← The Shit No One Tells You About Writing
The Shit No One Tells You About Writing
Techniques for Fully Dramatizing Scenes or Bringing Memories to Life
00:33:13
Jessica Waite
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- [00:01]
Bianca Murray
Omg. Have you seen the Deep Dive Virtual retreat lineup for the 1st and 2nd of February? It's incredible. Gatekeepers galore. As well as the authors who managed to get past them, we've got the editors and agents who worked on phenomenal projects like Station 11, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Crazy Rich Asians, the Flight Attendant, Maame Wayward, the Wife Upstairs, the Tinder Swindler, Big Little Lies, the Perfect Couple, the Other Black Girl, and so much more. The presentation topics are brilliant, so practical and valuable regardless of where you are in your writing journey. One of our speakers, the brilliant Annabel Monaghan, who wrote the best selling Nora Goes Off Script, was a delegate at the very first Deep Dive Retreat and now she's kicking butt all over the place coming back to present. That could be you one day. Those of you who take part in the Thousand Words of Summer will also be super excited to see the fabulous Jamie Attenberg in the lineup as well. Trust me, you do not want to miss this. Head to our website, theshitaboutwriting.com go to the deep Dive page to see more information and to register. We hope to see you there. Foreign hi there and welcome to our show, the Shit no one tells you About Writing. I'm Bianca Murray and I'm joined by Carly Waters and CeCe Leera from P.S. literary Agency. Today's guest is the recipient of the John White Memorial Essay Award. Her essays and short stories have been anthologized in the US, UK and Canada. She lives with her son on Treaty 7 territory in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies in Calgary, Alberta. It's my pleasure to welcome Jessica Waite. Jessica, welcome to the show.
- [02:03]
Jessica Waite
Thanks Bianca. I'm so excited to be here.
- [02:06]
Bianca Murray
I'm so excited to have you here. So the book we're discussing today is the Widow's Guide to Dead Bastards. If there was ever a better a better title in the universe for any book ever, I have yet to come across it, so but we will discuss the title soon for our listeners. I'm going to read you the flap copy just so that you know what we are talking about. This book is a memoir. So in the midst of mourning her husband's sudden death, Jessica Waite unboxed heartbreaking evidence that undermined everything she thought she knew about the partner she loved and trusted. Illicit affairs, hidden debt, and a pornography addiction obliterated her belief in their once happy relationship. Jessica struggled to rebuild a life with her young son, consumed by questions of who Shawn really was and how she could have been so deceived. But when strange, inexplicable coincidences blurred the line between perception and reality, a larger mystery loomed. Was Sean reaching back, trying to make amends from beyond the grave? With unflinching candor, wit, and courage, Waite details her tumultuous journey out of rage and resentment into hope and healing. The Widow's Guide to Dead Bastards is a riveting, vivid, and surprisingly tender look at the complexities of grief, mental health, and unresolved relationships. Waite's memoir ultimately reveals the most compelling. Love stories aren't perfect. They're poignantly real and defy all expectations. Now, Jessica, before we dive into the book itself, I would love to hear about your journey to publication, starting with how you began writing this as a way to heal. Healing.
- [03:49]
Jessica Waite
All right, so thank you so much. Yeah. I was not a writer. This is my first book that I've ever written, and I learned how to become a writer in order to tell this story. So it took about seven years. It took a lot of classes, workshops, trainings, mentorships. So I started basically writing as a kind of catharsis, a kind of healing. And then as I was getting a little bit of distance between the thoughts that were circling around in my mind and things coming out on the page, I started to understand that the things that happen to me stacked up in kind of an anomalous way, but they're things that are relatable to everyone. And that's what is the heart of a memoir, that there's a universality to the story that you're telling. And in my heart of hearts, like, I've always loved books and reading, I always kind of wanted to be a writer. And so I just felt compelled to write this story. I think the seven years is hard, like, for a lot of people. I'm thinking it's going to take a long time. But there are two big perils, you know, when you're telling a story like this. Like, one is that you're going to quit, and the other one is that you're going submit too early. And I knew from quite early on, once I decided to publish, that I was going to have to do a book proposal, that I was going to have to at some point sell and market the book. And so I was, as I was learning to write, I was also listening to the shit no one tells you about writing and paying attention to all those kinds of things. So that when the time came to public to try to publish that, I was ready for that. Yeah. So shall I go on?
