[SPEAKER_00]: and welcome to our show.
[SPEAKER_00]: The shit no one tells you about writing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm best selling author Bianca Marie, and I'm joined by C.C.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lira of Wendy Sherman Associates and Carly Waters of PS Literary.
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome everyone to a very special episode.
[SPEAKER_02]: Before we begin, I have a housekeeping reminder.
[SPEAKER_02]: Starting it right begins on July 9th.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a course that's all about how to begin your story in the best place and in the best way.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to cover all the elements that are present in the best starting locations for novels and memoirs.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we'll cover how storytellers can deliver to three seas.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're talking of course about curiosity, context, and connection.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a really intense experience so come prepared.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're talking four days with each day ranging from three to four hours with clear checklists So you can audit your existing beginnings to make sure they're working or craft a whole new beginning if you're like, I want to start over plus lots and lots of practical examples from your favorite works
[SPEAKER_02]: But without further ado, I am so thrilled to welcome to our show, our very special guest, the one and only Jenny Jackson author of The Shampoo Effect.
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome, Jenny.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for having me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a frequent flyer now, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: If I come more than once.
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can have your little card.
[SPEAKER_02]: We can start collecting miles.
[SPEAKER_02]: We should do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: We should actually be great.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm great.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, okay, so you obviously came for the first time to chat about your first U.D.
[SPEAKER_02]: view book and you this is now your second.
[SPEAKER_02]: So your second baby, how is it?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like pineapple street, your first book, the shampoo effect, your second book, how does it feel to have two books out?
[SPEAKER_02]: How different were the experiences?
[SPEAKER_01]: Incredibly incredibly different.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's so funny because I've seen this forever from the editor side of things in my day job as an editor at Knoth and the sophomore slump is real and second novel syndrome is real and, you know, for me, the huge difference is that when you're writing a first novel, nobody knows you're doing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody cares that you're doing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have no idea what anybody might think of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you're free to just
[SPEAKER_01]: Give it a whirl and see what happens with this second novel.
[SPEAKER_01]: I briefly got in a really bad headspace, which I don't recommend to anybody where my whole way of approaching the writing of the shampoo effect was I want to write a book that people who liked Pineapple Street will also like.
[SPEAKER_01]: and I want to write a book that people who did not feel the pineapple street was for them will want to come to.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is, ooh, big goal.
[SPEAKER_01]: Big goal, basically I'm trying to say, like I'm trying to seduce the haters wall retaining the lovers and that's not a productive way to write a book.
[SPEAKER_01]: You shouldn't actually at all be thinking about your critics when you're writing a book.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I had to kind of get over that at some point.
[SPEAKER_01]: so that I could really just let it flow and not second guess myself.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that you are essentially discovering the advice that you've imparted, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because you're discovering it as an author, because I'm sure you've told your authors that I'm sure you've been like, don't compare, don't try to bring in the haters.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure you've said that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Reviews, don't.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, all these things, but it's just kind of when it comes to the psychology of writing.
[SPEAKER_01]: you really do need to live some of it to understand exactly the sort of texture of neuroses that pop up inside a writer's body and brain.
[SPEAKER_02]: So true.
[SPEAKER_02]: You just have to live it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I actually remember on a first interview.
[SPEAKER_02]: I asked you like what if anything was different about your editing process now that you had written a book and you had been edited.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember your answer answer was so thoughtful.
[SPEAKER_02]: You said multiple things.
[SPEAKER_02]: But one of the things you said was I'd be way more
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I know the importance of just reading those little comments in the margins where it's like, I really love this.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is working not just from a psychological perspective, but also from a like reinforcement of this is working.
[SPEAKER_02]: So.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think my question to you now is you've written two books.
[SPEAKER_02]: So second time around, did you learn anything about maybe it's the editing process, maybe it's the author agent relationship, maybe it's with the relationship with the public, is it like have you learned anything that you're like, huh, and now I'm going to do things differently as a manager?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think that I have learned, and it really quickly came back to me on the editor's side,
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the funny things that happened to me with Pineapple Street is that after I sold the book to Pamela Dorman, I then had a bunch of conversations with Hollywood with different film companies and TV, production companies that wanted to adapt it, smart people, interesting conversations.
[SPEAKER_01]: The biggest theme of those calls was, well, we need to have the action up front when we're doing a pilot, when we're doing a script.
[SPEAKER_01]: You do all of this,
[SPEAKER_01]: scenes setting and world building and character development, but we'd have to figure out where the story starts for a TV or film.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I really took that to heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I sat down to write the shampoo effect, I was like, alright, I gotta get, I gotta get the drama from the jump.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am really gonna have sort of the big thing happen right away to set the course of the novel.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I wrote it and this isn't a spoiler because it is really like the end of chapter one.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wrote that you know the central conflict which is that this woman Carolyn Lash falls in love with this guy Van Whittaker and discovers that his ex-girlfriend is pregnant with his baby.
