Life on Words | Writer Interviews

Aleks Merilo wrote Exit 27, which the Houston Chronicle called "the best original play to be produced this season," and The Widow of Tom's Hill, which ran off-Broadway at 59E59. His plays have won the Playwrights First Award, Project Playwright, and the New x NW competition. He also teaches high school theater in Port Orchard, Washington, and that job, not the plays, is how he buys groceries.

He has been thrown out of a theater twice by people who didn't know he wrote the play. He once sat next to a stranger who was looking him up on a phone, and said nothing. He tells the story of the play he was sure no one would produce, which went off-Broadway, and of the director who found a meaning in it he hadn't put there, then called after 2020 to ask if he'd meant it. And he talks about the script he believes in most: The Snowmaker, award-winning, five times down to the last two or three at a major theater, never staged. He calls it the white whale.

He explains how a Jon Krakauer book sent him thirty miles into the desert, to a polygamist town and the teenage boys it had thrown out, and how their stories became Exit 27. He describes the play he is writing now, set in one morning's meeting during the making of Giant, where a man sells his soul to keep his name on the marquee.

Listen for one word at 14:26. Twenty-two minutes later it is his whole answer to what this life has cost him. Elena Taylor told this show a writer gets twenty-four hours to let a bad review sting; Aleks's wife gives him the same twenty-four. The last thing he says is about the day job, and it is the reason to stay to the end.

Topics & Timestamps

(00:00) Kicked out of his own play, twice

(00:29) Contests, and writing the play he'd want to see

(01:57) The boy who hoped a troupe of actors would steal him

(02:42) An actor first

(03:37) "When I was ten… I just knew"

(04:16) Why a theater feels like church

(04:46) A script in purgatory

(05:45) What the director saw that he didn't

(07:41) The play no one was going to produce

(09:03) The back row, and the stranger in the next seat

(10:30) Why playwrights should sit in the audience anonymously

(12:07) "I didn't get that"

(12:54) Tennessee Williams shows up with rewrites

(14:20) Why he kept writing it anyway

(15:38) Would an actor want this role?

(17:37) What eight-year-olds teach a playwright

(19:13) Teaching: "a prison guard and a social worker"

(19:46) A high school within sight of Seattle

(20:30) The theater he's sitting in, and who opened it

(20:51) Five top playwrights, none living off their plays

(22:31) Phones, and the actor who missed an entrance

(23:47) Tango Mike, his grandfather, and who owns a family story

(25:57) Exit 27: the town in the desert and the boys it exiled

(28:58) The Snowmaker, "the white whale"

(30:41) Who theater is for

(35:27) Why should anyone like Hamilton?

(36:27) What it has cost

(40:32) Giant, James Dean, Rock Hudson, and one morning's meeting

(44:03) Twenty years from now

(45:23) Marry rich, go to therapy, pick your audience

(49:22) What the day job is, and isn't

BOOKS: 9781400032808, 9780571198771

In third grade, Allie Millington was given a writing prompt — a different kind of hero — and decided the hero should be a pencil. The story took third place. Holding the certificate, she knew what she wanted to do for the rest of her life.

It took five years, several books, and more than four hundred rejections. She turned those rejections into a doodle or a poem apiece, a project she called her rejection collection, made as small acts of defiance and mailed out to other writers who wrote to say they felt the same. Near the end of that stretch, her husband bought her a 1940s Olivetti typewriter as a way of saying he believed in her. She wrote the manuscript on it. Olivetti debuted as an instant national bestseller, and Tom Hanks reviewed it in the New York Times.

Allie talks about what four hundred rejections do to a person's ability to trust their own voice, and about what success did next. Her answer to what this life has cost her is unusually specific: a little of her childlike sense.

