[SPEAKER_01]: and welcome to our show.
[SPEAKER_01]: The shit no one tells you about writing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm best selling author Bianca Marie, and I'm joined by C.C.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lira of Wendy Sherman Associates and Carly Waters of PS Literary.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey everyone, today's guests, debut young adult novel, me, Martha was a finalist for the National Book Award, and won the Corretta Scott King, John Stipter Award for New Talent, among many other accolades.
[SPEAKER_01]: Her second young adult novel, we are also good at smiling, was a school library journal Best Book of the Year, and was praised for offering important messages uniquely delivered.
[SPEAKER_01]: I cook as reviews in a starred review.
[SPEAKER_01]: God will, for middle-grade fiction debut, was awarded the Los Angeles Times book prize, and was named a best book of the year by Publishers Weekly and Cook as Reviews.
[SPEAKER_01]: And a second middle-grade novel, Unix and Beyond, was praised as a story of perseverance and love by Cook as Reviews in a starred review.
[SPEAKER_01]: she lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's my pleasure to welcome Amber McBride.
[SPEAKER_01]: Amber, welcome to the show.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for having me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for being with us.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is one hell of a raise of me.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not often I get to read author buyers like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Before we dive in for our listeners the book that we're discussing today for those of you watching on our YouTube channel is the leaving room I'm holding up the cover as is amber it is beautiful oh my goodness it's just like it's one of those books you just want to buy just because of the cover so gorgeous and then you dive in and everything else is gorgeous too so before we start chatting about the book I'm going to read you the flat copy so you know what to expect.
[SPEAKER_01]: So
[SPEAKER_01]: Gospel is the keeper of the leaving room, a place all young people must face through when they die.
[SPEAKER_01]: You see, the young are never ready to leave.
[SPEAKER_01]: They need a moment to remember and it keeper to help there will be souls along.
[SPEAKER_01]: When a random door opens and another keeper named Melody arrives, their souls becoming tangled.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is familiarity between them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our keepers are allowed to fall in love as they move towards each other, they realise
[SPEAKER_01]: With haunting encounters and a discovery of love in a novel that takes place in a span of four minutes.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a brilliant depiction of strong young souls trying to draw their way back to a life with so many more adventures ahead together and just for context, this is a why a novel in this, okay, so we're not something that we've discussed on the podcast before so before we actually begin discussing this book in particular, I would love to hear about your journey to publication in terms of getting an agent and publishing your daily
[SPEAKER_00]: Woo, okay, that was quite a journey.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I got my MFA right out of college.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I went straight from under Brad to get my MFA at Emerson College in Boston.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I started teaching at the Furious Lara Poetry Center, which is the only black, what at the time was the only black poetry center in the United States.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the thing about when I came out of my MFA, unfortunately,
[SPEAKER_00]: This is, like, in 2001, 12-ish, we weren't talking about diversity in the same way and everything that we do now.
[SPEAKER_00]: We work on doing now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, I kind of lost my voice in my MFA program.
[SPEAKER_00]: Often, my critiques would have, like, slightly racially charged things happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, I kind of stopped writing for quite some time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, when I was working at the Pierce Law Approachary Center, we were putting on a program called
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was put on with Nikki Giovanni and my angelu.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I met all these brilliant writers.
[SPEAKER_00]: The people I looked up to my whole life on the same day.
[SPEAKER_00]: And essentially all of them knew I had gotten my MFA that I wasn't writing that much.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the game in the same advice was to forget what everyone wants you to write just what you want.
[SPEAKER_00]: And soon after that I started writing again.
[SPEAKER_00]: So after that, it still took me about
[SPEAKER_00]: five years to get an agent and it still took hundreds of rejections, two full books written that didn't get the publication.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was a very long road to get there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that people forget how much quote, I don't call it rejection, but I think people just like, you know, it takes a lot of knows to get to a, yes, I want to be rep by you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and then I ended up switching agents about four years ago too.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's been a journey.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been a journey.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, I mean, that's incredible and something that I've never heard before.