[SPEAKER_02]: Messy people.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's very messy.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very messy and I was like laid the mess out on this
[SPEAKER_01]: And after my agent and editor read my first draft, they were like, love it great compliments sandwich.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you have this pregnancy news before we know the character is like the stinks aren't high enough and we don't care enough when we get this news.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was sort of like duh, writing a book is not writing for television.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not writing for the movies.
[SPEAKER_01]: Writing a book is its own beast.
[SPEAKER_01]: and I lent too much feedback from too many other people get in my brain and I should have really been writing for me my editor my agent and not tried to again please all these other voices.
[SPEAKER_01]: hilariously I would say six months later I
[SPEAKER_01]: I bought yesterday by Carol Claire Burke as an editor and fell in love with the book.
[SPEAKER_01]: Carol did maybe 15 conversations with different editors and then you know we prevailed in the auction and then after that she did a gazillion conversations with Hollywood and so after she sold it for filmed in half a way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Carol got my first editorial letter and she went off
[SPEAKER_01]: but she also had all these voices from the other 14 book editors and all the film editors.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she really wanted to take in all of the comments that she got from everyone.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's so smart and she's such an amazing student.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she came back with a draft that I think she knew.
[SPEAKER_01]: This way, way too busy, too full, had not moved in the direction we needed to go.
[SPEAKER_01]: So okay, wait, let's go back to what we had before and try this again.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then Carol is such a genius, and she went on to do several revisions that she just got smarter and smarter and better and better, but it was a classic case of too many cooks in the kitchen, trying to serve all masters, taking too much feedback that wasn't parallel and making kind of a hash of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: That makes total sense to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's such a smart way to put it because sometimes if there are too many voices, if there are too many directions coming from all sides, it's almost like by doing more, you're giving the work less shape.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, which is so interesting to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: But your, I mean, obviously I didn't read the first drafts, I'm reading it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I read the arc.
[SPEAKER_02]: But your starting place is great because we get
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, her mother is larger than life, her mother is this very famous author who is magnetic and charismatic and, you know, big personality and she's always felt like she's lived in her mom's shadow and then she is an acquiring editor at a publishing house and she always has that little like nagging feeling of huh, nepotism, you know, but she's actually really good at her job, like she's so good at her job.
[SPEAKER_02]: She decides to leave that successful job behind and move to Greenhead Massachusetts and People are like, what are you doing?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it's just one short story.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like it takes so long to build an author career like what and she's gonna like I'm gonna work on my novel.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm gonna write this novel.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I guess my question to you like the practical question is
[SPEAKER_02]: Did you decide on this foundational wound in this, in this, in this protagonist, you know, with her interiority, her trauma, her desires, her fears, her hangups, you know, but also like all the wonderful things about her, did you decide this before you started writing?
[SPEAKER_02]: Where's it something like revealed itself and then you had to go back and edit?
[SPEAKER_01]: So I knew that this character Caroline,
[SPEAKER_01]: was going to be a little younger than the group that she falls in with in Massachusetts.
[SPEAKER_01]: I knew the other character she falls in love with a guy who is 34 and his friends are sort of 32 and 34.
[SPEAKER_01]: I knew she was going to be a little younger, but I also needed her to be sort of malleable.
[SPEAKER_01]: I needed her to be a little bit unformed as a person.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what allows her to get so swept up in his group of friends.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what allows things to get so out of control
[SPEAKER_01]: totally confident in herself.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so she's 28, but she's a very young 28.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for me, it made a lot of sense that she would have someone really domineering in her life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why she wouldn't have really formed this incredibly strong sort of sense of identity.
[SPEAKER_01]: I also think I'm sort of fascinated with the people in the book world, whether it is
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, writers, publishers, editors who have family in the business, because, you know, like many, many, many industries, there are some dynasties in publishing.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are some, you know, very, very famous writers, Stephen King, who have children who are writers.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that would be so incredibly difficult.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I don't have any family in publishing, and so
[SPEAKER_01]: For me, again, it was like landing an editorial assistant job was so exciting and impressive to ever in my family that I could have probably stayed in the system for 30 years and they would be like, you are a success story and I would have felt good about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But for Caroline, the bar was so high that getting out from under her mother's shadow was gonna be difficult.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I also loved writing this famous thriller writer
[SPEAKER_01]: For me, I have created this like outrageous character in her mother, and I love to once in a while.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have my main characters usually are not so extra.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not usually so over the top, but I like to have some secondary characters that sort of have the volume at an 11, because writing their dialogue is just so much fun for me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and also offers great contrast with the protagonist, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, it's a way to really put the pressure on.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, and in this, with this true of all mothers, I'm remembering a scene where in Bailey's point of view, I'm pretty sure it has to be.