Topics & Timestamps

(00:00) Always looking forward, never sitting still

(01:15) Third grade, and a hero who was a pencil

(02:55) Five years, several books, four hundred rejections

(03:20) The rejection collection: a doodle for every no

(04:40) The typewriter her husband bought her

(05:35) Typing the manuscript on the Olivetti itself

(06:34) The agent she almost settled for

(08:53) Finding the other writers, and mailing the pieces out

(10:30) Why the collection is becoming a book

(11:26) What rejection did to her trust in her own voice

(12:20) Why she doesn't read reviews, good or bad

(12:50) The responsibility of delivering it twice

(13:52) The protections she's built

(14:40) The "don't look back draft," taped to her computer

(15:20) Play is the process

(15:50) Leave the layers for later

(16:30) Discovery over doubt

(17:32) An instant bestseller, and Tom Hanks

(18:00) Elizabeth Gilbert's question: how do you follow that?

(19:40) You won't always have Tom Hanks writing about you

(20:10) Missing the characters, and what deadlines changed

(21:30) Imposter syndrome, and whether it needs to go

(22:40) Being afraid to think highly of your own work

(23:00) What it cost: a little of her childlike sense

(23:50) Perfectionism at war with playfulness

(24:50) Why she tells kids to write on typewriters

(25:31) Feeling like a beginner every time

(26:40) Starting from an object, and teaching empathy

(27:29) The garage, the tennis ball, months-long stories aloud

(29:00) Discovering Judy Blume did the same thing

(29:30) The long dystopian novel at the end of high school

(30:16) Her parents, and books in the trunk of the car

(30:50) A mother who never let the Tom Hanks idea go

(31:50) "Mom, guess what?"

(32:15) Her husband, standing at the back of the room

(34:28) What this life taught her about herself

(35:20) Living in the future, forced to stay present

(36:32) A ten-month-old, and what changed

(37:40) No fluff, nothing meaningless

(39:12) What she'd tell young Allie

(40:00) Characters who find friends without changing

(40:52) What she makes of her own success

(43:14) The biggest thing on her plate

(43:50) Writing in the cracks, at five in the morning

(44:40) What's next: Trunk No. 3, out in October

(45:50) Looking Down, and the books lined up behind it

(46:30) Does she like what her career has become?

BOOKS: 9781250326935, 9781250393579

Poet and novelist Maureen McQuerry decided at age six that she would be a writer. She was in her forties before her first novels came out. In between, she was the neighborhood kid called "question box," a closet poet in high school, and a teacher who chose the classroom because writing felt too risky.

Maureen talks with Terry Heath about the fear that kept her from long-form fiction and how she got past it. She describes the phone call when Abrams bought three books at once, and the family history behind Between Before and After: her father became a flu orphan at ten during the 1918–1919 epidemic and survived on the streets of New York. The novel came out in 2019, just before a new pandemic, and then lost its editors and publicist, leaving the book orphaned too. Soon after, her agent of twelve years left the industry and she moved across the state to Bainbridge Island, where she knew one person.

They also discuss finding two brothers she never knew she had, one at the front door and one through a DNA match. The conversation covers the green man carving that became a poem and then a middle-grade duology, why poems and novels should open questions rather than answer them, the terror of release day, what writing costs, and the question under all her work: what does it mean to live well?

Highlights
00:36 Deciding at age six to become a writer
01:37 Spying on the neighbors with a notebook
02:11 A closet poet in high school
03:14 From poems to novels, and being a role model for her kids
05:16 Getting past the fear, bird by bird
06:17 The phone call: Abrams buys three books
07:13 Her father, a 1918 flu orphan, and Between Before and After
09:19 An orphaned book: two editors, a distillery, and a fired publicist
11:36 A brother at the front door, and another found through DNA
13:57 Myth, fairy tales, and Celtic legend
15:07 Every story starts with a question, and the green man
17:38 Rift and climate refugees
19:11 "Question box"
19:40 Why she chose teaching
20:40 The turn in a poem
21:29 Hope that denies universal defeat
22:45 How few answers there really are
24:38 Terrified on release day
25:51 The story her father wanted told
26:49 Walking Brooklyn with a guide in his nineties
28:01 Telling her brother who their father was
29:40 Isolation and community
31:57 Milestones don't change you; the work does
34:19 The dark night of the soul
36:01 The influenza orphan
36:10 Rebuilding, and a back-porch book club
37:53 What she still wants
40:27 What writing costs
42:22 What isn't two-sided
43:25 What it means to live well