- [05:16]
Bianca Murray
Well, yeah. And I mean you would have learned from listening to the show how difficult memoirs are to sell, especially when you're not famous, especially when there isn't a big platform. So I mean, that could have been something that you allowed to freak you out or make you despondent, but you clearly didn't. So I'd love to know. I know that you said in the book that you started doing some of the writing through one of Elizabeth Gilbert's initiatives, I think, and you formed a group of people whose work you were reading and critiquing. So it sounds like you had like a writing group as. As well, is that right?
- [05:49]
Jessica Waite
Yes, that's right. So that is one of the reasons that I didn't quit because I had, I found community, I found writing partners and I met these people through classes and like, you know, because you do matchups, like it takes a bit of like hit and miss before you find like your real people. But I was really lucky with that class. It was led by Martha Beck and Elizabeth Gilbert that there were a lot of like minded people. And so I was quite lucky in finding some kindred spirits early on. And we, yeah, we've stuck together as a writing group and then again this is like an extension of that. One of the big hurdles as like someone who's like just starting out and doesn't see yourself as a writer. Like you don't have any kind of resume, any kind of credentials and you need to like take that first step to show your writing to other people and that. So as I started to do that and build up the courage, that's how I ended up getting referrals to agents later on because I was showing my work to professional writers and then they believed in me and gave me an introduction. And so when it did come time to start submitting to agents, I ended up writing a really kind of. I started out with the traditional way of querying and then I had one referral left, that's her website said that she didn't accept memoir. So I didn't try her right away, but I wrote an unorthodox query letter which I have shared on the sub stack on the publication day. So if anyone wants to see that they can look it up. And ended up getting my agent response in about 20 minutes. We signed the next day and then when we went on submission, the book ended up getting snapped up in a preempt. It looked like it was going to go to auction, but it got the offer came in from Simon and Schuster in about a week. Just a little Over a week. So, yeah, it was really lightning speed. I was not prepared for that because everyone tells you it's going to take a long time, and I think usually it will. But, yeah, I. I would credit some of that to, like, putting the work in on the front side and not going until you really know that you're ready to go.
- [07:36]
Bianca Murray
Yeah, that is important. And you always feel ready to go. You know, it's so funny how so many writers will submit something and they'll go, I felt completely ready. And then looking back at it, in hindsight, I was like, oh, I wasn't ready. But, you know, if you do put in the work, if you do have the writing group and the critique partners and, like you say, showing it to really good writers who are giving you feedback, and if they are saying to you, I feel like I'm ready to put you in touch with my agent or refer you to my agent, then, you know, that's a good sign because no writer is going to say, oh, I'm going to put you in touch with my agent if they're looking at it and going, oh, this needs a lot of work.
- [08:13]
Jessica Waite
Yeah, that's so true. And I think that one of the things that I learned along the way is there's so. There's like, almost like a useful fiction that you have to tell yourself you're almost done. Do you know what I mean? And think that you're done. But then instead of sending it off to the agent right away, if you give it to a beta reader, they'll let you know, you know, if you're done or not. And so then having to be like, get their feedback and be like, oh, man, I thought I was at the top of Everest and I was only at the base camp, you know, and then. And then just resetting and carrying on from there.
- [08:43]
Bianca Murray
I think being a writer is constant recalibration, quite honestly. We have to recalibrate our expectations. We have to recalibrate, you know, our outlook on things. And, I mean, I'm busy writing. I'm not even gonna say it's my fifth book because I've written other books that didn't go on to get published. So it's probably my seventh or eighth book at the moment. And I sent it off to my beta reader, and I was feeling pretty good about that beginning. I thought I'd circled the building and I thought. I thought it was pretty good. And then she came back and I was like, no, it's not there yet. You know, and you sit there and you Kind of sit in the fetal position and you rock backwards and forwards, and then you recalibrate and you're like, okay, up and Adam, let's try this again.
- [09:26]
Jessica Waite
Absolutely. I think it is absolutely like that for everyone. And that. That's like. And all the times like. So I did allow myself the idea that I could quit, but I could never quit when I was in the fetal position. So it's like you can only quit from a place where you're standing up and have a clear view of what's going on. You can't quit when you're down and discouraged. Yeah, yeah.
