Erika Krouse

[00:00:04] Speaker A: The Right Mind is a podcast hosted by the Creative Writing Department at Austin Community College, featuring discussions about craft, creativity, and what it means to be a writer. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker's own and do not represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of Austin Community College. The material and information presented here is for general information purposes only. The Austin Community College name and all forms and abbreviations are the property of its owner, and its use does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific organization, product or service. [00:00:42] Speaker B: Welcome. Erica Kraus. Erica has published four books, two books of short fiction, a novel, and a really great book that I enjoyed a lot, which is nonfiction mainly. Right. You change some stuff. [00:01:04] Speaker C: I mean, you have to. Or the lawyers come after you. Thank you. [00:01:11] Speaker B: Yeah, which I. Which, you know, I was talking with my cohort after I read it, just how much I enjoyed it. [00:01:18] Speaker C: Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. [00:01:22] Speaker B: And her new book came out last year, Save Me Stranger, which I'm blown away by. [00:01:32] Speaker D: Thank you. [00:01:35] Speaker B: Which my students have read two stories, the Pole of Cold and Eat My Moose, and they'll have questions for you. [00:01:45] Speaker D: Great. [00:01:46] Speaker B: She teaches at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop in the book project, which I would love for her to talk about. Not immediately, but. But sometime in. In this hour I attended there, I was stuck not completing books, and I. And I have an mfa have a book published, but I was not really completing anything. And I searched out something like the book project, and I found out about it, like, at the last minute, McCracken posted something about it on social media, and I thought, yeah, that's what I need to do. So. And it's an amazing program, and for some of y' all who. Who want to write, want to complete a book, it's a lifesaver. So tell me. Well, let's talk about this, because you. Let's start with this. You made a commitment, Variety, to not have a normal life. Can you talk about that? [00:03:08] Speaker C: I love that. To not have a normal life. Yeah, it's totally true. It's sort of like saying, hey, wouldn't it be great if I never had health insurance and lived in poverty? [00:03:20] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:03:21] Speaker C: I mean, I think there is a point in most writers lives when they realize that the condition is terminal and they really have to sort of go for it whether they want it or not, because, you know, their life is just going to push them that way. But you're right. It's not a normal life. It's not. And I didn't know at the time that there was an actual trajectory toward being a writer because you know, I'm old, so I. When I was coming up, I was like, oh, well, to be a writer, you have to clearly ride trains, become an alcoholic. You know, like a whole lot of things that, you know, some of which I did, but I didn't do those two. You know, I thought it was more like this bohemian lifestyle where you would, you know, basically live a lot and then write about it. And that's. I think of that as more like the Hemingway model, where he'd be like, I'm going to go to war, and then I'm going to write about it. I'm going to, you know, be penniless in Paris, and I'm going to write about it. And then come to find out there's this whole sort of career track I didn't even know about. Where people go get an mfa and then they, you know, sort of get a tenure track job and march toward that life in a more secure way. So, yeah, I clearly didn't do the smart thing, but I think it's not really about how you get there. It's really, are you writing books? And whatever gets you there, whatever gets you doing that is the important thing. But you're right, it's not a traditional choice. [00:05:04] Speaker B: Yeah. So what are your obsessions as a writer? [00:05:09] Speaker C: Oh, gosh. [00:05:10] Speaker B: As a human being. [00:05:11] Speaker C: Oh, well, that's an amazing question. Obsessions. I. Well, I am obsessed. Obsessed with literature. I love it. I love reading it. I love all genres. I haven't met a genre that I don't like. I'm also. I am obsessed with teaching. I love pedagogy, and I love. I love learning how to help people learn. That's super important to me. And beyond that, it really depends on the project. You know, I keep threatening to myself. I'll be like, you know, this time I'm gonna. I am gonna go back to school and get a PhD. This time I'm really gonna complete my education. And then I'm like, but I have to write this book first. And then I. You know, and then the book sucks up all my time, you know, all the research. Right now I'm writing historical murder mystery. I've never written a murder mystery novel. I've definitely never written historical fiction. I don't know any history at all, especially American history, because I didn't even spend my formative years in America. [00:06:23] Speaker F: So. [00:06:25] Speaker C: So it's. It's a real, you know, everything I have to learn. Plus, I'm writing about a very specific job at a very specific time. So I'm Reading all these things that I didn't even know I was interested in. I didn't know I was interested in construction. I didn't know I was interested in, you know, the mob in 1929. I didn't know I was interested in. Actually, I didn't even notice. I