[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 CC Lira of Wendy Sherman Associates and Carly Waters of PS Literary.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hi everybody, we have clients with me today.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love it when I get to have my clients on the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know Bianca carries such a heavy load in doing all of the author interviews, and I get to pepper in the schedule with my clients, which is great.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have two clients, as you will notice, if you're watching us on YouTube, I have two clients because they co-write together.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love the clients, Tracey Dobmire, Wendy Kasman, authors of 10,000 light years from OK. And again, if you're in YouTube, you can see it over their shoulder there
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to talk about their sophomore novel.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess we can call it sophomore because it is the sophomore published novel and as you guys know in the show we'd love to talk about the publishing experience so we get into everything that these guys have worked on, everything going out with this book and I'm going to throw into these two to introduce the novel.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when the interesting, what is your new novel about?
[SPEAKER_02]: Great.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hi.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Tracy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so yes, our novel is about a young writer.
[SPEAKER_02]: So several years after her husband's shocking death near a plot line in her debut novel, she's very superstitious and she's on the verge of squandering her entire career when a bedtime tale that she spins for her young daughter convinces her to write a hopeful romance.
[SPEAKER_02]: So unfortunately, when a man bearing an uncanny resemblance to the novel's love interest, suddenly walks into her life, she has to learn the difference between imagining happiness and fighting for it before it costs her everything.
[SPEAKER_05]: So I'm Wendy.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm very excited to be here with you, Carly.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so this novel, it really dives into questions of connection, coincidence, resilience, and what it means to find your way in the world when it feels overwhelming.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And obviously, I love this book.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love all my clients book.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I'm, I'm a broken record of my clients.
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, like, let's talk about all the things I love about this book, but as you guys can see, it has a right and really hook to it, which keeps it very on the, with our show, the shit no one tells you about writing, because we have a novelist author as a character, which is so fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's lots of things I want to get into, obviously, some of the themes that when do you just write up our, all on point,
[SPEAKER_00]: The first thing I want to get to, because CC had one of her clients on the last author interview, and Dr. Tracy Diagletes has an expert on in-laws, and she had an in-law book.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to start off by linking the last author interview to this author to me, because there's a very interesting in-law connection between our main character, Thia, and her in-laws.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to talk about in-laws.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we obviously don't have to spill any family secrets of your in-laws situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: on the spot about your in-law situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love my in-laws and they're lovely.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I think they're really interesting relationships.
[SPEAKER_00]: So can you walk us through what is our writer, characters, what is her living situation and tell us about her in-laws?
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I mean, first of all, I will say that both of us absolutely adore our mothers-in-law.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it did, there's nothing out of my graphical in the characters or what happens in the story.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's an interest, we, we needed a
[SPEAKER_02]: someone to kind of be reflecting back on to the kind of where she was in her life journey, in her grief journey.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we actually have like, it's actually quite a close relationship in a lot of ways because the when she starts out, so she's very young, she gets
[SPEAKER_02]: Mary Young, she has the state view novel.
[SPEAKER_02]: Her husband is like an up-and-coming tennis player on the pro tour and then he suddenly dies.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when he dies they had been living in the guest house of his parents.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's a very close family relationship and she continues living there because she's about to have a baby.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then so there's a lot of like really lovely kind of family connections that happen in the beginning and then things kind of start to, you know, take some interesting turns as we go through.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, and we can't, you know, we can't spoil this novel on this show.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was one thing Tracy Wendy and I were kind of emailing it, but we're like, how much of the story can we tell?
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, why do we need to read it?
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's lots of cheesy stuff to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we won't say why the in-laws are the foil.
[SPEAKER_00]: We will just say the in-laws are the foil.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you'll have to read the book to find out.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yes, I think that's lovely, because the grandparents are such a nice relationship with their granddaughter, which is really sweet.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then it gets that point of, you know, when do you have to spread your wings, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And kind of, and move out after that big loss.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just love how kind of real complex that was.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is also a literary agent character in your book.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, I just, again, people read these books and they think, okay, what do you choice to have an agent?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's an agent in this, you know, in this story.
[SPEAKER_00]: What are some of the connections?
[SPEAKER_00]: So, let's talk about how this literary agent is maybe similar and or dissimilar to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And obviously, we can talk about our working relationship as well.