- [09:45]
Bianca Murray
Don't quit from the fetal position. So for our listeners who haven't yet checked out that substack, please go and have a look. It's actually one of our most read essays on our sub stack. It was just incredible. Jessica shows her very unorthodox query letter. Search for her name in our substack and you will find that. And it's definitely worth a read. Okay, so now diving into the book itself, you begin with a flash forward prologue, right? And anyone who listens to the podcast hears us say so many times, oh, the prologue's not doing the heavy lifting. You've used it as a band aid. Let's lose the prologue. This prologue was incredible, and it took us forward in time. It's subtitled the matrix of porn December 2, 2015. And it starts with, I'm looking at nine vaginas at the same time. So, boom, we've got a prologue that grabs the attention, leaps forward in time. Or perhaps, I don't know, maybe I misunderstood. Maybe that's where it begins and everything else comes back. But I loved how you played around with the timeline here. So first question is, was the prologue always there? Was that the beginning that you started with? Because you do move around a lot in terms of timeline. It is not linear. And I speak to some memoirs who say they wrote it in a linear way and then they chopped it up afterwards. Others are like, no, I went backwards and forwards exactly the way you see it. So what was your approach and what was the intentionality behind mind that approach?
- [11:21]
Jessica Waite
All right, so I always had a prologue, but the original prologue is not in the book now. So the original prologue was almost like, I think in journalism, they call it like, the nut graph. Like, it was like sort of a note to myself about what this book is really about and, like, what is the endeavor of this book? That was sort of the original prologue. And then it started with, what is chapter one? Which is me In a cafe, ordering a bowl of chicken soup. It arriving at the table, and I lift it up because it. To warm up my hands and it burns me. And so that was a chronological beginning. And what I always thought of as the beginning and what is now the prologue was chapter 11. So you're right, it is a flash forward. And the decision to move it from safely nestled in chapter 11 with a bunch of context to the very front was again, a decision that was made because you have to start with a hook. Like listening to books with hooks all the time. And I'm like, I'm either starting with soup or I'm starting with the hookiest hook that I have. And there's no way to make soup as interesting as the hookiest hook that I have. And so that was a strategic decision to move that to the front. And then in terms of how I wrote it, basically I. I wrote it in pieces in sort of like the shimmering images approach. Like, I wrote my memories out with like, wherever the energy was, whatever I was feeling. And I just kind of dumped all that out. And then I had the massive undertaking to figure out where is the story in all of this. And so that's when I sort of used like a str. Like looked for a structure that I could use. And then I still. Then I put it into chronological order. And then the final iteration is actually I used a mentor text because in. In my story, all the most of the drama and the like really sort of outrageous events happen in the first six weeks of the chronological time. And then the rest of the healing journey takes place over three and a half years. So it's really hard when you have a story where there's most of the action at the front and it's memoir, so you can't, you know, make up new to put in there to fill in any of those lulls in the action. And so I looked at like another story that I really loved that has a similar kind of thing, which was Breaking Bad, because I don't know if you people know that story, but, like, there's a lot. And then Walter White's end up, he's holed up inside season five in a cabin and having to sort of reconcile everything and then come through to make the finale. And so I really loved Vince Gilligan's storytelling and I watched that series multiple times and I paid attention to how they use flashback and flash forward. And then I tried to apply those things. So I actually did a Breaking Bad edit in my story to see if I was using the flashbacks and flash forwards successfully.
- [14:00]
Bianca Murray
I love that. I love all that intentionality, because that's what we're saying. You can do anything with storytelling. It's your book. It's, you know, you know how best to tell the story, how best to write it, but do it with intentionality. Now, there's a few things there I want to break down. One is what Jessica said about she could leave something safely nestled in chapter 11 with a whole lot of context, or she could use her hookiest hook. I feel like that now needs to be a podcast catchphrase. The hookiest hook. Right. Because we think we need all this context. We think we need to build up to something and give the reader all this context so that they understand how we got there. But sometimes the biggest sucker punch can be putting the reader right there without any context at all, because then that serves as a curiosity seed. The reader's like, how the hell did we get to all these vaginas? So I'm going to keep reading to see how we got there, and then you can move on to the rest of it. The other thing is, in terms of the healing journey, that's the part of memoir that is so difficult to write because that is so internal. Right? Healing. It isn't a stagnant process. It's very active. It happens inside you. There are so many conflicting feelings that are fighting with each other, and there's anger and there's resentment and there's rage and there's love, and. And it's all in there. But if you were filming that from the outside, it looks like someone just kind of sitting there. So in terms of writing a healing journey, I mean, you. You have a character who will be perhaps speaking to their therapist, as you have in this book. You have a character who may be speaking to people around them, et cetera. How do you write a healing journey on the page in a way that it feels active and propulsive and not like the reader is watching the main character or the author just sitting there in their lounge sort of crying and shoving chips in their mouth.