would know. I was interested in my heritage, which I'm writing about, right. So writing about these construction workers that. Actually, my great grandfather was one of these construction workers who worked on the Chrysler Building. So. And there's, like a certain, you know, ethnic part of that that I'm investigating. [00:07:06] Speaker E: So. [00:07:07] Speaker C: So I think the writing itself gets you obsessed about your obsessions, and you don't. You don't know what they are until you start the writing, and then you're like, wow, I've invented this world. I better make sure it has, you know, food and bars. And what were the. What was the food like then? Like all the disgusting food people ate in 1929. Amazing, right? Like, so I think that's the wonderful thing about writing is all those. All those things grow. All those obsessions grow, and you didn't. You had no idea they were there. I don't know if that was true for you, Joe, when you were writing in the book project. [00:07:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Newspapers.com. do you subscribe to that? [00:07:51] Speaker C: I don't subscribe. I actually use the New York Times archives right now, is what I'm heavily into. And I'm amazed by what was considered newsworthy. The way they wrote stories then is very different from the way they write them today. It was so much more exciting and interesting and borderline news, really. I mean, it was like, you know, it was. [00:08:17] Speaker G: It was. [00:08:17] Speaker C: It was technically probably news. But I'm also interested in what's absent from those newspapers. You know, like, you know, people of color, indigenous people. They were just cut out. All that history. [00:08:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay, save me, stranger. 12 stories, all of them in first person you've talked about. There's a theme of rescue. Can you talk about that and just talk about how this. This book came about, how it began many years ago? [00:08:54] Speaker C: Sure, yeah. I wasn't even writing short stories for a really long time. I was just working on a novel. And. And for me, it's really hard to work on a novel and short stories at the same time. It's very different way of using your brain. And then a good friend of mine died. He's actually a friend of Ben Whitmer. [00:09:13] Speaker D: Who? [00:09:14] Speaker C: Joe, you worked with Ben. Right. [00:09:15] Speaker D: So [00:09:18] Speaker C: he died by suicide. And he died. I was supposed to meet with him the day after he died. And we had plans, and I. I was just really shaken up. This is someone I considered to be sort of like a compatriot in this life of writing that we were doing. And it was a shock to everyone, especially his family. And it was very sudden. And I had that feeling like I should have done something. I could have done something. What could I have done? Not in a real way. I mean, obviously, his family probably had that feeling much, much more. [00:10:00] Speaker D: But I. [00:10:01] Speaker C: You know, I felt like maybe if I had done some random thing, if we had. Maybe if we had met the week before instead of when we didn't meet, or maybe if I had said, I don't know anything really, you know, if I had. I even had this feeling like if I had written better. Because when he died by, you know, I think my manuscript was, like, on his desk. You know, not literally on his desk, but he was working on it. You know, he was. He was reading it, so. Well, not. I mean, he's probably done reading it. I don't know exactly, but, like, all these, you know, things that obviously really wouldn't have made a difference, but it had that feeling, you know, you can't shake that feeling. Like, what could I have done that I didn't even know I could do, would have prevented this horrible tragedy? And so just to sort of get through that, I wrote the title story. It has nothing to do with suicide, obviously, and. But it was just like, a feeling I needed to. That sort of, like, guilt and that survival guilt, kind of survivor's guilt. And then. And then after I wrote that story, I was like, oh, I'm gonna write another one, and then write another. And then I just sort of, kind of kept orbiting this one theme. You know, what can we do for each other? How might we save each other or be saved by each other? Can we really help each other? And also, what do we owe each other? Those are a lot of questions. I still haven't answered them. I wrote a whole book. I still haven't answered the questions, but I feel like I've explored the questions, and that is more satisfying to me and helps me sort of get past some of those original feelings that I had. You know, it was. I guess it was another obsession that I had, among other obsessions. [00:11:54] Speaker B: Were you writing the stories, the other stories, with this book in mind? [00:11:58] Speaker C: Oh, no. Gosh, no. You know, it's sort of funny. Your. Your mind, I think, does this trick where you. You write and you write and you write the things that are Sort of inside you and that you need to explore. And then later you. I remember the day actually, I was like, wow, I have all these, huh? You know, and I've been sending them out and publishing them, publishing them when I could. And you know, I kind of looked up and I was like, oh, I kind of have like a book almost. And I feel like I wrote a book in a day. But when I was putting the book together, so I put it together and we sold it as part of a two book deal with my memoir that you, that you read Tell Me Everything, which. And thanks for reading that. I know that's not an