Should there be a body? Writing is Revising with Meg Mitchell Moore

Meg Mitchell Moore is the author of Mansion Beach, a page-turner-y multi POV summer saga with everything you could ask for: a beach, a body, rich people behaving badly but also sometimes not behaving badly, parties, drama and just enough gender-swapped Gatsby to think hard about the meaning of the American Dream. I loved it (KJ here) and I also loved this conversation with Meg, who apparently thinks in multiple POVS and is always just as impatient as I am to feel like the book is done and wonderful when sadly it is… not.

#AmReading

Meg: Audio: Great Big Beautiful Life, Emily Henry—Julia Whelan

Also mentioned: Julia Whelan’s Thank You for Listening

Print: The Road to Dalton, Shannon Bowring

from The Book Shop of Beverly Farms

KJ: Mansion Beach

Welcome to Glorious Tuga, Francesca Segal

Find Meg at @megmitchellmoore on IG, or visit her website at www.megmitchellmoore.com

HEY. Did you know Sarina’s latest thriller is out NOW?

Rowan Gallagher is a devoted single mother and a talented architect with a high-profile commission restoring an historic mansion for the most powerful family in Maine. But inside, she’s a mess. She knows that stalking her ex’s avatar all over Portland on her phone isn’t the healthiest way to heal from their breakup. But she’s out of ice cream and she’s sick of romcoms.

Watching his every move is both fascinating and infuriating. He’s dining out while she’s wallowing on the couch. The last straw comes when he parks in their favorite spot on the waterfront. In a weak moment, she leashes the dog and sets off to see who else is in his car.

Instead of catching her ex in a kiss, Rowan becomes the first witness to his murder—and the primary suspect.

Digital books at: Amazon | Nook | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play | Audible Physical books at: Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indigo | More paperback links here!

New! Transcripts below!

EPISODE 450 - TRANSCRIPT

KJ Dell'Antonia

KJ here announcing a new series and a definite plus for paid supporters of Hashtag AmWriting. It's Writing the Book, a conversation between Jenny, who's just finished a blueprint for her next nonfiction book, and me because I've just finished the blueprint for what I hope will be my next novel. Jenny and I are both trying to quote-unquote "play big" with these next go-rounds, which is a meta effort for Jenny as that's exactly what her book is about, and we're basically coaching each other through, trading pages, thoughts and encouragement, as well as some sometimes hard-to-hear honesty about whether we're really going in the right direction. So come all in on team Hashtag AmWriting, and you'll get those Writing the Book episodes right in your pod player along with access to monthly AMAs, the book labs, first pages episodes, and come summer, we shall blueprint once again. So sign yourself up at amwritingpodcast.com.

All Speaking

Is it recording? Now it's recording. Yay. Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. Try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing. Alright. Let's start over. Awkward pause. I'm gonna rustle some papers. Okay. Now one, two, three.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia, and this is Hashtag AmWriting, the weekly podcast about writing all the things. Short things, long things, pitches, proposals, fiction, nonfiction, memoir, other things I'm probably not thinking of. We are the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done. And I am KJ Dell'Antonia, the author of three novels, The Chicken Sisters, In Her Boots and Playing the Witch Card, as well as a nonfiction book, How to Be a Happier Parent, former editor of The New York Times Motherlode. You've heard all this. With me today, more importantly, is Meg Mitchell Moore, who has written a book that I think you're gonna find is your summer go to. It is called Mansion Beach, and I loved it. And we'll talk about it in a second. She is also the author of Summer Stage, Vacationland, can attest to both of those great reads. The Islanders, Two Truths and a Lie, The Admissions, loved that one too. They're all great. So, anyway, lots of lots of novels in the family saga, sometimes touch of romance, beach, summer, deep, but also page turnery read genre, which is not a genre because that was too long. But, anyway, Meg, thanks for coming to chat.

Meg Mitchell Moore

Thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be here. This is gonna be really fun.

KJ Dell'Antonia

So I've read some of your other books, obviously, and I felt like this one Mansion Beach was you sort of moving to a different this. It's a little how to describe it. You've got a lot of points of view, which you always, you often do, and a little bit of of a mystery, which actually, I've seen you do before, and then you've got a podcast going on so that you can have different people show show off what's happening. I guess I was hoping you would talk about the evolution of style, um, actually, over your whole career, sort of from, like, I'm writing a kind of a basic book with a couple of points of view and third person close, or maybe first person to these bigger, bigger stories with so much more to so much more to offer the reader. That's a really big question. Start wherever you want.