- [16:02]
Jessica Waite
Yeah, that is really hard because I think especially with this is a grief memoir, like, a lot of grieving is sitting there crying and shoving whatever in your mouth. What, like whatever the things are, whatever you're doing to comfort and. And heal. And so there's a lot that you can't include that it would make it even more realistic because, like, Marian Roach Smith is a memoir teacher who says a thing that I think about. And love don't make the reader run the lapse of your life with you. And because we all have our own lives, we all have the things that we go through, and we don't want to spend that time like. Like we need to really cut those things out. And so how. What I realized that I needed to do was like, pick the most, like, I think at its heart, like memoirs about transformation and. And people come to it because there's something that they' to go through or have gone through in their own life where there's maybe some kind of lesson in it for them, but you don't want it to be didactic and some kind, you know, it's like, here's the lessons that I learned. Some books are like that, but that self help, right? And so I just was trying, I tried to figure out, like, if I could pinpoint, because I was paying attention to my own healing and if I could pinpoint the moments that were the most sort of interesting and the most healing and just sort of layer that in, then someone who's going on this journey with me could maybe have the same sort of micro transformation as I was feeling through those scenes. And they were often with other people because, like, strange, like strange wild things were happening. So I'd go for a massage and the body worker would like, have some kind of intuitive vision and tell me about it. Like, that did not used to happen before, and now it was happening with more than one massage therapist. And so I'm like, well, this is interesting. And so I'll write about that. And so I just sort of decided based on what was most impactful to me and what I thought helped with the mission of the book, like sort of the thesis of the book. Because the question that I was really asking and grappling with was, can relationships heal beyond the veil of death? And so if I thought that the scene supported the grappling with that question, then I would include it. And so, yeah, that sort of. Those were the guideposts that I was using.
- [18:07]
Carly Waters
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- [20:05]
Jessica Waite
Yeah.
- [20:06]
Bianca Murray
Geez. Something no one prepared me for is how massage therapy can actually unlock so much emotion. I was told by a massage therapist that I was crying on the table. This was a week after my dog passed away, and I did not know I was crying on the table. And up until then, I'd managed not to be crying. And here this poor stranger was massaging me and having to deal with me sobbing without realizing it. What do you say, Jessica?
- [20:34]
Jessica Waite
Yeah, no, like, I get you. And it's like, yeah, we, I think we're. We store so much. This is something that all writers can really benefit from knowing how much we store in our body and how much of the story lives in our body. And so that's why when you're stuck, you know, walk, move, go swimming, even have a shower like that, things come through our. All of our perceptions, all of our senses. And so, yeah, yeah, and I know, I get that losing a pet is so, so hard. And yeah, we want. We don't want to fall apart.
- [21:04]
Bianca Murray
I mean, that grief is grief. You know, and. And it isn't linear, and it isn't tidy, and it is just super messy. And this memoir just really captures that so, so brilliantly. Another decision that you made that I really enjoyed was the decision to use present tense throughout. You know, even in. With the time jumps, even when things move around, it's all in the present tense, which makes it feel so, like, active, like it's happening right now. As opposed to you, Jessica, are writing from a place in the future in which you have g. This acceptance and this knowledge. I think that's the hardest thing for memoirists because they say you cannot begin writing a memoir while you are still angry or resentful or if you haven't learned anything from the experience. Right. You have to have been through this whole crucible, and you have to have come out on the other side. But at the same time, you cannot forget the messiness, those very strong, messy moments, and those emotions that you were feeling along the way. So was it that you always, always started in the present tense? Was that something that evolved throughout? Tell us about the intentionality there.
