← The Shit No One Tells You About Writing
The Shit No One Tells You About Writing
Insights from Lisa Unger
00:25:57
Author Interview with Lisa Unger
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- [00:07]
Bianca Murray
Hi there and welcome to our show, the shit no one tells you about writing. I'm best selling author Bianca Murray and I'm joined by Cece Lera of Wendy Sherman Associates and Carly Waters of P.S. literary.
- [00:22]
Lisa Unger
Hi, everyone.
- [00:23]
Bianca Murray
I'm really excited about today's special guest who scared the crap out of me as she hopped on because I was looking at another screen and I feel like this is an appropriate way for her and I to have met considering the books she writes. She is a New York Times bestselling and award winning author. Her books have been published in over 30 languages and have been voted best of the year for top picks by the Today Show, Good Morning America, Entertainment Weekly, and others. She lives on the west coast of Florida with her family. It's my pleasure to welcome Lisa Unger. Lisa, welcome to the show.
- [01:00]
Lisa Unger
Oh, Bianca, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
- [01:04]
Bianca Murray
You know, I get a lot of hiccups, so I feel like you and I need to hang around each other a lot because getting scared takes the hiccups away.
- [01:13]
Lisa Unger
Exactly. Whenever you're having like a hiccup jag, just schedule an interview and I'll hop on. While you're busy with something else, I'm
- [01:21]
Bianca Murray
gonna have you on speed dial. Okay, so for everybody who's not watching on the YouTube channel, I'm holding up the book we're discussing today. Served him right. Dun dun dun. We're gonna link to it on our bookshop.org aff page. If you get the book there, you support an independent bookstore and the podcast at the same time. So, Lisa, you have had a phenomenal career. I mean, is this, Is this your 23rd book? Have I lost track?
- [01:50]
Lisa Unger
It is.
- [01:51]
Bianca Murray
Have you lost track?
- [01:53]
Lisa Unger
I sometimes do lose track, but I. I know that it's my 23rd because I've turned in my 24th, and I'm writing my 25th book right now. So, yeah, my first novel published in 2002, you know, back in the stone ages. And I've been pretty much doing a book a year since then, in addition to, you know, novellas and short fiction and some nonfiction essays and such. So, yeah, you know, head down, nose to the keyboard for like 25 years. Yeah, for sure.
- [02:24]
Bianca Murray
I mean, that fascinates me. It's longevity in an industry that does not make longevity easy. Agents go this way, editors go this way. Suddenly the whole industry wants this, Then suddenly this is no longer fashionable, then they want this, then they want you to write in your lane, then they want you to Stay out of your lane. So whenever I come across a writer such as you, I really want to pick your brain about advice. In terms of the longevity, is it really just rolling with the punches? Is it being versatile? What's your advice for that?
- [02:57]
Lisa Unger
Yeah, I mean, it's such a great question because I think it's funny, like when you, you know, I travel all the time and I'm always at conferences, and I think there's always like this perception of people, you know, they sprung from the head of Zeus in full armor. Right. You know, and they're like people who are luminaries or people who are award winners or whatever. You know, you kind of only see them in that moment. I think most people are, or a lot of people, I should say, are not necessarily honest about what eroded is like what a journey it is. And I mean, in my case, you know, I was. I started writing my first novel when I was 19 years old. I didn't publish that novel until I was 29. But then once I started writing, I have, you know, I have, as I mentioned, written a book a year. And the industry has, I mean, if you think about it, 2002, at that stage, at that time, there wasn't any social media, right. We didn't even have smartphones at that point in time. So it was a different game altogether. The industry. And I've been in the industry since I was 22 years old. I started in publishing. That was my first job. So I have seen the industry just change dramatically in terms of formats. Obviously the, you know, the ebook came along and changed. Publishing, the audiobook is right now having a huge moment. Mass market has just completely gone away. It's gone now for most publishing programs, which is crazy to me, you know. Cause it was always like such a backbone of the industry. And so I've seen the industry change a lot and trends, of course, change and all of that. But what I will say is, what doesn't change is that people still read, people still want stories, like in whatever format they're getting them at this time. And I don't think that changes because it's the human impulse to narrate, to embody character, to narrate, to create story. It's the human impulse to hear and to read those stories and to learn about life. Not necessarily to escape life, although certainly, yes, sometimes that. So for me, the secret has always been that what I care about every day when I wake up is I care about what I do on the page every day. I believe that I can be a Better writer than I was yesterday. And I firmly believe that because it's the only thing that has driven me through my career. So, of course, you know, I actually wrote about this for Publishers Weekly that, you know, there's, you know, this long career, and of course, there are these dizzying highs and these crushing lows. You know, a beloved agent passed away, a beloved editor left. Like all of the things that can happen in your career have happened to me. And yet every day I get up and I write, and the same thing is true. On the amazing days, right? The days where you get a great review or you win an award or you're nominated for an award, it's the same. I sit down and I write. So it reminds me of that old, like the Zen Buddhist adage, which is like, what do you do before enlightenment? You know, chop wood, carry water. What do you do after enlightenment? You know, chop wood, carry water. So what do you do? What do you do on the worst day? Hopefully you write. What do you do in the best day? You better sit down and write. And that's what sustained me, I think, through my career.
