Jess, Sarina, Jennie and Jess are all here to talk about taking a break from various angles: the mechanics angle, the guilt angle, the fear angle, the identity angle and inspiration angle.
Mechanics.
* Leave yourself notes about the project when you leave off, for example, “The next thing that needs to happen is this…” so when you come back, you know how to get back into the project. This is Sarina’s daily practice, but it really helps when she has to leave a project behind. This can be especially helpful when you have to go away for an unexpected emergency.
* Jennie adds that the only way you can do this is if you have a place to keep and find those notes to yourself. In one of your 47 notebooks or in the document itself? Or, as Jess adds, on the side of the cardboard box you use for trash in your basement workshop that you almost recycle by accident.
* Jennie also notes that you have to have intentionality, to know what you are writing so you can know what comes next, whether that’s in your outline, inside outline, or whatever.
* Jennie has a little notebook she brings on vacation with her and she downloads those ideas into that just before going to sleep at night when she’s away.
* These vacation inspiration moments are much like shower thoughts, part of the magic of our brain unhooking, getting into deep default mode network, and becoming its most creative.
* Sarina mentioned an article about how walking makes you more creative, also a study in why tapping into the default mode network is so effective as a practice.
Fear
* The only way to get over this is to sit down and do it. Open the document. Just start.
* Jennie points out that getting back into a manuscript when it’s disappeared feels horrifying but it’s much easier than it sounds and has happened to one of our frequent guests, Sarah Stewart Taylor, when her then-toddler created a password for the document that was not recoverable. She had to give in to the fact that her book was gone, and recreate it out of her memory.
Guilt and Identity
* It only took Jess until her fiftieth year to figure out that her process - of walking, gardening, beekeeping, musing - is a part of writing, and that’s cool.
* Can you be a writer if you are not actively writing? Yes, if research, planning, thinking and otherwise cogitating is a part of your writing process. Get over it. The words have to land on the page eventually, of course, but if you are doing both, have grace for the not-actively-writing part of the writing process.
#AmReading
Tess Gerritsen’s series set in Maine (The Spy Coast and The Summer Guests) and, once she finished those two books, Jess went back to The Surgeon, where it all started for Tess Gerritsen. Stay tuned for our interview with her!
Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary (Don’t watch the movie trailer if you plan to read the book!)
Sarah Harman’s All the Other Mothers Hate Me
Amy Tintera’s Listen for the Lie
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer The Unfolding
Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club (coming to Netflix in August!)
Janelle Brown’s What Kind of Paradise
Want to submit a first page to Booklab? Fill out the form HERE.
Writers and readers, KJ here, if you love #AmWriting and I know you do, and I know you do, and especially if you love the regular segment at the end of most episodes where we talk about what we've been reading, you will also love my weekly #AmReading email. Is it about what I've been reading and loving? It is. And if you like what I write, you'll like what I read. But it is also about everything else. I've been #AmDoing: sleeping, buying clothes and returning them, launching a spelling bee habit, reading other people's weekly emails. Let's just say it's kind of the email about not getting the work done, which I mean that's important too, right? We can't work all the time. It's also free, and I think you'll really like it. So you can find it at kjdellantonia.com or kjda.substack.com or by clicking on my name on Substack, if you do that kind of thing.
Come hang out with me. You won't be sorry.
Transcript below!
EPISODE 458 - TRANSCRIPT
KJ Dell'Antonia
Writers and readers, KJ here. If you love Hashtag AmWriting, and I know you do, and especially if you love the regular segment at the end of most episodes where we talk about what we've been reading, you will also love my weekly Hashtag AmReading email. Is it about what I've been reading and loving? It is. And if you like what I write, you'll like what I read. But it is also about everything else. I've been ‘hashtag am-doing’, sleeping, buying clothes and returning them, launching a spelling bee habit, reading other people's weekly emails. Let's just say it's kind of the email about not getting the work done—which, I mean, that's important too, right? We can't work all the time. It's also free, and I think you'll really like it. So you can find it at KJdellantonia.com or kjda.substack.com or by clicking on my name on Substack, if you do that kind of thing or of course in the show notes for this podcast. Come hang out with me. You won't be sorry.
