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[SPEAKER_02]: Season twenty, episode thirty three.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is Writing Excuses.
[SPEAKER_02]: raising children as a metaphor for writing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Mary Ravanaugh.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm Dan.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm Erin.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I'm Howard.
[SPEAKER_06]: And we have been doing this series of episodes where we talk about different metaphors for writing.
[SPEAKER_06]: And when this series was pitched to me, the first thing that came into my head was, oh, I will do an episode about raising children.
[SPEAKER_06]: I have regretted that ever since.
[SPEAKER_06]: Because first of all, only two of the five of us have children.
[SPEAKER_06]: And second of all, there is a fundamental difference, I think, in how we think about these two things.
[SPEAKER_06]: I do think that this will be a valuable way to think about writing.
[SPEAKER_06]: When we raise children, we have clear goals for them.
[SPEAKER_06]: But they tend to be very general.
[SPEAKER_06]: I want my kids to grow up and be happy and successful.
[SPEAKER_06]: But the real joy of raising children comes in watching them express their individuality and meet those goals in very unique and different ways.
[SPEAKER_06]: uh... and we can look at media and you know how many movies have been made how many books have been written about parents that have much more specific goals for their children and the children rebel and they have horrible relationships with each other as i don't want to be a doctor dad just because you are
[SPEAKER_02]: This actually sounds like a great metaphor.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, you were telling us at breakfast that one of your sons had just returned from studying in Taiwan.
[SPEAKER_01]: Which is, you know, fascinating and wonderful and cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: And my memory of that child was him jumping up on the table and shouting Pepsi, Pepsi, gun, gun, gun.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And these are these are two very different things, but it's the same person.
[SPEAKER_01]: And your process for raising that child has likely changed.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I don't have to keep him on the table anymore.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's great.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, it just one thing I want to say at the top of this conversation is, you know, we are very intentionally not prescriptive about writing advice.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: We are, however, saying there's only one way to raise children in that display.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, genuinely, you know, I don't have kids.
[SPEAKER_05]: I would never mean it was this where I'm gonna try and tell a parent.
[SPEAKER_05]: Here's how you do it.
[SPEAKER_05]: But, you know, I think in the way that we talk about writing, that's a lot that we can take of, take from individual processes, individual experience and sort of extrapolate from there.
[SPEAKER_05]: So anything that we say about how to raise kids, don't take it as a, you know, prescriptive specific list of things you must do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, my child is covered in fur and is actually a cat.
[SPEAKER_06]: Well, we have two dogs at home, so most of my children are covered with fur as well.
[SPEAKER_06]: No, but like you said, Mary Robinette, I do think this ultimately is a very good metaphor for how writing works because we've all experienced this where we're trying to write in a certain way, and the characters have a mind of their own, and they go off in a different direction, or the book itself takes
[SPEAKER_06]: a different tack.
[SPEAKER_06]: When we write it, we realize it's about a different thing than we thought it was about when we started it.
[SPEAKER_06]: And this happens all the time.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so why does this happen?
[SPEAKER_06]: I guess is my question.
[SPEAKER_06]: It seems so ridiculous from the outside to say, well, what do you mean the characters have a mind of their own?
[SPEAKER_06]: You're the one writing them.
[SPEAKER_06]: And yet, every author can attest that that's true.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm not actually one of those interesting tell me about that.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think it has to do with what you talked about a little bit at the beginning which is that you have this intention.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I also think that it has to do with my own personal background as coming out of theater.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when I do have a character that's not doing what I want them to do, I recast them.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you can't retept cast a child.
[SPEAKER_02]: But having said that, the reason I was like, oh, this is a really good example is that I may have an intention, but my relationship with the book changes over a time.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so as a result of that, my understanding of what I want that book to be also changes, which for me is different than my characters have a mind of their own.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, one of the healthiest attitudes that I've found with regard to writing writing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, but also mostly raising children is I'm going to do everything I can to provide the setting to provide the inputs to provide whatever needs to be provided.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this child will grow into someone
[SPEAKER_01]: that I like and who is also happy and able to succeed and so on and so forth.
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the end of all that, they have the agency to choose what they are going to choose and I have to be willing to say
[SPEAKER_01]: I've done what I could.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've done my part.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've done my best.