Books by Maureen McQuerry

• The Peculiars (Abrams/Amulet), ISBN 9781419712067
• Time Out of Time, Book One: Beyond the Door (Amulet), ISBN 9781419714931
• Time Out of Time, Book Two: The Telling Stone (Abrams), ISBN 9781419719165
• Between Before and After (Blink/HarperCollins), ISBN 9780310767282
• Big Ideas for Little Philosophers Box Set, with Duane Armitage (G.P. Putnam's Sons), ISBN 9780593111703
• Rift (forthcoming)

Find Maureen: maureenmcquerry.com

BOOKS: 9781419701788, 9781419710162, 9781419714948, 9780310767381

Elena Taylor spent twenty years in the theater as a playwright, director, and designer before she wrote her first novel in 2007. It took until 2016 to see a book in print, and by then she had learned the thing nobody tells you: there is no game plan. No book you can buy that lays out a novelist's career, because everybody's is different, and most of what happens is out of your hands.

Elena talks about the mistake she considers the largest of her career, and what it cost her to get out of it. She talks about the difference between being autonomous and being lonely, and locates loneliness somewhere unexpected. And she talks about her father, a law professor, who heard her say she was thinking about law school and told her the world does not need more attorneys.

Topics & Timestamps

(00:00) Where loneliness actually comes from

(01:01) Writing since she could hold a pencil

(02:20) Twenty years in the theater, a first book in 2016

(03:30) What she thought publication would be: a straight line up

(04:04) A book released in April 2020

(04:33) No game plan, and none of it in your control

(05:30) What she didn't know about being published

(06:11) The largest mistake of her career: no agent

(07:00) A disagreement over book three

(07:51) Getting the rights back, changing publishers

(08:42) A second agent, and what that did for her

(09:37) Awards, nominations, and Blood at number one

(10:07) "I'm not sure I'm allowed in the room"

(10:37) No boss's office, no performance review

(12:02) Why one reader saying "I want to read your book" is a win

(12:35) Tenacity over skill

(14:46) Autonomous versus lonely

(16:06) How loneliness changed as she got older

(17:06) A time she wasn't understood: "always"

(17:34) A book club, and two lines read aloud

(19:31) Social commentary nobody comments on

(21:17) Why forcing readers to understand turns them off

(22:41) What the reader brings to the book

(23:36) Gen X, benign neglect, and the Troubadour at fifteen

(25:30) What stays off social media

(27:28) "X class": esteem your income doesn't explain

(29:38) The romance of the writing life versus the day job

(30:49) The hardest conversation — as an editor, not a writer

(31:22) What the writer hears versus what you said

(33:15) "I can't care more than the writer"

(34:17) The hardest thing to hear: flat characters

(35:00) Two rejections in one day, exactly opposite

(37:03) "If it really hurts, it's probably true"

(38:37) Reading criticism for what's usable

(39:07) Twenty-four hours to let a bad review sting

(39:27) How much has been luck: "everything and nothing"

(41:18) The publisher who'd just signed a similar book

(42:04) Where luck was on her side: the drive itself

(43:27) What the life taught her about herself

(44:04) Bestselling friends in a permanent panic

(45:08) The Hartwell family motto

(46:11) What she still wants: an Edgar nomination

(47:38) Still to prove? Every single book

(49:10) Norman Maclean, and beauty outsiders never see

(50:12) First draft to finished shelf

(51:53) Her father: "the world needs more playwrights"

(53:16) Her mother, dementia, and a shelf of her books

(54:50) Anything that would make her walk away

(55:50) The biggest thing on her plate right now

(57:09) Why promoting a book is harder than writing one

(58:12) Have the books compensated for loss?

(59:11) The three legs of a life

BOOKS: 9781448317370

Sheila Roberts wanted to be a songwriter. Sixty books later — with movies on Lifetime, Hallmark, and Great American Family — she says the writing life has cost her nothing at all.

That answer is worth sitting with, because it doesn't come from an easy career. Sheila talks about crashing twice: once over a research error in a Regency romance that nobody caught until the reviewer did, and once when a box of influencer copies never went out, her editor stopped taking her calls, and her agent let her go. She calls the second one a dark night of the soul, and describes the friends who showed up with champagne and chocolate and told her the only writers who fail are the ones who quit.