Multiple Speakers
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. All right, let's start over. Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay. Now, one, two, three.
KJ Dell'Antonia
Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia, and this is the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, the weekly podcast, while writing all the things—short things, long things, pitches, proposals, fiction, nonfiction. And somebody told me they thought this was a recorded intro. And I just want you to know I do this live every time, which is why there's this, come on, there's more variety here, people, and you should know that. Anyway, here we are, all four of us, for we got a topic today. But before we do that, we should introduce ourselves in order of seniority, please.
Jess Lahey
I'm Jess Lahey. I am the author of The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation. And I laugh, because when you said seniority, all I could do was think of us in our little eave space in my old house, down the street from you, not knowing what the heck we were doing. But yeah, we've been doing this for a long time now. You can find my... you can find my journalism at The New York Times, at The Washington Post, at The Atlantic, and everything else at Jessicalahey.com.
Sarina Bowen
I'm Sarina Bowen. I'm the author of many novels. My new one this fall is called Thrown for a Loop, and it will be everywhere that books are sold, which is very exciting to me, and all about me at Sarinabowen.com.
Jennie Nash
I am the newest of the co-hosts, and so happy to be among this group of incredibly smart and prolific and awesome women, and I'm the founder and CEO of Author Accelerator, which is a company on a mission to lead the emerging book coaching industry. And you can find us at bookcoaches.com or authoraccelerator.com.
KJ Dell'Antonia
I'm KJ Dell'Antonia. I'm the author of three novels, the latest of which is Playing the Witch Card, and the most televised of which is The Chicken Sisters—Season Two coming soon to a Hallmark network near you. And I'm also the former editor and lead writer of The Motherlode, making me our... well, and Jennie too, like the crossover. I've done too many different kinds of writing—probably should have stayed in my lane. Oh well. And our plan today—as we're recording, it is summer. And a pretty frequent thing that happens in the summer is that you need to put your project down for a little while, because you have house guests, because you're going on the kind of vacation that does not involve working, because you just need a break or you're sick. That's not really a summer thing, but it definitely happens. Anyway, we wanted to talk about how, you know, what—what do you do to make that work better?
Jess Lahey
I think a lot about being a parent and needing to take a break too. And you know, this is something I talk a lot about with, you know, other writers who are sort of struggling, especially since I read a lot about parenting—who are struggling to—with that guilt of, you know, like, I feel like I owe my time to the words, and I feel like I owe my time to the children. And finding a way to take a break from the words and not feel guilty about not being with the words can be really, really hard, especially when you're going gung-ho on something. So I want to make sure that we figure out a way to have a break without guilt. That's like the big question I get a lot—is, how do you, you know, either from the parenting or the writing side?
KJ Dell'Antonia
And I was thinking about it more from a mechanics side.
Jess Lahey
Yeah.
KJ Dell'Antonia
How do you put this thing aside for a week or two weeks or even a month? And know where you were?
Jess Lahey
Right.
KJ Dell'Antonia
And come back and feel like it does not take you forever to dig in.
Sarina Bowen
Yeah. Um, so we've got the guilt question. We've got the mechanics of how to do it. And I would just like to add a layer, which is the fear factor.
Jess Lahey
Yeah.
Sarina Bowen
I have this thing where, when I walk away from a manuscript, I become afraid of it. So it seems scarier when I take a break. Like, even if it's not true—that I don't know where I am or that I become unmoored from the channel of that book and it seems intimidating to go back to.
Jess Lahey
Can I add one more layer as well? And that's the identity factor. You know, if I identify as a writer, what am I if I'm not actively writing something? And that messes my head up a lot. So I would love to add that added layer in as well and make sure we discuss that.
Jennie Nash
Well, and I have something totally different from all of those, which is that I often find when I go on vacation, I am more inspired and motivated to work on my project than I was in my real life. It tends to light a fire under me. So then I'm faced with that choice of, you know, wanting to really lean into it. And, you know, just like a really small piece of that story is, I love to write on airplanes. I just love it. Give me a very long flight, and it's—I just want to work and not talk to anybody. And, you know, it's awesome. So I feel some guilt around that. When I'm with my family, it’s like, don't talk to me, don't watch movies. You know, I'm—I'm enjoying my plane time, doing my work. So I have that reality.