Meg Mitchell Moore

That's a great question. I I don't know if it has been such an evolution. I have always written multiple points of view to the point where it makes me crazy. And I wish I could. I wish I could do one or two. I really wish I could. I've tried it. I can't do it. I just can't. My brain doesn't work that way. It's I can't do it. So even my very first novel, which I published in 2011 it was called The Arrivals, that was a much smaller story. So yes, I for sure, I've evolved plot wise, but I remember, and this was when I was brand new and did not know what I was doing, and I was just trying to figure out how to write a novel. I had so many points of view. And I remember my now agent. Maybe she was not my agent then and was becoming my agent, or maybe she was already my agent, but I remember her saying, we have to take out at least like five of these points of view. And it's still, it still has a lot. I just that's how I think those are the kind of books I like to read, usually, not always, for one thing, but it just. Must be how I think I'm always in everybody's head, and it's really hard for me to restrain that. So this book, I don't think, has any more points of view than any other. Might have fewer than some. It does have a mystery.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah it might, then some that I've read, I guess I I, I saw it as different, maybe in part because of the the use of the podcast to frame things.

Meg Mitchell Moore

Yeah that's new. And then it's a bigger, you know, it's a bigger idea. It's a, it's not a retelling of The Great Gatsby, because I don't like to use that word, but it is inspired by The Great Gatsby. So it has definitely some bigger I was looking at bigger themes, maybe from the start. A lot of times I back my way into the themes based on what my characters are doing. I don't always start with the themes, but this time i i was looking at some of those big whether, what's the American dream and what does success mean, and how does money equate with happiness, and some of those bigger questions. And I don't always do that. I might do it in reverse, but I don't always do that first. So I do think it has bigger theme wise, it's bigger maybe plot wise, yeah. And some of the elements, some of the elements that move it along, are a little different. I was working with a new editor for the first time for this. This is my first full book with my new editor. So I think that had something to do with it too, because I think she was probably pushing me for some of those elements that don't come naturally to me, which I think ended up being good for the book.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah, it's a little more thriller. Isn't exactly the right word, but there's definitely a page turning mystery in there. I know here's, this is like a so there's a page turning mystery in Mansion Beach, and the question all along for the reader, like, you know somebody is going to die. But I at least did not know who, but I had an advance, and it came as a as a digital book, so I didn't have the cover and I didn't have the blurb on the back, if a reader has those things, are they gonna know?

Meg Mitchell Moore

Interesting.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Are they gonna know? Who it is that that dies?

Meg Mitchell Moore

I don't think so. I don't think so. The people I know who have read it both ways, I think have not known.

KJ Dell'Antonia

That's good.

Meg Mitchell Moore

It's sort of that white lotus effect, you know, for White Lotus fans out there, where there is a mystery, and you care about the mystery, but you also it matters, but it doesn't matter as much as what's going on with everybody else. So I really like that as a framing device. I like watching it and reading it. And I tried it myself this time. I did it a little bit in two truths and a lie as well. I guess that's my only other one that has a dead body, and a lot of people are mad at me for who the person was who died, which I want. And two truths...

KJ Dell'Antonia

Don't give it up.

Meg Mitchell Moore

No, I won't. So that was interesting, so I hadn't tried it again, and this time I went in a little nervous, because people had been upset with me, particularly my husband. But I I still, I mean, I had the chance not to do what I did in two truths and a lie, and I still chose to. So I still, for me, it was the right thing, but it was an interesting experience. And I didn't try it again for a couple books. And this time I did also because I was playing with some of the Gatsby themes. I mean, Gatsby has three bodies, so I thought, I mean, I should have at least one, so I won't, yeah, I won't give anything away about…

KJ Dell'Antonia

No, don't.

Meg Mitchell Moore

Who or what or how, but I did enjoy having that as a device to propel it now that also, I don't think that was in the first draft. I don't think there was a body in the first draft. I mean, there were huge changes in this book, and I think that was one of them. I think we decided we needed the body after one draft.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Wow. Okay, now I'm deeply fascinated, and of course, I'm trying. So I'm trying to make this interesting and useful for those of you who haven't read the book, although you could also stop, go get the book, and read it, and then listen to this, and then it would be even better.

