[SPEAKER_02]: and welcome to our show.
[SPEAKER_02]: The shit no one tells you about writing.
[SPEAKER_02]: 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_02]: Hi everyone, welcome back to another books with hook segment.
[SPEAKER_02]: Today we're super excited because we have the author joining us on the show.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we always love when that happens, but today especially we are joined by Sarah Miller Adam.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sarah, welcome to the show.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thanks.
[SPEAKER_04]: Glad to be here.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's it's kind of cool.
[SPEAKER_04]: Kind of terrifying, but great.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's amazing to have you here.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so we are going to kick things off immediately and we're going to our
[SPEAKER_04]: The Canadian trio, the ship no one tells you about writing has been my MFA, my accountability system, and the reason I flinch when anyone says stakes.
[SPEAKER_04]: Garlic keeps me grounded, CC pushes me deeper, and Bianca keeps me from burning pages at 2 AM.
[SPEAKER_04]: Zoning by lateral breathing with your voices in my ear feels right.
[SPEAKER_04]: If it sparks a CNC dual, I'll make popcorn.
[SPEAKER_04]: Three mid career women and medicine gave everything to their work, now they must reclaim
[SPEAKER_04]: their purpose, their power, and a life still worth living.
[SPEAKER_04]: By lateral breathing 77,000 words is an upmarket literary leaning embodied fiction novel home in rotating close third-person POVs.
[SPEAKER_04]: It moves like a body under stress, short staccato rhythmic sentences, learning a leachofox emotional clarity with NFL monahan's intimacy and the character driven depth of
[SPEAKER_04]: Dr. Eve Miller, 54, facing menopause and professional exile after resident patient miss-happes, she did not cause.
[SPEAKER_04]: It should have been the family medicine teaching clinic she built.
[SPEAKER_04]: Dr. Hannah English, 39 in OBGYN, longs for life beyond surgical control, and the ache of infertility or work will not let her out run.
[SPEAKER_04]: Janet Fitzgerald, 51, a nurse practitioner with a background in social work, silenced by failing marriage, fights to reclaim the voice she lost
[SPEAKER_04]: Eve reluctantly joins best friends Hannah and Janet in reopening and a shuddered rural Alabama clinic through a new rural medicine initiative.
[SPEAKER_04]: In Whitehall, the towns widowed sheriff, Danny King, becomes an unexpected steadiness for the three women, a neurovirus outbreak and a life flight obstetric emergency to find their early months.
[SPEAKER_04]: Each crisis tightens their bond and tests their skill.
[SPEAKER_04]: When a horned attack nearly kills Danny, it detonates everything
[SPEAKER_04]: As the urine folds, the three growth closer down by a friendship forged under everything they have survived.
[SPEAKER_04]: However, when a betrayal and an unexpected pregnancy fracture of the trio, each woman is forced to live without the comfort of the unit that ones held them together.
[SPEAKER_04]: They must decide whether they are in white hall to heal what medicine broke or return to the university that broke them.
[SPEAKER_04]: I am a playwright-turn novelist based in Alabama.
[SPEAKER_04]: I do not write as a clinician.
[SPEAKER_04]: I write from the South I live in.
[SPEAKER_04]: shaped by decades-long physician friendships and my own experience within fertility.
[SPEAKER_04]: My work centers emotional truth, sharp observation, and the quiet cost of care.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much, Sarah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think we can all agree that Sarah has got the best voice.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've ever heard on this podcast and the rest of us would happen.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's swap matters, ours for the dulce de tones of hers.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, Collie, we are gonna hand it across to you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you please kick us off there?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I can't remember if we said this off the top but 334 words was the creative letter Obviously there's a little introduction and we're so glad to have you on the show Sarah And as I say every time it's my my favorite day of the month when we get to have the authors on so I'm so glad Okay, I usually start at the top, so okay, so title
[SPEAKER_03]: This feels a little bit clinical to me, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like by lateral, you know, I honestly, I'd be like, what does that mean?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like by half lateral either side, so my calf and half breathing, but then there's like a trio of POVs.
[SPEAKER_03]: So then I'm like, well, bye, it means two.
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, you can correct me.
[SPEAKER_03]: Anybody listen to this?
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, that's where I'm going to say it's that me.
[SPEAKER_03]: But by and my mind means two, but then there's three POVs, so I don't know.
[SPEAKER_03]: I just feel like there's a number of ways that maybe the title isn't.
[SPEAKER_03]: working as well as it can.
[SPEAKER_03]: Also sounds a bit nonfiction, right little bit clinical.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think I like the breathing part, so I would do like the blankety blanket breathing, like you know that type of title if we're going more on market.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I play around without a little bit.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so one of my big things that I always say with multi-POV stories is
[SPEAKER_03]: how are these stories united as opposed to three women living a life because the way they presented it suggests that there is a reason that these women are telling their stories alongside each other but you also introduce them very separately and so I would like it if we started with the reason that they are all together or the implosion like a hook that eludes to the implosion that's going to happen or again like the reason that they're all brought together under
[SPEAKER_03]: That's something I think that's that's definitely missing here because to me they just sound like co workers that don't really know each other and then we get to the point where they're best friend I don't find other best friends till chapter two paragraph one two three four five six right and so.