[SPEAKER_05]: to have you as our agent and our partner.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, I think when you're going through this process, you so badly want an agent, but it is so important that the agent that you end up with is a partner who believes in you and the number of times where you have told us you believe in us, because this is a hard journey and things have not always gone our way.
[SPEAKER_05]: So we are eternally grateful to this relationship.
[SPEAKER_05]: There's a line in the book from you that's kind of inspired some of this where the agent tells the that she is the sear of contemporary fiction.
[SPEAKER_05]: And you had said that to us at one point after we were in the process of writing our debut novel Girls With Bright Futures that was based on a college admission scandal.
[SPEAKER_05]: And we were almost done writing it when the
[SPEAKER_05]: And then we had another book idea that was kind of based on these sports and a character had a health issue and then something like that happened in the real world and said that's when you said to us you guys are the series of contemporary fiction and and that kind of helped spur on this idea of.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like a writer being afraid that what she writes will come true because we were already superstitious people and that really played into it right and I'll also add that like so you've always said to us from day one and that was one of the things we loved about you from the beginning was that you're in it for after you've proven that.
[SPEAKER_02]: like time and again because you know we've had some flops and we've had some successes and you've always been there and saying you know I believe in you keep going and that is so meaningful and in Bias case she's really pushing that to the limit because she's gotten so in her head that she's about to really throw away her entire career and so it actually is like it's not we weren't necessarily thinking about
[SPEAKER_02]: What would happen if that happened to us and would currently stick with us, but I think the fact that you have stuck with us through so much makes us feel like it was just an interesting thing to contemplate is there a point where, you know, the agent is like, okay, you know, if you're not going to write it all and you're and you're basically completely and it dead stands still then what are we actually do it in here.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's just kind of an interesting concept in the kind of publishing journey to think about.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's like, there's so many things that I want to touch on.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things is that what I think this book does so well, like the example of the in laws and the example of the literate agent character is a lot of writers would just write their version of what they think, oh, you know, this caricature of an in mind is or this caricature of an agent.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you guys always come with such depth and heart and you're like, okay, but also how am I going to take this to the limit because this is fiction.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not my job to create this necessary exact reality, the job of the author and of the writer is obviously to contextualize it within the plot and kind of make it interesting as possible for the reader.
[SPEAKER_00]: So.
[SPEAKER_00]: You guys did a fantastic, fantastic job on that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I want to switch over to the superstitions because you kind of just, you touched on that a little bit and that's such an obviously huge part of this book.
[SPEAKER_00]: This idea of like, what can we manifest into reality?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that even possible to manifest things in reality?
[SPEAKER_00]: It is that just like longing and hope enough sometimes to get us through it when times are tough.
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a number of things that, again, we're chatting about offline.
[SPEAKER_00]: And do you guys have your own superstitions?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, your right-release superstitions are life superstitions.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you feel about the superstitions in your life?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we're going to share that with you for a while.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're our lucky days.
[SPEAKER_02]: We take these with us everywhere, we only go on the writing desk.
[SPEAKER_02]: They do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're in the office on the shelf right above our desk.
[SPEAKER_00]: So those of you that are watching on YouTube, they're like dice that would go over your mirror your car.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's only the tip of the iceberg for us.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're we're we're quite superstitious.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean one example would be
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, obviously, Carly, you know, the Rusty world probably doesn't, but I had breast cancer.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, we were purying you.
[SPEAKER_02]: We actually puried you from my chemo suite.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, during that time, Wendy was like my rock.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the way that we kind of got through this time and kept our hope and everything was Wendy gave me this present.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was just, it was like, I think there were 15 different lucky charms from all over the world.
[SPEAKER_02]: And,
[SPEAKER_02]: It was just, you know, some little plastic figurines in the rabbit's foot and like you name it and with a description of why each thing was lucky and I that I held that deer and it got me through a very tough time and it got us through a lot of, you know, challenges and we have continued like they all those lucky charms are still in our office and we kind of.
[SPEAKER_02]: Clinked in that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we are superstitious.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would say in a very real way and every time we send a big like a manuscript off to you We each touch one of the lucky dice and then we push sentence That's a bigger veil Very superstition.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I guess like my like you know gentle push to you was what happens if Like how do you know I guess the terms always work?
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you know?
