[Minda Honey, Part 1]: Answering the call to write + the right beverages are everything Ep 1044

Minda Honey is the author of The Heartbreak Years, a hilarious and intimate memoir of a Black woman finding who she is and who she wants to be, one bad date at a time.

Minda's essays on politics and relationships have appeared in all kinds of amazing places, including Harper's Bazaar, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Teen Vogue, and Longreads. She is also the editor of Black Joy at Reckon, an online outlet where she also helms a newsletter that has nearly 60,000 subscribers.

Honestly there were SO MANY quotes I wanted to pull from this interview–just go ahead and press play right now

But here’s the synopsis:

How Minda–the daughter of a postal worker and a computer programmer–did the “get good grades, get a scholarship, join corporate America” thing and realized, it wasn’t for her

Squaring all the “Davids and Jonathans”--the typical authors taught in MFA programs–with the Tonis and Zoras Minda revered

The financial move that helped Minda launch her freelance career

The many daily parts of life that count as ‘writing’

Why you NEED to find your writing community

Minda’s recipe for sitting down to write: Lofi music + a trio of beverages and four hours blocked off

The satisfying clickety clack of a specific type of keyboard

Why Minda was doing our interview from Mexico (it involves “skipping winter”, but there’s a lot more to it than that)

Giving up drinking and moving away from home

For full show notes with links to everything we discuss, plus bonus photos!, visit katehanley.substack.com.

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