uh, 'cause she's also fantastic.
Speaker:So I've gotten a couple of outside opinions.
Speaker:And that's usually where most of the really horrible, painful
Speaker:edits happen in this part.
Speaker:Then it goes to my agents, and I've gotten feedback there,
Speaker:but it's never been as painful.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, and then the editor, who also will, it tends to be more subtle threads.
Speaker:And my, my editor editor George is marvelous.
Speaker:I love him, he's the best.
Speaker:Um, but usually I've taken care of anything that is like major surgery
Speaker:has happened before it gets to him and his is more like, okay, you know,
Speaker:this subplot isn't quite paying off.
Speaker:Can we rework this slightly or this time line doesn't quite work of there,
Speaker:there are more minor adjustments.
Speaker:Then once we get that, then copy editor goes through.
Speaker:I had a fantastic copy editor on Grimoire who sat down and I, I very unkindly.
Speaker:It didn't even occur to me.
Speaker:So just the thing for people, if you've got working docs,
Speaker:send them along with your stuff.
Speaker:'cause this poor guy reconstructed the timeline of this thing
Speaker:that I had written out.
Speaker:working out what the days of the week were of what thing happened on which day.
Speaker:And I did actually have it 'cause I was paying attention because one of the
Speaker:characters, the werewolf, so I needed to know where, where the full Moon was on any
Speaker:given, and it's all, it's all school year.
Speaker:Of course.
Speaker:So there's a lot of full moons to keep track of.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:So I had the whole thing and I didn't send it to him and I feel so bad.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But in the process, he managed to figure out that I made a just passing reference
Speaker:to spell Scouts being on Wednesdays.
Speaker:Because I wanted her, I wanted the character to be like, oh no,
Speaker:I couldn't possibly do that thing you've invited me to that I don't
Speaker:wanna do cause a spell scouts.
Speaker:And he figured out like four chapters later that I had
Speaker:said something was a Sunday.
Speaker:And he is like, well, this couldn't possibly be a Sunday, because
Speaker:if Spell scouts was on Wednesday and it had to, they're like, oh.
Speaker:Oh wow.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:You're awesome.
Speaker:Thank you for working out my inconsistencies.
Speaker:It was very impressive.
Speaker:Like I, a really good copy editor is worth their weight Gold.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, so that was super helpful.
Speaker:And then you get proofread edits, so there's, there's a lot of stages there.
Speaker:That said, my current one that I'm working on, I think some of it is
Speaker:nerves of, this is the first book that I've written after hitting
Speaker:the New York Times bestseller list.
Speaker:And whoa, the imposter syndrome is strong.
Speaker:I'm like, oh, no, I fooled everybody.
Speaker:Uh, how am I gonna do this again?
Speaker:So I, I definitely was struggling this summer really
Speaker:hard, just dealing with that.
Speaker:'cause at the same time, because I was also in the process of doing the launch
Speaker:and also doing the developmental edits on Grimoire and also starting the
Speaker:book that I'm working on right now.
Speaker:And psychologically it definitely messed with me, but I gave my group
Speaker:the first five chapters and they're like, we hate this protagonist.
Speaker:She's awful.
Speaker:And not in like a good, because the problem was like there's,
Speaker:when you try to write a
Speaker:not love to hate.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Like it's just genuinely hate.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And she wasn't supposed to be that level of hateable, like if I intended her to
Speaker:be dislikeable, but she was supposed to, like, she was supposed to be flawed,
Speaker:but she wasn't supposed to be punchable.
Speaker:And she was punchable and that was not good.
Speaker:But they're also, they called me on repeating a certain theme with some
Speaker:family members that was like, okay, yeah, that's not actually a pattern
Speaker:that I want to be a thing in every book.
Speaker:And like they, They were like, a whole bunch of, this is funny, but it's awful.
Speaker:Like, oh God, uh, and so cue you know, dark Knight of the Soul.
Speaker:And that's how we got to be laying all these pieces out on the floor.
Speaker:And I've, I think I fixed it.
Speaker:I'm actually much happier with where it's going, and I've got a totally different
Speaker:subplot that I'm much happier with.