- [22:19]
Jessica Waite
Yes, this was also really deliberate. Well, it was partly accidental to start, but what I noticed was when I would try to remember, because, you know, you have to rely a lot on memory, I would. I would bring in things that would help me remember that time. So go visit. Revisiting the place or having some, you know, whatever. If I was drinking a special, you know, cinnamon tea, I would drink that, like, and so I was bringing the memories in. And what I would write would be in the present tense because I was sort of reconjuring it, and. And I'm bringing it from my body, and I think the body's kind of always in the present tense. And so I. That's a tip that I recommend to people writing memoir is, like, when you're writing your memories, write them in the present tense as though you're right there, and make it immediate. And then in the storytelling, you can decide what tense you want to put things into. And so I realized that because I was starting it in, you know, the immediate aftermath, like, that writing in the present tense was. And I did put some. Like, I even did write the. I originally wrote the FL. Flashbacks in present tense, too, because I was doing the same process, but in the book, I actually change them into the past tense just to help the reader locate themselves in time because it's. So. You don't want to be confusing with time jumps. It's very tricky. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [23:30]
Bianca Murray
The flashbacks were in the Past, but in terms of the time movements around that stayed present, that was cohesive, which, which I really loved as well. And something you've said now is, is so important. Is, is like you say, if you were drinking cocoa at a time when something happened, if you were having soup when something happened, if you were, you know, listening to a certain song or if you were sitting by a fire and recreating that so that you can sit with those feelings and remember them. Because I think we block out a lot, especially when it comes to anything traumatic. We can become completely overwhelmed. I know there's a lot of times that in the moment I feel as though I'm having an out of body experience. But when I sit afterwards and I really try and unpack it, I will remember the most insane details that like I kept staring out the window at somebody parking and they were doing a really bad job of parking. And that will come to me after the fact. But you know, if I hadn't really sat with that, I would never have remembered that particular thing. Because you so much in your head and in your emotions when this is happening, happening. So what other advice can you give to two memoirs, and not even just memoirs, all writers, that when you are dramatizing a scene as opposed to taking it from a telling point of view, how do you make it become so viscerally alive for the reader that they feel like not only are they there, they feel like they are you and they're experiencing this themselves?
- [25:01]
Jessica Waite
Yeah, that's so what. So, so how it was for me is that I always told those parts, I always skimmed over. And so that's when a reader will be like, if you're kind of skimming over the. And so then I was like. And so our initial like self preservation won't let us go so deep. And so then the, the exercise would be to use a timer so that I would know that I could go in and come back out as a way of self care. Because some of these memories are really hard, right. And you don't want to like torture yourself or put yourself in a bad emotional or mental state. So I'd use a timer, I would just, just bring myself in and then I would just notice what was going on. And then like as the feeling like. So it's like take kind of taking one feeling at a time. It's like, oh, my stomach's really like feeling in knots. And I feel. And so then I just write that like what that felt like. And so then coming from the feeling, then it's what you said about the bad park job, it's like memories come flooding in. Because one of the things as I was sense making around all of this stuff just in my real life, I was learning about the science of perception and I learned that memories aren't stored, they're assembled. And so the more that you give it, the more like. And so. And a lot of that's coming from like your internal state. So yeah, that I think that just taking care of yourself, doing it for a limited amount of time and having a process to say I'm going in and say, I would also say I'm coming out so that I would like come back into my real time. And then that was so I could just repeat that process and keep it sort of safe and keep it moving and not get too overwhelmed. Although there were times when I was overwhelmed and would take long breaks.
- [26:34]
Bianca Murray
But yeah, yeah, I mean practicing that self care is so important, especially with memoir especially. So let's talk about this title because I know in the book there's a part where I think it's your brother in law who some family member has an objection to the title and is like, oh, it's a bit harsh. Can you take us through? Was this your title that you came up with originally? Were there other titles? How did this evolve?