[SPEAKER_01]: So many people say that they went to do the MFA to find their voice, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's where they found their voice.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've never had somebody say before that's where I lost my voice.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's just as important to talk about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but I think that I will say that a lot of people of color or queer people I know talk about it specifically in the time period I was going, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because what I said we weren't talking on inclusion the same way we are now, lost their voice in their memory programs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or at least got to the point where they knew what they had to write for people to like it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it weren't really being authentic to themselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember very distinctly I wrote a poem that was dedicated to Malcolm
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I have so many moments like that that just invalidate myself like as a black person knowing black history well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was just so much of me trying to teach people now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do want to say my professors, John Skull, Skoyles in particular Emerson College brilliant brilliant professors.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just that you have to work in a workshop environment where you're they're not going to be as, you know, your professors are your professors to a reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: They understand the complexities and poetry and everything like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But with my peers, it was it was really difficult.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and, you know, that's the thing because you're in this kind of workshopping experience and you're wanting good feedbacks are really so difficult to be making yourself vulnerable and open yourself up to critique and of course you want good feedback and then when you find yourself adapting your voice or what you're writing so that you can get the good feedback, it's just yeah it's just so How to use of it's terrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Great, you're like going in circles.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to start.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it was an experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I do think that it's really important for anyone who is like listening, thinking about MFA.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really, really do the research.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like look at the professors that you want to work with because it will make or break your MFA program.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so really considering that before you jump in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so before we start discussing the leaving room, I'm going to ask you to read the first sort of chapter, can you first describe for our listeners who aren't familiar with, you know, a novel in verse what that is about just so that they understand that before we actually dive it.
[SPEAKER_00]: 100% so a novel in verse is a novel written through poetry.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's written with line breaks using a bit more creative kinds of forms because your work count is going to be almost a quarter of what a regular novel.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it should sound or it sounds poetic.
[SPEAKER_00]: My students have said before it's almost like a modern issue Shakespeare right so it's almost sounds like a play the way that it's set up.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a really meant to be read.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, so I think the mode works really, really well for our reluctant readers to people who want to read something short on a like a plane ride.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's fun because you get to be more creative with how you're letting the story unfold.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So for all listeners, you're going to hear and be reading it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's going to almost sound like pros.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the way you see it on the page is very much like.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there we go.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm going to show up like.
[SPEAKER_01]: some examples.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so for those of you who are not watching on YouTube, I would suggest you go and have a look on YouTube so that you can actually see the form of the words on the page.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, end of what you please read those for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, the first one is called, the gospel keeper will one do not lie.
[SPEAKER_00]: Time might not be significant everywhere, but rules must
[SPEAKER_00]: The thing is, no memory recalls itself exactly correctly.
[SPEAKER_00]: So at the center of every good telling, there's the soon marble of a lie.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most soulful things lie.
[SPEAKER_00]: Think of violins that are sitting looking instruments of the living.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're drawn struts into any melody, smaller than Adam, kissing the infinite parts of air.
[SPEAKER_00]: Think of their hums.
[SPEAKER_00]: how it gently vibrates the nerves of the skin like penny scraping stones under the scent into a washing well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes I think I can hear them, the violin and the cooking of pennies, which should be impossible because this is a true filled place and keepers can't lie because keepers don't have living souls.
[SPEAKER_00]: Keepers are only atoms, matter, and some otherness.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you open us up along our double-stitch seams, I believe only fireflies would flutter out.
[SPEAKER_00]: My, Gospels leading room, will too, only one lever and one fever in a leaving room at the same time.
[SPEAKER_00]: The room I keep is small.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some might call it a closet that you can escape.
[SPEAKER_00]: Square will sky high ceilings worn by a herd.
[SPEAKER_00]: I whisper into each night.
[SPEAKER_00]: frame paintings and sketching blind the walls and a greenous grass kitchen hugs back wall because those not ready to leave still think they need to eat.
[SPEAKER_00]: You just think that if you wanted someone to leave, you'd make the cushion sink, make the food cold and bland, craft the room dark, and get the paintings off put in smiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps other keepers do this, frighten leaders into fleeing, but only children come to my
[SPEAKER_00]: and children require dessert, moon sets, and warm blanket.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what happens in other rooms because there can only be one leader and one keeper at one time in a leading room.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is one rule I have never broken.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think the kettle hot,
[SPEAKER_00]: I collect recipes, I flood the caught in the corner with some leaders patented to sleep with quoted blankets, my chair that rocks on half moons as stations at their enormous stump linked with fuselage.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know the stump is wounded, I don't know why, changeful bruises cycle through it from blueish yellow to purpleish green, then the hill and wind and starts again.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a bit that has been struck by some mythical act.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's use a mark to the center of a leading room, a wooden compass, putting everywhere and nowhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: A main collar board is carved into the ancient vines of the stump, attached to a chance with playing pieces that have been known to mark on their own accord.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's an alchemy to being a keeper, because I also must keep the tears from running too hard,
[SPEAKER_00]: but it shouts from spinning through the seams like a string.