Speaker:But I had to substantially rewrite the first, like five or six chapters
Speaker:in a way that I haven't done before.
Speaker:And I, because I, I tried to do the, like, okay, I'm just gonna make the
Speaker:note and I'm gonna Leeroy Jenkins my way through this, and I'm going to
Speaker:just, I'll write forward from here and then I'll go back and fix it.
Speaker:And I just couldn't, I couldn't get the cut.
Speaker:Like, the threads were not connecting so badly.
Speaker:one point I remember telling somebody that it felt like I was in a sailboat
Speaker:somebody cut all the lines on, and so the all the tension was gone.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I need that sense of tension to be able to keep going.
Speaker:So I just had, I had to re rig the whole thing.
Speaker:Because I, I had, I had laid the groundwork for a whole bunch of things
Speaker:and I realized that what I thought was going to be the climax actually needed
Speaker:to happen at like the one third mark.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Because I just had too many try/fail cycles built in.
Speaker:Where they were, just trying something and have it not worked too many
Speaker:times without getting to there.
Speaker:I was like, wait, what if I have the thing that I thought was gonna
Speaker:be the big climactic movement?
Speaker:What if that happens like a third of the way in, and then they have
Speaker:to deal with the ramifications of that, and it's so much better.
Speaker:It's so much more interesting.
Speaker:But it took me a little while to figure out why Because it was
Speaker:like somebody, somebody cut all my legs, all my touch, got I I adrift
Speaker:in the bay, what's going on here?
Speaker:So I'm, I'm back in it, it's like actually humming along and it's great.
Speaker:Uh, but there, there was a couple months there of just sitting in a
Speaker:calm sailboat in the middle of the bay being like, what have I done?
Speaker:And when you are, you know, stuck in, uh, those, ' cause I always think
Speaker:it's interesting how people react to their edits and, and feedback.
Speaker:Um, and obviously you've got this, uh, core group of friends, other writers
Speaker:that you've been with for a decade or some have come in, some have gone.
Speaker:Is it when you get those emails or when you get those notes, is it like, oh,
Speaker:brilliant, I can, like, make it better?
Speaker:Or if it's like, I'm gonna need, um, a stiff drink, uh, and a bru soothes my ego.
Speaker:Oh, it's, it is absolutely stupid.
Speaker:and the, thing that's so painful is they're not mean and they're not wrong.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Everyone wants it to be perfect.
Speaker:No notes.
Speaker:That's the feedback you want.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:You, you want it, but it never is.
Speaker:And it's gutting.
Speaker:And I've done it to other people too.
Speaker:And I hate delivering that.
Speaker:'cause again, like all these people are super talented.
Speaker:And I love each of their work.
Speaker:And we do it like at the, it used to be in person, uh, now
Speaker:at this point it's on Zoom.
Speaker:Like people moved away.
Speaker:you know, we, we moved online during lockdown and then we just stayed that way.
Speaker:But we do do it live.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So you're sitting there taking notes while people are feedbacking at you.
Speaker:You're just like, oh, oh, good god.
Speaker:Oh God, what have I done?
Speaker:And it's, it's hard.
Speaker:I mean, it's really hard.
Speaker:And I mean, like the feedback they were giving, like there was scenes that were
Speaker:working and there were jokes that were working and the concept was working,
Speaker:but all of the bits weren't connected.
Speaker:Like the, all the interstitial bits were not working.
Speaker:And it was really hard to hear and I hated it.
Speaker:But you want to hear that when your five chapters in from, your peer group, rather
Speaker:than hearing it from your editor, if you, you know, delivered a, like they gave
Speaker:you an advance based off an outline and they get it and they're like, this is
Speaker:unpublishable that you don't wanna hear.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I much like, or even worse if for some reason, like they let it out.
Speaker:Then the first time you're hearing it is from reviewers
Speaker:and readers that this is awful.
Speaker:This is stereotypical, this is hackneyed.
Speaker:This is bad.
Speaker:If it's not good, you're going to hear it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So the earlier you hear it, the better you are.
Speaker:And you said, um, George, is that George Sanderson at Titan?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I,
Speaker:yes,
Speaker:I've met George.
Speaker:I've drunk with George.
