Mom Writes Podcast

In this episode:

The short of it:

Flashbacks! And how Abby epically screws them up.

The long of it:

Abby and Jennie talk about her most recent revisions and being in the lens of your character, seeing things from their eyes. This is a great episode if you want to get into the nitty gritty of character motivation and background. What writers often miss is the including appropriate reactions in how their particular characters would react to events given their own personalities, histories, and quirks. 

When you bring up the cause and effect trajectory it can mean big things, dominoes falling, scene-to-scene trajectory in the story, but it's also true on a sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph level. Abby was able to insert a major idea, the idea of leaving childhood behind, into a scene where her character is looking through a drawer of old toys, but she included a lot of other memories for her character that weren't necessarily pertinent to the point of the scene. Jennie says that when you're setting up an idea like this you're introducing a whole theme that you can then explore, but it's important to maintain your focus on the point of what you've introduced. Don't get lost in the trees - keep the forest in sight. 

Jennie and Abby continue to discuss flashbacks, their potential problems, and how to spot and solve them. In real life, memories reference things that have happened to us in order to help us move through problems and make meaning of what's happening to us in the present. Flashbacks can be an important tool for imparting information to the reader in a creative way. It's great to have multiple triggers for flashbacks, but they need to be brief and have a specific point to avoid it turning into an info dump, and too many memories at once can lose the point of the scene.The whole point of a flashback is for the character to have an opportunity to make sense of what's happening to them. 

Lastly, we discuss what these events in the scenes mean to Abby's character, Bernadette, and how they drive the scene and keep story-level problem front and center. Everything needs to serve the story - to highlight what the main problem is and keep weaving that thread throughout the plot. If you need to go back in your story and add additional details to shore up that thread or the themes you're trying to impart - do it! World-building in the beginning is an essential key in helping the reader make sense of later points in your story.

Doing All The Things

One of the most challenging aspects of writing is pulling it all together - what you know about your story, what you know you should do with your story, and all the plot lines and characterizations going on in your head. In this episode Mel and Jennie discuss raising the stakes, avoiding info dumps, and where the line is between not enough and too much information.

People either think one thing or the other: "I suck and everything I write sucks" OR "I am amazing and everything I write is brilliant." Either end is not a good place to be because it's not real. You're never always good or always bad, and developing your muscle of discernment is an important skill. - Jennie Nash

Jennie points out that Mel needs to work on remembering your character's history and motivations when continuing the story - be more in your character's heads. When your character is an expert on something, or is well-versed in a certain profession, they need to swim in that water all the time and see things through their own personal lens, and you've got to commit to consistency in their reactions to events. Characters are rarely neutral about things that affect them or the things or people they care about.

When we talk about raising stakes in a story, people always think it's drama - that could do it, but it really means raising the emotional stakes in the individual. - Jennie Nash

Jennie and Mel also address info dumps: When you're learning how to engage the reader sometimes it's three steps forward two steps back - lots of repetition means that you're already getting down what you need. There's nothing wrong with doing an info dump as long as you recognize that you need to eventually revise and make it more nuanced. The kind of nuance you're looking for is subtle and placed in thought, dialogue, story details, etc. Info dumps in general box the reader out, but the reader wants to be IN the story, IN the scene, IN the character's head. Ask yourself: "How can I put this back in a moment, back in the scene, and filter the rest of the information through the narrator or character themselves?" The goal is to recognize when you're doing it and know that you can go back and clean it up. It's much easier to go back and fix something that's too much than not enough.

Stephen King says "I'm convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing". If you're not dialing it up to 11, maybe you need to stop playing it safe and take the risks you need to go farther in your story. Fear of what, though? The fear is about looking at your true self - if you have to sit and examine the nitty gritty details of how your characters make decisions, how YOU or anyone you know might react to anything in your story - that can be a frightening thing. As writers, some of our biggest fears surround being exposed when our readers see us for who we really are through our work.