- [06:25]
Bianca Murray
Geez, what do you do before you make shit up and what do you do afterwards you make shit up. I'm going to frame that somewhere. Something you said was something that I wanted to ask because there's pros and cons to this is one. You have hugely loyal fans. And I know this because every time I go on a cruise or if I go to resort somewhere where there's a lot of people crowded together reading, I will always check what they're reading. And your books are everywhere. So it shows. And it's not just the latest one, it's a whole bunch of them, which shows a really loyal, faithful following. And something that I've noticed about you, just from seeing you on social media, is that you're a really good literary citizen. You highlight other writers, you show up for other writers, you know, you do a lot of conferences, etc. And readers now nowadays, through socials, want to have a kind of parasocial relationship with you, right? They. They want to ask you questions. Why did you do this on this page? Why did you do this on this page? And of course, you want to engage with. With your readers, but there comes a point at which, especially your level, you cannot be doing that and still writing. So how do you balance that authentic engagements with a community who wants to engage with you with getting the next book out, which is also what they want.
- [07:48]
Lisa Unger
Yeah, it's very. It's a. It's a really interesting balancing act. And, you know, especially for somebody who's been doing this work as long as I have, you know, it's relatively new. Like, I remember a time before social. There was a time where there wasn't really any social media, and certainly it wasn't to the. It hasn't evolved to. It had. Only, I think only in the last couple years has it become like this basically fire hose of distraction and need and all of it. Right. Like, it's only recently become that from my perspective. Right. So, I mean, I really, I have really tried because I, you know, I consider it, you know, and I'll just be really honest. Like, first of all, I consider it the enemy of creativity, really. Really. And yet it's also a way to connect with other authors, booksellers, readers, and that's important as well. Right. And so it's an inauthentic platform, but I've worked to try to find a way to be authentic within that platform. But truly, no, it's not possible to engage personally with every single person who wants to engage with you. But the way I feel about it is that, you know, I write a book, I spend a year writing a book, and I pour all of myself into it, right? And it's my book, it's everything that I did that year, it's like what I thought about the most. It's the pinnacle of my ability. It's the best that I can do at the time of its writing. And then I put it out into the world, right? And then it becomes the reader's book. So that's where my relationship is with my reader. And I have been writing for a long time. I have people. And even though my books are all a little bit different, they're definitely layered and, you know, not the kind of, not the same thing, time after time. So I feel very, really grateful that the people who have been reading me all along, you know, come along for the ride. But, like, that's my true engagement with my reader. I provided you with this book and you take it and you read it. And when you read it, it becomes yours. You bring yourself to the book and it becomes something different, something utterly different from what I. What I created is what it is in your hands. And so I feel like that's an important, it's the most important way that I engage with my readers. I do also engage in real time and social media. I have help. You know, all content comes from me, all content flows from me. I've been really careful that there's no one else creating content. Somebody else might post all that stuff. And also I keep a really. I try to stay really strict in my schedule. And this is something that I got from Cal Newport. He wrote a book called Deep Work. I don't know if you've ever. If you've ever read it. I think it's an important book. I think every writer should read it. But you know, the work of writing, that is my deep work. The creation of my novels and my stories, that is my deep work. My marketing and engagement work, that is my shallow work, right. According to Cal Newport. So the deep work always comes first. My golden creative hours for the morning, 5am to noon. I try to honor that as much as I can. That's where I'm closest to my dream brain. That's where, you know, there's a. Like a little pocket of time before the sun comes up or nobody else is interested in you and what you're doing. And I try to really stay there and then bring myself to the other work of marketing and engagement in the afternoon. That's what I try to do.