KJ Dell'Antonia
Well, that's the choice that you have to start with, is, am I just, you know, can I not? Am I—do I need to accept the reality, which is that this is a beach trip with extended family and some, you know, my—to multiple generations, and I inevitably am going to be the person who is cooking and figuring out where the garbage has to go in the Airbnb? I should, you know, I—I will feel better if I just accept the reality that I'm not going to wake and work. Or, you know, is it a—is it a trip where you can schedule some work time and want to? Or is it a trip where you affirmatively want to give yourself a break? Or is it also, I mean, I sort of think that the last possibility—well, there are probably multiples—is I just want to touch this every day. So I feel like you can kind of—you're like, you're either like, just—no, not going to happen, not going to pretend it's going to happen, not going to feel the guilt. That's the—that's where we are. And there's sort of a, I just want to open the file every day and keep it warm and friendly. And on, you know these three—three days I have an hour.
Jess Lahey
So let's do this. Let's—let's do mechanics first, since that's the real nuts-and-bolts stuff, and then we'll talk about all the touchy-feely stuff after that. So let's do mechanics first. It sounds like you have thoughts, KJ…?
KJ Dell'Antonia
Well, I was actually thinking that Sarina did this pretty recently.
Jess Lahey
Yeah, that's true.
Sarina Bowen
Yeah. Like, you know, I, um, I have found mechanically that leaving yourself notes every time you walk away from your manuscript is a good thing. So this is sort of like a best practices in your life idea, where I will have a writing day, and it's done now, and I'm going to get up and go do other things in my life. If I pick up my notebook, and I write down where I am—like, okay, and the next thing that has to happen is this—like, it could be really short or not. But taking better notes about the structure of the thing I'm working on is serving me on so many levels that it just slots right in here. Like, I took a big trip in April, and I thought I might work, but then I didn't, and I really seamlessly came right back in, because I knew where I was, and I avoided a lot of my own fear. So, if the practices that help you become a good day-to-day writer also can be practices that help you in this very instance, the mechanics of picking up your book again are that you left yourself a note right in your document, um, or in your notebook, that says, and here's what I think is supposed to happen next. And, yeah.
KJ Dell'Antonia
That's going to be gold for an unexpected break too, because that happens, you know, right? You get one of those phone calls, and it's a week before you're back or more.
Sarina Bowen
Yeah.
KJ Dell'Antonia
Yeah. I love this practice. This is one of those things I forget to do.
Jennie Nash
I feel like I—I feel like I have to add to that a couple things. That the only reason you can do that is, A, if you have a place to take notes, which—which could be your, the document itself that you're working on. But Sarina talked about a notebook, right? You have a place that you know, that you can find that, which is not an insignificant thing to have, or...
Sarina Bowen
Correct!
Jennie Nash
Right?! Or, in the case of me, it's like, I have 47 notebooks. Well, which one did I put the note in?
Sarina Bowen
Right.
Jennie Nash
But then the second thing is, I mean, this is something that I find so inspiring about the way you work, Sarina, and it—and it's a thing that I teach—is you have to know what you're writing, you know, in order to know where you are, what the structure is, and what you're doing, and to ask those—like, you have to have done the thought work of what, what it is you're trying to do and what your intention is. Otherwise, you sort of don't ever know where you are or where you're going. So...
Sarina Bowen
Right, but that's on two levels. Like, you could—let's just say you have successfully written yourself an Inside Outline, you know, the way that you do it—you still might need that granular thing.
Jennie Nash
Oh yeah!
Sarina Bowen
Like, you might know where you are in the arc of the book, but you might actually need the note that's like, "And now we're going to wash the dishes." I mean, let's please not put that in the novel, but you know what I mean.
Jennie Nash
Yeah, yeah. But that intentionality of, on the big picture, what am I doing, and on the small picture—in this chapter, in this scene, in this moment, and with this character—what was I... how'd that fit into the whole? What was I thinking? And those things are not—they're not easy. Like, we're talking about them like, "Oh, you just..." You know, like I was saying, what if you have 47 notebooks? That literally is a problem I have. It's like, I know I wrote this note down, and I don't know where I put it—digitally or analog.