Abby, Jennie and Mel close out the conversation with a discussion about art and how it teaches us and connects us as human beings. Many writers seem to have this fundamental dissatisfaction with the way the world is, and a fundamental desire to understand it better. The art that captures our hearts is that which imparts some sort of understanding about those universal struggles and truths about the world. That--the connection with others--is what keeps us coming back to our favorite works of art again and again, whether in writing, photography, painting, or music.

Is joy the point of writing? There are so many things one can feel when they write, and the deep level satisfaction of engaging and wrestling with the work is what most of us eventually feel - in addition to joy, of course. Any art, writing included, it an iterative process. Most artists find themselves going back again and again to their work, changing and improving and making it better before it's finally finished. 

Mel details her experiences before she started this process and the tendency to romanticize either the wildly creative parts of writing or the end result. There are a lot of reasons why people write, and sometimes your work doesn't turn out how you expect. We read portions of Anne Bradstreet's poem, "An Author to her Novel."

(Mel would like to give a shout-out to her 12th grade english teacher, Mrs. Berg, for introducing her to the poem and for a great AP english class!)

Abby also talks about her experiences in 12th grade English reading Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own" and her battles with her 12th grade english teacher, Mrs. Wyche, over their differing tastes in literature.

(Also, Abby would like to give a shout out to Mrs. Wyche-- a.k.a. Lois--  for not only being an amazing teacher, but also an amazing friend and co-worker in later years!)

Jennie had an English professor in college, Mr. Finklepearl, who gave her some great advice. "Write your next paper in first person rather than writing it as a proper academic essay," he said. 

He also gave her a great piece of advice and told her to go start her writing career instead of going to grad school. "Give it five years and see what happens," he said. Within 5 years she'd published her first book.

Jennie reads portions of the beautiful poem, "The Writer" by Richard Wilbert, talking about what writing IS.

If you want to write to have people read your work, engage with your work, and even eventually pay for your work, joy is only one of the emotions you might feel along the way.

Book coach Jennie Nash and writers Abby Mathews and Melanie Parish talk about self care, writing, and parenting in this episode of Mom Writes. Moms (and dads) have this superpower for discerning when your kids (or your spouse) need you and when your writing needs you. And writers should never feel guilty about prioritizing.

Today Abby and Mel talk to Roland Comtois: medium, nurse, and author of the books And Then There Was Heaven, Sixteen Minutes and the upcoming The Purple Papers and the Stories Behind Them. Roland describes his mission with his medium work as guiding people through grief, through loss, regret and disappointment by helping them hear the messages from their loved ones who have passed on.

"One of most amazing moments for me with this book [Sixteen Minutes] is when a woman came up to me and grabbed my hand, and said, 'because you cry, now I can cry too.'" - Roland Comtois.

Roland's first book is a memoir detailing his experiences as a medium, and his second surrounds grief and his mothers death. His third is a compilation of experiences, written with others, about his medium work and how it has affected those here on Earth.

"People thought that because of what I do for a living, being a nurse and a medium, that this process of her [my mother's] passing away would somehow be easier, but it was excruciating....I remember the day she stopped talking, and the day she passed, and none of those were easier because I'm someone who believes in the afterlife. I later sat in front of my computer as I was trying to figure out a way to help people, and I started writing the book...what I realized I was really doing was finding a place for my grief to have a voice. What I was really telling was the story of my pain and sorrow, and that is reflected in the stories of the thousands of people I've met along the way." - Roland Comtois

Roland, like many authors, was surprised by the realization as he reached the end of his first memoir that it was as much about his experience as what he was writing for others. Writing is a journey as much for the author as it is for the readers who will experience the finished book, and memoir writers in particular put themselves center stage, totally submersing themselves in their work, and according to Roland, come out of it stronger, better, more alive and transformed than when they first sat down to write their book. Many authors we've talked to, and this is something we've realized about ourselves as well, is that our stories are as much about ourselves and what we're trying to work through and discover as they are about plot and character.

Nursing has been Roland's longtime profession, and he cites experiences in patient care as affecting both his writing and his work as a medium. He's sat with hundreds of patients as they took their lasts breaths and cites that as one of the greatest honors and blessings of his life.