Along the way: the purple gaucho outfit, the Dancing with the Stars audition, a mother who hid the naughty book face-to-the-wall, and the New York Times list she has decided to stop wanting.

Topics & Timestamps

(01:05) Stumbling into a career, and a book sold on the first try

(03:19) Paying your dues: beginning, middle, or end

(04:21) The purple gauchos, and a friend who said "you look like a cliché"

(05:14) Auditioning for Dancing with the Stars

(06:37) The résumé — and roughly sixty books

(07:09) What it cost: nothing

(08:54) Crash #1: the Regency error four sets of eyes missed

(10:25) Crash #2: copies that never shipped, an agent who let her go

(11:21) The dark night of the soul

(11:49) Champagne, chocolate, and Susan Wiggs

(13:18) "No problem, no story"

(14:28) Nashville, and an ambition that became an idol

(15:27) Songwriting success or the marriage

(16:26) The movies, and bribing a film crew with cookies

(18:15) What an extrovert knows about loneliness

(19:50) Why isolation starves the idea machine

(20:21) Not fear exactly — not knowing who she was

(21:20) Did success change how people see her?

(22:09) How it changed how she sees herself

(22:50) Two older brothers and no pedestal

(23:31) The naughty book, and a discovery after the funeral

(25:47) Once it's in print, it's there forever

(26:32) The hardest conversation: being dropped

(27:24) Brain baby versus product

(28:20) Letting go of the New York Times list

(29:34) A cat on his last life, and an agent who laughed

(30:39) Muses, wiring, and ideas circulating in the air

(32:06) The Man Next Door: Rear Window with two nosy women

(33:20) Killing darlings, fool's gold, and the ideas still waiting

(34:57) How you know it's gold (you don't)

(36:04) Tennis, ping pong, and a husband who'd rather pretend

(37:11) Writing every day but Sunday

(38:18) Miss one boat, be ready for the next

(39:16) What it gave her that outsiders never see

(39:57) Genre fiction, humor, and the layer underneath

(41:20) Giftings, and becoming who she's meant to be

(42:36) Unexpected Journey, and the copies she still sends to strangers

(43:43) Why books — "because songs didn't work"

BOOKS: 9780999439807, 9780369773784, 9780312594497, 9780312370220

Kirby Larson learned that words have power at age seven, standing on a playground where the popular girls always got to be Dorothy. She told them her mother was in the hospital — leaving out that she was there having a baby — and got to be Dorothy that day. Decades and 250 rejection letters later, she'd write Hattie Big Sky, a Newbery Honor book, and a shelf of historical novels about the slices of American history most of us were never taught.

Kirby talks about what a silver sticker costs you: the innocence of writing purely for love, the privacy that disappears when strangers call you by your first name. About the manuscript she rewrote entirely on a trusted reader's advice, then threw out and restored, because her writer's gut wouldn't budge. About the novel she started in 2011 and only sold this year. And about book banning, and what it's doing to the middle grade market and to writers with less privilege than she has.

Topics & Timestamps

(00:43) The playground, the Wizard of Oz, and a seven-year-old's discovery that stories change people

(02:18) From broadcast journalism to picture books — and the library trip that flipped the switch

(04:16) 250 rejection letters, and learning that revision is 95% of the job

(05:33) What she imagined the life would look like, and how little she let herself dream

(07:01) The bookstore event with two toddlers — and how that "disaster" launched a career

(09:01) Publishing is a relationship industry

(09:37) The Newbery Honor: "like winning an Oscar"

(10:08) What it cost — ghostwriting, working on spec, losing the freedom of anonymity

(12:27) Giving up privacy: presentations, vulnerability, and strangers who feel they know you

(13:56) What loneliness taught her — the observer's advantage, and mining old cruelties for characters

(16:11) A quieter Newbery, before social media — and building a circle of fellow creatives

(18:29) Her own definition of success (hint: it happens at the desk)

(19:25) Fan mail: Duke, Dogs for Defense, and readers convinced her invented characters were real