[SPEAKER_02]: So Bailey's talking to her mom and her mom's like,
[SPEAKER_02]: You shouldn't do that or else Van's gonna think you don't want to get married and she's like, I don't want to get married mom That's correct.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like Bailey does not want to get married to the baby daddy and her mom's like well things might change And in that kind of like antagonistic force So it's an antagonistic force with with loving intentions, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's pressure.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's pressure on the protagonist.
[SPEAKER_02]: That creates such good Father for storytelling.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so I have a question you mentioned your POV characters
[SPEAKER_02]: So we have in this book, Caroline, Bailey, Fran, oh, why am I playing Augusta?
[SPEAKER_02]: Augusta, okay, was it always going to be these POVs or did you at one point think of just Caroline?
[SPEAKER_02]: Just Caroline, just Bailey, did you ever think about adding van, like, how do you decide that?
[SPEAKER_01]: So of course, Bailey and Caroline were always going to be the, they're two sides of the love triangle.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I wanted to explore marriage with this book and I wanted to explore different kinds of relationships.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it is so interesting right now to be an elder millennial who is navigating marriage in parenthood with sort of a generation that has pretty different ideas about partnership than our parents' generation had.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I, you know, like all of us, I have several friends who have done it alone, women who have had babies on their own and who
[SPEAKER_01]: our single mothers and I have friends who, you know, have gotten divorced or we're going through divorce.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have friends who have adopted our friends who've done surrogacy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I really wanted to think a lot about how different partnerships can look.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so for me to get into that, I wanted to bring in more than just, you know, one character Bailey who's having a baby on her own, one character, Caroline who does not have a child.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to bring in Fran who
[SPEAKER_01]: has a partner, but is unwilling to marry him, even though we have children.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then Augusta, who is so traditional, and kind of just wants everybody else to be really traditional also.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so these other characters, let me sort of take a prismatic look at marriage and relationships from different points of view.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And what about like real life inspiration?
[SPEAKER_02]: So Caroline is,
[SPEAKER_02]: an author.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's a moment where she says that she feels ashamed to admit that her work isn't pure fiction.
[SPEAKER_02]: So meaning the implication is that, you know, if she's a fiction writer, it should all come from her imagination, but actually the short story she placed in the New Yorker, the one that was already there when the story began.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you've read the book, you know, there's another one.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not going to ruin it too much.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that first story, it was based in real life.
[SPEAKER_02]: So she's like, hey, am I even a real writer?
[SPEAKER_02]: So does that?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I'm sure that in Poster Syndrome can't happen to you, Jenny.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can't tell us that you have in Poster Syndrome we're all sealed and we'll depress everyone.
[SPEAKER_02]: So tell us you don't have in Poster Syndrome because you're not allowed to have it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I assume, come on, you're Jenny Jackson.
[SPEAKER_02]: But also, do you feel like authors have that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like is that something that people get hung up on?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think that no matter what your process is as a writer, you sort of suspect you might be doing it wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: Honestly, whether you're writing from real life or you're making things up whole cloth and then that makes you feel like you're, you know, not being realistic enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: To me, it's that it is so very morally tricky to write about real people and that's something that I have run into as a writer and very much as an editor.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so even though writing from real life can make characters incredibly realistic and can give the reader this incredibly visceral experience, it can also be quite ethically challenging for a writer and Caroline can only do it that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: She can only write that's her process.
[SPEAKER_01]: She pulls from real life and she has, you know, she talks about how when she was younger, she wrote a story about her best friend.
[SPEAKER_01]: and she put it towards her senior thesis but her best friend still doesn't know about it because she knows that if she ever published it that would be harmful.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this is something that she walks around feeling guilty about, but it is her way.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think I really wanted to sort of discuss some of these scandals that we've seen in the publishing industry, you know, Robert Colcker's amazing article,
[SPEAKER_01]: the bad art friend or, you know, the scandal around cat person or we've, I mean, there's more than we could possibly count people sort of coming forward and saying, you wrote about me or, you know, even like, and patch it writing about Lucy Greely in Truth and Beauty.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, some of the most incredible works of art have been drawn from real relationships and real people, but it always
[SPEAKER_01]: treads the line of sort of a moral gray area and it's juicy who's allowed to tell what story if you go out to dinner with a writer and you both witnessed something who does it belong to if a writer friend tells you something and you put it in a book but they didn't say they were going to write about it is that allowed if you're out with another person they tell both of you is it whoever gets their first
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, and like, God forbid, you're, you know, married to a writer and you break up and you both write about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, hit published faster.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, this is like really juicy stuff that all writers have to contend with.