[SPEAKER_05]: You don't
[SPEAKER_05]: I think part of it is just it's like just in case we're big and catching our bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so let's just stick with our superstition name for a little bit because it's also one of those things where it is a bit let's call it like a more of a woohoo science or however you want to describe it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you feel like you want it to be grounded in science or do you like that it's more like a of what a thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it depends.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I'm a very analytical person.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think I do want things to be grand.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to understand the way the world works.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I also find it kind of just delightful.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: It feels very like exciting when something really crazy happens.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you think, well, what if there's something else there's some invisible hand that's kind of controlling this?
[SPEAKER_02]: So I mean, I can give one crazy story, just as an example
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know how to think about it, but I love the story.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm from LA originally, we live in Seattle.
[SPEAKER_02]: Dodgers made this to the world's series last year.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're also in the Philippines.
[SPEAKER_02]: probably your kids will try to raise it now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and this guy's out with this comes out.
[SPEAKER_00]: You guys will know the outcome right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: We do know the outcome.
[SPEAKER_02]: We do not know the outcome.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, as this series is tied one one.
[SPEAKER_02]: But last year, the Dodgers got into the world series against the Yankees, and it was a really big moment for someone who had grown up at Dodgers' man.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I decided to head down the LA and see a game.
[SPEAKER_02]: I picked game one, and I went with some family including my son.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I grown up kind of going to baseball games with my dad.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was very special, oh, like special relationships.
[SPEAKER_02]: So in Seattle, I just remember that I had this like box of memorabilia and I started digging through it and I find a world series t-shirt from the 1986 World Series, which for those who
[SPEAKER_02]: don't follow baseball.
[SPEAKER_02]: So game one, the Dodgers end up winning the whole series by game one ended with just an absolutely iconic walk off home run by someone named Kirk Gibson.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so Kirk Gibson's face is feature on this T-shirt that's ancient.
[SPEAKER_02]: I bring it with me to LA.
[SPEAKER_02]: And my son looks at it and is like, tell me what is this, you know, my as a special, that was like, well, I thought maybe it would bring us good luck because the Dodgers won that world series.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just have it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so my dad, who was too in firm to go to the game, but we were visiting with him just before.
[SPEAKER_02]: And my dad tells my son the whole story about the Kirk Gibson home run and
[SPEAKER_02]: Now it's at the stage for the Dodgers to win that series and I suddenly said that's really cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: Can I wear the shirt and I said sure, maybe that'll bring us good luck too.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we went to the game and sure enough at the bottom of the ninth inning.
[SPEAKER_02]: Dodger Freddie Freeman hits a walkoff, Reinslam home run that was just so epic.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it kind of mirrored the 1986 World Series and my son's wearing this t-shirt.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we just, like, there were so many layers of things that had to happen in coincidences.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was so, like, it kind of blew my mind, honestly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love, okay, speaking of world series t-shirts.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going very deep into baseball law.
[SPEAKER_00]: When the blue jays won the world see if they did back to back 92 93 baseball wins.
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad went to one of the 93 games.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know which game it was, but he brought me back as child.
[SPEAKER_00]: He brought me back a t-shirt and it was like bright blue and I wore it, you know, went through the wash obviously, but like till, you know, the class of like crinkles off of the
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I also have like a very old world series, uh, original thing that has long gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I know I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's, there is, like you said, just so much hope, and there is so much connection between all these events in our life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we never really know, you know, obviously, where this is all going to stem from and where it's going to pin from.
[SPEAKER_00]: But,
[SPEAKER_00]: It's such a beautiful thing to think, you know, if this had happened, or if I had an apartment, this parking spot we wouldn't have gone to this time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, and so there's so many coincidences that happen in your book, do you want to talk a little bit about the coincidence where fear decides what her book is going to be about, and then she meets the person that is connected to the book?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that going to give it away?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, we're looking at the other way to think how are we going to say that's without giving it away.
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, so she decides to write.
[SPEAKER_05]: I have to write.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's good to write the book anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can tell.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: So via has a young daughter Lucy who is obsessed with princesses.
[SPEAKER_05]: So anyone with a little girl maybe has been through this.
[SPEAKER_05]: And.
[SPEAKER_05]: It had never occurred to her to write something hopeful and she just cannot bear to tell another princess story.
[SPEAKER_05]: So she ends up like she makes up a story for her daughter one night and it inspires her.
[SPEAKER_05]: What if I made up my own hopeful romance imagining my husband returning to me?
[SPEAKER_05]: And because like what's the worst that could happen?
[SPEAKER_05]: Like maybe she can bring him back.