[SPEAKER_03]: yeah, I just would have loved to know maybe what it was that brought them together as best friends and or the implosion of why we're telling the story between these POVs.
[SPEAKER_03]: I would also say that this is probably literary.
[SPEAKER_03]: You give us cops, at least a fact, animal monahan, and Elizabeth Strout.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I would probably say we need to cut the animal monahan who we love, of course, but in terms of the applicability to this story,
[SPEAKER_03]: and they're also, yeah, just three very different writers.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, and then the technicality of introducing the character.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you say, Dr. Eve, Miller 54, Dr. Hannah, English 39, Janet, Fitzgerald 51.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's a much more of a synopsis style introduction of characters.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know how much we need to point out their ages, unless you feel like, I don't know, we can't understand the story without it.
[SPEAKER_03]: We all, because you say earlier on there are three mid-career women so we can assume that mid-career is within this range.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I don't think we have to name their ages in that sense so that I think that we can probably part with that.
[SPEAKER_03]: The other thing is it does sound like a lot of kind of like set up and backstory, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, we say Dr. Eve Miller, facing Manipause, professional exile after a resident patient with this app.
[SPEAKER_03]: She did not cause it showed from the family medicine teaching clinic.
[SPEAKER_03]: She built, I'm not clear if that happens.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, before we meet her on the page or whether that is the plot of the book, same with all three of their introductions.
[SPEAKER_03]: So again, I would want to know what is happening in the story currently versus more importantly than what happened before.
[SPEAKER_03]: Or if you think that we have to know that about them, again, I would find a way to weave that into the connection between the three of them.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so all of it's super interesting.
[SPEAKER_03]: All to say, this sounds great.
[SPEAKER_03]: It sounds super interesting, sounds like a book, but I'm just not clear on what is actually the plot now, versus what is the set up beforehand.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, now I wanna go to the last paragraph, so you're a lovely author of biopereograph.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you talk about your decades long physician friendships.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think maybe you should name whether they've read it like as sensitivity readers of sorts, because you just say obviously it was shaped by your friendships.
[SPEAKER_03]: and your own experience with them for tilty, but sometimes if these three characters are that much outside your lived experience, you might just want to make it like, you know, and, you know, so, and so, it'll be your way and read this and, you know, that, that, that, that, that, that, that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Just trying to wait a kind of a loot to the fact that like they did a sensitivity read.
[SPEAKER_03]: Obviously, some of this is from your own experience, which is great.
[SPEAKER_03]: But if you're going to mention the friendships and the fact that you're not a doctor, you might just want to loot to that piece there.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then the last line, my work centers on emotional truths are observations in the quiet cost of care, which is great.
[SPEAKER_03]: I would say the query's job in the plot's job is to show that instead of tell that.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I probably just cut that line and then why some of the tips that I gave you, I'll probably be able to show that through the plot.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it sounds really interesting and good job.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'll turn that over to the other two.
[SPEAKER_02]: CCC, we're going to hand it across to you now.
[SPEAKER_02]: Something that I'm always fascinated by in terms of the correlators when they are multi-POV characters is that I know a lot of the times we say focus on the main character in the query letter and allude to the others and I know CCC you've said before you don't have to say what kind of POV it's written in.
[SPEAKER_02]: So let's hear how that all comes together over here
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so glad you're here with us.
[SPEAKER_01]: There I need to say that first and foremost.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so from the top, you're calling this up market literary leaning.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am a firm believer that all the market stories, they either skew commercial or literary, like there's still a market, but there's always a tiny, tiny bit of like a, you know, extra little sea salt on top and that sea salt can be literary or,
[SPEAKER_01]: or commercial and it's really good for you to know like where you stand if you write a market whether that you with Sarah or anyone else but I don't think you have to say that in the query letter because I feel like it could give the impression to the agent that you're like not sure how to position this so I would call it one thing when I read the query letter I actually thought to myself I'm going to tell Sarah to call it upmarket
[SPEAKER_01]: But then when I read the pages, I was like, I'm gonna tell Sarah to call it literary, because your writing is very literary.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you know, we'll get to that when we get to the pages.
[SPEAKER_01]: The really my advice is pick one, pick whichever one you feel best represents your story.
[SPEAKER_01]: I also, again, love the self-awareness that you know what your writing sounds like.
[SPEAKER_01]: You call this, you refer to your own writing as a body moving under stress, shorts to cotto, rhythmic sentences.
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, the self-awareness is spot on because I've read your pages now and that is a very accurate description.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think we need information on that in the query letter, though.
[SPEAKER_01]: like I will find out once I scroll down and read the pages by ironing any agent.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't need to promise us what the writing is going to sound like.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's one of those things where it's best experience as opposed to described.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost like it removes some of the magic when you describe it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is really interesting because I'm such a like,
[SPEAKER_01]: writing forward person so you would think that CC would want to know and what the writing sounds like, but I think I want to find out as opposed to be told.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an interesting discussion, I think.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, should writers share it in full under query letter about the quality of the writing and by quality, I don't mean like high quality low quality.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean the type of writing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think, I think no.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, let's talk of plot paragraph.