easy read. So the short story collection was done, but they wanted the bigger book first, so they wanted the memoir first. So I wrote that and that got published. And in that time, while I was writing a whole other book and publishing it, some of those original stories, I realized that they really sucked. They were really terrible and they were no longer relevant. A lot of things changed during that time. Know, there was the Dobbs decision and the, you know, he who Shall Not Be Named became president. And there were a lot of, lot of sort of events that happened that really changed the climate for me. And I realized that some stories that I'd written originally were either no longer relevant or they gave a message that I did not, that that was not what. What I ever intended. But circumstances had changed the whole sphere so much that things could be inter. Interpreted the wrong way. For example, I have a story about a pregnant teenager. And back. When you have choices, when there is such a thing as choice, it reads one way. Once that's gone, it reads a completely different way, whatever choices those people make. So some stories I was able to rehabilitate and change, very change a lot. And then some stories, they just had to go by the wayside. And I wrote some new ones, including Eat My Moose is one of the newer ones that I wrote for the collection. And that was a story that I'd been thinking about for, I don't know, like nine years or something like that, before I, Before I ended up writing it. [00:14:33] Speaker B: I don't. I want to be able to shut up. Students ask. Ask you questions. [00:14:40] Speaker C: Sure, I welcome them. [00:14:41] Speaker B: So you guys can go ahead, ask questions, particularly about the two stories that you read. Just. Okay, there's Miriam. [00:15:01] Speaker D: Raise your hand. Hi, it's so nice to meet you. Thank you. Thanks for being here. So, yeah, we read Eat My Moose, which I thought was like pretty amazing, but I was intrigued by the, really the dark humor in there. And I think it must be very difficult to write funny. I haven't really done it myself. But when you write that kind of humor, are you like, are you like, do you agree aloud and tested or do you just know that it works? [00:15:33] Speaker C: Tell me more about your question. [00:15:35] Speaker D: So like funny bits in here, like a bump run instead of a beer run. I mean it's, it's something, the temporary immorality. I mean, I just underlined kind of, [00:15:50] Speaker C: I don't know, things. [00:15:51] Speaker D: I just thought it's the whole. I mean, it's like I'm reading it wrong. I mean, I read it's tragic, but it's also in some places, laugh out loud funny. [00:16:01] Speaker C: Oh, thank you. Yeah, I mean, I like, I mean I wrote a funny book about sexual assault. I mean, I think like the, the, you know, harder subjects sometimes offer more of an opportunity for this kind of, you know, very more edgy humor. Right. Like there are things that are just not funny. Like crime is not funny, right. It's like crime against women aren't. That's not funny. Right. But there are some things that are so absurd that you can't have any other response but to laugh. And that's something that I've noticed actually. Like, I used to work as a private investigator and I would investigate, for example, sexual assault. And that's such a common response for people when they're enraged or when they're, they cannot believe the absurdity of life, they laugh. Right. And I had the great pleasure of meeting the writer Louise Erdrich last week. Last year feels like last week, and I asked her about that, I was [00:17:09] Speaker G: like, what is that? [00:17:10] Speaker C: You know, like we're writing these like kind of horrific stories sometimes and, but, but we have to make what they're funny, right? There's this funny part too. And I said, why do we do that? And she said, because that's how we survive. And I really loved that. You know, there's this sort of desperation to humor sometimes and that's that humor that's pulled out of you rather than the telling jokes, right. So when I write a story or when I write a, any long form book, I try to cut all the jokes. I mean, like the schlocky, you know, I'm being funny stuff, you know, I get, I try and get rid of that as much as possible. And I think then the inherent humor that is part of life, even difficult life, ends up remaining and it ends up being something that we can, that we can relate to. I don't know if that really answered your question. [00:18:09] Speaker D: That's Great. I mean, that. Actually, it more than answers my question. I mean, it sort of tells me a lot about how the intensity of life, the humor grows out of the intensity. And it is. Right? Yeah. [00:18:21] Speaker G: Yeah. [00:18:21] Speaker C: And the inappropriate. I don't know about you, but I really love inappropriate humor. Like. Like, I don't. And you've probably seen this. I don't know if you've ever gone [00:18:32] Speaker D: to, [00:18:34] Speaker C: like, a funeral and everyone's sad and you suddenly think of these terrible jokes that you really can't say, but you're thinking them, and then you, you know, maybe you're having a, like a inappropriate humor response yourself again. It's how we remind ourselves that we're alive and that we keep going. If you come from any, like, ancestry or legacy of tragedy, some of the funniest ethnic groups in our country are often the funniest. Like, some of the most. The ones who have had it the hardest. They're often telling the most jokes, being. Being funniest because we're trying to remind