[SPEAKER_00]: I must charm the ceiling to blink with stars and convince the police to offer reassuring dogs.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're a rules from death.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't go back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though there are hundreds of paintings of everywhere places, there are no doors.
[SPEAKER_01]: Amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I get goosebumps.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had goosebumps when I was reading it on the page and I have goosebumps listening to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's incredible.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: So can you tell us a bit about the inspiration of this because I loved reading your authors note about what inspired it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, so this was a long time simmering.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I was in college, my dad had a near-death experience during what was supposed to be a pretty routine surgery.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he later told me about essentially how an experience where he was floating about his body and his aunt or his grandmother technically called him back to his body.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the same way, she used to call him when he was a kid, because he would sleep in.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a city boy, so he loved to sleep in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so his grandmother would always call him once twice and on the third time, she kind of yell it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he would like jump up and be like, I'm awake, I'm awake, I'm going to school.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so essentially he said, he was like, loading above his body and he heard his grandmother's voice kind of behind him, once twice and on the third time, he woke up back in his body.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it made me start thinking about like, what is this liminal space between life and death?
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea came to me again.
[SPEAKER_00]: I used to be a professor at the University of Virginia before I resigned last year, and unfortunately at 2022, there was a school shooting that resulted in the death of three students.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for me, I think that anybody who works with young people knows that they're living with life, and so this this passing of these three students was so difficult to navigate with the student body, but also as a professor, and I started thinking again like,
[SPEAKER_00]: is there's this place that holds you right after especially for young people who have so much life left.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I hope that this book will kind of open conversation about death in the afterlife outside of religion, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like outside of whatever you think is after after this.
[SPEAKER_00]: But is there a moment where you acclimate that because death feels like a very sudden thing?
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's kind of the slow progression of creating this book.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's so much that I'm packed, I mean, a book that takes place in four minutes, you know, as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was like, I think the most I've seen in terms of time frame with a book is like a book that takes place in a day.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, and then you feel like, oh, wow, they're really like a month this day.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, in terms of trying to do that in prose would be virtually impossible.
[SPEAKER_01]: It would be the most
[SPEAKER_01]: boring book that ever was, people would just be like this, nothing happening here.
[SPEAKER_01]: But poetry is about capturing a moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: So much of it is about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So can you speak a bit about your background in poetry and how that influences your story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Spot on on the idea that poetry is like so in a motion.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we can sit with a motion for so long.
[SPEAKER_00]: And prose.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you sit with emotions, it gets telly on what you want us to think the character is feeling.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so for me, verse, because I'm originally a poet, it's the idea that so much like you're saying goosebumps.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like almost like when we're listening to our favorite song, and we don't know why we get goosebumps.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's hitting at a nerve or something that feels so human.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that poetry does that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like reaching at feelings that
[SPEAKER_00]: don't necessarily like everyone's use like the analogy of the stars being like fireflies.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we all know that might be cliché, but it invoke something in us because we're taking something that when it's pitch dark outside and you see fireflies, they do reflect stars, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's these things that we all have experienced and we can review our own emotion into it as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's the beauty of poetry.
[SPEAKER_00]: It invites you to put your own experiences into it to
[SPEAKER_00]: It was also putting that narrative arc in there because I've written a poetry collection.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's different, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you have a poem and it stands alone and they kind of loosely go together.
[SPEAKER_00]: But making sure characters change from beginning to end and making sure they're still a narrative is the huge challenge for me when it came to switching to writing an actual the kind of novel in verse.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I think that for me poetry is my first love.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a thing that speaks to me the easiest and so my only novel gone will, which isn't in verse,
[SPEAKER_00]: was like rough.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, there are so many words here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like we've described the setting fully.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that was one of the bigger challenges.
[SPEAKER_00]: For me, describing something using poetry almost feels like breathing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very second nature to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, I was just thinking I said is a novelist and I sit down for the day and I give myself a word counts sort of goal, you know, 500 to 1000 words and I feel like I've done stuff and often I'll just be wordy for the sake of being wordy so that I can hit my damn word count.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's a whole thing about poetry is that the economy of language there that you don't see in prose.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's about capturing something in fewer words rather than more words.
[SPEAKER_01]: So can you tell us about your approach to the craft of writing when it comes to something like this?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you plot everything out?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know what's going to be where?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it kind of pencing and seeing where it goes?
