My friend Barbara Shoup returns to the podcast to share lessons from her writing life and her new book about writing, A COMMOTION IN YOUR HEART. She talks candidly about struggling with depression, finding joy in writing even when it doesn’t lead to great fame and fortune, and the challenge of bringing forth something as ethereal as a story using only language. We chat about author estate planning, learning from writers you don’t like personally, ethically basing characters on real people, the cruelest editor rejection ever, and so much more.

Barbara Shoup is the author of eight novels for adults and young adults, most recently An American Tune and Looking for Jack Kerouac, and the co-author of Novel Ideas: Contemporary Authors Share the Creative Process. Her short fiction, poetry, essays, and interviews have appeared in numerous small magazines, as well as in The Writer and the New York Times travel section. The recipient of the PEN Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Working Writer Fellowship and grants from the Indiana Arts Commission, she is the Writer-in-Residence at the Indiana Writers Center and a faculty member at Art Workshop International.