[SPEAKER_01]: The rules.
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: And how much do you draw from real life?
[SPEAKER_01]: um, I draw a lot from real life.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am sort of a crow who is like goes out and collects shiny things and brings them back to her nest.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm constantly making notes in my phone, just ease drops conversations, stuff in my sister-in-law tells me stuff in my friends, tell me, I mean, I'm an ease dropper and it's, it's pretty shameless.
[SPEAKER_01]: I, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't trust me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to put it in a book.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't trust me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to put it in a book.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can we put that in a t-shirt?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, no, I love that.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just scary.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm begging.
[SPEAKER_01]: In all honesty, if you tell me something, if you tell me something serious and tell me not to tell anyone, I won't.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a really good friend and I don't gossip.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if it's like, if it's harmless or if I can disguise it and disguising is a huge thing,
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so happy.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what I was going to say.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I mean, one of my writers says, if you swap the gender of someone, then they never see themselves, and so you can kind of get away with a lot if you swap the gender.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some people joke that, like, as long as you make the subject, you can talk about how beautiful they are, you can get away with it because the person will be like, I can't believe they wrote about me.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, if you give them a lot of money too, like, they could, yeah, because they won't recognize themselves.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I hope they'll forgive you, but they probably won't recognize it because it's stuff that changes the power dynamics, like whatever changes the power dynamics.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, I mean, it's incredibly fascinating and like I even, not about my book, but about other books I've published or have worked on, I've had fascinating conversations with our lawyers about how,
[SPEAKER_01]: writing fiction about a real person is actually more dangerous than writing memoir.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is really interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is very interesting indeed.
[SPEAKER_02]: We should have you on just for a different episode of that one.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I don't want to get sidetracked in the shampoo effect.
[SPEAKER_02]: So okay, I have a kind of like I think a delicate question which we can totally edit it out.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you're
[SPEAKER_02]: As they was reading this book, okay?
[SPEAKER_02]: One thing I kept thinking to myself, and it's a very CC thing to think.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I don't know if you'll agree, but this is how I felt.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, man, all these husbands are useless.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, all these husbands, even like, I'm not saying they're bad husbands, like all and all.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just saying like loving, caring husbands, a lot of them that we like root for them.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just going these men are useless.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're just like,
[SPEAKER_02]: They're not doing anything like they're not picking up their the slot.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're not carrying their weight Did you miss this on any of your friends husband?
[SPEAKER_02]: That's my question.
[SPEAKER_01]: Say no say no even if the answer is yes, deny it I absolutely not no no no husband's were harmed in the making of this product.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that The I wanted to contrast a lot of the husbands in this book with it
[SPEAKER_01]: Van, the not husband.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the one that Caroline falls in love with, who wants to, you know, to be a good guy, he would really like to be a good father to this baby he's having with Bailey, but Bailey is putting pretty firm guardrails on in terms of what he's allowed to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you can see the way that he treats Caroline the way he treats his friends.
[SPEAKER_01]: Van is, he's a golden retriever, but he's also
[SPEAKER_01]: He's an environmentalist.
[SPEAKER_01]: You go for a walk and he's picking up litter the whole way.
[SPEAKER_01]: His love language is caretaking.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is checking the oil on your car.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is gonna fix that creaky step out front.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have it in the book, but I'm just gonna tell you, we definitely like does her laundry.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is, he is a full 50, 50 guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: He would be an amazing partner.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's just not necessarily,
[SPEAKER_01]: the partner that Bailey thinks she wants for herself.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm contrasting this guy who honestly reminds me a lot of my husband who does my laundry and who picks up trash and is the full 50, 50 with these other relationships.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, Fran, who is one of the characters in this book, Fran was raised with wild brothers.
[SPEAKER_01]: She has two little boys of her own.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's surrounded by boys all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Her partner is RJ, and she hasn't been willing to marry RJ, partly because she just can't stand to tie herself to another boy, but also because she can see that he is not going to be a full 50-50 video.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he really wants to marry her.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's been wanting to marry her for a long time.
[SPEAKER_02]: He does.
[SPEAKER_01]: He loves her very much.
[SPEAKER_01]: but he is also living for pleasure still he is staying out late drinking he is a big proponent of cognitive liberty and even though he is physically doing his 50 50 yeah I have the kids on Saturday I took them to soccer he is not doing all the emotional labor he you know he's not signing them up for camp you know he's not like arranging the parent teacher conference
[SPEAKER_01]: He thinks he's doing his share, but he's not and she cannot fully commit to somebody who's not going to get for what she deserves.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I loved the moment in the story where she realizes the spit about the mental load.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, the spit about the partnership, she's in, because I feel like it's very, it would be very easy for you to have written a marriage where it's like, well, I'm not rooting for them, but I'm still rooting for them, you know, so I think that's a very beautiful balance to strike, because at the end of the day, if we want, you know, to give every love story that the chance it deserves, then it can't just be, these husbands are useless, which they are, I stand by.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's abandon them, it has to be, let's reform the husbands.