Meg Mitchell Moore

That is true.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah. Okay, so let me just start by saying I am actually not a person who typically likes a book where your whole like, like, the question is, you know, either who died or who did it. So Lucy Foley, I've enjoyed some of those, but it's not necessarily my favorite go to genre, but the thing that made this book work great for me was exactly what you just said, that there's so much more to it. You I could see that this story would exist before you added that and that. I mean, that's so cool. And then I also, I'm not a Gatsby person, so neither of those would like, neither of those hooks is going to grab me. But what grabbed me, I think, was the different women, different versions of the American dream.

Meg Mitchell Moore

Mm-hmm.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Is that where you started?

Meg Mitchell Moore

I started… Yeah, I think so I would. Really, yes, I wanted to really look at notions of success, particularly for women today. You know, it's contemporary. It takes place that, you know, in the summer that is coming out, or that, if you actually match up the dates, and I think I messed up the tides and the moon in some places, but it's the summer. So yes, I was very interested in those questions. I was I wanted to have a love triangle, because I think that's interesting, and that's part of Gatsby too. So it's funny that you say you're not a Gatsby person. I think my first, another change from my first draft, was very Gatsby heavy. I think I tried to, I think it just was, I was trying too hard to to do the same thing. And…

KJ Dell'Antonia

It’s kind of a reverse-gendered Gatsby.

Meg Mitchell Moore

It is, yes, it's reverse gendered. But what I was doing was just, I was just trying to, I don't know what I was doing, but it was a mess. I mean, I always knew I wanted to play with Gatsby, but I tried to do it too closely. And I tried a little first person with the narrator, which that's how Gatsby is told, but I can't write him. Can't write successfully in first person. So that was a mess. And I remember that my editor probably looked at this thing and said, This is what are we doing? But what she said to me nicely was, you need to, like, don't worry so much about Gatsby at all, like you need to free yourself from those constraints, and you need to write the story. And that was the best advice, because that's when it started to come together. So it's more that Gatsby was a jumping off point, and some of those themes, I was so interested in how those themes are so relevant 100 years later, and they are, so I think I needed that as a jumping off point, but I didn't need to, you know, retell it scene by scene, or try to have the narrator feel the same, or do anything like that. And I had some missteps along the way before I figured that out.

KJ Dell'Antonia

It interests me that this doesn't seem to have taken any longer than your other books, did it?

Meg Mitchell Moore

Uh, I felt like it took forever. My books have come out either with note with, you know, a year and then the next summer, or with two summers in between. This one has, this one has an empty summer in between. So I did need that extra writing time for this. And I remember, I always start out thinking I could do this in a year. I'll absolutely and I always hit. I'm a deadline hitter. You know, I always hit the deadline

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah, you give them something.

Meg Mitchell Moore

Yeah, I was a journalist for a long time. I just, I'm not late on things. I just always, I'm just, I always hit my deadlines, but it might be awful. And so this was nobody actually. I mean, it was pretty awful when I think back to that first draft, and I think that my editor and Agent thought, okay, we can do this. And I looked at it, and I looked at my schedule and my life and my brain, and I thought, I don't think I can do it very well. So we put it off for a year, which gave me not a year's writing time, but maybe six months that I hadn't had. And that made a big difference. So this one took a little longer. Same thing with vacation land. I had the exact same thing happen where I thought it was going to come out one summer, it came out the next summer, but Summer Stage and then the book coming out, if I finish it next summer, will have no extra time in between. So it kind of, I've gone both ways with it.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Do you see any like consistency in why? Or it just sort of either happens that way or it doesn't?

Meg Mitchell Moore

I think I when I try bigger, when I try bigger books, I need more time, as it should be, but I always think I can do it. You know, I'm patience is not, is not my best quality. Impatience is my worst quality. So I find that I'm usually impatient to get something done or to hit the deadline or to put the book out, and I have to slow myself down when necessary, and vacation land. It was a different editor, same publisher, but different editor. I remember her saying, having that talk with me and saying, it will be a much better book. If we put it out the following year, it will be so much better. And she was right. So we needed that time.

KJ Dell'Antonia

I so totally relate to this.

Meg Mitchell Moore

Do you?