[SPEAKER_01]: The fact that you're doing
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, Dr. Eve Miller 54, Dr. Hannah English 39, Janet Fitzgerald 51, and then you're getting to the story.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost like you have two different beginnings in your query letter and I'm not sure I liked that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would prefer to all be baked into like one really strong plot paragraph or a couple plot paragraphs.
[SPEAKER_01]: I also wondered, and this is such a minor thing, but you know how my brain works.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like with Dr. Eve Miller, you're saying that she is facing menopause and professional exile.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then in the next clause, you say she's shoved from the family medicine clinic.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, isn't that the same as exiled, like being shoved from and experiencing professional exiles?
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm just wondering if you're like saying the same thing twice.
[SPEAKER_01]: But after reading those first three lines, the lines that share their internal struggles, I will be very real with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I felt empathy for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't feel curious.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I suspect it's because all the information was internal.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we learned that one of them longs for a life beyond surgical control.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the other one wants to reclaim her voice.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's like very zoomed out, very internal, and there's no specificity for my mind, for my brain to attach itself, and that specificity not being there makes me go, huh?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I was like, great, because we have the plot paragraph, and that's gonna have specificity.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we both do when we don't.
[SPEAKER_01]: So here's what I know about the story from the plot paragraphs, not the backstory, okay?
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's what I know about the story, the present day timeline.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're three doctors and they're also friends.
[SPEAKER_01]: They reopen a rural Alabama clinic.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a sheriff.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a neurovirus outbreak.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is an obstetric emergency.
[SPEAKER_01]: there is a hornet attack and there is a betrayal.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, there's also an unexpected pregnancy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Notice how I shared all these plot points in a way that did not show causality between them.
[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't have that domino's tipping over, you know, one thing led to another effect.
[SPEAKER_01]: We also didn't have, this is even more important, attachment to each protagonist.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, we found out about the sheriff who gets a name of a query letter and I'm like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Because they're in love interest with the sheriff, is the sheriff helping them, you know, they're getting death threats, the sheriff is helping, like, to grab who's sending them death threats.
[SPEAKER_01]: And even the plot points, which are in it of themselves quite interesting, you know, a pandemic, it's quite a pandemic, but like a big virus outbreak.
[SPEAKER_01]: And
[SPEAKER_01]: a big emergency in the betrayal.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I love stories that have betrayal and sacrifice.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like that's the ingredients to every great story.
[SPEAKER_01]: But these are all very zoomed out things.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what that means.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what detonates everything they have kept contained means.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what the betrayal is.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they're right now, your plot points are not specific enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like I, and they're not connected to each protagonist in a way that indicates causality.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought to myself, like, I really want to know,
[SPEAKER_01]: When a story has three strong women, relationships between women, stories that depict relationships between women, whether that's mother, daughter, sisters, best friends, these are some of my favorite stories, because I love sassed with relationship between women, like I just find it to be so interesting, because women's inner lives are so interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I really wanted more on that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will respectfully disagree with Carly about the last line because I have to tell you when I got to the author paragraph, for like in theory, I agree.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't need to be told themes or what your work is doing, your plot paragraph should do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the quiet cost of care is such a beautiful way to put it that I'm like, can we find a way to keep just that part because it's so good?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that every woman picking up this book and like taking a look at the jacket copy would go, oh my god, that's me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I experienced the quiet cost of care, high cost for quiet, you know, we talk about invisible labor a lot, but we don't necessarily, like I've never seen it framed in that way and I thought it was beautiful.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, CC.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, Sarah, we're going to hand it across to you now.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can either answer some of the questions I've had or you can post questions of your own, let's unpack it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, hardly.
[SPEAKER_04]: Love you, but we're going to, we're fighting over the title.
[SPEAKER_04]: bilateral breathing is a medical term and it's also a swimming term and once you read the pages, it becomes very clear.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's also in the novel in a moment of what bilateral breathing is.
[SPEAKER_04]: I understand what you're saying, but it's too fold.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's medicine and swimming and balance.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the biggest thing, balance.
[SPEAKER_04]: bilateral breathing, you can't breathe, it's just long,
[SPEAKER_04]: But you have to have balance in your life, in breathing and everything.
[SPEAKER_04]: The easiest way to describe that, you know, and I just kind of made some notes and the three women as an overarching thing for Harley, is yes, we have, we have Eve is the main, you know, spine, but it is an isosolese triangle.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I will use this as an example with you guys Bianca is the engine of the podcast and you and in cc are the transmission and wheels.
[SPEAKER_04]: You're not moving without all three of you, but Bianca holds the holds this the hotcast together.
[SPEAKER_04]: So and like a nice, possibly triangle if if one side disappears or both sides disappear and you just become a line.
[SPEAKER_04]: It may be a great line, but it's still just a line.
[SPEAKER_04]: So you got to have that's why they're, and I know that you've made it very clear that I have not made it clear, how the three of them interact.
[SPEAKER_04]: But without them, she can't survive her story and without her, they can't survive their story.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it is all meshed together as an engine.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then,
[SPEAKER_04]: literary that the issue and and you saw it or will we'll discuss it in the pages is the shafak strout and monahan is there is a little sprinkling of each one.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not just me focusing on shafak.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not me just focusing on strout like all of kiteric.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's monahan's, you know,
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm bridging the river betrayed all three of them.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so that's answering that question.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I'll go back to C.C.