[SPEAKER_02]: So she does that, but her writing knows in her logical mind, she knows.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's not crazy.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's just, yeah, right.
[SPEAKER_05]: She's bad, hopeful.
[SPEAKER_05]: But she's hopeful, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: Because again, what's the worst thing that could happen in it?
[SPEAKER_05]: It's a way to get her writing again and away for her to spend time in that space with Sam, her husband, thinking about him, where she sometimes doesn't feel like she has permission in the rest of her life, because it's been several years.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I think sometimes people expect
[SPEAKER_05]: You move on, even though that isn't really how great works, and so it's giving herself permission to live in this world with him.
[SPEAKER_05]: So she writes this very hopeful romance about, or she pitches this idea of a hopeful romance about a professional tennis player, and her wise agent says to autobiographically, you gotta come up with something else.
[SPEAKER_02]: You need something larger than life.
[SPEAKER_05]: So she, she has just gotten her daughter a dog and the dog, I can sit in this part, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: Is this okay?
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_05]: She's like smiling.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's like, she's like, I think so.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think we should let the rest of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's many coincidences such as the character of, you know, anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You got real little twilight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't, I don't, I don't want to spoil it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the book is so charming and everybody's going to love all of the different twists and weird ends up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, let's go back to the dog though.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to talk about the dog.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's this, you know, saying that goes around essentially that, you know, certain things in your life isn't going to fix something, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, you know, a child isn't going to fix a marriage or a dog isn't going to fix a grief, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But let's talk a little bit about the your dog character Sam and explain to us,
[SPEAKER_00]: How Sam gets a Sam's name, and let's talk about the pet inspiration, is there like, you know, because it was our pet in your life, that's very close to you, and then got you through a tough time, or, you know, how do you think about pets in your life?
[SPEAKER_05]: Definitely.
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, we each have a dog.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: This is really my first dog.
[SPEAKER_05]: Tracy's in the dog person for a long time.
[SPEAKER_05]: And
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, we happen to think there's like nothing better than dogs to get you through pretty much anything.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, ours came to us during the pandemic and was a really important addition that helped bring a lot of joy to our family.
[SPEAKER_05]: Cindy, want to talk about how?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, have the dog came to me?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, so the dog, we, so basically, via, so via has a best friend,
[SPEAKER_02]: And Randy's no-nonsense, she's always kind of there supporting via, but kind of pushing her to kind of be rope-rounded in the real world.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, via is reluctant to date again.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's been several years since her husband died, but she's still really stuck in her grief process.
[SPEAKER_02]: And Randy is encouraging her to date.
[SPEAKER_02]: And as a way of kind of putting, she's like, you're not moving forward with your life, you need to move forward.
[SPEAKER_02]: Franny, one day, Pia just blurt's out.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I am moving forward.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm getting a dog, okay?
[SPEAKER_02]: She has no idea what I know to the dog.
[SPEAKER_02]: So she ends up getting this dog just because she can't like disappoint Franny, those Franny will hold her to it and does.
[SPEAKER_02]: And but then they bring the dog home and the other Lucy is three at the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: And she's, she's,
[SPEAKER_02]: heard all these stories about her dad who was no longer with them and his name is Sam.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the minute the dog walks in the door, Lucy starts jumping up and down and saying, it's Sam the dog.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's his name.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's Sam the dog.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they try everything to talk her out of it, but she's just absolutely determined as many three-year-olds are.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so,
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, in some ways it feels almost disrespectful to Neme, her dog after her late husband, but at the same time it keeps the memory is right there in front of them and keeps that connection going.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's also like Lucy's so perceptive because part of the reason she chooses the name is that she thinks it'll make her mother happy because she knows how sad her mother is and maybe this
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's the word Sam, you know, connotate sex sadness, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, can we make the name Sam, you know, give us happy feelings.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, okay, I love, I love our dog character.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was thinking I was making notes before the call looks I have two dogs.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I was today excited.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mayan lost, we could have been lost.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I've been lost, I'll get that out.
[SPEAKER_00]: and I have my dog so yeah we we love pets on this show and they're such a such a great pet character and this one that you know again won't spoil it but helps bring some of the story line together so because this is a writing show I want to talk about the writing process as well right so there are two of you writing one book you want to walk our listeners through that process for you guys how it works maybe from conception to the logistics
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah, go ahead and look at the content.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay, so this book is a little bit different than our first book, Girls With Bright Futures, which had three points of view.