Sarina Bowen
Right. I confess I actually do still have this problem. Like, even with all of my best practices, like, put into—sometimes it's like, well, is that in the document, or is it in my notebook? And then—or I thought about it at four in the morning and actually didn't write it down anywhere. And I'm looking anyway...
Jennie Nash
Oh, I do that too. I absolutely do that too. I'm convinced that I left a note while I was driving—that's a thing I often do. I'll leave—I'll have Siri write me a note, and then somehow it doesn't appear, or it's like, I know I did this, I know I asked her to do this... you know.
Jess Lahey
I actually have—I was doing the recycling, and I realized that I was in big trouble because three sides of a box I'd had down in the basement with me while I was working on a project—I was doing something with my, getting some beehives ready—and I was listening to an audiobook that is research for a project I'm working on, and I had scribbled some really important notes to myself about how I was supposed to start a chapter on. And it was a great start. It was like a whole paragraph on the three sides of the box, with an old Sharpie I found down in the basement. And then I realized I almost recycled, like, some really useful outline stuff.
Multiple Speakers
[all laughing]
Jess Lahey
So normally—no, so I actually have them. While you guys are talking about something else, since we do see each other while we're recording this, I'll show you later. But the thing that I normally do is either in the document, like right where I left off, or in my main notebook, because I am so bad at finding those notes that I have strewn all over my office or on the side of a cardboard box.
KJ Dell'Antonia
I have had the problem lately of I'm not in a manuscript, and that it's much easier when you're in a manuscript to come back to a manuscript, but I'm in a notebook full of assorted random Blueprint challenge, you know, like trying to—I'm, I'm in figuring out where this is going mode, which means I do a lot of thinking while I'm not working that then hopefully I go and write down. But it also means that I frequently sit down and I'm like, well, am I going to think about who these people are? Am I going to think about what the plot is? What am I going to do? So I've been trying to leave myself like a task, something that will, that will just get me, get me back in, because sometimes that's the problem. I, you know, I open the notebook, and there's no obvious thing to do, and the next thing I know, I'm buying running shoes.
Jennie Nash
Well, since we're talking about nuts and bolts, when I said that I often get inspired when I go away or go on vacation and I want to work, I'm not talking about I'm going to go sit in a library or coffee shop for three hours. What, what I mean by that is I often have ideas that I want to capture, and so I have a little notebook that I bring on vacation, and what I like to do is go to bed early enough that I can download all the things I thought that day. I need that space and time to—if it's, if I'm working on something, it's in my head. It's not going to not be in my head. And so the one sort of new mechanical thing that I, that I do, is have that "vacation notes notebook" with me.
KJ Dell'Antonia
I always carry one, and I never use it. So there's that.
Jess Lahey
I get—I am at my most inspired to write when I specifically can't write, which is usually behind the wheel of my car. So I use, in my car, I have been known to, you know, either scribble on things—which, totally don't do that—or to record myself on my phone. But then, audio things, I'm particularly bad at going back and listening to; that seems like it's just too much work. So those tend to get lost a lot. I need to come up with a better system for that. But it is predictable that if I am in a place where I cannot physically write, I will be at my most inspired to write.
Jennie Nash
Jess, that's kind of what I'm talking about. That's what happens to me, is I might say I'm leaving all work behind. I'm going off the grid. I'm not doing the thing. And that's when I most want to do the thing. And I, like, my brain seems to really get inspired. What? What do you think that's about? Is that...
Jess Lahey
I, you know, I, I was very worried that it was my sort of, um—sorry, what's the word I'm looking for? It was—it's my, my brain's way of saying, "Oh, you couldn't possibly work now, so let's have some of the best ideas so that you seem like a good little doobie writer, but it's physically impossible for you to write now." It's just a really weird thing, and maybe one of the other things I thought about is that I'm often listening to a book that I'm really into, which also inspires me to write. I've been listening to a lot of really great books lately, and you can't listen to a book—even one that inspires you deeply—and actually write at the same time, which is another quandary.
Sarina Bowen
You know what, though? This is not uniquely your brain messing with you—like, this is shower thoughts.
Multiple Speakers
[Overlapping: “Mm-hmm.” “Sorry.” “Ohhh...”]