- [11:17]
Bianca Murray
I love that. I love that process. And something you said earlier about layering your work and people who read your work find that layering. I'm going to read two small excerpts just for our readers to show what, you know, Lisa means. Here it says, I've seen enough gore in my life and career that I could be one of those who resorts to gallows humor to cope. It still gets me every time I know too much about the human body and how it comes apart, breaks down, comes undone. Mainly these days. I see overdose fentanyl is a scourge, especially in semi rural communities like this. A thousand people last year died in this county alone, all kinds of people. Last month, a wealthy doctor. The month before that, a waitress after a night out with her friends. Two college students found in the library. They thought, according to friends, that what they were taking was Adderall died over their textbooks. There have been car accidents, suicides, assaults, domestic violence. But in my five years on the Little Valley pd, this is only my fourth murder. The three others were open and shut. Domestic violence turned deadly. That's the truth of it. Overdoses and men killing women who they supposedly love. Like the flower he hadn't meant to pick or the bug he hadn't meant to stop. Why? I heard one man wail. Why did you make me do it? The rage. And I got goosebumps there and then. I was filled with so much rage, Lisa.
- [12:46]
Lisa Unger
I mean, I got it I got to own it. There's a lot of rage in that book, for sure.
- [12:50]
Bianca Murray
I'm loving the rage, and I know exactly where it's coming from. And I always say, put the rage on the page. That's where it needs to be.
- [12:58]
Lisa Unger
That's the best place for it.
- [13:00]
Bianca Murray
Yeah. And. Well, there's a whole bunch of places for it, but on the page helps. So here as well. There's another one. It goes. There we go. Our relationship to the natural world, to plants and trees, to the whole big spinning orb, is complicated. It's a twist, a dance, a struggle. Nature nourishes us. An endlessly giving mother. But unsheltered exposure to her whims and mood can end your life. The plants we use to heal ourselves in different doses become toxic. The substances we use for recreation can stop our hearts, irreparably addle our minds, invade ourselves and change our behavior. Consider tobacco, one of the most dangerous plants on Earth, killing nearly 500,000 people a year. And yet some of us pick it up willingly and daily suck that poison into our lungs because of the way it makes us feel. And the poppy, the beauteous red flower of misery and death. Untold millions have died from the drugs concocted from her compounds, drawn over and over again to the promise of that state of euphoria, the blessed relief from the pain of living. There's no such thing as an unnatural death. Nature has devised a million ways for us to die, even if it's by way of human nature. There are some that believe humans have dominion over the Earth, but it's not so. As we trample and destroy her, so does she wreak her havoc upon us. Eventually, she will eradicate us, like the virus we have proven ourselves to be. So, I mean, you pick up this book and you're expecting a murder mystery. Someone's gonna die, man. Which I love. But then you get these moments where you read that and it just resonates, and it's so true and gets you thinking about so much else. So there's so much depth and layering in between the murder and the mystery element of that.
- [14:51]
Lisa Unger
Thank you.
- [14:52]
Bianca Murray
Does that come from years of writing? Was your earlier work like this as well, or have you leaned into it later?
- [14:59]
Lisa Unger
I think so. I mean, I definitely see a thread. I mean, for me, it's always every book. It begins and ends with character, voice. Everything begins with character for me. And then those characters reveal themselves to me on the page, very much the way my reader will learn about them later. I have that Very like sort of authentic relationship to the page and to my characters where, like I write for the same reason that I read, you know, because I want to know what's going to happen to these people who are living in my head. And, you know, and I think that I've always been, as a reader, you know, I've always been like this literary omnivore as a kid. You know, my mom is a librarian, my dad is an engineer, and they're both big readers. And every place we lived it was like big bookshelves and there was no censorship, right? For me, I could read. If I could read it, if I could reach it, I could read it. And so I kind of grew up with this and we traveled all over the world. So I was always like the new kid. I was always the odd person out, right? So I've had this, but I always had a book and a notebook, right? So that was always like a home for me. And so I read everything. I mean, I read things that were wildly inappropriate for my age. I just read everything, like from the, from the classics to science fiction to fantasy to popular fiction like VC Andrews and Sidney Sheldon and Stephen King. And so I've always had this really like large just appetite for fiction. And I don't discriminate. To me, like a literary novel, you know, like Jane Eyre, something that stays with me my entire life, you know, is comparable to something I read, you know, from Robert Heinlein, science fiction, like back in the 80s or whatever. And it's like it doesn't matter to me, like. So these stories have formed me, of course, as a writer. So this deep sort of.