[SPEAKER_05]: And we'll talk about our process that by having three characters, it was easier to divide up the writing.
[SPEAKER_05]: So the way this, say our new book, 10,000 light earsmoke has one point of view.
[SPEAKER_05]: So many things were still the same.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like we brainstorm everything
[SPEAKER_05]: That's probably where we spend the most time in our writing process.
[SPEAKER_05]: And then once we're ready to go, we divide up the actual writing.
[SPEAKER_05]: And because this was one point of view, we couldn't say, okay, you write this character and you write this character, we just divided it up based on the chapter and because we each kind of like to write, we have different strengths and like to write different types of things.
[SPEAKER_05]: And then as you finish a chapter, we always stay really close together.
[SPEAKER_05]: You put it into the master.
[SPEAKER_05]: And then we spend a ton of time editing.
[SPEAKER_05]: And finding that voice, smoothing everything out, that's probably the second largest part of our time.
[SPEAKER_05]: The actual writing of bringing out first draft is definitely the fastest part of what we do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, I love that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and then I would say just kind of more on like,
[SPEAKER_02]: a meta level for the co-writing process.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's, you know, we've been friends for 25 years, 25 plus years, I think.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we've always been really close that I think that a writing partnership is different on many levels.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you really have to make yourself so vulnerable to the other because,
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you know, when you're editing, for example, there are just things that have to go or, you know, and maybe it's your stuff and maybe it's your partner stuff and you and we just have to decide from the beginning that we're going to check our egos at the door and we're going to be honest and we're going to be loving and supportive and it's just it's really worked for us, but it's not to say that it's always easy in there definitely moments where
[SPEAKER_02]: We have, I won't say fights at all, like never a fight, but we, you know, there are moments like when you get my get a little testy when you're deep into a revision and then and you just kind of want to be woke up on the wrong side of the bed or like in my case just didn't sleep at all or.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, there are sometimes there are points where you just put a pin in it and you come back the next day.
[SPEAKER_05]: But I think part of that, so there was, there's another writing duo,
[SPEAKER_05]: rule that they imparted to us.
[SPEAKER_05]: And their rule was no always wins.
[SPEAKER_05]: So if there is anything, it could be a word, it could be a plot twist, it could be a name, whatever it is, if one of us is not comfortable, you speak up, and we never compromise.
[SPEAKER_05]: So this is our new part that we added to this rule.
[SPEAKER_05]: Because compromise gets you mediocrity.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so what we do is you gotta keep working on it until we both get to not just yes, but like, yes, with an exclamation point.
[SPEAKER_05]: And that could, I mean, we might look up a word.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, this is okay, this is a funny point so that's actually in the writing process.
[SPEAKER_05]: So we were having a conversation, we spend a lot of times, I'm sure a lot of writers do this, just looking upwards.
[SPEAKER_05]: You're trying to find that perfect word.
[SPEAKER_05]: And there is the word, the anthem.
[SPEAKER_05]: And what's that the right word?
[SPEAKER_05]: And we must have gone 10 minutes looking at words.
[SPEAKER_05]: Having a conversation.
[SPEAKER_05]: No, that's not the right word.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's not the right word.
[SPEAKER_05]: So every day, we both do the New York Times spelling bee.
[SPEAKER_05]: And the next day, after this like 10 minute conversation, trying to find the right word, the pan gram where it uses all the letters, the very next day, was fantastic.
[SPEAKER_05]: So that was a sign, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: How did you say that's not a sign?
[SPEAKER_05]: It would be a perfect thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like everything needs to go by my lottery ticket today when they're listening to the episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, this is the lucky episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a superstition.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just your gal, all the things, I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I love that, like totally what you said.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like we can't compromise, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's like neither is, it's not that neither's winning, but more so that the common goal isn't being achieved, which is having the best possible writing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I wanna go back to one thing you said, which is a YouTube of different strings, which is so interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: in the sense that, you know, maybe it's dialogue or this or that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you want to talk a little bit about which each of your come back to a baseball metaphor, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, you know, on the team, you know, what's your experience?
[SPEAKER_00]: Does it really often?
[SPEAKER_00]: Does it defend?
[SPEAKER_00]: So what are your strengths and how have you decided that through your strengths?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you know, that's interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Actually, and I think our strengths have kind of evolved over time, but I think, I mean, I'll go first.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that I have
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, let's see.