Speaker:He's a lovely man.
Speaker:George is a lovely man.
Speaker:He, he is just, he is also just wonderful to work with.
Speaker:I think editors are the unsung heroes of novels.
Speaker:Oh gosh.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And they do not get paid anywhere near what they ought to be.
Speaker:And they work so hard.
Speaker:Well, I, I compare it to like the singer songwriter sort of dynamic.
Speaker:It's, it's like, you know, there's the brand, the face, but there's
Speaker:someone working it equally hard.
Speaker:That's just as creative, you know, sort of like helping shape
Speaker:and making it its best thing.
Speaker:I mean, there's a huge team behind, with traditional publishing.
Speaker:Uh, part of why people still want to do traditional publishing despite all
Speaker:its myriad flaws, which the internet has elucidated upon a great length.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Um, is because it is a huge team.
Speaker:And I've, I've done self-publishing too.
Speaker:And it is brutally difficult.
Speaker:And it is fantastically helpful to have that, that whole team behind you.
Speaker:And most of them do not get a whole lot of recognition.
Speaker:'cause I mean, there is, there's the editor, but there,
Speaker:there are assistant editors.
Speaker:Who are also doing a ton of work.
Speaker:The publicity team is an entire team of people.
Speaker:There are salespeople who are incredibly critical to like the whole point of
Speaker:doing traditional publishing instead of self-publishing is trying to get into
Speaker:brick and mortar and get that support.
Speaker:Uh, there's a sales team that makes that happen.
Speaker:They can make and break you.
Speaker:I mean, your, your copy editors, your proofreaders, the cover
Speaker:artist is enormously important.
Speaker:Uh, there is so much work that does not get sufficiently acknowledged that
Speaker:goes into getting a book well, like physically made and into people's hands.
Speaker:All that type setting, it doesn't happen by itself.
Speaker:So yeah, it's, it's all, it's a lot of work.
Speaker:I self published this book, uh, that we were talking about
Speaker:before we started recording.
Speaker:It's called Leah's Perfect Christmas.
Speaker:And, uh, speaking of branding, uh, that one is under a different pen name.
Speaker:And part of the reason why is because I self published it before Dreadful came
Speaker:out, and I primarily write fantasy.
Speaker:And I wanted my primary reputation to be around fantasy because generally
Speaker:like people want to buy, like if they read one thing and they buy
Speaker:another book by that person, they're hoping for a similar experience.
Speaker:And this was a contemporary romance, which I don't typically write.
Speaker:That's its own whole story.
Speaker:That was one of the few times I've ever gotten blindsided by something like that.
Speaker:One just kind of came out of nowhere and needed to be written.
Speaker:And I wrote the first draft in like a week.
Speaker:But I, I self-published that one and I'm like, okay, if I go
Speaker:out as a romance author, then people are gonna expect romance.
Speaker:And Dreadful is really not a romance.
Speaker:And there's a lot of subversions of tropes in it around romance that
Speaker:if somebody reads and thinks they know where this is going, they're
Speaker:not necessarily gonna be happy.
Speaker:And so I'm like, okay, let me just do this under a different pen name.
Speaker:And if I do write any more romance, it will be under the Catherine Beck pen name.
Speaker:I'll, because again, like it's, it's just, it's a different, it's a different thing.
Speaker:And I want, I don't want to ever disappoint a reader.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Like, it's okay to surprise readers.
Speaker:I like surprising.
Speaker:Surprising readers is fun.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But disappointing readers sucks for everybody.
Speaker:Nobody wants that.
Speaker:Anyway, though.
Speaker:So The Leah's Perfect Christmas, weirdly enough then got picked up by Hallmark and
Speaker:they made it into a Hallmark Christmas movie that's coming out on December 8th.
Speaker:And I got to go to a set visit.
Speaker:Amazing.
Speaker:Which was so cool.
Speaker:Oh my gosh.
Speaker:It was so cool.
Speaker:But you know, theoretically that there's a lot of people who are not on camera.
Speaker:But you have no idea, if you've never been on a set, how many
Speaker:people are not on the camera.
Speaker:Oh my gosh.
Speaker:It's like two people on the camera and there's 50 people back
Speaker:here on my side on the camera.