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm in the middle of it. Now, if anybody who's listening is also listening to our what the books are writing the books, what the books also like? It's a little mini series where one of my co-hosts is writing nonfiction and I'm writing fiction, and we're trading pages, and we're doing a weekly series of conversations. And this week's realization was, I have always known that I'm writing a story with multiple points of view, but I couldn't start it that way. I had. I had to start it with just this one protagonist. And then I thought, Oh, well, then it'll just be that, and it'll probably be really easy. Look, I've got this all planned out. I'm just gonna write. I'm just gonna, oh, I'll bet I can get, what if I got my agent a draft this summer? Hahaha, it's, you know, it's not good, but I'm so impatient. I want ...

Meg Mitchell Moore

Right, right. Well, I was listening to one of your to your podcast the other yesterday, and it was the one where you were talking about your story idea starting. How do you, how do you ideate the book?

KJ Dell'Antonia

Oh, gosh.

Meg Mitchell Moore

And you so you write a book, and then you present it to your agent, and then you sell it, right? So…

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah.

Meg Mitchell Moore

That's your process. So I'm the opposite, where I write, I get the contract first, and then I have to write the book. And I don't know which is harder, because you don't have a built in deadline. You have your own deadlines that you said, but you're writing something that you said. Maybe this will sell, maybe it won't, I don't know, whereas I know it will eventually be published, but I also have that pressure of I have to get things in on time. So what do you think is, what's better? What's worse?

KJ Dell'Antonia

I don't know. I envy your... I envy that way. I feel like that would make me feel more secure, more professional. My, my agent, doesn't… she's very against selling a book of mine, at least before I've written it, because she says, I'll, she says I might change it, and then, and then, it won't be what we sold or I won't be happy. So so I don't know if she's I think she's just against it as a general rule, but I know lots of agents that that do it, and I know a lot of of writers that do it. Sometimes I look at this and I'm like, you know, I could do a proposal. Maybe we could sell it. I could get some money. That would be lovely, right? Yeah. But...

Meg Mitchell Moore

I see, I see your point, and I know a lot of people think that way. I remember a long time ago when I'd either published, I think I'd published no novels. Maybe my book was about to be published, my first novel, and I heard Ann Patchett speak at a conference, and she said, she said that she would never take money for a book she hadn't written.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Wow.

Meg Mitchell Moore

And I remember thinking, Oh, well, if that's what Ann Patchett says, I guess that's what like, that's how the world is. But I disagree, like I disagree, because for me, first of all, she has a different life situation, but for me to keep income coming in steadily, because this is my only job, I feel like that's the way to do it. And I also feel like other industries, like my husband doesn't only get paid when he goes to the board meeting. He's getting paid every other week for his job that he does for the company that he works for. And so to try to approximate a little bit of a normal salary, I feel like that's the way to do it. But then I also see the other side, and I see why Ann Patchett wouldn't do it, because she's Ann Patchett, you know, so she can take whatever time she needs...

KJ Dell'Antonia

See that's so funny. Because I think, well, you can do this because you're Meg Mitchell Moore, and Meg Mitchell Moore is going to sell and a KJ Dell'Antonia, one of them will, and the others somewhat less, so at least that's my my record at the moment. So I guess we just all see each other differently. My co-host Sarina sells on proposal.

Meg Mitchell Moore

Okay, so fiction, that's fiction?

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah, yeah. She sold thrillers and romances that way. Okay, so she has a bigger track record. But also, I've known people, you know, I guess there's just different ways of of of doing it. And I would not say that I chose this. It chose me.

Meg Mitchell Moore

Interesting, but there was always that chance. I mean, my agent... If I said to my agent, I don't want to sell till I write, she would say, Great, that might be better for both of us. We'll probably sell it for more, because you might write something really good, but I just don't want to take that. I'm too impatient, you know, I'm just Yes, maybe, if, you know, maybe if I had, you know, had some big blockbuster, and then I thought, Okay, now for two years, it doesn't matter what's coming in, because I'm getting money from that book, that would be different. But, um, that's not how it works for most people.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah, and maybe I would feel less impatient with getting this done if I weren't like, I want to get to the point where I know if we're going to sell like, I wrote a whole thing last summer, and it never got to the point that we felt like we could sell it, and I I'm sick of it. I can't write it anymore. I'm done with it. I mean, maybe I'll come back to it, but, yeah, right. And like, I've had, you know, a freelance editor at it who's really good. My agent's been at it. I finished it like three times, and apparently it still sucks. So I'm done.