[SPEAKER_04]: Embodied fiction is a thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's why I put it, let me scroll back up.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because I wanted to say, it moves like a body under stress.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because a lot of people don't understand in body fiction.
[SPEAKER_04]: They may know it from psychology.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I'm coming from a theater background where embodied fiction is the way you do it, and I walk through life like that, you know, that's the way I think in the way I do, for the lack of a better word, so that's why I felt like I had to explain the embodied fiction, especially for somebody that may be like, you know, it's the it's the shit podcast, so I can say it what the hell does that mean.
[SPEAKER_04]: The introducing each character in this goes to CC and Carly, I understand that maybe overframed it, underframed it, whatever, but each one of them has a reason in this story, it's not just a jumble.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's where I was going through that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And of course, I understand what CC's saying about zooming out too far, but again, you know, 400 words or less,
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to hop in.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess I'll question first.
[SPEAKER_03]: When do they reopen this shuttered rural Alabama clinic?
[SPEAKER_03]: Is this like an inciting incident?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, but it is.
[SPEAKER_04]: But they have to we have to see the life and then because it's the pressure pressure pressure, then once they move to white hall, everything just kind of, you know, everything they've built, because medicine
[SPEAKER_04]: It's the way you speak and move to the world.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a way that you're trained to hold your emotions down.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we have to see that first and then blow it up.
[SPEAKER_03]: So what percentage into the book would you say that they open this clinic?
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it's chapter five.
[SPEAKER_03]: OK, so I'm going to posit a theory of speaking containers.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like about how we can maybe frame this.
[SPEAKER_03]: I would maybe suggest that
[SPEAKER_03]: And again, it's your book correct me if I'm wrong, but this clinic almost is a character or this clinic is going to be a main setting.
[SPEAKER_03]: This clinic is a main identity for the women and the book based on the way that everything's going to happen within it.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm thinking, if you feel like these women's three storylines are running parallel, obviously, there's a midtersection.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm wondering if that's the rule line here can be the clinic.
[SPEAKER_03]: And maybe you can introduce the clinic as, you know, this organism.
[SPEAKER_03]: or this type of character as a setting, that could maybe help you frame this a little bit, would that be helpful?
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe, but also it's the town, because they're coming from big city, and they're going to a town that really doesn't want them, because they're outsiders and all the good stuff.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it is the town and the clinic.
[SPEAKER_04]: The clinic is what contains them, because that's medicine they can operate on autopilot.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's meeting Danny, it's him unsettling all three plot lines and so forth.
[SPEAKER_04]: But yes, that makes sense of working in the clinic.
[SPEAKER_04]: CC, did you just say that town doesn't want them?
[SPEAKER_04]: It is implied.
[SPEAKER_04]: Some of the town, because they don't have the hospital closed and they don't have they don't have healthcare.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you know anything about rural medicine, it's a nightmare.
[SPEAKER_04]: It really truly is.
[SPEAKER_04]: You drive an hour.
[SPEAKER_04]: to see some.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm I'm just going to interrupt you for a second.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not the point.
[SPEAKER_01]: The point is if the town doesn't want them, that's excellent.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you have to make that clear in the query letter because it ups the stakes.
[SPEAKER_01]: It ups the tension.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like these are three women unwanted.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, who are up against the town who doesn't want them there?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's that to me could tie the domino effects, could help tie the domino effects.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's that when you said that my eyes went, you know, because I'm like, ooh, outsiders, ooh, up against the town doesn't want them, you know, especially with healthcare, which is such a hot topic that's so divisive and that includes so many things, you know, that's juicy.
[SPEAKER_01]: what we want to do in a query letter is up the curiosity because you might have an explanation for every single line here and I believe that you do, but readers are going to talk to you to figure out what the explanation is readers are going to read it and go, I'm curious or I'm not.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so if you have these elements, I like them.
[SPEAKER_03]: So is the common goal that these women are then trying to bring healthcare to this rural town who has an absence of healthcare?
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the side car.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's the frame in which they reckon all of their stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, because I think you just need a container.
[SPEAKER_03]: You need a vehicle.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think, and you either have to, I see, see, say, expand on the fact that these three women come together trying to bring some health care.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a lot of tension in the town, which I see, pointed out, it was great.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, that's just a way to kind of explain why these three women, why now, because I just don't think we're at the point where we understand why these three women, why now, in particular, but anyway.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, Sarah moving it back to you.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't, I mean, we've kind of covered some of the questions.
[SPEAKER_04]: As we were going, and I know that I just have to figure out the container, you know, and it ain't this type of where.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the biggest thing is, what about the three introductions?
[SPEAKER_04]: That's my only question.
[SPEAKER_04]: What about the three introductions?
[SPEAKER_02]: So, can I move this back to you?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because you've often said, you know, there's different ways to frame the story.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like in a world where or whatever.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like is there some kind of suggestion you can have in terms of that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I don't think it's working introducing the three characters separately.
[SPEAKER_02]: And like you say, you need to explain how they all relate to each other while up in their attention.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there something we can do around that town and then the introduction
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: So some options would be like the character goal obstacle.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is why I keep trying to figure out what the goal is here.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like there's the character goal obstacle.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's are three characters.