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you tell us a bit more about that?
[SPEAKER_00]: For me, I'm a pantser, so I'm just going with the vibe.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been hoping for the best, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's really intuitive in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I will say for the leaving room this book and for Nemo, my debut, I knew how the book was going to end.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I just was working towards that ending.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so for me, when I sit down, I don't really have a work out in mind when it comes to poetry.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's more, can I get through the scene?
[SPEAKER_00]: This moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I tend to be a very fast drafter.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think the easiest thing in the verse for the first draft is important to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I do put up pretty big workouts, even though it is burst, but I really kind of just feel through the story and I hope for the best, which does mean on the back and I'm doing a lot more editing than the average person, because you do have to go back and you start to pull out things, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, oh, when I talk about memory, I'm using a lot of synth.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, like, let's you smell more, let me pull that out more, or, oh, when I'm using this one girl, she does have a sticky kind of word in language, maybe her name should be maple instead of this, that kind of stuff I start to like tease that as I edit.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm quite surprised that you say that you draft quite quickly because people I know who write poetry or who write so beautifully that it feels like poetry, you know, I'll be sitting across from them and we'll be having a writing session and I'll get to write 500 words in an hour and they will write sort of 50 words, but they are so particular about those 50 words.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, it's interesting that you're able to
[SPEAKER_01]: head to off and that's so important for me right because too many times we allow the critic to creep into the drafting phase and then we like know that's not good and that's not the right word and that's not the right word choice.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I love how you're able to just drop quickly which I think means you're not allowing the critic in the room.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, a hundred percent, a hundred percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that for me, I write very quickly, I've put out a lot of books in the last couple of years and people ask me how I do it and I say my biggest superpower is what I'm
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, those times where I'm like, that is a horrible line.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't care what's the kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I just take that out of it because I think that everything has to be done badly before it can be done well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I really, really lean into that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: My friends, it's actually funny because my friends who write in prose actually joke about my high work counts.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if we like, sprint together, I can often get more words than them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I usually draft a first novel in a month, first draft.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so then I go back and obviously I work with it for quite some time.
[SPEAKER_00]: But like first drafts, I can get out really quickly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I get tedious people are talking about when I'm like getting meticulous about the actual line in the structure, but my first drafts generally,
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm still putting up a 500 to 1,000 more days in inverse, which I mean, I love.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, but it is, it's getting the critic out of your head.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that this idea of perfection at first draft does not make sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even in sports, people have to practice and everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, I was about arena for 18 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: I look at it like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like when I personally look at choreography, I'm not good at it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't review that much emotion into the movement.
[SPEAKER_00]: It takes time and you have to allow yourself that time.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to allow yourself grace to create something that you can be proud of.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's amazing how much time it takes to make something look effortless.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you see somebody doing it with a rich or writer or whether it's somebody who's an Olympian or whatever, you know, you just go, oh my god, they're making it so easy, but it's hours and hours that go into that exactly exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that is that is a great way of putting it.
[SPEAKER_01]: How important is reading aloud your own work aloud as you're drafting it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it's something that I say to a lot of my students, is that it's so important to hear the words, to hear the cadence and the rhythm of the words.
[SPEAKER_01]: And especially if a scene becomes really fast and action-field as opposed to when it's more meditative, take your breath, let's regroup kind of scene.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for me, I get the most out of my work after I've drafted an edited and then I'm reading it a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I imagine with both, it's got to be the same or even more important.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, definitely.
[SPEAKER_00]: So for me, I'm always reading the lines aloud even from the early drafting part we were talking about because I think poetry is meant to kind of be read.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you do, like you're saying, you catch so much plotting, you catch repetition.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like things you don't notice when you're just reading in your head that when you're speaking it,
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, oh, that doesn't work or, oh, wow, that sound looks sounds good together.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, I read my books a lot and I think that even more so now, because I have done this I've done, I don't remember.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I'm on my fourth audio book that I've done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even reading aloud meticulously is something that doing audiobooks is taught me.
[SPEAKER_00]: is that having a director pointing out where they think the emphasis is, and then you're being like, oh, I don't know that I thought that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It makes me look even more closely at my verse.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's really helped me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that when I did this audio book, I saw that because I remember when I was reading it to myself like, oh, that's not going to sound great on audio.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so like, it's so many aspects that come into the crafting of poetry, but reading aloud is
[SPEAKER_00]: definitely something that's very important.