- [27:00]
Jessica Waite
The original. I had this original title that I wrote the book under for most of the time. Like probably the first six years it had the same title, which was Ghost of Boy Meets Girl because the ghost of sort of meant Trace of and Boy Meets Girl meant that it was like a posthumous love story. Like boy dies, boy loses girl. But that title was like kind of confusing. It's not a romantic comedy, it's not a ghost story. And so it didn't really do the job that it was supposed to do. So then I had a bunch of of other titles that I was like working with. And I had coffee with one of my late husband's best friends and I'm like, I need a title. And he suggested something very close to the Widow's Guide to Dead Bastards. And I just died laughing. And I came home and wrote it on my whiteboard. And it sat there for like a year and I cycled through more titles and then when I got my agent, it had a title that just wasn't working for her. Like it was a kind of title that you understand, like when you finish the last page, right, it's like, oh, now it all makes sense. But. But when you understand the job of a title, it's to get you to pick up the book like the title is a sales tool. And so I understood that being strategic with the title was the best service that I could give to this book that I poured so much of my heart and soul into. And so I said to my agent, what do you think of this? And she said, gold. And I am very confident that this, the reason that the book was snapped up was because of the title. And unfortunately for me on the family side, what you're pointing to something that's in the epilog with a family who had been very supportive of me through the writing all of that, I had to come around and say, the book's getting published by Simon and Schuster and this is a title. And so those two things like that, it's a pretty harsh title to Sean, right? To someone who doesn't know him. And more and more people will see the title than read the book, which was the objection that my brother in law had. So I think when these things come into the world, you know, family reactions, hard, it's scary, it's very exposing to put vulnerable material into a world that can be cruel sometimes. And so I, I understand why people felt nervous and upset about that. And that's another, you know, consideration that everyone writing has, you know, family reactions and that sort of thing. And again, when it's a true story, it's, it's an even bigger concern.
- [29:16]
Bianca Murray
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, I always come back to this. I saw this hilarious. This illustration was a cartoon that somebody wrote and it's a woman signing her books. And the book is called My Awful Shitty Childhood or something like that. And her parents are in line to get the book signed and they go, we're so sorry. If we knew you were going to become a writer, we would have been better parents. Cracks every time I see it. And I mean, you as the person who went through all of this, you have permission to, you know, to say what you went through, you have permission to express that. And I think a lot of memoirs are so busy tiptoeing around how everybody else is going to react to their truth that they lose sight of their truth. So what's your advice to them there?
- [30:08]
Jessica Waite
Yeah, I think that the, the good thing about how long this process takes and how many sort of obstacles and hurdles there are along the way is you really build up your courage with every decision that you make. And then like you said, you're constant recalibrating, seeing how things work out. And, and so for me, you know, the longer, like the first time I had to say this title to, like, someone's like, oh, you're writing a book. What is it called? I'm like, oh, my God. Like, just, like, looking at the floor, wishing it would open up so I could fall in. Like, it's like. So it's. There's all of these. But I've learned how to sort of stand in it and how to be with it and. And the longer that it's out there, the more. The happier I am that I went with it, and. And the more ways that I have to read it. So it's actually, you know, it can be very harsh. It can be, you know, a little bit provocative. But there's also, like, a sense when you get to the end of the story and you feel like. I felt like in the story, like, was I receiving some kind of guidance? You know what I mean? Like, it's like that there's a. There's a different way that you can read at the end than the beginning. And so I think that's also the great test of a good title, too, is that it can. The meaning can. Can transform as you have a deeper knowledge of the story.
- [31:22]
Bianca Murray
I found it very cathartic, a very cathartic read. So, yeah, I totally get that. One thing. Last question before we end is I don't want our listeners to always just see the publishing of the book as the end goal. And then they're like, I just want to see my book get published. Because there's things like post publication. And something that I'm always interested in, especially for memoirs, is speaking to book clubs, speaking to people about your book. Because, I mean, mostly today we focused on craft and your, you know, decisions that you've made about telling the story. But when a book club picks up your book and they read it, you know, they are going to be asking you an awful lot of personal questions. This is your life laid bare. And I think it's hard enough to do that in that moment in your little room where you're writing it and you're putting it on the page and you're reliving it for yourself. But what comes afterwards when you have to kind of relive of things a lot of times over and perhaps be interrogated about things that you may be held back from in the book for certain reasons. How have you found that experience to be, and what is your advice to. To other memoirists there?