[SPEAKER_02]: Another thing we can put on the t-shirt.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can just come and have all these t-shirts.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right before, yeah, totally.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's reform the husbands, let's do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so did you have a favorite character to write?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, but it has been so interesting because just because somebody is my favorite to write does not mean it's breeders' favorites and I really learned this the first time around with Pineapple Street.
[SPEAKER_01]: Georgiana was my favorite and so many people
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my God, I hate it, Georgiana.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's so spoiled.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, yeah, I love writing her.
[SPEAKER_01]: This time around, my favorite is Bailey.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Bailey is an alpha.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she is a flirt.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she thinks of herself as sort of kind of like a man eater.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she's unapologetic about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she's independent.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she's gonna have this baby on her own.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she's beautiful and bossy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had a blast writing everything about her.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I had this hilarious conversation with a journalist who was writing for Elle Magazine.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she said, but Bailey's such a pick-me girl.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, oh, that's the other side of the coin there.
[SPEAKER_01]: OK.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't think Bailey wasn't paying me girl at all.
[SPEAKER_02]: I loved reading Georgiana, and I loved reading Bailey.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love how Bailey is unbothered.
[SPEAKER_02]: Did you watch White Lotus?
[SPEAKER_02]: You do, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like Bailey was a little daffy in a way, like in a fairy.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's an unbotheredness too heart, you know, where she's just not going to.
[SPEAKER_02]: I loved reading them, I lost it, it was so much fun, I could tell that you had fun, but she was not my favorite, I have to say my favorite would still Caroline.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, because I think we imprinted with Caroline first and also because I see the whole mother relationship that just added so many layers of vulnerability to it, love them all, but yes, Caroline was my favorite.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so there's a moment where I'm not going to say where in the story because I don't want to ruin it, but there's a moment where there's a line that
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a funny thing, publishing a book was sort of like getting to experience your own funeral.
[SPEAKER_02]: People you hadn't thought of in ages came out of the woodwork, old teachers, camp friends, and second cousins, ex-girlfriend, you'd met once at a wedding.
[SPEAKER_02]: Where did this brilliant insight come to you?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, was it through one of your authors or was it through your book?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, where you like, I met my funeral.
[SPEAKER_01]: My book tour was exactly that experience.
[SPEAKER_01]: My first great teacher came to my book reading and she said, Jenny, it's Ann Marie and I was like, hi, Ann Marie.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she said, what's it like, you know, being here in your hometown?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, oh, it's incredible.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's just so cool to see like, oh, teachers, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: And she's like, well, that's why I'm here.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, mom, who is Anne Marie?
[SPEAKER_01]: And she said, that's Miss Tamaki.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, oh, my god, hi.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, you can't go as if you're a first grade teacher.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't go on saying your first name.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, like, you
[SPEAKER_01]: really can't you really can't it should be I did not know she had a first name but it was could be so mind-blowing and so sweet and then also there's this hilarious event where this girl came through and she said oh you know we went I went to Williams College I'm like on me too and she said can you make it out to Lauren I said sure and then I said
[SPEAKER_01]: More and what's your last name?
[SPEAKER_01]: She told me and I said, we is your fake ID all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So my friend had memorized her address everything because we had, so it's like, I mean, it was really, it was like your second cousin's ex-girlfriend.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was everybody comes out of the woodwork and it's so incredible, but also if you suffer from even mild social anxiety, it's also incredibly stressful because
[SPEAKER_01]: You're just worried the whole time that you're blanking on names of people that you should remember or know which is why I love it at book events when people do the post it and I always make sure my authors get the post it so people write it out of time so that when the poor author is socially overwhelmed it's just like for Brian and they're like Brian hey you know a hundred percent it's kind of like the devil was proud of original versions and half of I had to whisper yes a hundred percent we just we just need that we just need that
[SPEAKER_02]: I've got, I love that so much publishing, like a book was like experiencing your funeral.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, that was such a good insight.
[SPEAKER_02]: I loved it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's talk about place.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, place is a big deal in this novel.
[SPEAKER_02]: Green had Massachusetts.
[SPEAKER_02]: I understand it's based loosely based maybe.
[SPEAKER_02]: And in your hometown, can you tell us about that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I mean, it is thinly veiled.
[SPEAKER_01]: Basically, the street names are correct.