Speaker:We're, we're not being seen by anybody.
Speaker:And publishing is like that too, of there is so much that you never see.
Speaker:That's all going on behind the scenes that makes any of this stuff happen.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And another thing I want to sort of, uh, touch on, with the wrapping up of
Speaker:a book is, uh, you said earlier about how, you know, you need to be in love
Speaker:the world that you're writing 'cause you're gonna be with it for five years.
Speaker:When it's finished.
Speaker:So now that Dreadfuls, you know, you're still in the promo trail, I guess, for
Speaker:it, but it, it, you know, it's done.
Speaker:You're no longer writing those characters.
Speaker:Is there, would you say more grief of having to say goodbye to those
Speaker:characters or more relief that you can now move on to the next thing?
Speaker:That's a good question.
Speaker:I dunno if I felt either actually.
Speaker:I mean, with the world of Dreadful, so I I, I get asked whether I'm
Speaker:doing a sequel fairly often, and I have no plans to do a direct sequel.
Speaker:I have no interest in doing the continuing adventures of Gav.
Speaker:Uh, as far as I'm concerned, we were with Gav for the most important
Speaker:couple of weeks of his life.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And that this is the most important thing that will ever happen to him.
Speaker:And I don't have a lot to else to say about him.
Speaker:I think it's interesting to me in observing my own process in that I think I
Speaker:am interested in writing character arcs of key inflection points in somebody's life.
Speaker:And I don't have another arc for him.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:He has learned and grown and changed.
Speaker:And I like where I left him.
Speaker:And he's clearly going to have like, there, there's more life happening.
Speaker:Like this is not the end of his story, but it's the end of my interest in his story.
Speaker:Yeah, no, absolutely.
Speaker:You just wanna live, you know, live happily go on your way.
Speaker:But yeah, I felt that it was, it was a very complete story.
Speaker:Yeah, it is.
Speaker:And I don't, I don't actually want to reopen that 'cause I think one of the
Speaker:very minor spoilers, but one of the themes to me, like some of this came out of the
Speaker:whole Me Too thing of you get these big artists who are exposed as being awful
Speaker:people and I find it interesting thinking about who deserves a redemption arc
Speaker:and what do you need to do to get one.
Speaker:And my personal conclusion is like we, we can't completely vilify somebody,
Speaker:most people, based off of the very worst thing they did, like, I mean, there's
Speaker:some things that are just not Yeah.
Speaker:Are not forgivable.
Speaker:But, you know, say they've just been awful people and they've made things
Speaker:very unpleasant around the, but they haven't committed an actual crime.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Um, there's no incentive for people to improve if once you've done one bad
Speaker:thing, you are forever irredeemable.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But I also don't think that we owe anybody to get their career
Speaker:back when they've torpedoed.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Gav had a position as a powerful wizard.
Speaker:He was awful.
Speaker:He's an awful person.
Speaker:He got a lot of stuff out of being an awful person and in my
Speaker:mind, he doesn't get to keep it.
Speaker:He doesn't get to stay powerful and influential.
Speaker:Uh, he's not going to rise to a new position of power.
Speaker:He doesn't deserve it.
Speaker:And that doesn't mean that he won't grow and change and make new friends and have a
Speaker:satisfying life being a different person.
Speaker:But I don't want to give him another adventure.
Speaker:He hasn't earned another adventure.
Speaker:He doesn't get it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:but the world is an interesting one.
Speaker:I don't have anything on the current docket of like, yes, I'm definitely
Speaker:doing something out, but I could definitely see writing something else
Speaker:in the world, which would probably have some of the other minor characters
Speaker:at least flow through as minor characters and other people's stories.
Speaker:I, I'm waiting for a plot.
Speaker:I'm waiting for a hook.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, to come.
Speaker:Once I have a hook that works in that world, then we'll go from there.
Speaker:But it's always there.
Speaker:Like, and this is, this is also my feeling about adaptations.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, I mean, I just had a book adapted into a movie, and it's
Speaker:going to be substantially different.
Speaker:Hopefully not bad, but I, I don't actually know.
Speaker:Like, I didn't see the final shooting script.