(21:37) Turning down a respected editor because the story didn't touch her heart

(23:32) Killing darlings, abandoned projects, and the novel she started in 2011

(25:06) How she knows a story is right — overlooked women, forgotten history, and why there are so many dogs

(26:36) C.S. Lewis on children's books, and why adults write her as often as kids do

(27:39) The hardest lesson: learning to ask for help

(29:05) A typical work day — and the research assistant asleep under the desk

(30:20) What people get wrong: the fame, the money, the second job most writers have

(31:08) The hardest conversation — rewriting Liberty in one POV, then trusting her gut and going back

(34:04) Book banning inside publishing houses: editors asking writers to second-guess themselves

(34:58) Where the inner voice comes from

(36:10) Self-discipline, and what her son taught her about it

(37:50) Violet the contemptible cow, stubbornness, and the folded love notes she leaves on her laptop

(39:35) What she'd be doing instead

(41:05) Why books: "I could find a friend between the covers of a book"

(42:23) The price right now — the middle grade market and fear

(43:24) The stories she isn't blocked from telling, and who is

(44:46) What she's afraid of: the blank page, and writing the terrible

(45:53) The charming literary note practice that made her closest friends

(49:17) What the life gave her that outsiders never see: confidence, and a passport that stays current

(50:38) What the whole arc has been about

(51:30) What made it worth it — the awards kids vote on themselves

(52:10) The metaphorical headstone

BOOKS: 9780385735957, 9780545416368, 9780808532101, 9780345440464

Alan Katz has written more than 50 books and spent five years writing for The Rosie O'Donnell Show. He grew up in a family of shoe-store owners and teachers and announced early that he'd be a writer — his father's response was that as a writer, you are your own merchandise. We talk about what that life has cost, the bullies who taught him to write on deadline, and why he tells kids a joke at someone else's expense is never worth it.

Key topics

• "You are your own merchandise": the cost of a career where next year is never guaranteed
• Comedy writing in advertising — Pepsi, McDonald's, and a musical about Sperry computers starring Kirk Douglas
• Writing song parodies on the 5am train for a show that aired at 10
• How his daughter's dinner-table question became Take Me Out of the Bathtub
• Writing jokes for Henny Youngman at $7 apiece, in high school
• The agent who said write only for television, and why he refused
• What happened to the sitcom
• Kids who say they don't read for pleasure

Timestamps
01:25 A family of retail and teachers, and a kid who wanted to write
02:12 The costs: a best seller one year, no idea the next
03:17 How the Rosie O'Donnell Show job happened
04:19 Broadway, comedy, sitcoms — why their sensibilities lined up
05:15 Comedy writing in advertising, and a musical about computers
06:22 The Scholastic joke books
07:01 Writing parodies on the 5:30am train
08:03 Simone's question at dinner
08:26 Simon & Schuster was across the street
09:28 What he'd be doing if none of it had worked
10:40 Got Your Nose, and the packages kids send him
11:30 Two Sides to Everything, with his wife Rose
13:12 A typical Tuesday, and Jerry the ventriloquist dummy
13:50 "Turn the Tub Around," and what his kids are proudest of
14:52 What people get wrong about a comedy writer's life
16:00 The text chain with Dan Gutman and Peter Lerangis
16:51 Whether his kids thought he was funny
18:02 Keeping a notebook — writers observe
19:15 Awesome Achievers, and never joking at anyone's expense
20:56 A funny kid, and the bullies who demanded jokes
22:04 Writing for Henny Youngman at $7 a joke
22:38 How live TV taught him to write under pressure
24:24 What he wouldn't tell his younger self
25:26 Mildred Feinsilver, and three years chasing a sitcom in LA
26:56 Is he a good boss to himself?
27:53 Soupy Sales, and why jealousy isn't the word
28:48 The part luck played, and the advice he gives his son
30:00 The most unglamorous thing he did this week
31:29 Advice for someone starting out — and stay away from AI
33:31 What happened to the sitcom
35:15 Lie-ographies: laughing your way into the facts
38:17 Two stories about his name
41:56 What's next, and 27 ways to tell a Barbie story
45:07 Has it been worth it?
46:29 Kids who don't read for pleasure
49:14 Keep reading, keep writing, keep being kind