- [16:51]
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- [19:02]
Lisa Unger
You know, connection to character and then also, you know, these things that have come on that evolve on the page either as their perspective or as the, you know, whatever from a third person perspective. Like, it's very organic. I never sit down to write that. I didn't sit down to write a book about Anna Blacksmith and her relationship with men and her relationship to plants and how layered and complicated that is. I didn't sit down to write that book. I heard her voice and what evolved in that story evolved on the page. So it's all very organic. But I think you'd see it if you start if you read Angel Fire, which was my first book that published in 2002 and I started it when I was 19, when I was still in college, I think you would still find a lot of those layers and that it's all, you know, as my learning I mean, Obviously I was 19 this year I'm going to be 56. So I've been writing all that time, so hopefully I'm a better writer than I was when I was 19. I certainly hope so. I have tried, but I think you'll see a thread that runs through that. It's not just. I mean, I didn't choose thriller. Thriller kind of chose me. I just have this really dark imagination and it's where I metabolize darkness, the darkness that I perceive in the world. And so I think that's part of it as well. But part of it is just, you know, things are dark, you know, they're also light, they're also beautiful. But there, there's a. There's a darkness. And that's what I'm the most curious about. So I think that's kind of. That's the long answer or the short answer.
- [20:37]
Bianca Murray
I love that answer. I mean, we live in this constant duality.
- [20:40]
Lisa Unger
Yes.
- [20:41]
Bianca Murray
We're not going to have time for much more. But something that I really wanted to get into was you do multiple first person POVs so well.
- [20:51]
Lisa Unger
Oh, thank you.
- [20:52]
Bianca Murray
You know, so often you read a book and I mean, how many POV characters ever got you? It's like seven or eight.
- [20:59]
Lisa Unger
Timothy, Anna, Vera, Coraline, Timothy, Perspective, Agnes, which is like a. Six.
- [21:07]
Podcast Sponsor/Ad Voice
Seven.
- [21:07]
Lisa Unger
Yeah, yeah, six, seven.
- [21:10]
Bianca Murray
Six or seven. Right. And most of them are in the present day timeline. We've got Agnes that takes us into the past, but they're written in like first person POVs. And the problem that often happens here is that when, if you just pick up and you forget who the person was, you will be completely confused because you're like, okay, who the heck is this character? And people don't realize how much each of those first person POVs have to be so different according to that person's experience, their knowledge of the world, the kind of words they would use, their social demographic, their history. So how do you tackle that? Do you come up with that character first? Because like you say character, voice comes to you first and then you try and form them out. Do you use vision boards at all to keep them all separate or.
- [22:00]
Lisa Unger
No, no, I don't do anything like that. I mean, I write in a Word document. That's all I've ever done. I've never used any of these. Like, I think there's like really nice like software and stuff that you can get now. I couldn't write like that. I wouldn't be. I wouldn't even be able to figure it out. I write in. You know, I don't have a vision board. I don't have, like, a whiteboard with scenes and things get moved around. No, nothing like that. For me, it's really. I mean, I really do just, like, authentically hear these voices, and they're all really different to me. Like, in the writing of them, in the experience of them, they're all really different. You know, I've had people ask me, don't you get confused between this character and that character? And I'm like, I don't understand that question. Do you get confused between your sister and your mother and your friend? Like, they are different people to you, right? Like, oh, I. Like, whatever. I mean, that is the authentically how I experience it. So, I mean, obviously, you know, they're just. They're. They're so vivid to me in my mind that hopefully they. They come that way on the page. And when I start hearing them, I talk a lot about, like, writing as an organic process. There's an ebb and a flow, right to your day. It's like you have the. We all know what to do on the flow days. We write, you know, we write. But on the ebb days, you know, when you're just kind of like, you run into the stone wall of what's gonna happen here? What's next? I don't know. You know, like, you do whatever you do, you go to the gym, you throw the ball for the dog, bake a cake, whatever. Whatever you do to kind of get yourself out of that headspace. And then you hear it. For me, it's like, I hear it or I see it, or there's a sentence, and then I'm like, I'm back in. Right? So that's kind of how it works for me. Like, so I don't, like, say, okay, here's Vera, here's Anna, here's Agnes. You know, I need to accomplish this with the plot. So this character is going to do this, and I need to do that with this character in that. None of that. Absolutely none of that. It's all organic. It's all from. It's all from the inside out. I'm sure there's an easier way.