- [32:30]
Jessica Waite
Okay, so, yeah, about the wanting it to be published, I. I want to say, first of all, that I held so many different tracks to success. So if I had self published, gone with a small press, gone, like if I, I had an envision of success where I wrote one hand bound, beautiful book and had it passed around and that could have been success for me. So really like allowing yourself multiple channels for what you envision success to be. That. That felt very important to me. Being able to even like put the book into the world. And then now that it's out, yeah, there's there, there is a sense of people being able to. Feeling like they can ask you anything, which you can. You have to have boundaries around that kind of thing. And so I go, when I go to book clubs, I made a little video where I said, you know, here, you know, you could. You're welcome to ask me what you like and if I don't want to answer, I'll respectfully choose not to answer. Like that kind of thing to sort of set up some parameters around that. And then, you know, there's also ways that people will write about you on, in reviews, on Goodreads, like those kinds of places where people are can. They can say. They say whatever they want. There's trolls there. There's like, not even. I don't even think they're all real readers. And then there's the new kind of thing that I, I didn't really know. That's just sort of with the advancement of AI where there's been like knockoff copies of like, like fake biographies, like the true biography of Jessica Wade or the like, fake. But like. And so it's like all these things popping up on Amazon that you have to then get taken down. So there's. There's a. But there's always, I feel like gonna be like the next hurdle. Like, it's never, there's never like, there's that myth of arrival that you're gonna get there and it's just like, oh, you know, but. And there's moments of that to appreciate and enjoy and take the satis action in. But yeah, I, I would really not let publishing be like the idea that it's going to make you permanently happy or, you know, that, that sort of thing. It's just another wave of, of your journey as a artist and a storyteller.
- [34:32]
Bianca Murray
Yeah. The goalposts keep shifting, so we always have to remember why we come to the blank page and our love for that. Jessica, what a joy chatting with you. I absolutely loved your book, loved your essay that you wrote for us for our listeners. We're going to link to the book on our bookshop.org affiliate page. If you get it there, you support an independent bookstore and the podcast at the same time. Thank you so much for taking the time, Jessica.
- [34:57]
Jessica Waite
Thanks for having me, Bianca. This has just been a dream. I want to say one more thing. I got selected for books with hooks and ended up having to turn it down because I had an agent. Had. And I was always so sad. Like I was like, oh, I missed my chance to be on the podcast and I was such a ardent fan and listener and I love the work that you do and that you helped me so much to get to where I am. So I just want to say thank you for giving me the chance to be here and encourage every listener to, yeah, just keep on going. And. And yeah, thank you for having me.
- [35:26]
Bianca Murray
Thank you, Jessica.
- [35:28]
Carly Waters
A reminder that this is an unscripted program and our conversations have been edited and condensed and is not a full picture of our feedback or conversation directly with each off author. As always, refer back to our written notes for the Folsom picture. Carly Waters and Cece Lira are agents at PS Literate Agency, but their work on this podcast is not affiliated with the agency and the views expressed by Carly and Cece on this podcast are solely that of them as podcast co hosts do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies or position of PS Literary Agency. A reminder about all the ways that you can support us as a show. Rate us five stars on Apple Podcasts. Tell your writing friends about us Us. We'd love to help as many writers as possible and follow us on our Substack Newsletter. Get our stacked newsletter on a weekly basis. Bonus videos, articles, essays, advice and more. You can find it@the shitaboutwriting.substack.com that's the.
- [36:18]
Bianca Murray
Shitaboutwriting.Substack.Com and that's it for today's episode. I hope you'll join us for next week's show. In the meantime, keep at it. Remember, it just takes one. Yes. Omg. Have you seen the Deep Dive Virtual retreat lineup for the 1st and 2nd of February? It's incredible. Gatekeepers galore. As well as the authors who managed to get past them, we've got the editors and agents who worked on phenomenal projects like Station 11, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Crazy Rich Asians, the Flight Attendants and Mame Wayward, the Wife Upstairs, the Tinder Swindler, Big Little Lies, the Perfect Couple, the Other Black Girl, and so much more. The presentation topics are brilliant, so practical and valuable regardless of where you are in your writing journey. One of our speakers the brilliant Annabel Monaghan, who wrote the best selling Nora Goes Off Script, was a delegate at the very first Deep Dive Retreat. And now she's kicking butt but all over the place. Coming back to present that could be you one day. Those of you who take part in the Thousand Words of Summer will also be super excited to see the fabulous Jamie Attenberg in the lineup as well. Trust me, you do not want to miss this. Head to our website theshitaboutwriting.com go to the deep Dive page to see more information and to register. We hope to see you there.