BOOKS: 9780689829031, 9780063025042, 9780762463381, 9780762463367

Steamy romance novelist Christina Braver has never turned a profit on her books — and she's never regretted a page. In this conversation, Christina talks about writing "real sex representation" into the romance genre: heroines with endometriosis, sexual trauma, and bodies that don't work perfectly, who are still worthy of love and a happy ending. She shares the reader letter she returns to when imposter syndrome hits, the one-star review her Formula One–obsessed son wanted to answer personally, and why a woman with a clinical psychology background and a corporate career ended up writing romance during COVID. Along the way: the "generative stage" of life, the tyranny of the checklist, charlatans in the self-publishing space, and what her husband's coworkers think when they find out what his wife does for a living.

The main question of this podcast: What has your life in books cost you, and what has it given you?

• (00:47) The main question: cost and reward
• (01:01) The honest ledger — money lost, free time gone, work-life balance eroded
• (03:49) The generative stage: writing to leave a mark, not to climb
• (05:59) The reader letter she saved — Hawaii for Two and one woman's healing
• (09:25) Endometriosis, authenticity, and the romance genre's turn toward inclusion
• (11:34) Imposter syndrome, charlatans, and why she rereads those letters
• (15:02) What could ever make her walk away
• (17:24) Kennedy Ryan and discovering that romance can say something real
• (21:35) Medium essays, a craft book in progress: writing intimacy with intention
• (23:44) The famous one-star review — Formula One Noel and a son's defense
• (26:50) Process: the "plotzer" method — start with the sexual health issue, then find the characters
• (34:34) Where ideas come from: Michael Pollan, Mary Roach's Bonk, and the vet tech who explains boyfriends via animal husbandry
• (38:17) Writing young men — bro culture, toxic messaging, and the new adult WIP
• (40:41) Has writing changed her? ("My therapist says my word is why.")
• (42:18) What she wouldn't tell her younger self — and what she would
• (47:00) What everyone gets wrong about the job: Nashville dreams and the myth of making it
• (50:39) The most unglamorous thing she did this week (a tent was involved)
• (51:28) A day in the writing life: email as the frog, sprint partners, Tuesdays as flex days
• (55:44) Boundaries, budgets, and refusing the "you should" advice
• (01:00:05) On a scale of one to ten — was it worth it?

• Hawaii for Two
• Formula One Noel
• Your Two Lips (first in her series)

• Kennedy Ryan
• Michael Pollan
• Mary Roach, Bonk
• Liz Plank, For the Love of Men
• Michael Kimmel, Guyland
• Stephen King ("the boys in the basement")
• John Gottman (5:1 ratio in relationships)

Life on Words — the life behind the work. New episodes weekly at lifeonwords.com.

BOOKS: 9798988547976, 9798986361451,

Ben Rockwood and his wife Tamara started Bainbridge Island Press out of frustration — she was writing better and better work and getting nothing but silence from publishers. So they decided to get on the other side of the fence and find out why. Four years later he's designing books, sitting in working groups with Penguin Random House, and helping write an international standard for royalty reporting. He also rejected the show's opening question, which results in an interesting answer.

Key topics

• Why he doesn't think of any of it as a cost
• The dinner in Harvard Square where the press was decided
• Why most publishers won't give writers feedback — and what they do instead
• The man with thirty years of handwritten poems in boxes under his bed
• Hybrid and vanity presses, described generously and then honestly
• Why he tells authors to publish before they think they're ready
• The economics of poetry, and why so many poetry presses are nonprofits
• Whether a regional name helps or hurts

Timestamps

01:28 Rejecting the opening question

02:28 Starting the company in rage

03:24 Harvard Square, and the decision to see it from the publisher's side

05:06 A reader and a writer, coming at books from opposite sides

06:48 What it's given back: being in a position to actually help

07:43 Why they answer every submission — and why most presses don't

10:09 The man who'd never read in public before

11:44 Thirty years of poems, handwritten, in boxes

13:02 Walking in knowing nothing, and why that was right

14:17 Learning enough to ask an intelligent question

15:15 Working groups with the big houses, and what publishers won't tell each other