- [24:00]
Bianca Murray
You know what? I've. I've interviewed so many authors, and I sound like you. Because what I've always said is that if I know what's going to happen in this story, I have no desire to write it. What, the font?
- [24:13]
Lisa Unger
Exactly.
- [24:14]
Bianca Murray
So I'm like, a character sidles up to me, like, in a barn. Like, I've got something to tell you. And I'm like, tell me. And I start writing it down to find out where the heck we're gonna go. And it feels to me almost like channeling them, you know?
- [24:29]
Lisa Unger
Yes.
- [24:30]
Bianca Murray
It's like having a psychic experience some. You channel someone, and your job is just to faithfully represent this person's story. And that's how it feels to me as well, 100%.
- [24:40]
Lisa Unger
And I will say, too, that there are some moments when, you know, research, obviously, there's a lot of moments where research needs to be done. Your research doesn't necessarily need to find its way into your book, but you need to do it a lot of. A lot more than you would imagine. To write authentically about anything, to write one authentic sentence, you need to have done a couple months of research. And this is something that's true for my book that will come out in 2027, where I had a character who just kind of showed up, you know, was getting to know her, realize that she was in a wheelchair. And so I had to. I had to address my own, you know, ignorance in that area. And so I started doing some reading. And then I reached out to two people who, you know, teach writers how to write about things that are not their lived experience to get that really right for her that, you know, that show her that character and, you know, somebody else who might be in a wheelchair. The respect that, like, I don't have this lived experience. And so I'm going to do months of research trying to understand that experience so that I can portray it with love and authenticity on the page. So there. There is that piece to it as well, you know, but it begins with the. It begins with the voice. Like, I would never say, oh, I'm going to write about a character with a disability. I'm going to write about a person with, like, that would never happen. That would never happen. I wouldn't, wouldn't. I don't think in that way about story.
- [26:09]
Bianca Murray
Yeah, the character will come to you first and go, oh, by the way, I'm a wheelchair user. I've had characters come up to me and be like, oh, by the way, I have a parrot. He sings the King's greatest hits. I'm like, I'm going to have to learn some Elvis
- [26:26]
Lisa Unger
and parrots, for that matter.
- [26:28]
Bianca Murray
Yeah, I've never had birds either, so I had to learn about African grey parrots. So, yeah, it's. It's really interesting.
- [26:36]
Lisa Unger
But that's joy, right? Like, that's part of it is the joy for me. It is discovery, inhabiting character, bringing people authentically to the page, treating people with respect, so that when other people read, maybe even though it's fiction and it's thriller, you're getting a little bit of a. You're getting a little bit of a window into somebody else's world, which is
- [26:55]
Bianca Murray
how empathy is created. We are creators of empathy because, yes, absolutely, yes. Cannot read a book and step into a character and feel what they're feeling and go on that journey without developing some degree of empathy, which the world needs now more than ever.
- [27:12]
Podcast Sponsor/Ad Voice
Yeah.
- [27:13]
Bianca Murray
So we will end on that note. Lisa, thank you so much for joining us. I'm holding up the book again.
- [27:18]
Lisa Unger
Thank you.
- [27:19]
Bianca Murray
Served him right. It's going on our bookshop.org affiliate page and it'll be out soon, and we wish you all the best with it. Lisa, thank you for joining us.
- [27:28]
Lisa Unger
Bianca, thank you so much. It's a pleasure talking to you.
- [27:31]
Bianca Murray
Cece Lira is a literary agent at Wendy Sherman Associates. If you'd like to query CC, please refer to the submission guidelines@www.wsherman.com. carly Waters is a literary agent at P.S. literary Agency, but her work on this podcast is not affiliated with the agency, and the views expressed by Carly on this podcast are solely that of her as a podcast co host and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of PS Literary Agency.