[SPEAKER_03]: What are their singular goal?
[SPEAKER_03]: I think right now you're focusing maybe on their independent goals.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the character, this goal is obviously we want the goal to be singular and then the obstacle.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like what is the obstacle they're coming up against?
[SPEAKER_03]: For example,
[SPEAKER_03]: trying to bring medicine to a rural community, obstacle, they get to the town, as CCC said, they get to the town and they're not wanted, or they can't find a way to fit them within the town.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a simplified version, obviously we have spend a bit more time on this.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like a what if question version of the hook would be
[SPEAKER_03]: What if three female doctors who need to start a new life for XYZ reason?
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, think they're going to make a difference in this town and an outbreak breaks out.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you don't want to try to say like we need to figure out the character goal obstacle.
[SPEAKER_03]: What other ideas could we do?
[SPEAKER_03]: We could do the
[SPEAKER_03]: character situation, complication, which is what that was what I was trying to get out when we were talking about the situation, meaning the clinic, so the characters, the situation they find themselves in, they find themselves at this clinic, or rebuilding this clinic, and then what's the complication when they build the clinic?
[SPEAKER_03]: Slightly different way to think about what CCU was saying, with them not being wanted.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, yeah, I think it is challenging with the three.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's why we say this every time we do a multi-POV query.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like, it is really tricky.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think you either, and it sounds like you can't really centralize one person.
[SPEAKER_03]: You feel very strongly that the three of them make you mental triangle, that the three of them are part of it.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's figuring out how they're connected, what's their goal and their goal and obstacle, or what's their situation and complication.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that would be what I would focus on.
[SPEAKER_04]: OK, thanks.
[SPEAKER_04]: Appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Great.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, all right, so we're running out of time.
[SPEAKER_02]: They so let's move on to the pages.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sarah, can you give us an overview of what's in them?
[SPEAKER_04]: We open with Eve, feeling all the external pressure from everything that's in her life past and present, swimming, that's her containment.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the way she processes everything and she can have her anger, quote free.
[SPEAKER_04]: So she's swimming and going through all the internal pressures.
[SPEAKER_04]: and go inside and still grasp for something to contain what's spiraling in her and there's a resident fellow in her bed and well anyway.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then Janet and Hannah arrived bust in the house with the dog to get ready for their third Thursday community outreach clinic that they they religiously do
[SPEAKER_04]: colliding with pressure and even it kind of stabilizes everybody, but everybody has their own thing and then they kind of, you know, run through this is our life, get over it, move on, and yes, there's a man in your bed and where it just, this is us.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, Sarah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, before we go to Colleen CC's take on that, we're just going to have a word from our sponsors.
[SPEAKER_02]: Alrighty, CC, I'm gonna hand it straight to you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Tell us what you think.
[SPEAKER_01]: I first wanna commend how.
[SPEAKER_01]: Still I still don't have a word for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been thinking about a word for this since yesterday.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think it's a very generic word that's unworthy of your pages.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to come in how beautiful the writing is.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I thought that that was a lot of times people page things as, you know, the sentences are rhythm-ticking.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, right, they're super rhythm-etic.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure they are most of the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you know that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that you should be right proud of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure you are.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'll say it anyway.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love rhythm in writing and I think that you have a very developed author voice and that's always a joy to see.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, let's talk about where we are, where we are in the story when we first meet these women.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I feel like most storytellers, if not all storytellers, understand that their opening pages, that the job of that is to tell us what's happening in the protagonist's life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they have to pick a what is happening, a specific what is happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: Woman going to the grocery store, couple walking into a wedding, could be anything, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, like I said, most if not all storytellers understand the external nature of the what is happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: The scene that a camera could capture.
[SPEAKER_01]: In this case, Eve swimming.
[SPEAKER_01]: Eve is swimming.
[SPEAKER_01]: Savvy storytellers understand that that's just half the job.
[SPEAKER_01]: The other half is capturing what's happening internally, what's happening in their inner life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you have to pick that justice carefully, if not even more carefully than what's happening externally.
[SPEAKER_01]: So externally, we have a woman swimming.
[SPEAKER_01]: Internally, we have a woman going through.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you didn't share this in your summary.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm not gonna be the one to ruin it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But she's going through the she's thinking about what's happening in her life in a way that is like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Like there's a lot, you know, like there is a lot going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: We understand that her useless ex nearly killed her.
[SPEAKER_01]: We understand that Mara, who is Mara, you don't know yet and that's good, no namesplaining.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Mara died unexpectedly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we understand that there was a system that failed her and we understand that she's wounded, deeply, deeply wounded.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do we know this specific exact shape all encompassing?
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: and either we supposed to because that would be like killing the tension.
[SPEAKER_01]: But come on, like that is a big thing, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So we also know the fair on technistic forces.
[SPEAKER_01]: The, so the dean, and I'm not sure if it's DOS the dean and the rest, or if it's DOS another person the dean, because because the Oxford comma, I think it's DOS being the dean, but I'm not sure, but that's also not the point.
[SPEAKER_01]: The point is there are antagonistic forces with specificity.
[SPEAKER_01]: and that she is very defiant.