16:38 How nuanced the industry actually is

17:34 Paper mills, high-art presses, and everything between

19:12 What's been disappointing

21:47 Why poetry is a tough space

22:34 Lots of poetry writers, not many poetry readers

23:44 What he'd tell himself, and what wouldn't have stopped him

25:14 Learning InDesign, and why poetry breaks every word processor

26:13 The Chicago Manual of Style, and the books already on your shelf

27:09 Write it down when you're a beginner, not when you're an expert

29:09 Advice for poets facing rejection after rejection

30:26 Hybrid and vanity presses — the pitch, and the reality

32:24 The people who want a book for their grandchildren

33:06 On being a gatekeeper

34:37 Chapbooks as a way to say yes

34:07 Thank-you letters for rejection letters

35:03 Authors as bands: make the album, tour, make another

36:57 Why poets keep switching presses, and why that stings

37:35 Chapbook or full collection — how they decide

40:34 Contest fees, and the poet's vice

41:54 Where a poetry press's revenue actually comes from

42:55 Why they chose for-profit over nonprofit

43:23 Copper Canyon, Wave Books, and where they want to sit

45:28 Quality first — and covers designed like album art

47:50 Whether "Bainbridge Island" helps or limits them

50:58 Prose, memoirs, and possible imprints

52:50 A real Tuesday: printers, proofs, royalties, letterpress

57:06 Five kids, a nightly fire, and a wall of book covers

59:54 What's next, including an international royalty standard

1:01:33 Is it worth it? Tech aged out. Books last.

BOOKS:

Susan Wiggs sold her first book in 1986 while teaching full-time with a one-year-old at home. She's since written more than 60 novels, won three RITAs, and hit the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists. We talk about what that life has cost — a decade of television, some friendships, the steadiness of a predictable paycheck — and what it's given back. Also: the insecurity that never leaves, the bicycle wreck that nearly stopped her, and why she says you have to be ready when your luck comes around.

Key topics

• What she peeled away to make room for book after book
• Why she told almost no one she was writing a novel
• "Writers are one of the most insecure populations I can think of"
• Wayward Girls, the Good Shepherd homes, and New York's look-back law
• Why she'd rather be called a writer than an author
• Operation Baby Lift, and the book she's researching now
• The 2025 bicycle accident and a year of recovery
• Book signings where nobody came

Timestamps
02:03 A decade of TV, and the friendships that went
03:30 Uncertainty, anxiety, and the stress of being a sole proprietor
05:30 Creative gratification, and writing first drafts by hand
06:20 A stranger in foreign sales who sold her books around the world
07:34 What it cost her family — and her daughter's honest verdict
09:38 Texas in the eighties, and a first husband who wasn't a patron of the arts
10:15 Why she kept the novel to herself until she could point to a publisher
12:14 Confidence, insecurity, and never quite dropping the backup plan
14:19 Where the next book comes from — and Operation Baby Lift
16:47 On the term "women's fiction," and why she says commercial novels
18:18 Writer vs. author, and why the distinction matters to her
19:19 What she'd be doing if the writing hadn't taken
20:56 What she gave up: a predictable schedule, and health coverage
22:25 A typical writing day, and the four-hour limit
24:40 Admin, social media, and the other hats
27:14 "You don't want to be just a life support system for an imagination"
28:44 Stephen King, James Lee Burke, and why envy isn't the word
29:50 The Carrot Seed, the first book she ever read alone
30:53 What she'd tell her younger self — and what she wouldn't
33:15 The advice she got, and where to find the straight story
35:24 The imprint that closed, and the launch slot that opened
37:35 When paperbacks came out like magazines
40:30 A million words of apprenticeship, and avoiding writing programs
42:10 Whether it's harder to start now
43:28 The bicycle wreck, the airlift, and the year after
46:02 Beach-read covers with unplanned pregnancies inside
49:39 Her process: the pitch, the synopsis, and leaving room to be surprised
52:32 What people get wrong about writers' income and hours
54:29 The most unglamorous thing she did this week
55:59 The signings where nobody came
59:27 What's next: an eclipse in the North Sea

BOOKS: 9780063118263, 9780062914118, 9780063211193, 9780060233501