Sarina Bowen
But everybody—everybody has those great ideas in the shower, and it's because you have unhooked yourself. You are just in there with the shampoo and the conditioner and that razor that you probably should change the blade with, and like, you know, there is nowhere to write and nothing to do. So your brain is like, I am free right now to unclench and actually solve this problem of chapter 17, and that's what—that's what happens.
Jess Lahey
It is my duty, whenever we mention this, to bring up that—years ago, Ron Lieber, the write... uh... the "Your Money" columnist at The New York Times, told me that he has a waterproof little whiteboard situation that’s— that lives in the shower. He and his wife, Jodi Kantor—amazing writer as well, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, even— that these would be people who might just need a waterproof whiteboard in the shower with them.
Sarina Bowen
But would that ruin the magic…?
KJ Dell'Antonia
It might just...
Multiple Speakers
[all laughing]
Jess Lahey
If you had a place to write it down, your brain would—like—be... your brain would say, "Sorry, I'm not coming up with good ideas."
Sarina Bowen
Because I don't think I am willing to take this risk. I take a lot of risks in my life, but this one—like; we do not mess with the shower thoughts. I think, I think...
KJ Dell'Antonia
So, so what do we do if you didn't do any of this? If what—you know—what are—you're listening to this podcast, coming back from your trip, and you're like, I... was writing... something...
Sarina Bowen
You know what, though? I almost feel that we should point out the fact that, like, that is kind of unlikely. Like, somebody should feel welcome to take this trip and to have all those thoughts, and even if you didn't write them down on your whiteboard in the shower or on your handy notebook, like, I would argue that unhitching yourself in the first place possibly leads to a lot of creative development that, even if you don't capture it in the moment, is still with you. Like, I had this fantastic trip in April. I thought I was going to work, and then I did not, and it was, like, the best two weeks of my life. So then, the other day, my husband said, “Hey, there's a new article you need to read in The Athletic,” which is a New York Times sports blog, and I have just pulled it up so that we can recommend it, about how walking makes you a better problem solver. And the framing story of this article is about a retired baseball coach, but, um, but then, when they got around to studying it, um, they said this question planted the seed for the first set of studies to measure if walking produces more creativity. In the series of experiments, Oppezzo and Schwartz [Marily Oppezzo & Daniel L. Schwartz] asked 176 college students to complete different creative thinking tasks while sitting, walking on a treadmill, walking outside through campus, or being pushed in a wheelchair. In one example, the students had to come up with atypical uses for random objects, and anyway, on average, the students’ creative output increased by 60% when they were walking.
Jennie Nash
That's so cool!
Sarina Bowen
And the article is—it's so cool—it's called An MLB manager found value in long walks. Research suggests it’s a ‘brain-changing power’.
Jess Lahey
I have put a spot for it in the show notes. And I should mention that this is all part of what we call the default mode network. This is the—the part of our brain that is the wandering, most creative part of our brain. And we can get there lots of ways. Walking is a fantastic way to do it.
KJ Dell'Antonia
Sarina, if you do have the fear of the manuscript when you're coming back to it, like, take—you know, travel back in time to maybe when you were a little less confident in your abilities. What do you do to get past the fear and sit down?
Sarina Bowen
There is only one solution, and that is sitting down. And I'm not so great at this—like, when, when the fear creeps up on me, in spite of my best intentions, man, I will do anything to avoid that sucker. And then when I finally do, and I wade back in, almost every time my response is, Oh, this isn't so bad. I know where—I kind of remember now. It's going to be fine, you know. But it's so easy to put off work out of fear. It's—it's the—it's the one big obstacle. Like, I don't put work off for other reasons, you know, because I'm tired or whatever. It's because I'm afraid that there's something fundamentally wrong with the project, or fundamentally wrong with me, and that is almost always what's keeping me from doing good work.
Jennie Nash
There was, back in the day before computers became what they are now, people would frequently lose manuscript drafts. It was just much harder to save your work. And I can't—I can't explain exactly what changed, but it was. People frequently lost huge chunks of their work if they didn't actively back up. And when I was a new coach and working with writers who would lose their manuscripts, they would be—understandably—beyond devastated. And this often was full manuscripts, just unrecoverable, full manuscripts. And it was true that if they sat down to recreate what they'd written, it would really flow from them, for that same reason—it was still in their brain. They—they had—they'd written it, so there was a sense that they had, they owned it, and they could sit down, and it was kind of quite remarkable. And I would confidently say to them, just sit down, start writing. I think it will come to you, and it always did. It's very interesting.