[SPEAKER_01]: She refuses to break, not for DAS, not for the system, not for anyone that she's going to keep on fighting.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we have so much on her spirit and what she's up against and that's great.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's all amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will say though, and again, this is a matter of taste and if your story is literary, you get to choose.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is not something that you say that you have to follow and won't be not tolerating, let me say.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this is something that literary fiction can do if you want to.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think you should, but you can if you want to.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that what's happening externally needs to be just as compelling, right now her swimming frankly way more tedious than I would have liked, you know, like I get that it matches the themes of the books, I get that it matches the title, and sure you're going to have her swimming, but something else needs to be happening with externality to really up the tension.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because, and this is what I was getting at when I was talking about like, when a storyteller opens a book, they're sharing two lives, the inner life and the external life.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of people go, oh, I have so much dejuiciness to share in the inner life that I'm going to have a scene that's not as juicy.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, because they don't want to like remove from, they don't want to take attention from what's happening in the protagonist's mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that, in my opinion, is a mistake.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need the external scene to be just as compelling, as what's happening in their mind, because we need to understand this as a book that has plot, that has things that's a protagonist is up against, externally too, I'm not just with her telling us, but with us seeing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't think that she should be alone swimming, like I don't think that's compelling enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the second part of that, which is her having this men and her bed and her friends walking in,
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't see, and I think this is intentional, but you can tell us.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't see her like fathered by the fact that her friends walked in while he was there anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they didn't seem to be like any power and balances that play, and I always say like wherever you start your story, you're protecting this needs to be facing power dynamics that are interesting and juicy, and power dynamics can include power struggle, it can include threats to power, temptations to power.
[SPEAKER_01]: But power is necessary, power dynamics are necessary.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they just seem to get along like, and they're so like, basically, they doesn't seem to be any messy power dynamics between them, which I think is the intention because they're good friends and why should there be messy power dynamics?
[SPEAKER_01]: But then I just don't know that that's the right place to start.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like these are things that can exist in the book, but to start, you really wanna like grab your reader.
[SPEAKER_01]: Make the reader go, ooh, juicy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm not feeling that here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am feeling beautiful writing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Beautiful, beautiful writing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, C.C., thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, Collie, we're handing it across to you now.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, so we started with the timestamp.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love the timestamp.
[SPEAKER_03]: I used to have a timestamp jingle.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't even know what it is anymore.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll have to make up a new one.
[SPEAKER_03]: What I also think we need those location stamp, because my Canadian born person was like, we're swimming outdoors and late for everywhere.
[SPEAKER_03]: I honestly thought she had an indoor pool, like where I grew up fancy people had indoor pools because you couldn't like swim in the winter.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I don't know.
[SPEAKER_03]: Obviously this is very particular to me, but there is a huge larger, you know, portion of your readership.
[SPEAKER_03]: That'll be from, you know, northern U.S. Canada, et cetera.
[SPEAKER_03]: Hopefully globally lots of readers.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I would just put the location stamp in there.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's a bit more clear about the fact that she's swimming outside at that time of the year.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that would help a little bit.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because right away, I was trying to be like, is because in my mind, again, if it was February and I was swimming at 4 a.m.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'd be like, what time did the pool open so that I'd have to go to the gym to do the swimming?
[SPEAKER_03]: So, the logistics, whatever I get trimmed up with logistics, it just slows down me being able to get my entry point into the story.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, I really think just a location stamp would be able to solve that.
[UNKNOWN]: Pretty quick.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's so many beautiful lines, you know, I really like the first line and we'll talk about lines and sentences in a second, but you know, for a am isn't night isn't morning either a dark hour at that belongs to youth Miller.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I think it sets the tone also for the kind of that punchy writing and so I want to talk a little bit about the balance between.
[SPEAKER_03]: the more punchier sentences.
[SPEAKER_03]: So in my opinion, and I'm apologized to CC in advance for talking about sports.
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't not talk about sports, but so if you're watching on YouTube, basically the way that I feel about this is like a boxing sense, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because I feel like you're doing like jab jab, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: You're doing quick sentence, quick sentence, but then you're not coming around for the hook, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like jab jab, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Punch, punch, punch, and then like you takes time to come around for the hook.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you're not,
[SPEAKER_03]: you're watching on YouTube, CC's trying to make this year.
[SPEAKER_03]: But so I don't know.
[SPEAKER_03]: For me, I just, I was kept waiting for the, like, it was jammed down.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I kept waiting for the hub, right, the slow, because then the person's thinking, okay, quick hit, quick hit.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then, then all of a sudden, when you go slow, they're not ready for it.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I felt like you were so on your toes in this, like, so on the short sentences that it's created a sense of,
[SPEAKER_03]: urgency but I wasn't sure what we were urgent for because she again is in the pool and swimming is an endurance activity right so it's like you know it can be quick obviously for doing sprints but it is still an endurance activity to certain sets because you're doing these like longer you know laps back and forth so I just I don't know I just fell and maybe it's intentional sometimes imbalances intentional especially a literary fiction and that's the point but I my mind was just kind of trying to
[SPEAKER_03]: figure out how we can kind of bring all these things together so that they're in communication with each other a bit more.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that would just be my feedback on, you know, when are we doing the quick sentences?
[SPEAKER_03]: When are we doing the longer sentences?
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that we need to play around with that a little bit more.