[SPEAKER_01]: The, like,
[SPEAKER_01]: the clam box and the coffee shop.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's it's all my hometown.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I started writing a draft calling it episode to Massachusetts.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I started getting stuck because I haven't lived in it so to Massachusetts in 20 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I grew up there, but I don't live there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I started feeling like, oh my gosh, like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Do I have that corner exactly right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the book, I say there's only one bar, but I know there's more than one, but it just sounds better if it's only one.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I started just really getting in my own way, feeling like this need to be painfully accurate with every detail.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once I changed the name on the page, all the sudden had infinite freedom to write the place that I wanted to write.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it is 98%.
[SPEAKER_01]: true to upswitch, and then that 2% is an imaginary place called green head, but calling it that gave me so much liberty.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it is so interesting, like, talking about this realizing how much of the writing process is making psychological rules for yourself that let you continue to stay in the flow.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's like identifying
[SPEAKER_01]: speed bumps and saying like, okay, well, we don't need that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, you know, just like changing these little things that let you get out of your own way can just be such a difference between pulling it off and not, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I love that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I hope every writer listening just feels, you know, free to give themselves permission to create those little psychological rules.
[SPEAKER_02]: What a great way to put it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So.
[SPEAKER_02]: Reading a book is an exercise in like seduction.
[SPEAKER_02]: We always say this on our podcast, they always say storytelling is seduction.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the art of knowing when to reveal, went to withhold little things, big things, of course.
[SPEAKER_02]: Speaking first of little things,
[SPEAKER_02]: An example we find out very early in the book, why Caroline decided to leave New York to get away from the shadow of her mom, who she doors, but who is larger than life.
[SPEAKER_02]: But then later, in page 78, we learned that there was more to the story, that there was a second reason, no spoilers here, but there was not a second reason, but there was a deeper reason, let's just say.
[SPEAKER_02]: So,
[SPEAKER_02]: You give the reader a first deep reason, right, like to not just to write a novel but to get away from the shadow of her mother and then later you give them more.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is, you know, a big thing psychologically speaking, but it's not a big twist in the book or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So my question is how do you decide when to...
[SPEAKER_02]: went to like dole out the information, the context in a way that honors curiosity and honors connection.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like what's what's your process?
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you do it based on instinct because you obviously know story or do you have like a way you map it out or something else?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think some of it is that my books are not as plot-driven as they are character-driven and so, you know, there's not like an alien invasion and there's not, you know, like a discoverer of treasures under the sea in this book and the place that I go for twists, the place that I go for narrative poll is like little reveals like, and there's more to the story and there's
[SPEAKER_01]: I like to, I like to sort of tease it out that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: I also think that when you're dulling out information, if you give the reader everything at once, then they can't tell what's important, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so for me, it was more important that as we first got to know Caroline, her family story and her professional hopes and dreams, that's really the driver for her.
[SPEAKER_01]: This other story line is secondary important, but secondary to her foundation.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think like trying not to just do like a backstory in faux dump.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also, that's one of the like funny little dances of storytelling, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: As you do like backstory, front story, back story, front story, and so you can't get it all out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't do the whole backstory at once or it's not gonna give the story a strong sense of momentum.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you have to bake it in.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you bake it in amazingly.
[SPEAKER_02]: What about the bigger things?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, for example, the twist, what Caroline does?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's reference in the back of the book as Caroline is cast out of the circle and what she does next in a potent mix of fury and heartbreak.
[SPEAKER_02]: Exposes long-held secrets and works.
[SPEAKER_02]: The entire town of Greenhead into a leather.
[SPEAKER_02]: Did you always know what the twist was going to be?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because it was such a good twist.
[SPEAKER_02]: It made so much sense when it happened, but I was like, did not see a coming?
[SPEAKER_02]: Not because, again, not because it made perfect perfect sense, but I think I was so caught up in the moment with Caroline.
[SPEAKER_02]: that I just wasn't trying to figure out the next piece of the puzzle.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was living the experience with her.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when she does what she does, which will not ruin, I could, I, I, the reason why it wasn't surprised is because I came to the realization with her.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I, like I, I experienced a visceral emotion with her.
[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't something she planned.
[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't premeditated, which is why I didn't see it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Does that make sense?
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you decide that?
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you decide the twists?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this is like the worst part of my process.
[SPEAKER_01]: So both times, both with this book and with pineapple street, I knew the twist, I knew the pivot before I knew anything else.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I wrote to get there.