Jess Lahey
There's an example—we've interviewed Sarah Stewart Taylor many times now, and she tells the story of, a long time ago, her youngest managed to crawl across the computer in such a way as to create a password for the document itself, and there's nothing that can be done. She was on the phone with Word—with Microsoft—for a long time, and they're like, look, this is a password you created. We can't—that's not recoverable. So she had to go and recreate—I believe she was about a third of the way into a book—but she said that it actually flowed really well, and that, you know, she'd had it, it had been cooking and stuff like that. So that massive fear of, oh my gosh, how am I going to get back into this project when it has just disappeared? It turned out to be not a thing—that it actually came really easily to her.
Jennie Nash
Jess, you're bringing all the very weird stories today, and I'm so here for it—notes on boxes, babies making passwords.
Jess Lahey
Yeah, well, and the hard part—the funny part about that—is like, you cannot recreate a toddler, essentially, like bashing away at your keyboard and creating a password that's never coming back. Sorry.
Sarina Bowen
There is a writer—she once gave a talk that I heard—a very successful young adult author, Cynthia Leitich Smith, and she apparently wrote a discovery draft of the novel to, like, figure out what it was about and then deleted it and started over on purpose.
Jennie Nash
On purpose?!
Sarina Bowen
Yes, and everyone in the room gasped because, of course, you know that I just rather, like, been in a lot of pain. I'd rather have oral surgery than delete my first draft of a novel. But, um... but yeah, if she was unafraid to get back there after that kind of break, then I think we can all handle it.
KJ Dell'Antonia
This is true. I've never deleted a draft, but I have just gone—poofft—"Let's, let's, let's start again." In fact, almost every time. Kind of sad. I'm doing it now, actually, but it's not a full draft. Anyway. So take the breaks, right? That's what we're saying here.
Sarina Bowen
Yeah, take the break.
KJ Dell'Antonia
You can break however you do it, you know, whichever thing you pick, and if you don't do what you thought you were going to do, that's cool, too. It's going to—it's going to be fine.
Jess Lahey
Can I mention something that has—so that now that we've sort of done mechanics, we've done a little bit about the fear thing, the—the identity thing—has been really hard for me, in that I have these two books that I've written, and I've written a bunch and researched a bunch of things over the past couple of years, and people keep asking me, what are you writing? What are you writing? And the reality is, like, I'm not. I'm working on something, I'm researching something, and I've written a lot of things. In fact, now I'm holding up my cardboard box pieces—I found them. But the day—I'm not, like, meeting a 1200-words-a-day goal. And sometimes I feel really... I feel like a fraud. I feel like a massive fraud. Like, what kind of writer is not actually sitting down and writing 2,000 words a day? And that's incredibly difficult for me. Like, I don't deserve to call myself a writer, even though I have a couple of books out there and I wrote—you know—did all this other stuff. But the thing that I have—there are a couple of things that have really helped—and one of those is to understand that and have some grace for myself around what I happen to know full well what my process is. Yes, I wrote a couple of book proposals that didn't turn into books, but it was only through writing the book proposals that I discovered that those books weren't something that I wanted to write, and only through doing all of this research on audiobooks and writing on the side of cardboard boxes. That's the way I've written every one of my books. And it's not—it's just what works for me. And so having a little bit of this, you know, this feeling of insecurity as a writer, I don't think is—I don't think is unique to me. I think a lot of writers feel this, and it's...
KJ Dell'Antonia
No, all the rest of them are...
Jess Lahey
All of them are really...
KJ Dell'Antonia
Yeah, no, everyone else is just like, well, of course. No, I'm not an imposter.
Jess Lahey
But what's great is when I sit down with other writers and I say, what is an integral part of your process that isn't actually about putting the words on the page? That's not some bogus, like, excuse for not writing. You know, the gardening is part of it, the—the research is part of it, the listening to audiobooks is part of it. The writing—or the walking—is part of it. And it's not just a part of it. It is an incredibly important part of it for me, and—and understanding that and owning that about myself has been really a good thing for allowing myself to not—I'm not productive when I just feel guilty or like an imposter every day. It—that's not good for my process. But none of you ever feel that, right?