[SPEAKER_03]: I also really felt like this was actually quite cinematic with her in the pool.
[SPEAKER_03]: Once I figured out where we were.
[SPEAKER_03]: I felt like it was really cinematic.
[SPEAKER_03]: I also felt like if we were filming this, we would see her touch the wall, do the change, kick switch, and then it'd be like cutting between,
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I can see this in a cinematic way.
[SPEAKER_03]: In a book way, I felt like you were introducing a lot of characters that I didn't know.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that I was like, okay, who am I supposed to be focused on here?
[SPEAKER_03]: We're just trying to get introduced to her.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then we're, you know, talking about the accent, Mara, and the work.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then the best friends show up and then she got a man in her bed.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm like, okay, that's a lot of people for five pages.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that felt a little again, a little unbalanced to me.
[SPEAKER_03]: But there's some, again, and every time I'm, you know, making a comment about what I think could you some revision I also make a note about what I really liked, you know, I really liked the line per career isn't a parking spot to claim beautiful line that's so, so good I love that line so you know those are kind of my, my big picture notes I think there's so many wonderful things and you'll see all of my notes obviously here, but yeah I would just love to be more grounded in time and space that's kind of my main note and then thinking about how we're bearing up the sentence structure.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, great.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, Collie.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to hand it across to Sarah now again, you know, coming in terms of intentionality because we're always saying everything you do must be done with intentionality.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I know, Sarah, you would have picked the swimming scene with great intentionality.
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you take us through that and perhaps we can brainstorm.
[SPEAKER_02]: If there's another way to begin including all of these things that you wanted that will factor in what CC was asking for.
[SPEAKER_04]: So take us through that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Charlie saying about the punches, but I thought and maybe it was just me, I thought I layered in punch punch punch punch and then lyrical and then punch punch punch lyrical.
[SPEAKER_04]: Opening in the pool, I tried as you always use Bianca your analogies of entering the house.
[SPEAKER_04]: I've entered this house.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know how many times.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think this inner this innering the house in this way is like I crawled to the
[SPEAKER_04]: originally intended, but the pool is for Eve, a containment, and it's also, if I had started in a clinic, whatever, if I had started, which chapter two has her in the car, driving too clinic, okay, it's just, you know, this has, we can actually get her, her anger, her interiority
[SPEAKER_04]: and understand all the pressures because she's relaxed for once.
[SPEAKER_04]: At 4 a.m. is the only time and I believe the line is her mind red lines everywhere but the water.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's after the dark hour that belongs to Eve Miller, who ate for drugs like her mother and too early for saints like her dead father.
[SPEAKER_04]: You are only gonna think about that in the water when your her body is on autopilot
[SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, everything surfaces up.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, I, it was intentional, beyond intentional, I think it was body.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it was my body saying this is where it needs to go.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's where embodied fiction also comes back.
[SPEAKER_04]: Is we have to know how she moves.
[SPEAKER_02]: Totally get that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm trying to think, is there some kind of disruption that can happen in the water again that reveals so much about her character and again, can include that embodied section because people who work in these situations when when a crisis happens.
[SPEAKER_02]: They don't even think their body is just react with everybody else is like screaming in their heads and wanting to run away So I don't know is there an animal that can fall into the pool a crypto or something like I'm trying to think of something that can disrupt the scene I don't know cc what are you thinking is a way we can keep it in the pool But have some kind of Disruption that's still for fools what Sarah's trying to do here
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that first and foremost, if this is literary, you get to start slowly like this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that it's important to establish this so that you don't feel like we're pressuring you and I want that to be something that you hold on to as we do discuss potential other options.
[SPEAKER_01]: You always have the option to keep it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, that's fine.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you do want to at least explore other options, one idea I had is that, again, I don't know the specific settings or this would fit, but it's really just to give you an idea.
[SPEAKER_01]: The pool could be closed, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And there could be a security guard telling her she can't go in the pool.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then she could be like, there's an emergency medicine.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a doctor.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to let me get through.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're going on my gut.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's an emergency and the emergency she needs to swim.
[SPEAKER_01]: like, but again, it would show how she acts in a situation where there is an external force disrupting her.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it would also surprise my brain because my brain would be like emergency emergency.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a doctor, there is a doctor.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, the emergency is a doctor needs to care herself, the care that only the pool can bring her.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm sure that won't fit in the actual logistics and nuts and bolts of the story, but it's really just to illustrate the fact
[SPEAKER_01]: external opening against a very tumultuous and interesting internal opening and I personally don't think that's serving the propulsive nature of your story, especially because her interior already is focused on what happened.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's very little futureizing.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you added futureizing, maybe that would tweak it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, maybe that would, would solve for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's more than one ways to address this issue.
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought of the external because I thought to myself, this is
[SPEAKER_03]: Colleen, I think a simple just like losing track of time could honestly work, you know, like she's swimming and then doesn't realize what time it is in the friends are there and need to take her for their Thursday work day.
[SPEAKER_03]: Or if you want to start heading ahead, I don't know how this plays into the larger picture.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you want to start with a more romantic opening, like how does she feel about this guy in her bed?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, could he be swimming laps alongside her?
[SPEAKER_03]: Could he be the one to get her and be like, hey babe, you gotta get out, like, you know, your friends are here?