[SPEAKER_00]: It also makes the very clean drafts.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you notice that like you catch a lot of errors when you're reading your work alone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because you skip all of that when you're just reading it on the page and some people say okay make the font figure change the font size that you're on skipping past the mistakes and stuff but to me nothing works as well as reading it aloud.
[SPEAKER_01]: The camp speak a bit about the world building with this book because there was a lot of world building, you know, in terms of
[SPEAKER_01]: So what was your approach to that, especially since you're a pencil, was that I'm going to get there and then I'm going to figure out how the world works or was it that you kind of knew how the world works and then you were figuring out the plot as you were going along.
[SPEAKER_00]: For me, it was definitely, I have no idea how the world works.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know how I want it to look, let's just see how it goes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because there was another aspect to the creation of this, but it was great to mention, is that while I was going through all this and these things were happening, I started working on a puzzle of a girl who was in a room by herself with a wall, and there were lots of books, and there were like fish outside the window, it was very surrealist.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was kind of the reference spot for what a leaving room might look like.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just every fancible thing I could think of.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, does it have the beauty and the beast aspect of a giant library?
[SPEAKER_00]: Does it have this Southern Gothic aspect from the south?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, in viewing that, the rules actually came along.
[SPEAKER_00]: We talked about fun of drafting.
[SPEAKER_00]: When my editor was like, was sitting in bed.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot happening here.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got to ground this a bit more.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, what if there are rules?
[SPEAKER_00]: And she was like, that would really help, because especially like explaining to the reader what's at stake in the beginning.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that comes along.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love how collaborative, writing a book with an editor you trust can be, because they know your style, I'm not trying to change it, but they're like, hey, this is how we can make it better.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's when the rules came along, but the idea that it happened in four minutes, that was something that was also, I knew from the beginning, without giving spoilers, because there were certain aspects that I had known how the end was going to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in general, it was just, I really do feel my life through things, and so later, I'll be like, okay, well, I didn't actually describe the room.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I should do that right and then how the room changes through the season.
[SPEAKER_00]: What does that feel like?
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, I put like a YouTube video a fall up and just listen and like remember what it sounds like that kind of stuff really trying to get into a nitty gritty of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then one fun thing I did do with this one because memory and smell are so closely related.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of like smell kind of descriptions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that I went on my favorite pro team website and I was just like reading how they were describing.
[SPEAKER_00]: certain sense and I like had a list of like worlds I really liked and I was like okay what ones of these actually working the story so it was trying to really create something that felt very lush and very full even though like he said it's only happening over four minutes and it's only happening and essentially a room.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do I keep that interesting and engaging?
[SPEAKER_01]: But also at this kind of book, there's like a sense of timelessness, even though it is only happening in form minutes and you know that about the place like there's a sense of time being suspended and I love what you've just said now about having a YouTube video for leaves a tech trip because when I'm writing a doc and stormy night, I listen to thunder and lightning and I have a flashing so that it feels authentic to me and I love to light candles as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: lot's something that's like smell like cedo whatever because that really makes something come alive to me and I've got tons of vision boards as well you know so that I can describe something while looking at it and and I love that you do the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you ever do playlist as well for like music aspect?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah
[SPEAKER_01]: but some books, but not all books.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've written one book that the whole book needed an entire playlist, but the next book there was no playlist at all, except for sound effects.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like, every book teaches you how to write it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep, every book, a different journey.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Tis.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, this is, okay, we've come to the end of our time, unfortunately, for our listeners, even if you are not a poetry person, even if you're not averse person, please go and get this book.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're linking to it on our bookshop.org affiliate page.
[SPEAKER_01]: You get the book there.
[SPEAKER_01]: You support an independent bookstore and the podcast at the same time.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the kind of book you want to add to your collection and you want to save it.
[SPEAKER_01]: The words become like this, like hard candy that you want to just rub all over your
[SPEAKER_01]: suck it until the flavors all gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just, it's, it's incredible.
[SPEAKER_01]: So please go and get it even if you're on poetry people because it teaches you about language, about the best use of language.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I just absolutely loved it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amber, we wish you so much success with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just want to say thank you so much for having me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I listen to this podcast a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, especially a little while back.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I just really appreciate you having me and thank you again.
[SPEAKER_01]: Amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a best compliment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's it for today's episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: I hope you'll join us for next week's show.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the meantime, keep at it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Remember, it just takes one yes.