Speaker:I don't know what it's gonna be like, but I know it's going
Speaker:to be substantially different.
Speaker:Nothing makes the book disappear.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:He's always there.
Speaker:I can always go back to him.
Speaker:I can always go back and read, like I can visit him as many times as I want.
Speaker:And so I have sent him off into his sunset.
Speaker:But I, I didn't kill him.
Speaker:No Minor spoilers.
Speaker:But it, it's, I think it's clear from the tone of the book that this is not gonna
Speaker:end with the protagonist dying horribly.
Speaker:So he is, he's still there.
Speaker:Like, I, I feel like it's more like a friend you drifted apart
Speaker:from, but might call someday.
Speaker:That's cool.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Um, I'm gonna wrap up with my last two questions.
Speaker:Now, we've kind of answered this one already.
Speaker:'cause it, I, it's my belief that writers continue to grow and develop their
Speaker:writing with each story that they write.
Speaker:And I usually ask, what was something you learned from your
Speaker:last one that you're now applying?
Speaker:And obviously you've said how mapping out the story might be something
Speaker:that you continue, but also the editing and yeah, that starting
Speaker:again, uh, has been a big change.
Speaker:But I guess those are still in motion.
Speaker:They've worked this time, but they're not now definitive process.
Speaker:Is there something, maybe earlier on, or maybe there's something from Dreadful of
Speaker:being your first published work where you did something different for Dreadful that
Speaker:was different from your earlier books?
Speaker:What, what do you think was the key thing that changed?
Speaker:Oh, I, I wish I had like this magic key because that would probably
Speaker:feel a lot more confidence.
Speaker:Um, I think the two steampunk novels.
Speaker:I am still proud of.
Speaker:And I think a lot of the problem with them was a timing thing.
Speaker:Uh, I got some very good feedback from agents where they were like, I had
Speaker:one explicitly say, look, I really love this book, but I already have
Speaker:an airship book that I can't sell.
Speaker:I can't take on another Unsalable airship book.
Speaker:And it's like, well, this is literally about basically being
Speaker:a cruise ship airship, so there's no way to take the airship out.
Speaker:Okay, that's doomed.
Speaker:So I don't know how much, and, and I definitely feel like I am a better
Speaker:writer than I was in those, but I don't know how much is a leveling up.
Speaker:I think one of the things that you have to understand and accept about
Speaker:publishing is that there isn't an objective measure of quality that at
Speaker:this point, suddenly you leveled up and you became a good enough writer.
Speaker:And once you are a Good Enough writer, you know, capital G, capital
Speaker:E, little like trademark mark.
Speaker:Uh, but now you are publishable.
Speaker:A lot of it is timing.
Speaker:That is not a thing you can control.
Speaker:That you, you need to have the thing at the time in front of the person who
Speaker:is ready for that thing at that time.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, one of the reasons why Dreadful did so well is because I managed to hit
Speaker:dead on in the center of the cozy week.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Which is not predictable, was not planned in any way.
Speaker:Uh, there was no way I could have written to that.
Speaker:Because traditional publishing moves at a glacial pace.
Speaker:It is not possible for an author to time a book.
Speaker:Like it to hit a trend.
Speaker:By the time you're aware of the trend, it's too late because your
Speaker:book isn't coming out for two years.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's gone.
Speaker:Uh, So that was luck.
Speaker:Uh, and no one likes hearing that.
Speaker:But some of that also is persistence.
Speaker:And that, you know, there's the cliche about you miss a hundred
Speaker:percent of the shots you don't take.
Speaker:If you want to be able to be in the right spot at the right time, you
Speaker:need to keep putting yourself there.
Speaker:And so some of it definitely was just, I managed to be persistent.
Speaker:I mean, my first short story was published in 2007.
Speaker:There's, there's a huge amount of persistence here.
Speaker:And that doesn't mean that if you keep trying forever, you'll get it.
Speaker:But if the combination of talent and skill and persistence.
Speaker:Has the best odds of success.
Speaker:Also follow up with me again in 10 years to see whether I still have a
Speaker:career that that's also not predictable.
Speaker:And I think the, I think the best authors keep changing.
Speaker:Like, I mean, if you'll listen, like there's other podcasts.