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess I'm going to start by saying my weakness is, is that I tend to overwrite, so like I'm the person who the first draft, I mean, so I have a lawyer by training.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can write, I could write like the equivalent of three paragraphs that's one sentence, you know, that's just kind of how my mind thinks.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I've had to really work at editing myself and.
[SPEAKER_02]: trying to, you know, so I, and trying to write shorter sentences and trying to only put the information in that we actually need.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's something that, and I've kind of learned from Wendy, Wendy's got a really like, she's just got a really kind of succinct way of expressing ideas.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so over time, I think we've kind of like I've gotten a little less verbose and maybe I think I've gotten more because my problem is sometimes I assume that's already an evidence.
[SPEAKER_05]: I was not a lawyer.
[SPEAKER_05]: maybe that's why.
[SPEAKER_05]: So, sometimes I leave too much in my head and just assume that too many the reader knows too many details.
[SPEAKER_05]: So, I think we balance each other out in that way.
[SPEAKER_05]: So, like I love to write dialogue.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's, yeah, in your exposition is amazing.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I think that's
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and to be able to write about them.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, but it just, it all comes together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it's just going to say it's also not only to kind of have a writing partner.
[SPEAKER_00]: You also have an editing partner, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because you get to, like, that's a built-in fully-formed system.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you're the Otani of writing, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Right, but you can't handle it.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's just exactly like, oh my gosh.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I mean, we have this joke, like, if she wants to use an advert,
[SPEAKER_05]: I have to sell her the app, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: It's just convinced, yes, I've been through it.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm very stingy, that's so stingy.
[SPEAKER_05]: The app, too.
[SPEAKER_02]: Give it to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: It can work for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the quarter of the day.
[SPEAKER_00]: You only get so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep, great.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: You do.
[SPEAKER_00]: You guys are so delightful.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's talk about also just like the writing history.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like obviously we've talked about, you know, you published one book before even friends for 25 plus years and obviously this is your second novel.
[SPEAKER_00]: So obviously I am not going to ask you guys your age.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this is not your, you know, the first wave of your career you have done other things as you guys spoke to and alluded to with your careers in law and in marketing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's talk about, you know, how you got to this is in terms of the second act or third act or if everyone will look at it with all of your life experience because I love when authors come with so much life experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, there's life to be lived to kind of, again, have that experience and that emotionality to write, you know, fiction in a big way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you guys want to speak about how you kind of like brought that energy into your career?
[SPEAKER_02]: Sure, definitely.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when we first decided to try to write a novel, it actually came later.
[SPEAKER_02]: We were about late 40s at the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're kind of mid to late 50s now.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've been at this for a bit.
[SPEAKER_02]: brief situations in our families.
[SPEAKER_02]: We both had husbands at the time who had gone through major health crises and while we were raising our kids.
[SPEAKER_05]: We still have those husbands.
[SPEAKER_02]: Please tell me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sorry.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I did not come out right.
[SPEAKER_02]: They did great.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: They both made it through, but it was definitely, it was a journey and we had kind of as good friends at that time had done a lot of talking about what, you know, the meaning of life
[SPEAKER_02]: freezing kids and in friendship.
[SPEAKER_05]: The impact on your friendships when you're dealing with these issues and our kids were the older kids were getting ready to apply to college.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: That was also impacting friendships.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when we decided to actually try and write a novel, it was something that neither of us had ever done.
[SPEAKER_02]: We actually had no expectation in our lives of this was something we were going to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was kind of a second or third act as you say,
[SPEAKER_02]: And we were thrilled with the idea initially, and just kind of dove right in, trying to teach ourselves how to write it, not be Google, how do you write a novel.
[SPEAKER_02]: We didn't have any of the technical experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: We didn't have an MFA, we felt nervous about, because our VA, we didn't feel like we had time to go back and get an MFA at this stage, or we'd be wasting valuable years when we could be trying to actually write.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we just sort of dove in, but we had a lot of
[SPEAKER_02]: self-doubt in those early months, probably the whole first year I would say, and one thing that really affected us and kind of changed the way we were thinking was that we had each kind of independently as parents read this book called mindset by Carol Dweck, and she's that we did a whole video on it, but it was really it's truly was one of the most impactful books that we'd ever read because
[SPEAKER_02]: as parents what we realized was that we've been telling our kids how to kind of take chances and live in this growth mindset.