[SPEAKER_01]: The problem is you can't talk about it, you know, when you're in the jacket copy.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't talk about it right away.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I felt with pineapple street so frustrated because
[SPEAKER_01]: For me, like, the most interesting thing about pineapple street is when, and I feel okay to give, like, some minor stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, actually, on that book.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Here's the last thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, all our listeners have read it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can probably, I felt okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: I felt like the most interesting thing about pineapple street for me was that this rich girl has a terrible loss and decides to give all her money away, but it's harder than she thinks.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I couldn't write on the back of the jacket or talk about on my press tour, this girl decides to give her money away because it happened three quarters of the way through the book.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was frustrating, because for me that was the idea I was writing to and yet it would have ruined the reading experience to talk about it too much.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now I've done it again.
[SPEAKER_01]: For me, one of those central ideas of this book is the thing the Caroline does.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've made it so that I can't talk about it in promoting it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, good job, Jenny.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will say that both times around, I sort of enter into the novel writing process with a few big ideas and themes in mind, and this is the action theme, but the other themes I knew that I was writing into, I wanted to write about how absolute Massachusetts, where I grew up, was the childhood home of John Appdite.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is a place where writing is kind of baked into the community where having a famous writer in their midst is sort of part of the town ethos.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I knew that was going to be part of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I grew up in Massachusetts where the New England Patriots are actually the state religion.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I knew that I found Tom Brady having a baby with Bridget Moynihan while he was dating Giselle, part of my like foundational understanding of marital and child having dynamics.
[SPEAKER_01]: that to be part of it and then I wanted to think about the other big theme that I was excited about is like the final coming of age that happens when you have kids because they're all these various sort of comings of age that we talk about that we experience that we write about and that can be the you know when we leave high school for the first time it can be when we fall in love for the first time it can be when we
[SPEAKER_01]: get our first job, it can be we learn how to drive, it can be the loss of a parent.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so many things that can be the coming of age.
[SPEAKER_01]: For me, the most like day to day, bone deep life changing, growing up thing I have done is have children because you no longer live for yourself anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't go to sleep when you want to.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't wake up when you want to.
[SPEAKER_01]: You never, the person takes the first bite at the table.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every single thing in your life, you do for someone else before you do for yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I wanted to get this cast of characters who have grown up together, who have always sort of lived joyfully for each other with a sense of fun, who now are becoming parents together and trying to figure out what is childish and they need to leave behind and what is fundamental to their happiness as humans and they can continue with.
[SPEAKER_01]: when you go from being the kid to being the parent.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I love that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, what a good, what a good, see?
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't have to talk about the big reveal.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is how you talk about your book.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, Jenny needs my validation, but that was perfect.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my gosh, that was perfect.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so usually our last question is, will you please recommend us a book?
[SPEAKER_02]: You can be a book you excited to read, a book you just finished, in your case I suppose it could be a book you bought because you also buy books in addition to writing them.
[SPEAKER_02]: But we're going to make an exception here.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am going to ask you this question right now, but then we're going to have a final secret question.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't recommend people listen to the final secret question until they've read the book because it's something I have to ask.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just have to.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's it's been eating away at me ever since I read this because this book takes place in publishing and I read this and I was like, how dare Jenny do this.
[SPEAKER_02]: You've been warned people, I will ask now the question about, you know, which book Jenny recommends and then later I will ask the super secret question because I can't let her off the hook.
[SPEAKER_02]: So okay, Jenny, first recommend us a book and then I'm going to grill you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, in August there's a book coming out by Chris Bajarian, it's called The Amateur, and, you know, Chris and I've worked together.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am, I am his editor, but I'm recommending this as just in absolute bang or read.
[SPEAKER_01]: Chris and I've worked together for 25 years, 20 years of very long time,
[SPEAKER_01]: We have this writing process in place.
[SPEAKER_01]: He writes, it pitches me an idea for what he wants to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: We chat about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: He writes the first third.
[SPEAKER_01]: I read it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We talk more.
[SPEAKER_01]: He goes back.
[SPEAKER_01]: He writes a draft.
[SPEAKER_01]: We had it from there.
[SPEAKER_01]: This time around, Chris and I hadn't even talked about what he was going to do next.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's a liver to finish manuscript on my desk.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was because he, a voice came to him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he knew what this book was.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's set in 1960s in Westchester, North of New York City, in the sort of moneyed bedroom community.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it follows a young woman who is a golf prodigy.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's an astonishing golf player.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's going to join the LPGA.
[SPEAKER_01]: She has just finished her senior year.
[SPEAKER_01]: She'll be leaving for college.
[SPEAKER_01]: And one day, she's standing at the Country Club.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's at the practice net.
[SPEAKER_01]: and she swings and hits the ball.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the ball rips through an invisible hole in the net and strikes a caddy, a boy in her class who is sitting nearby on the ground waiting for his turn.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the ball hits him in the head and kills him in an instant.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the novel is the fallout.