KJ Dell'Antonia
Or apparently the people around you…
Jess Lahey
The other thing that has been—well, the other thing that's been really, really helpful is the—and especially from the parenting perspective—is, or the marriage perspective, or the dog perspective, or the bees perspective, is I need to be fully committed to the thing right in front of me when I'm doing that thing. And if I'm feeling guilty about not being with the words when I'm with my children, or not being with my children when I'm with the words, that is awful, too. And so I have found that when I have to let go of all the other stuff and be fully, 100% in, I'm highly distractible. And so if I'm not fully in the thing, and that—all that guilt of not being over there doing that other thing—that's just taking away from the actual process of writing or researching or whatever it is, or taking care of my bees. I have to be fully in the thing I'm in and not feel guilty about not doing something else. And that's been a growth moment for me, too. It only took me—how old am I? I'm 55 now, and I got there somewhere around 50, I think.
Jennie Nash
There is also—I mean, I—I love what you're saying, and that is a thing to strive for, for sure—to be, to be present in whatever you're doing. But there is also this idea—I always think of it as mental real estate—that you leave for your project, for your idea, for your writing, for your book. That you, that you have a space in your brain devoted to that, and that you visit, whether or not you're producing words. And I think that that, too, is writing. I think, in some ways, that's more writing than sitting at the keyboard. I mean, I always object to the process of just putting words down. And a lot of the things that challenge writers to do that, because they skip that part—the thinking part and the having-the-part—you know, the real estate-in-your-brain part. And I think this connects to the shower—shower thoughts, right? You're gardening or beekeeping, you're walking, you're thinking, you're writing proposals and throwing them out. You're doing all that, that, that's writing. That's the—that's writing in my mind.
KJ Dell'Antonia
And it's not... I mean the other thing we do say a lot is, you know, "Good writing comes last."
Jennie Nash
Yeah.
KJ Dell'Antonia
You've got to do the other stuff. So you can do it on vacation, or you could not do it on vacation. This—I don't think—we just—maybe I—this was my idea, and I think maybe I just needed the reassurance. I have a couple weeks coming up where I'm probably not going to do anything, and I just needed a reminder that that's cool. That's cool. It's all right. It's going to be okay. That's what I—if y'all could just pat me on the head and say "it's going to be okay."
Multiple Speakers
[Overlapping voices: “Mm-hmm,” “Sorry,” “Ohhh...”]
KJ Dell'Antonia
Six or ten times an hour, that might be about what I need.
Jess Lahey
Well and one of the other things that has been really cool this summer is I've been on a streak of really good books. And every one of those really good books that I've been reading has made me like, Oh, I could do this. Oh my gosh, I could do that. I could write like her. I could I could write this other thing. And it's, it's all that energy is good and it's all a good thing to sit on a beach and read a book, or sit in the woods and read a book. It's all great.
KJ Dell'Antonia
All right, everybody, go collect some energy. Hey, on that note, who's read something good lately?
Jennie Nash
I want to hear all these great books, Jess.
Jess Lahey
So I really have been on this roll. I've already talked about Atmosphere in an earlier podcast, the Taylor Jenkins Reid thing. But then I've been on this Tess Gerritsen jag, because we're—I'm interviewing Tess Gerritsen later this week. You guys will get to hear her later this summer. I am... Sarina and KJ, I believe, read the first of her new series that she has set in Maine and with a couple of retired CIA agents and spies in Maine. And then I enjoyed those so much that I went all the way back to the beginning—to her first book, The Surgeon, which I didn't even know was turned into this whole series called Rizzoli and Isles. It's a television show—I had no idea. And now I'm deep into Tess Gerritsen land. I'm still—I found out that there's going to be a movie of the book by the guy who wrote The Martian, Andy...