[SPEAKER_02]: But for us, we were kind of practicing.
[SPEAKER_02]: We were modeling the fixed mindset in that moment by doubting ourselves and feeling like maybe we can't do this.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we do this.
[SPEAKER_05]: But if we fail, what if we're terrible?
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so,
[SPEAKER_05]: That was a huge wake up call when we realized like we weren't being the types of parents that we wanted to be.
[SPEAKER_05]: So we really had to reassess our situation and figure out how do we apply the growth mindset to our writing and once we did that.
[SPEAKER_05]: We never had another conversation about should we try this?
[SPEAKER_05]: Could we do this?
[SPEAKER_05]: We just decided we were going to just do our best, which is what we were asking from our kids.
[SPEAKER_05]: Just do your best, put in your best effort and control things you can control.
[SPEAKER_05]: So whether it was reading craft books or getting your button your chair or becoming part of the community or
[SPEAKER_05]: reading, hitting your word count, like, those are the things we could control.
[SPEAKER_05]: Not what other people thought.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, you can never control what other people think.
[SPEAKER_05]: They're always bringing other baggage, their own perspectives, the business, whatever to the table.
[SPEAKER_05]: And that changed everything for us.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's gotten us through a lot of difficult times in the publishing journey because
[SPEAKER_02]: I think we can share that our, that the book that gained us your representation never actually got picked up by a publisher and it was devastating at first because we thought we thought we, you know, kind of had it made.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we didn't and you said go right another book and we said, oh, really for a minute.
[SPEAKER_02]: But then we remembered this growth mindset, and we saw it as an opportunity.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we literally, like, we hit the books, Carly, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: After you told us that, we kind of liturbed one for a few minutes, and then we read more craft books.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we read more fiction in our genres.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we just worked really, really hard.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we always looked at it as something that we could grow and that we weren't just like, you know, kind of, we didn't just have a set amount of talent.
[SPEAKER_02]: we can improve.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then that led to girls with right features.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then it'll happen again.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, remember our sportsbook, you know, we wrote this sportsbook that we loved and but it, it just was.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll just sit at the time to think, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I, you know, I do have this on the show all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, books, you never know when a book is going to come back around.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, I think you guys were ahead of you talking with this sportsbook.
[SPEAKER_00]: So any editor's listening.
[SPEAKER_00]: that you know how to find me.
[SPEAKER_00]: We got a great women in sports.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you scrimmed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, these ladies were ahead of their time.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, no, I totally love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love what you're saying, but like the parenting element of it, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's like you want to demonstrate, you know, the type of like bravery that you hope that will inspire them, but then as adults in mid life, you're like, well, I have a fixed mindset in a sort of way, because we're just living on our lives raising our kids, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's just so there are opportunities to have
[SPEAKER_00]: then obviously writing and starting a new career is such a special one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now I'm going to use that every time and clients, and I send clients at it, I'm like, you know, I'm not like critiquing you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am trying to improve your growth mindset, obviously.
[SPEAKER_05]: Obviously.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, it's just like it's been when you're writing and I don't, we don't know what it's like for solo writers because we have each other and we're editing and we live in this little world.
[SPEAKER_05]: And then when we share it with you,
[SPEAKER_05]: And we do get your feedback.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, first of all, it's always insightful, it always makes us better, but it is a gift, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: To have other people reach a work and really give you information.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's, I mean, it is kind of like being in school and having that chance to learn and improve.
[SPEAKER_05]: So we are all about that mindset for everything.
[SPEAKER_05]: Always trying to improve.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm so excited about this book, guys.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so at the time that everybody is listening, you can buy it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The book is out this week and just came out.
[SPEAKER_00]: So everybody can go grab it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is available.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is incredible.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's got a huge heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's got love.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's got family parenting, friendship, all the different things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a huge superstition plot, as you guys heard, which, you know, I heard Wendy knock on what at one point in this invitation.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to work on quite a lot, I did.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it has it all guys.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I really hope all of you guys go pick it up and engage with these guys on socials and enjoy the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: The audiobook is great.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I only have I read this book multiple times as the agent.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just started this into the audiobook because they sent me the link this weekend.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's so good.
[SPEAKER_00]: whatever format, audio, print, ebook, please grab it, you know, when interested you to such a good job.
[SPEAKER_00]: Congratulations on 10,000 my ears from okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, Ecarly.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for all your support, as always.
[SPEAKER_02]: 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.