[SPEAKER_01]: The fact that they're able to express agency has to be enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whereas with books, if all my book can do is choose for itself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, that's wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: If my book is wrong, then I get to go back and try again.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, this is one of the things that I see with people who have more than one child.
[SPEAKER_02]: So with the first child, they're extremely precious and very, like, here's how we're gonna do things.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the second child, they're kind of like, well, good luck.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the third, if they have three or four, they're like, all right, I mean, you won't be eaten by wolves.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that happens with writers that the writers who have only the one book.
[SPEAKER_02]: or your first manuscript, you get very tight and very controlling, very fearful.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're going to mess it up somehow.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that as you go along, you realize, no, actually, these things have a lot more resilience.
[SPEAKER_02]: If I let it breathe, if I let it do its own thing, I don't have to be that controlling.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think the idea of relaxing your control over the books as you grow as a book parent is probably useful.
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, as I mentioned, I don't have my own kids, but I did have the great joy being able to be, you know, an auntie to a couple of, you know, children who are now full adults.
[SPEAKER_05]: And it's funny.
[SPEAKER_05]: It strikes me as that is a little bit similar to my professional, right, where I'm not involved in the process at the beginning, but I do get to drop in from time to time and encounter them as they are.
[SPEAKER_05]: right and so I was able to have very different relationship to those kids and their parents did and got to be sort of the one that was like yeah I see you you're here this is the thing you're interested in this is who you're trying to be and I'll support you and that or listen to you on that or like you know just talk you through whatever crisis is happening right now that you can't talk about with your parents for whatever reason right and
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, I think what you're saying, however, there is a lot of truth to it in terms of you can edit a book in a way that you can edit a child.
[SPEAKER_05]: But there is also a reckoning process.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think that happens as an author of having to confront what the book is, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: Which may not have been your idea that you originally had when you went out with it.
[SPEAKER_05]: But a lot of times, what you do is you encounter the book having written in and say, okay, what are you now?
[SPEAKER_05]: Who do you grow up to be?
[SPEAKER_05]: And then now, how do I respond to that and help you achieve those goals?
[SPEAKER_05]: And so as an agent and as an editor, I get to come in and say, what was your intention here?
[SPEAKER_05]: What is your vision for this book?
[SPEAKER_05]: And how do we align that with what the book is?
[SPEAKER_05]: And that is so much editing process.
[SPEAKER_01]: The quote I come back to all the time, Ralph Von Williams, upon hearing a symphony that he'd written, performed, responded with, I don't know whether I like it, but it is what I meant.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that so much because, yeah, he acknowledges that's what I wrote, that's what I meant.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if I like it, but
[SPEAKER_02]: So I just want to check, are you using music as a metaphor for raising a child and for writing about books?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the do-bush tour of your case.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry, now it's food.
[SPEAKER_06]: This is our turd duck in the room.
[SPEAKER_06]: I love what you said, Doug one, about being able to come in from the outside, and maybe this isn't exactly what you said, but it's what I got out of it.
[SPEAKER_06]: Coming in from the outside of that process, you can often see more clearly what's going on than the author themselves.
[SPEAKER_06]: which is absolutely I think true of children as well.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it's one of the reasons that we rely so heavily on aunts and uncles and grandparents and neighbors and stuff.
[SPEAKER_06]: Because when I see my children, it's my first instinct to see what I have planned for them.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it can take a lot of time and a lot of emotional intelligence to kind of meet them where they are and see them for who they are trying to be rather than for who I want them to be.
[SPEAKER_06]: And going back to writing, that's the same reason I use a writing group.
[SPEAKER_06]: That's the same reason I rely so heavily on my agent is they can kind of see what the project is.
[SPEAKER_06]: rather than the idealized version I have of it in my head.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I will say that I think one of the things that is most helpful for is not the, you know, the onto you who comes in and says, well, this is how you should raise your child, that someone that you are like, I'm not gonna hang out with you.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the ones who listen and ask questions, whether of you or of the child, those are the ones who can actually
[SPEAKER_02]: be helpful because they are trying to meet that child or that book where they are.