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know, just like some way to see some more interaction in that sense, but I think a simple, like, run losing track of time could work.
[SPEAKER_03]: Her friend come out back and they're like, what do you do in?
[SPEAKER_03]: And then she's like, oh, this is a very hard character for me.
[SPEAKER_03]: I never lose track of time, and then we can internalize that.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel very strongly that disruption for disruption sake doesn't work.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, a heel broken, losing track of time, I don't think that would work.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you need a disruption that shows power and balance and power dynamics.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or else, or else it feels devicey and gimmicky, or else there's letter swim.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I, I, that's my take.
[SPEAKER_04]: It could be as simple as,
[SPEAKER_04]: of everything we learn in the five pages, it could be as simple as she has a panic attack and has to swim earlier or something or realizing that she left, you know, the research fellow in her bed, and then need to do that.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I mean, all this makes sense.
[SPEAKER_04]: But again, crisis just for crisis makes me, I love you guys, but it makes me go, but it makes sense, but it still makes me cringe.
[SPEAKER_04]: that leads into the 4 a.m.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not morning.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not night either.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because we've all had those days.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: So Sarah, so in terms of then the future rising, if you don't want to put in a disruption, CC suggestion about her future rising, rather than who's just thinking about the past and everything that's already happened.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it's something to think about him and move maybe she knows she's going to
[SPEAKER_04]: Dawce thing is is that, you know, it's which is why it's in the query of, you know, she's being shoved out.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, I don't know, things to think.
[SPEAKER_04]: But, you know, so I, and I also would like to comment very quickly that apparently they trying to put the reader in the body of her in movement.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was too much, too much embodied.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's to me, it's not that it felt flat because I would be a very unfair description of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: To me, it felt quiet.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if quiet is the intention, keep quiet.
[SPEAKER_01]: I, you know, something I'm always looking for when I speak to an author is how set they are in their vision.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you seem to me as someone who's very set in your vision, and I applaud you for that like state, stay within your vision.
[SPEAKER_01]: It might not work for me, it might not make me curious, but honestly, and I say this with love to myself, who cares?
[SPEAKER_01]: Your job is not direct for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your job is to write for your readership, you know, and you know your readers taste.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, again, all we can do is like taste the food you make, and share how it tastes for us, but there are other people who are going to taste it, and I'm hoping to have a different take-off.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, for me there was anything wrong with it is more I just really wanted to be more grounded in place like I just felt very untethered so that was, you know, if you want to oversimplify my note it would just be yeah can we just ground ourselves in place more and it also is is the water is disorienting so I mean there was there was.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sarah, you were saying there was an intentionality to the antagonist of the swimming.
[SPEAKER_02]: You specifically wanted that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, there, I mean, that's, that's just the, the, because everything else is contained.
[SPEAKER_04]: Language, control, everything else is contained in medicine that the uncontainment in the water.
[SPEAKER_04]: That it was specific.
[SPEAKER_04]: in its intention, its actual function on the page may have fallen a little left or right of center, but it is intentional and to answer one other quick question, the circle back of two questions.
[SPEAKER_04]: One, the friendship is supposed to show that they don't care because they deal with so much chaos in their workwives that the fact that Eve has a man in her bed,
[SPEAKER_04]: But it's Thursday, it's Thursday, you know, it's coming, so move it along.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the other quick question is the Greek chorus with the music.
[SPEAKER_04]: I know that leads back to Carly's cinematic feel.
[SPEAKER_04]: But that is also the Greek chorus doing a lot where the characters not having to say it in 16 pages of interiority.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like I feel bad, but the songs talk about
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, betrayal and gossip and feeling lost is the easiest way to describe this to songs.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I just, if you either one of you has a quick note on that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Ice can buy songs personally, just because there are so many songs in the world.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know every song.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so unless a song feels specific to you, the reader, I find them tricky.
[SPEAKER_03]: So they didn't add anything for me that would be my answer.
[SPEAKER_01]: CC.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like them.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's what I'm telling you this this is what the more specific the art the more different you have the opinions and Sarah's work is very specific like Sarah you hold on to your vision honestly think thoughtfully over the things we're telling you but hold on to your vision
[SPEAKER_04]: I guess I'm not making popcorn because there was, well, there is kind of a dual.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I guess I'm going to go pop popcorn.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, your job is not to make me want your pages.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your job is to write the pages that you want to write, and if, and if, you know, an agent whether it's me or someone else or currently, like, if an agent wants an agent wants it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay everyone, our time is up.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sarah, thank you so much for joining us and for sharing your work and making yourself vulnerable so that everybody else can learn from it.
[SPEAKER_02]: We really, really appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Next week, we have authors on the show and then in two weeks time, we back to another box with us.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks so much, everyone.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_04]: Have a great day.
[SPEAKER_02]: Bye-bye.
[SPEAKER_02]: CCLera is a literary agent at Wendy Sherman Associates.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you'd like to query CC, please refer to the Submission Guidelines at www.wshermon.com.
[SPEAKER_02]: Carly Waters is a literary agent at PS Literary Agency.
[SPEAKER_02]: But a work on this podcast is not affiliated with the agency and the views expressed by Collean on this podcast are solely that of her as a podcast co-host and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of PS Literary Agency.