Speaker:I think if you listen to, like Mary Robnett Kowal, talk about her process,
Speaker:it has clearly evolved over time.
Speaker:Mm. Uh, and she's, she's been publishing really excellent,
Speaker:successful books for quite some time.
Speaker:But she's pretty transparent about the fact that a bunch of things about
Speaker:her process have changed over time.
Speaker:She keeps adding tools to her toolbox and she keeps
Speaker:deliberately embracing new things.
Speaker:And I definitely find myself doing that.
Speaker:I know some of my flaws that I do correct for now.
Speaker:I have tendency to write very passive protagonists to begin with.
Speaker:My, like, way too much happened to Gavin without him doing things in my first pass.
Speaker:I changed a lot of stuff for that.
Speaker:I had less of that problem, but still had that problem with Grimoire
Speaker:and had to go back and change that.
Speaker:Uh, I have outlined with knowing that fact, that I have a tendency to do this.
Speaker:And that's part of why I mapped out those arcs is trying to make sure I actually
Speaker:have a active arc for my protagonist.
Speaker:That she is making choices that change things from the beginning so
Speaker:I don't have to go back and fix it.
Speaker:Well, yeah, I I guess that's the perfect answer then, is that you've
Speaker:learned to have active protagonists.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, I, I expect to keep learning.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, and I expect to keep changing how, 'cause it's also, each one is different.
Speaker:I'm different.
Speaker:The river is never the same river.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And, uh, my last question, 'cause it is been great, Katelin, I've
Speaker:really, really enjoyed this.
Speaker:Oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker:Over all of your writing career and, with your writing group, has there been
Speaker:one piece of advice that's resonated with you that you keep returning
Speaker:to in your own writing when you get imposter syndrome or when you struggle?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I don't know if it's writing advice so much as life advice, but as I said
Speaker:before, something is better than nothing.
Speaker:Like, if you let it paralyze you, then I guarantee nothing will happen.
Speaker:I Can't guarantee that anything is going to work, but I can guarantee
Speaker:that not doing anything will not work.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And it goes for absolutely everything in your life.
Speaker:And it may be slower.
Speaker:Like if, yes, if I could write every day, I would turn out more stuff faster.
Speaker:It would probably, my writing would improve faster.
Speaker:I would have books on the shelf faster.
Speaker:If I could exercise every day, I would probably also not have my
Speaker:doctor making me like tisk tisk noises over my cholesterol levels.
Speaker:You can't do everything.
Speaker:None of us can, you cannot possibly do every single thing there is to do.
Speaker:You can't do the social media promotion as much as you possibly could.
Speaker:You cannot write as many books as you possibly could.
Speaker:You cannot network as much as you possibly could.
Speaker:You will never, there's literally no end to any possible activity that you could
Speaker:do it enough and somebody would say, yay, go you, you officially did it enough.
Speaker:So do some.
Speaker:Do what you can.
Speaker:Try to do it at a sustainable level because it's a very, very long game.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And it is much better to do, not as much as you wanted, but to do something than
Speaker:it is to try to do it all in one burst.
Speaker:Burn yourself out horribly and never come back.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well, that's great.
Speaker:And uh, that's, uh, a fantastic place to end, I think.
Speaker:Uh, Caitlin Rozakis, thank you so much for being my guest this week.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:It was super fun.
Speaker:Aw, isn't she lovely?
Speaker:I really found that last bit inspiring, so I hope you all feel
Speaker:motivated to write something soon.
Speaker:If you'd like to learn more about Caitlyn and her writing, then her
Speaker:website is caitlinrozakis.com and I'll leave a link in the episode description.
Speaker:And both Dreadful and the GIR Grammar School Parent Teacher
Speaker:Association are available to buy now.
Speaker:And if you're listening to this in the last week of May, 2025, then there is
Speaker:a Kindle discounted price of only 1 99 this week, uh, for the GIR Grammar
Speaker:School Parent Teacher Association.
Speaker:So definitely worth picking that up now.
Speaker:Anyway, that's all for me this month.
Speaker:I'll be back with another great writer at the end of June.
Speaker:Until then, keep writing until the world ends.