[SPEAKER_05]: And meet the parent whether you are in a lot of my job was just to be at the non-judgmental third party who listens to everyone complaining about each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a burning question about writing and parenting that I must ask you after the break.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, we are back and I am so excited to ask this because when you talked about like senior child for who they are, there's a reflection theoretically of you as the parent based on who your children have become.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe there shouldn't be, but I think a lot of times parent is sort of a
[SPEAKER_00]: like if your kids are doing something your kids are crying on the plane you'll see parents feeling this shame as if like if I were better at this my children would be not reacting to their ears popping and would instead just be staring into space and like I don't know doing their homework
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm wondering as a writer, how do you deal with that feeling?
[SPEAKER_00]: If you write a book and you loved your book, but everyone hates it or they see something in it that you didn't and then they want to reflect back on you as a writer that seems like that would have that same feeling of shame as like I thought I did this and I see it this way but no one else sees it the way that I do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't say kill your darling.
[SPEAKER_05]: I need some time to think about an answer for that question.
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, the thing that strikes me both in sort of this as a topic and specific era of saying is that in a lot of ways from the outside again, so much of parenting is about knowing when to go about
[SPEAKER_05]: control right because you know when they are an infant and a toddler in a thousand percent dependent on you for every single thing in their life you have total control over that that child in in many ways right you can't control necessarily when you know they're going to sleep or whatever it is and that's the thing you're trying to figure out but once they grow as they become teenagers as they become adults as your book is published and put in the world you no longer have that control right and your relationship to what that book
[SPEAKER_05]: is needs to change, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: At some point, it's not your book anymore.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's the reader's book, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: They're the ones with the relationship to it.
[SPEAKER_05]: They're reading and they're interpretation of it becomes not just a more important than yours, but it is different from yours in a way that you don't get to touch, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: How they feel about it is something, and it's really hard.
[SPEAKER_05]: I see all the struggle with this.
[SPEAKER_05]: When authors get in trouble online, it is often because they are trying to control reader response to the book in a way that
[SPEAKER_05]: is not only unwise, it is impossible to do, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: And so I think I could see this parallel image in terms of like, oh, you're now a full-grown person with your own ideas, your own emotions, your own thoughts about how the world works.
[SPEAKER_05]: I may disagree with them, but also I kind of got to let you go do your thing now, you know?
[SPEAKER_06]: Well, what I have found with, I've got six kids, three of whom have moved out.
[SPEAKER_06]: aged up, bin adults.
[SPEAKER_06]: And kind of the year when they are eighteen years old, in every case, they have ceased to be my beloved child and they have now become an adult house guest that I can't kick out.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it does sound like my novel.
[SPEAKER_06]: And there is that transitional period where, and it was very, very difficult the first time and slightly easier the second and much easier the third, where I have noticed that and had to come to terms with what you were just saying.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, I cannot control you.
[SPEAKER_06]: I should not control you.
[SPEAKER_06]: The whole point of making you in the first place was to let you go off and do greater things than I have done.
[SPEAKER_02]: When the book leaves the house, it has its own relationships with the reader.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is a thing that I do think that a lot of us forget.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like when we were talking about the metaphor for puppetry, I talk about the fact that I think about the reader as a collaborator.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is a, this is very much the same thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like the reader, the reader is not a co-parent.
[SPEAKER_02]: They didn't help you raise the book, but they are relating to the adult books that you've sent out into the world.
[SPEAKER_05]: Why do my book by a motorcycle?
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Children as metaphors for books for me is very different from raising children as a metaphor for writing, because with both raising children and writing, I feel like the very best course material available is just go get started.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good luck.
[SPEAKER_01]: People will yell at you as you go and tell you you're doing it wrong or you're doing it right or this is how I do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because the process of raising children evolves so dramatically, not just as the children age, but as the parent matures and finds strategies that work for them with their set of resources and their set of cultural contexts.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, yeah, there's the, you know, with the with the first child, if the binky falls on the floor, you throw it in the boiling water and break out a fresh binky and with the fourth child, if the binky bounces off the dog dish, you wipe it on your jeans, stick it back in the baby and then consider taking the dog to the vet.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's, again, this sounds like my novel.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's this evolution of process.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I love that, here we are with writing excuses, trying to fill a void for people in the learning to write aspect of the process by talking about the learning to parent aspect of the process and we are not going to help you much.
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, and the reality is, in both these cases, there's only so much prep you can do.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's only so much education and learning that's going to help you.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, in both cases, I think it's good to do some, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: It's good to do your research.