Meg Mitchell Moore

So that's interesting, because I always think that I would not be writing good books if I didn't know if my editor gets a very messy draft, and all of my editors have gotten bad dress and really helped me. And without that step, I don't think I would ever write a book that could even be sold. So I feel like I need to know, okay, somebody else who is better at this is going to be helping me really soon. I just need to get through it.

KJ Dell'Antonia

That's that would be amazing. I don't think my editor cares enough about me to do that. So...

Meg Mitchell Moore

Oh, my editor would absolutely prefer a cleaner draft. Like, no question. I mean, she would be delighted if I showed it to five people and got feedback, but I'm always in a rush. So I'm like, here you're the first reader. Here you go. She's like, thank you.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah, that's my agent. I'll be like, Look, I'm done it's great! and She's no... it is great, but you know what would be really great? Poor agent. Yeah, okay. So, so we're we're both impatient, but we're doing this in in very different ways. Well, now I want to hear more about that. How do you go from a first draft with no body, to a final draft where the body, it's definitely one of the things that's pushing people to turn the page. It's not the only thing. So maybe that's the good news of not having started with a body. Also, did you know whose body it was?

Meg Mitchell Moore

Um, we discussed because, yeah, I mean, we discussed a little bit about it. I remember thinking, Could it be this person? And here's why we wouldn't want that person. Could it be this person? So we had some discussion. I didn't write it. I once I knew who it was. I didn't write multiple versions of it. I always had that person. But, and I guess I just think of it as more of a framing device than anything, and a framing device, you can add the frame later.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah.

Meg Mitchell Moore

So the middle was mostly what was happening, was happening, and then there was this framing device and and then there are certain things at the end that kind of came together. And I was like, Oh my gosh, this makes it all come together. But I didn't know that in the beginning. And that was so you may be late.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Did you not know how the body became a body?

Meg Mitchell Moore

Ah, that changed. There was...

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah, I could see that.

Meg Mitchell Moore

And then I thought, oh my gosh, this is kind of what I needed to pull together all those themes. It was those exciting moments that really don't happen very often.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Oh, I bet and I mean, I can see it from the outside as a reader. It really did. It made it like your ending is one of those endings that changes the whole, your whole reading experience for the better, right? Not that it wasn't a great reading experience the whole time. You know, sometimes somebody doesn't stick the landing, and then you're like, yeah, no, I don't really want to recommend this. I mean, it was fine, right? But, and sometimes it's just great. It's like, solid. You're happy, yay. Okay, that's a good, it's a good. Yours colors the entire like, if I were somebody who would go back and reread it, would color the entire experience differently.

Meg Mitchell Moore

Oh, Thank you!

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah, which is cool, yeah, very cool.

Meg Mitchell Moore

Now, when I wrote Vacationland, I started with a body, and the body came out. So I had the opposite experience, where I thought I was writing a thriller. The whole time. I was like, this is going to be my thriller. There's a body. And I had it all. And to me, it made sense. It all tied up, and my different editor, but my then editor said, I like everything but the body.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Wow.

Meg Mitchell Moore

We had to keep it was first it was a an important body, and then it was a less important body, and then it became the body of a seal, because I had to have just a scene of children looking at something they found in the water in the very beginning. And so it was a body, and then it was a seals body. This time. I got to keep my body at least.

KJ Dell'Antonia

So I love this also, because you haven't been, um, pigeonholed into a genre that involves bodies or doesn't involve bodies. Has that been a thing as you've as you've gone from book to book where people are like, well, I don't know… Meg, people don't really want you to kill people or the, you know, the opposite. Well, I don't know, people are kind of looking for some more thrills from you.