Sarina Bowen
Jess Lahey
Andy Weir, thank you. And I was warned very specifically on social media not to watch the preview—the trailer—for the new movie that is going to be coming out with Ryan Gosling later on this summer, because it ruins the book. The book is called Hail Mary… Project Hail Mary. So I very quickly turned away from social media and said, Ooh, I better read the book really quickly before anyone ruins it for me, and I am enjoying the heck out of Project Hail Mary. So it's been really fun. Yeah.
Sarina Bowen
I am reading a book that KJ put into my hands. And the fun part is that I don't remember why she put it into my hands, you know. Like, why did I pick up this book? Like, it happens all the time. It's called All the Other Mothers Hate Me by Sarah Harman.
Jennie Nash
What a great title.
Sarina Bowen
Yeah, like, I picked up this book, and my husband said, oh my God, what a great title. And so, yes, that's super cool. And it's very voice-y. And the—the flap copy has the—a premise that smacks of a thriller, but the voice isn't like all deep, dark thriller. And so I think maybe the contrast of those two things might be why KJ put it into my hands. But I am enjoying the fabulous writing, and I'm—I'm still at the beginning, but the way she introduces characters is really sharp. So even that alone is like a little master class on introducing characters.
KJ Dell'Antonia
Yeah, that was why I gave it to you, was that we'd been talking about, you know, the voice, and also because we'd been talking about, like, funny thrillers versus thriller-y thrillers. And this isn't funny, but it's super voice-y. It reminds me of the one you pressed into my hands, which maybe is a little funnier—Listen for the Lie.
Sarina Bowen
Yeah, yeah.
Jennie Nash
Well, I'm reading something very different, which is not—not very beachy. I go to a yoga class that is taught by a middle grade English teacher, and she runs her yoga class sort of like English class, where she always starts with a poem and throughout the class, she refers back to the poem in a very embodied way that you're doing the yoga around. And then she reads the poem again at the end. It's—its spectacular. She's—she's so popular at our yoga studio that you have to, you know, fight your way in. But she read a poem by a woman named Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer—and that’s Rosemerry like Christmas Merry, so: Rosemerry. And the book is called The Unfolding. And I say it's very different from what you are all mentioning because this woman experienced the death of her young son and father in very close proximity, and her poems are ostensibly about grief, but they're just filled with joy and hope and delight. And, you know, it's kind of that thing you're talking about, Sarina—that it's—here's a book about tragedy and grief, but it's—there's something about the voice that just is—is fresh. And they're just—they're just stunning, just absolutely stunning. And I have gone and ordered all her books, of which there are—are many. So she's a new voice to me, and I just—I can't get enough of them. They're incredible.
KJ Dell'Antonia
Well, here I am going to go back to the fiction summary read-y thing. I am very late to The Thursday Murder Club party, but it is joy. It is so much fun—really your sort of classic Agatha Christie stuff, but way, way funnier and more entertaining, with a dash of elderly spies. So we're on that theme. And then I also want to mention, just because I liked it so much—and I'm not sure I want everyone to read it—What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown. This could be your lit fic read of the summer. It's somewhere—but—but it's still a page turner. And I thought the premise was extremely great. Basically, it's: what if the Unabomber had also raised a young daughter with him in the woods on all of his theories, back when the Unabomber was living in the woods, and inadvertently involved her in his first kill before she got away? And now she's an adult looking back at what happened. And Janelle Brown is a Silicon Valley person. She's really steeped in this culture. She really knows this world. It's a really good book—plus super entertaining.
Jennie Nash
I love it.
KJ Dell'Antonia
That's it!
Jess Lahey
I love it when we have a lot of good stuff, because there have been a couple weeks this year where we were like, I was just let down this time around. But yay, I'm loving this.
KJ Dell'Antonia
All right, I think that's it for us this week, kids. Remember, if you support the podcast, you get bonus content every week right now, because we are killing it. You might get Jess's Soup to Nuts series, where she is coaching a fellow writer on creating a nonfiction proposal that also will work with her speaking career. You can join me and Jennie on a weekly basis as we flail our way through the beginnings of writing a couple of books. And of course, on a monthly basis, we've got the Booklab, where we look at the First Pages of novels submitted by listeners. And if you'd like to submit to the Booklab, that'd be great. Jess will put the link in the show notes.
Jess Lahey
Indeed, Jess will. And until next week, everyone, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.
The Hashtag AmWriting 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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