[SPEAKER_05]: Good to know what you're getting into.
[SPEAKER_05]: But also, it's going to be different.
[SPEAKER_05]: Every book is different.
[SPEAKER_05]: Every child is different.
[SPEAKER_05]: Every parent is different.
[SPEAKER_05]: Everyone's life looks different.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so what your process is going to be is something that you will uncover
[SPEAKER_05]: by doing it, and that is a terrifying, but also be that openness to finding out what it is as you do it can be really beautiful.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and that is exactly where people get into trouble with both children and books, is when they think this is the way it has to be, and this, this rigidity, it doesn't work because of that evolution.
[SPEAKER_02]: Wait, is Dr. Spock save the cat?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I think that's a sad list that we've just said.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm the Vulcan, is that what he's writing up some uses?
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you expect when you're expecting?
[SPEAKER_06]: I feel like I...
[SPEAKER_06]: understood my own writing process a little better when I started GMing role-playing games a lot more and this this which is a very similar process I think to raising children because you we have so many layered metaphors and mixed metaphors in this episode it's amazing
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, when you are the GM of a campaign, you have in mind a story that you want to tell whether you bought the book or you've come up with it yourself.
[SPEAKER_06]: But if you go through and just tell that story straight, the way it is in your head, you're missing the entire point of role playing, which is
[SPEAKER_06]: collaborative storytelling you need to leave room for the players to be the heroes of that story and you are facilitating the story rather than directing it rather than kind of mandating it.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think, you know, again, chasing this too many metaphors saying, you know, for me, the greatest skill, any GM or any player at a table top game and have is listening.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think what distinguishes a truly great player from everyone else is their ability to listen to what other people are saying and respond to it.
[SPEAKER_05]: and in all of my experiences with kids and I love hanging out with kids because they're they're just fascinating because they're all just trying to figure out how the world works with their entire brain every second of every day because they don't understand yet right and so whenever I've encountered a kid and I just genuinely listen to what they're telling me and I respond as if they are
[SPEAKER_05]: having a conversation with anybody I would have in the world with the full respect and attention and give another adult they love that right and the response so well and a hands really true of the writing process too right as you coming to your book in really listening to what
[SPEAKER_05]: the story you've told is and what elements you put there.
[SPEAKER_05]: You have all that control, you have all the techniques, you have all the tools that we've talked about for all these seasons of this show, but at the same time as you're crafting it, I do think sometimes you need to step back and look at it with fresh eyes and really try to listen to what the story is and what your characters are doing and all of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's this thing that we say in the animal button community, which actually comes out of working with nonverbal children, which is presumed competence.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that this is a thing that would actually help a lot of writers.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you're looking at the manuscript and like this manuscript isn't working, I'm a failure as a writer and a failure as a storyteller.
[SPEAKER_02]: This story is a failure.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the wrong way to go.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you presume competence and you look at what things is this story doing intentionally?
[SPEAKER_02]: and how can I support the things that it is doing intentionally, that that's the way you support a child, that's the way you can support your own narrative process, like there's stuff that you do well, there's stuff a child does well.
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't think that a child is a failure because they don't know how to cut with scissors yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: You look at, you've made good color choices, let me teach you how to work with scissors, and you can level them up slowly.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think you can do that with a manuscript, too, that you presume competence, you presume
[SPEAKER_02]: The idea that I had was good, the idea that I want the story to be, there's these things that the story is doing well.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me focus on those things.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me help that story level up to what it can be.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think you can presume past competence.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is also like, forgive your past self.
[SPEAKER_00]: So one thing that I don't have any kids, but people who I know who our parents will talk about is like the frustration of like figuring out something like late or like, oh, no, if I had known this, when my first kid was doing this, that I figured out on my third kid, I would have done it differently.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you know what, I was the person I was then.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember talking to, I can't remember who, but a writer who's like a prolific writer who was like, I hate
[SPEAKER_00]: some of my early short stories, but I don't ever pull them out of circulation because they reflect the writer I was at the time and I want to honor who that writer was and presume that they were as competent as they could be with what they had just because you have more tools now doesn't mean that your old self was bad or wrong just that you were different.