Meg Mitchell Moore

Well, Vacationland. I remember that editor said they don't, we don't want this from you. We want, we don't want. We want a summer book. We don't want. We're not looking for a thriller. You know, they had other thrillers. You know what? They're doing their own end of the business, too. So they definitely said that this time. I mean, I feel like I'm not pigeonholed, but categorized as beach as a beach book. But I think within beach books you can do all of those things. Yeah. So if I were to write a giant thriller that I said, I think this should come out in the fall, and it's a big book, I that's when they would probably say, I don't know if your audience, if you have the audience, right, pull that off unless the book is amazing, you know? I do feel like I need to come out in the summer to keep my readers.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah, I actually love that. That beach book is a You're right. It's a pretty big genre. It encompasses a lot. It encompasses a lot of of things, the only requirement being that it's, you know, entertaining, which, as far as I'm concerned, is a book requirement anyway. But...

Meg Mitchell Moore

Right, right. It is interesting because my books also happen to usually take place on beaches, but not all beach books do. So it is, it has become a very big category and competitive like you also want to stand out in that category, because there are so many books with the word summer in the title or the word beach in the title, or this. Actually, this cover is a departure for me, which I love, because I feel like I have done the just the oceanscape or the main or the woman looking at the water. I've had those kinds of covers.

KJ Dell'Antonia

It's your first... It's, it's, it's a cartoony cover. I don't, I don't mean that it, you know that sounds Yeah, it's almost a romancy cover. But there's only one person. First. I'm just so you guys should, it'll, it'll be in the show notes. You should, you should take a look, because you're right. It is a departure. I see, yeah, I see what you're saying there. But this one's, it's a hardback, right?

Meg Mitchell Moore

Yes.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah. Have all your books come out first in hardback?

Meg Mitchell Moore

They have, yep.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Nice, cool.

Meg Mitchell Moore

Have yours?

KJ Dell'Antonia

No, none.

Meg Mitchell Moore

None? Okay, now, what do you now…? Do you think that… that, I sometimes I feel like that's a great thing too.

KJ Dell'Antonia

I go back and forth on that. My agent is bummed about it. But for me, it's frankly, much easier to, like, go out to everyone and be like, spend $18 versus be like spend $38.

Meg Mitchell Moore

I agree.

KJ Dell'Antonia

So I haven't minded. Oh, and I was at the Newburyport Book Festival a few years ago, and they accidentally got my second book only in hard book, because it was, it came out in hardback and paperback at the same time, which there was a moment of about six months when publishers were doing that, and then they stopped and they only had the hardback. And I was like, Oh, I don't even want anyone to buy that. Like that, isn't I would be mad if I bought a hardback...

Meg Mitchell Moore

Right, right.

KJ Dell'Antonia

And then the next day, I was at the store and was like, hey!?

Meg Mitchell Moore

Right, yeah, it's interesting, because I do actually love… because I bought your book The Chicken Sisters this weekend, in paperback, and I love, I love paperback, yeah, I love it.

KJ Dell'Antonia

For travel…?

Meg Mitchell Moore

Lighter, yeah, and I think it is appealing. It's so interesting. I mean, I remember Emily Henry's first couple, at least, came out paperback, and then now that she can sell so well, they now they come in hardcover, but I still feel like...

KJ Dell'Antonia

I look at them and I'm like, I don't want that that way. Now, I'll just buy a digital version, because I don't that's not…

Meg Mitchell Moore

Right? Right. It's really interesting. And I know I don't understand the sales end of it, the way that the people who are doing the job do, and the profits and the margin and all that. But I kind of feel like, why isn't everything in paperback right away? You know?

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah, no, I feel the same way. And and also people's, especially now we're thinking, we're talking about beach books. Some people's beach I mean, if my beach vacation is an airplane beach vacation, I might bring one hardback, maybe...

Meg Mitchell Moore

Right.

KJ Dell'Antonia

And maybe, probably not, because I'm a fast reader, I could easily eat that on the plane, and then there I would be. So...

Meg Mitchell Moore

Right.

KJ Dell'Antonia

I don't know.

Meg Mitchell Moore

Right, yeah.

KJ Dell'Antonia

I guess that's what e-readers are for.

Meg Mitchell Moore

That's true.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Well, I mean, gosh, I could probably talk to you about in depth, about the writing of this for about 12 hours. Because, okay, one one last thought. So listeners, Meg writes like we said, in multiple points of view. Talk to me about how you know when to change the point. You know what point of view a scene should be told from?