"I think that we're put in places where we need to be, we go where we're supposed to go....my nursing job was the best job I've had in my life. Now I have the honor of guiding the spiritual world back here for one brief moment so that their loved ones can live their lives." - Roland Comtois

Roland, Abby and Melanie discuss Roland's medium work and the Purple Papers, which is the way Roland expresses the messages he receives from those who've passed on. He describes his process as similar to automatic writing, encompassing several senses (sight, hearing, etc). These "letters from heaven" or the universe connect to someone on earth, bringing them messages of hope, peace, and sometimes of closure with those loved ones who've passed on. Roland' events center on reading or talking about these Purple Papers in hopes of connecting to someone in the audience. More often than not, they do, and the recipient is allowed to read and keep the message from their loved one.

The messages Roland receives have now become his latest book entitled The Purple Papers and the Stories Behind Them, a compilation of 50 stories and the loved ones that received these messages of hope and meaning, and how these helped them in their journey through grief.

In today's episode:

Jennie and I chat about my daughter's amazing male kindergarten teacher, "Mr. E," while we wait for Mel to dial in.

We chat about the Pete the Cat empire, Mr. E's Pete the Cat scavenger hunt, and Jennie makes a confession about Amazon.

Mel and I have a little mom competition over diapers. I talk about the Fort Worth Competitive Mom Circuit, and Jennie talks about the dreaded school car pool.

"All the people are just alone in their own little bubble" of SAMENESS.

I talk about going to see a medium, who I end up interviewing for the podcast (episode to come)! Jennie jokingly tries to edit my conversation as I tell the story. But I connect my visit to the medium with my writing as I tell the story about my best friend, Robyn, dying over a decade ago and how it has affected both my life and my writing. Jennie goes into full-blown therapist mode and reminds us that these deep WHYs are what we come to writing for. She also connects the book world I've written about in my story to the psychic realm, where characters go and can't come back.

I write about the first moment my main character notices a boy in middle school. I had just attended a workshop where the instructor said not to write about bodily sensations, which only served to challenge me to go back and write about bodily sensations… Jennie translates "don't write body sensations" to "don't write bad crap!" She persuades me to read part of the "body sensations" scene I wrote, and we talk about why it works.

Massive amounts of information go through our heads really fast in the real world. Sometimes you have to figure out how to work in small connections in your writing, small important bits that your characters will process without belaboring them.

Let's give those voices of doubt we all carry about our writing a mental slap in the face. Jennie works to help writers turn up the volume on those voices that say, "YES I CAN!" Today she harps on getting Melanie to express what it felt like as she wrote this week, because her work kicked butt. 

In this episode:

Subtitle: How One Friend Drags Another Friend Kicking and Screaming Towards Her Dream.

Mel’s husband, Mike, listens to the podcast for the first time.  Our husbands give us their unsolicited thoughts on the podcast, which actually surprise us! (Melanie and I have husbands who are both medical physicists.)

We tease each other about subscribing to and reviewing our own podcast.

Mel’s mom makes a surprise guest appearance.

Mel talks about her feelings on writing with authority and contrasts them with how uncomfortable she felt writing her scenes previously.

There’s comfort in knowing that even if you aren’t sure about what’s on the page, your book coach can help you fix it—you can’t edit a blank page.

Jennie harps on her questions about how we felt while writing, because her goal as a book coach is to get in the writer’s head and teach them how to “self-coach” as they write. She wants writers to push down the voices of doubt and shout out “I can do this!”

Jennie coaches Mel through a large chunk of backstory that can’t organically be conveyed through dialogue. How can she do this without feeling like it’s an info dump and without stopping the flow of the story? The key is to filter the meaning/emotion of the information through the characters.

We talk about how to end a scene—you end a scene by resolving the thing that started.

Jennie talks about how Mel totally killed her scene this week. It’s good not just in how it was written, but she nailed where she placed it and the role it plays in the overall story.