[SPEAKER_01]: The three words that I lean into in those circumstances are grief, then forgive.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am allowed to grieve having made the mistakes
[SPEAKER_01]: But now that I've done that, I have to forgive myself and move on.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, this is why my early manuscripts all have deep-seated trauma from being poorly raised.
[SPEAKER_02]: I actually want to talk about grieving and writing, which is I think that this is one of the reasons that rejection hits so hard.
[SPEAKER_02]: especially when you're early in your career because you do think of it as this story has died.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't think that this is one of the places that it is not the same.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have invested ourselves in the story.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have this grief for the potential of the story.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the story always retains that potential.
[SPEAKER_02]: The work you've put into it always retains that potential.
[SPEAKER_02]: When a child makes a mistake, when they mess up, when they are disappointed because they don't get into the university they wanted, or they turn out to not be capable of a thing that you thought that they would be capable of.
[SPEAKER_02]: You grieve the loss of that potential, but the love is still there.
[SPEAKER_02]: The child is still there.
[SPEAKER_02]: The worth is still there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think for writers when you think about a story being rejected, you can still like that value is still there.
[SPEAKER_02]: That worth is still there.
[SPEAKER_05]: I also want to flag one thing which is, and maybe this is slicing something too thin, but I think there's a space between forgiveness and acceptance, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: And so when you look back at your juvenile and you can see the errors that you made there or the things you wish you had done differently, you don't necessarily need to exactly forgive your past self, but you need to accept that you were the person who made those choices and who wrote that thing, and that's not going to change at this point, and that's okay, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: And I think there is an important distinction there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like for instance, if you go back into the archives of writing excuses, you're going to hear me talking about a middle grade manuscript that I was trying to work out.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we talk about it on the podcast, but the thing we don't talk about, because I had not yet learned this thing, was that that manuscript was white-save your complex and cultural appropriation all the way down baked in.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was no fixing it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I am, like, I forgive myself for having made that mistake.
[SPEAKER_02]: Should I have known better?
[SPEAKER_02]: Probably, but based on the way I was raised in the time I was raised in, I didn't.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I don't continue making the mistake just because I made it in the best.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's important to recognize.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is why I lead with grief.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is important to recognize that sometimes when you're looking at something that you just
[SPEAKER_01]: You're filled with regret, you're filled with longing, you're filled with remorse, and you have to recognize, oh wait, I'm grieving the lost time, the lost effort, the lost whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, this is grief.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just need to treat this like grief so that I can grieve and then move on.
[SPEAKER_05]: and get to that place of acceptance and that clarity of seeing the critique of what went wrong and still being on board.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I want to make a final point and this is going to lead us into our homework.
[SPEAKER_06]: There comes a point in writing as in raising children where the thing you are working on does something that you don't like.
[SPEAKER_06]: Whether that is something you've put in intentionally something you've done accidentally a character with a mind of its own or a scene that just doesn't work or whatever it is.
[SPEAKER_06]: And we've talked about this in the past where that is an opportunity not for you to immediately correct it.
[SPEAKER_06]: and say, well, this isn't in my outline, so therefore it is bad, but to take stock of it and say, is this something that I need to change so that it matches my plan or is this new thing it's doing better?
[SPEAKER_06]: and I need to change my plan.
[SPEAKER_06]: And that is, I think, as true with children as it is with writing.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so for homework, what I am going to say is do that in reverse, whether you have a child of your own, a child you interact with or just a person in your life that you are mentoring or that you are friends with.
[SPEAKER_06]: If they are doing something you don't like,
[SPEAKER_06]: Take that moment to consider is this actually better than what I had planned or assumed and kind of give that moment of grace to them.
[SPEAKER_06]: And sometimes, yes, you need to step in and correct.
[SPEAKER_06]: Other times, you need to realize that they are their own person and what they are doing is right for them.
[SPEAKER_06]: So look for those moments in your life as well as in your writing.
[SPEAKER_02]: This has been writing excuses.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're out of excuses, now go right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Writing excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends.
[SPEAKER_02]: For this episode, your hosts were Mary Robinette Koal, Dong Wan Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Taylor.
[SPEAKER_02]: This episode was engineered by Marshall Card Jr., mastered by Alex Jackson, and produced by Emma Reynolds.
[SPEAKER_02]: For more information, visit writing excuses.com.