Meg Mitchell Moore

Yeah, I don't. I'm it's so much. I do so much rewriting, a lot of that. I mean, I'm just thinking, I just turned in a draft yesterday of, hopefully next summer's novel, and I that is also multiple points of view. It's, I think it's mostly three, it's three adult sisters and they each have a point of view. There might be a couple little scattered things, but when I look back, I think I need to probably adjust, even in the draft I just turned in, I think I'm a little heavily weighted toward one over the other, so I don't always know. I just go on gut and instinct, and then I fix it later, which is how I do almost everything. I just go by instinct, and it's usually wrong And I change it later.

KJ Dell'Antonia

So, you'll, you'll be like, you've written a scene, and the point of view of one person, you realize, oh, either it's the other person's turn to have some more time, or I need their inner thoughts, not this person's inner thought...

Meg Mitchell Moore

Right. Yeah, its not very organized.

KJ Dell'Antonia

And sometimes you drop in like, you know, a kid on a beach or something, is that when you need something to happen that you that your protagonists don't know? Or just, you just feel like?

Meg Mitchell Moore

I think, I think it's fun. I just think it's fun sometimes to have this person you haven't heard from and you won't hear from again. But a lot I probably did. I probably do that. It probably gets taken out 80% of the time when I do that, because usually it doesn't make sense. But I just wanted to do it. I did it in my book. I just turned in and the first this scene between the a realtor and her husband, the realtor who's selling this house that these people are in. She doesn't matter to the book, but I just really wanted to write the scene of her and her husband, and I even wrote in the draft. I know this doesn't make sense, and my editor said, Yeah, this doesn't make sense. Like, you either need more of them, or they need to go. I don't know what they're...

KJ Dell'Antonia

Do you ever give them away for? Like, you know, here's your pre order bonus. Read this extra scene…

Meg Mitchell Moore

I should do that. Maybe I'll do that. They'll do that. I have never done that, but maybe I will. But I feel like, I think it might be Anne Tyler. I remember reading an interview. Is she the one who does the strings like she has strings with different?

KJ Dell'Antonia

Maybe, i don’t know.

Meg Mitchell Moore

Every character has a different colored string, and then she pulls down the red one because it's the red, you know, that's how she knows who she's writing. And I thought that was really cool, but I've never done it.

KJ Dell'Antonia

That sounds like a lot of work.

Meg Mitchell Moore

I guess.

KJ Dell'Antonia

And, like, I would need a different…I need a bulletin board. Okay.

Meg Mitchell Moore

Yeah, I don't know where you, where I would hang it from, but it's just seems kind of nice to think, then maybe...

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah it does.

Meg Mitchell Moore

She knows if she's done the right amount for everybody.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah, The Chicken Sisters is alternating points of view. And I just, I just alternated. And then sometimes that was a problem, and I had to figure out, like, how to get somebody's feelings? Yeah? So....

Meg Mitchell Moore

Yeah, it's confusing. I don't know why I do it to myself, because sometimes I'll just read a perfectly, a book that's just perfectly written in first person. I'm trying to think of an example right now, because I don't even always read that much in first person, but like, Yellowface? … Yellowface. Okay, that book was so, like, simple in a way, but I love I loved it. I thought it was brilliant, and it was all just this point of view, and...

KJ Dell'Antonia

And didn't you occasionally get, like a newspaper article? I think...

Meg Mitchell Moore

Maybe, maybe.

KJ Dell'Antonia

That must have been what she did when she had something her person couldn't know.

Meg Mitchell Moore

Yeah. I guess, yeah. I guess, technically, it would be harder to do it all from one because you how do they know everything? But I feel like I get lost, like I have trouble. I literally lose the plot, because I'm just this person's off doing something in their day that might have nothing to do with what's going on. I get really caught up in that kind of stuff, and that's what I have to edit out.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah, I'm always trying not to do that. I'll sit there while I'm writing, like, No, do not let them move their coffee cup. They can move the coffee cup in a later draft, if the coffee cup is still here, if they're even still in this coffee shop, if this coffee shop even exists. But I can't seem to stop it. My my like, default mode is, you know, he said while taking a sip and burning his lip or whatever, right? Just, I can't seem to not do it.

Meg Mitchell Moore

Yeah, but sometimes that's where you get the gold too, because you wrote all that, and maybe that one sentence is the thing that you needed. So it's just the process.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah, it is. It's just the process, and it's longer than we hope and slower than we hope...

Meg Mitchell Moore

Always...Always. Yes.