I ask Jennie a super rookie question—how do you decide what makes a chapter? Jennie answers the question using a terrible physics example in an attempt to relate to our husbands, who we are now aware are listening.  Even though she used a science example, she said this is where nuance and art come into play. Jennie compares a scene in a book to a scene in a play and explains how to use location as one way to determine how to break things up. Ask yourself, is there enough change that we need to rest in this place?

In this episode:

Fidget spinner DIY, black market fidget spinners, and other things writers can fidget with while they think

Jennie finds that when writers are feeling “not enoughness” they are usually actually really close to a breakthrough and just have to push through a little bit.

Mel talks herself up every time she sits down to write.

My mental block with the nastiest of all writerly words—outline

If the character gets everything s/he wants at the end of the book, it feels like a waste. It’s not satisfying to the reader because it goes against everything that READING is about, which is to learn how to navigate situations. “What happens if I don’t confront this fear of mine?” etc… It’s emotional survival. We turn to a book to answer the question, “How does that feel?”

Lisa Cron’s Emotional Cost Benefit Analysis and brain MRI’s

Imagination alone doesn’t make a story. You have to marry imagination to an emotion.

A common misconception about book coaching is that the coach is going to walk all over your story and make it their own, but today’s episode shows how Jennie led me through the process of figuring out the ending of my story by just asking one question. (And believe it or not, that question wasn’t, “WHY?!”)

Mel and I talk about how Jennie’s edits are actually kinda sorta totally like crack.

Both good feedback (you’re doing it right) and bad feedback (you need to change something) can be super motivating and helpful.

Jennie uses a phrase “generosity of spirit” to describe being in a character’s heart and head. I just love that, and I strive to write with more of that authority. It’s an almost voyeuristic feeling, and to get it I’ve been trying to tap into the 6th grade me.

You can’t get away with generic anything in a story, because then you are leaving it up the reader to put in what they think, at which point you lose them. (Talking about comments like, “I wish I could just be normal” or “I wish I could just be loved” or “be accepted” or anything generic a character might think…) Readers want specific because they want to be able to cheer for some specific thing.

I admit to writing some pretty bad poetry using a rhyming dictionary, and Jennie fangirls on Kelly Barnhill and disses on the Oompa Loompas.

And finally, we talk about keeping your eye on the end goal, which is readers and the marketplace, and how your book is going to live in the world.

Writing is a messy process, and it shows in this episode, where I have to face the fact that sometimes you throw away words that you love. I also seek to embrace my inner-middle-schooler by remembering my own experience and forcing my friends and family to remember theirs! After all, writers often steal from real life!

In this episode:

I make the world’s worst ninja.

The challenges of writing when your schedule is off and you are supposed to be on a weekend “away,” but your story is nagging at you.

When all the kids go off to school, how much time do you really have?  It’s easy to squander your time if you aren’t careful. I attempt to time-block to counteract my tendency to nickel and dime my time.

Jennie is a huge fan of using an actual kitchen timer when trying to build a writing habit. She uses an actual hourglass!

In my book, I keep my surface level details, while changing gears in the driving force behind my story. I discovered that the reason why I couldn’t connect the beginning and end of my story was because I was solving a different problem at the end than I presented at the beginning of the book.

Don’t build a world that doesn’t make sense for your story.

Sometimes you have to give up world-building details that you love in order for your story to make sense.

I used the idea behind the Parent Trap movie and the tropes in my genre to pull it all together—the wicked step mother and the wicked step sister. I think it would be fun if my main character had to choose between having the wicked step-mother OR having the wicked step-sister.

When writing about middle school, you have to lean into all the awkward moments and memories of things that happen. I surveyed people asking for their worst memories of middle school for inspiration! And we include them. Including an EPIC Melanie Parish Middle School Moment as a bonus at the end!!

Real writers do this thing called “throwing stuff out”—words are cheap, just get rid of them.

If you've got kids, you know what it's like to get everyone back into a routine after a break-- summer break, Christmas break, spring break, you name it! Sometimes it just puts you in the feels. Jennie talks about how to take those emotions and channel them into your writing.