[SPEAKER_01]: It at first seems like a freak accident, but soon,
[SPEAKER_01]: The insurance agents are circling, and the club doesn't want to take fault for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the netmaker doesn't want to take fault for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they begin to see a pattern of erratic behavior in this young woman, and soon they discover enough fair, or she's been having with an older man, and they discover something she did to another boy's car with her golf club, and as the sharp circle, her entire life changes.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's called the amateur, and it is
[SPEAKER_01]: bell binding.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a beautiful novel about old money, golf clubs, men and one woman sort of at the four texts of this moment in American culture.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is phenomenal.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, wow.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now I want to read it right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, everyone.
[SPEAKER_02]: Go on.
[SPEAKER_02]: The amateur.
[SPEAKER_02]: Done.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, everyone.
[SPEAKER_02]: So now it's our official goodbye, Jenny stay on, because I am asking you a bonus question.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's our official goodbye.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for joining us.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now is when you stop listening to the episode in case you have not read the shampoo effect.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so welcome back.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you are here for the second time after reading the shampoo effect, this is a spoiler.
[SPEAKER_02]: I actually don't think it's that big deal at the spoiler, but I'm going to be super careful because I do not like spoilers.
[SPEAKER_02]: Jenny, Jenny Jackson, Jenny.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, one of the most famous acquiring editors of our generation.
[SPEAKER_02]: The protagonist is a writer.
[SPEAKER_02]: The protagonist isn't author.
[SPEAKER_02]: The protagonist writes a novel.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, the protagonist...
[SPEAKER_02]: The novel gets published is what I'm trying to say.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sorry, Lisha, I'm going to say this again.
[SPEAKER_02]: There is a novel that gets published.
[SPEAKER_02]: One year after, the protagonist decides to write it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Explain yourself, Jenny.
[SPEAKER_02]: That timeline is not adding up.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is not how fast a book comes out.
[SPEAKER_02]: We tell all our listeners, all of them, Jenny.
[SPEAKER_02]: We tell them it takes two years.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it takes one year of editing and then one year of production sometimes more.
[SPEAKER_02]: You want a long runway for publicity.
[SPEAKER_02]: We, I say this to my clients, we say this to our listeners.
[SPEAKER_02]: What, what did you do here?
[SPEAKER_02]: Why won't your later, Jenny?
[SPEAKER_02]: What?
[SPEAKER_02]: What is this?
[SPEAKER_02]: Is this poetic liberty?
[SPEAKER_02]: What is this?
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I really, really wanted to toy with the reader's expectations of what the book is, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I have her at the end drive up and, you know, she's getting out of the car at the literary festival.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's at the New York, no, I'm sorry, she is at the Newburyport Book Festival in the final scene, and she, you know, takes her book out of her bag and is like, wow, you know, it's incredible to see my first book.
[SPEAKER_01]: and as a reader, you're supposed to think you know what that book is.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're supposed to feel sure she is written about and you realize she didn't, she got, she, she tossed out.
[SPEAKER_02]: But if it had been two years, I would have figured that out.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's why you made it one year.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, that actually makes a lot of sense trying to be tricky here.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, this this is devious.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's devious Jenny devious and tricky and brilliant and okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, okay, but to everyone listening, this is not going to happen to you guys.
[SPEAKER_02]: Please do not expect to hear us please
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: You heard it here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, this is actually super brilliant.
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought you were going to say it's because her mom called in a favor and was like, make it happen fast guys.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean she could have done couldn't done.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's also possible.
[SPEAKER_01]: That part can get it done that he is a power agent.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not based on anyone real.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me tell you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was going to say I hope not for reasons that will make will be clear when people read the book.
[SPEAKER_02]: Although I do appreciate a lot of the medical arcness towards the end.
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought that that was lovely thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, a lovable cat is like kind of a jam.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, well also people need to be messy or else it's boring.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, Jenny.
[SPEAKER_02]: Officially thank you now.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for joining us.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're the best.
[SPEAKER_01]: I so appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't believe what an amazing reader and conversationalist you are.
[SPEAKER_01]: lucky all of us.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel really lucky.
[SPEAKER_02]: We all feel really lucky to have you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am like completely obsessed.
[SPEAKER_02]: I loved this even more than I loved Pineapple Street and I was quite obsessed with that one.
[SPEAKER_02]: I made my mom read it and my mother-in-law and we had a little book club so we're going to do it again this time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, let me know how it goes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks, easy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Talk soon.
[SPEAKER_00]: CC-Lera is a literary agent at Wendy Sherman Associates.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you'd like to query CC, please refer to the submission guidelines at www.wshomen.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: Carly Waters is a literary agent at PS Literary Agency, but a work on this podcast is not affiliated with the agency and the views expressed by Carly on this podcast,
[SPEAKER_00]: are solely that of her as a podcast co-host, they do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of PS Literary Agency.