KJ Dell'Antonia

And more, and more revising. Well, do you have any, like, genius words about revision for people? Because it sounds like you do a lot of it.

Meg Mitchell Moore

I do a lot of it. I think just is so important. It's just so for me, it's so important. I just think nobody gets it right. I hope nobody gets it right the first time. Because if they do, I'm really jealous, but I think for the most part, nobody gets it right the first time. So revision is, I mean, I'd say I spent almost as much time on the revision I probably do as I do on the first draft.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Do you still lie to yourself in the first draft and let yourself pretend it's going to be right?

Meg Mitchell Moore

Oh yeah. I always think, Oh, this is the time I did it, I nailed it, and then I get my editorial letter, and it's like, great start. Here's the 700 things that you need to do now.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Well, thank you. I feel better. I hope everyone else does too.

Meg Mitchell Moore

Yeah, it's a long process.

KJ Dell'Antonia

It really is, all right. Well, this was fantastic. I really enjoyed it.

Meg Mitchell Moore

Yeah, me too.

KJ Dell'Antonia

As we hit the end of any episode, we always like to ask people what they've been reading. So I hope I'm not springing that on you.

Meg Mitchell Moore

No, I just I always have an audio book going and a regular book going on audio I just started the Emily Henry, the new Emily Henry, which I've never listened to her books. I've always read them, and I know that Julia, the famous Julia Whelan, is always her narrator, so and she's phenomenal. So I'm loving the audio version, which is just funny that I've never done it with Emily Henry before.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Did you listen to Julia Whelan's book that she wrote herself?

Meg Mitchell Moore

Mhmm.

KJ Dell'Antonia

That was so fascinating, because it really was different, like I actually read it, but I could feel the… yeah. Anyway, okay.

Meg Mitchell Moore

Oh, you should go back and also listen. It's so it's such a good audio book.

KJ Dell'Antonia

I bet.

Meg Mitchell Moore

Yeah, it was fantastic. And then I'm reading a novel called The Road to Dalton that my friend Hannah, who owns the Book Shop of Beverly Farms in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, phenomenal store recommended to me. So I bought it last time I was there, and it is about a bunch of people in a small town in Maine, which is my vibe immediately I was in. But it's very good. So I'm reading that. I can't, I can't remember the author, which is unusual for me, but Shannon something I think [Shannon Bowring].. But it's The Road to Dalton

KJ Dell'Antonia

That’s okay. I will find it well. As everyone is gathered, I just finished Mansion Beach. I I really loved it. It was a rare book that I loved even more when I got to the end of it. And, yeah, it was amazing. And also in that, that vibe, that sort of small town Maine and yet, but this is like small island, middle of the Atlantic. Welcome to Glorious Tuga. Have you heard of this one?

Meg Mitchell Moore

No. I’ve never heard of it.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Okay, so it's a tiny island settled 300 years ago by a miscellanea of Dutch and British and and African people didn't have any locals. So that's kind of and they have formed the society. It's only open for half the year, because you can't, like, get a boat into it, because storms and currents and whatnot. So this woman has gone thinking that she's going to study the native tortoise population all Darwin, but she gets there and they're like, great. You're a vet. That's what we need. So it's kind of like all creatures great and small meets...I don't even know what it meets yet, I got to come up with that. But it's really a lot of fun. And it's very multi it's multi POV in a really interesting way, because you're with her, and then sort of whenever you kind of get a little interested in someone else, you're like, Oh, why are they doing that? Then maybe you'll switch to their POV. it's really, I really enjoyed it so, so that was fun. So those are my ranks, all right. Well, thank you so much, listeners for joining us, and thank you, Meg for joining me today. Where can people follow you? Where's the best?

Meg Mitchell Moore

Mostly on Instagram @Meg Mitchell Moore, I'm on Facebook, but I don't use it very often and I kinda want to leave it. So…I also just read the Facebook, the Facebook memoir.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Oh yeah?

Meg Mitchell Moore

No, I really want to leave Facebook, but also I know that they own Instagram. So anyway, Instagram is the best place to find me, and I was so happy to be here. Thank you. It was really fun.

KJ Dell'Antonia

This was super. Okay. Thanks everyone for listening, and until next week, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.

Sarina Bowen

The hashtag am writing podcast is produced by Andrew Perella. Our intro music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.

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