ourselves that we made it through whatever we. We've made it through. I don't know if that makes sense. [00:19:25] Speaker D: Pretty much, yeah. [00:19:30] Speaker B: Anything else, Miriam? [00:19:33] Speaker D: No, no. That's good. I want someone else can. [00:19:36] Speaker B: Okay. Who's got a question? [00:19:44] Speaker F: I did. [00:19:45] Speaker H: Kate. [00:19:46] Speaker B: Kate? Yeah. [00:19:48] Speaker H: Hi. [00:19:49] Speaker F: Thank you for being here. [00:19:50] Speaker C: Thanks. [00:19:51] Speaker F: I had a couple, but I'll just do one for the moment. I love that you mentioned your novel that you're writing because you talked about the. One of my questions from one of your short stories was about research. In Pole of Cold in particular, I was wondering how you approached the research because you had so many great details, like that opening bit you're talking about hammering in a nail with a. Frozen. With a banana. I just. [00:20:11] Speaker C: It felt so. [00:20:13] Speaker F: Those were things that you didn't learn from, like, a book. Like, I felt like those are things you would learn from talking to people. So I was wondering how you approached the research for that story and for the one that you're writing now. Sure. [00:20:23] Speaker C: You know, research is one of my very favorite things to do. And I, you know, I think that story, the Pole Cold, I think I researched that for around six years before I decided to write a story about it at all. I was just interested in it. And the reason I was interested in it was it came from a very personal place. I've never been there. I can't go there. It's too expensive. I can't, you know, normal people. I can't really go there. [00:20:51] Speaker G: But. [00:20:53] Speaker C: But so I was. [00:20:55] Speaker D: I. [00:20:55] Speaker C: Long ago, I'VE had a. And if you ever read my memoir, you'll know I have an extremely difficult family, you know, history, and my mother disowned me. But I didn't know there was no goodbye. And I was like, I'm going to write a letter and say goodbye, you know. So I wrote this letter, but I didn't know where to send it. I couldn't send it to her. It wouldn't. That wouldn't have worked out at all. So I thought, you know, where it feel psychically like the place to send this letter, that is now actually something I have to get out of my house, right? And I realized, oh, you know, the. The. The coldest place on earth, that seems like the appropriate place to send this goodbye letter. So I found, you know, some poor person at 1 Oymyakon Road in Siberia has gotten this letter in English with no return address. So I sent it there, you know, but in the process of sending that letter, I was like, you know, where is the coldest place on earth? And oh my gosh, that's so interesting. And let me watch this YouTube video and let me read this book and. And I just kept reading about it because it was fascinating to me. And also now I felt like this, you know, this part of me, because I send my. In my mind, it's where my mother lived, even though she. She definitely doesn't live there. So. And also I have a part of. I have a really, really mixed up, you know, heritage from many, many, many places. And one of them, according to my grandmother, is part of the family was exiled to Siberia. So I also had this sort of ancestral connection to the place. So that research process went on, but for. For a really long time, it was just the joy of it. And it's not all I was doing in that six years. I mean, I was, you know, doing other. But, you know, I did get stuff like that from books. I did get stuff like that from the Internet and then had to, you know, check it all. I'm trying to think if I. With that, you know, that story was a little harder than the usual research process because I did speak some Russian in college. I learned some in college, but I haven't spoken it since. And I don't know more than, you know, six words anymore. So I couldn't really interview anyone there. And I thought, you know, I can't really find out, like, who is the mayor and who. How does this town work? You know, I did as much as I could. But then it was also a little freeing because I was like, well, if I can't find out, neither can my reader. So it can become this little bit more mythical place, and I can make up some of these things that I. That I definitely took liberties with. And that was fun as well. That was a good question. Did I answer your question? [00:23:55] Speaker F: Okay. [00:23:58] Speaker B: Did you use real words from that other language? [00:24:03] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, yeah. The Russian in that. In the story is Russian. And, you know, I can. [00:24:10] Speaker B: I thought there was another. [00:24:12] Speaker C: Oh, there's Saha as well. That's. That's a. Like a indigenous language. Yeah, so I did look those words up. So, yeah, I wanted to be realistic, so I did look those up again. And what else did I. Did I have another language in there? No, it's just the two. So, yeah, in the whole collection, I used so many languages, and I only speak of, like, a very little bit of some of them. And so I had to do a lot of research into that as well. So that involved. I mean, the Internet's a wonderful tool for that. You know, you can. You can look up, how does someone say this? And watch a video, and maybe they say that word or use that. But I did discover after the book was published, they spelled some things wrong. Some transliterations aren't quite the way they should be. So that's a little embarrassing. [00:25:14] Speaker B: Adrian, you have your hand up. [00:25:18] Speaker I: Hi. I was interested in how you think about and create your kind of secondary characters. So the pull of Cold is the one that I was thinking about. And the son of the. The parents who died in the plane crash, do you think of him as, like. Do you think of him first as just this whole character? Like, you have these parents and this situation, and, oh, I bet they had a son, and what is he like? And what does he go through? And are your secondary characters fully their own people, or when you think of them, do you think of them as, like, how do they push my main character forward? I was interested in how you thought about the secondary characters. [00:25:59] Speaker D: Right. [00:26:00] Speaker C: You know, that's a great question, and I think the answer is beyond behind door number three. So usually what I end up doing. And again, that's a wonderful question, and I'm not saying this is the way to do this at all, actually. I don't think I'm a role model in any way, so don't do anything I do. But in general, the way I think of characters is I think, wouldn't it be messed up if whatever situation there is. Right. Oh, and you know what would make that even more messed up? Blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah. And then what if this person that I thought of in this other way was this other way, and it would really, really jack things up. So. And, you know, so that's sort of the way I go. [00:26:45] Speaker D: You. [00:26:45] Speaker C: And it's. You know, I think I go more toward the conflict, more toward the situation, and. But I always think different writers do it so differently. Like, I think of it as everyone has their preferred door. Like, they enter a certain door, and some people do enter through that character door, and they're like, oh, I want to write about a person who. And I've done that. You know, it's not like you can only go through one door in your writing career. Other people like to go through a door of setting. You know, I want to write about this place. Sometimes you go through a door of situation, and sometimes you go through, you know, some other, you know, any other door you can think of, a line of dialogue you heard or for me, with, you know, the other story. Eat my moose. It's definitely a. It's something that someone told me, you know, story. Someone told me that I completely changed. So it really. It's good to sort of be flexible, I think, and just decide that you can, you know, for this story. For this, you know, I've been thinking about writing, blah, blah, blah, what's my door for this story? And let each story have its own particular way of its own particular point of entry. For the Pole of Cold, for me, it was definitely setting. I was interested in this place and then also interested in. For me, it was theme for that story, too. I wanted to write a story where the underpinnings of the character's relationship with her mother flavored the whole story and every one of her decisions and everything that happened, even though the mother's not actually part of the. She's not character in the story. Am I making sense, Adrian? Okay, good. I'm curious. What's your door, Adrienne? [00:28:49] Speaker I: So the story I just wrote, the first story, it was. It's funny that you said it, because I didn't ask it, but I definitely went through the conflict door because I had a main character that was like, yo, she needs to get jolted in this time and moment right now and knowing that she's the type of woman she is. What would jolter. Oh, this person needs to show up. So for that one, it was definitely like, a conflict. [00:29:10] Speaker C: Right? Right. That what if? Question. What would make it even worse Question. [00:29:16] Speaker I: It was like, everything. It was just like you said, like, what would jack this up even more that was how I did for this story that we just wrote. [00:29:22] Speaker C: Right, right. I feel like there are two really great questions that any writer can ask themselves is how can it get worse? And how can it matter more? I think those two questions help guide me, and they don't. And the answer to those questions can be setting, or it can be character, or it can be the situation, or it can be really anything. Is it raining that day? Well, that would make it worse. How can it matter more? Well, if that happened to them before in a different way, that might make it matter more. There are all these different ways you can sort of create more and more conflict. I think some of us are just. We just like to start stuff. Am I allowed to swear? [00:30:10] Speaker B: Oh, sure. [00:30:11] Speaker D: Okay. [00:30:11] Speaker C: We just like to start shit, you know? Like, some of us are just like, shit starters, you know? Yeah. Now that I know I can swear, I feel so much more comfortable. It's my love language. [00:30:28] Speaker B: Anybody else? Questions? Oh, Zach. [00:30:36] Speaker H: Yeah. No, not strictly related to the short stories. I had a question about how you usually handle structure. Because when I was writing my story, I kind of had a moment where I sort of shifted the shape of it and the structure for it. Kind of in the middle of the story, as I wrote on, I had a beginning and an end, but the way I get to the end has changed. Have you ever had, like, a moment like that? [00:31:02] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. [00:31:05] Speaker H: Really changes the context of everything. [00:31:07] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. I always think of short stories especially as an experimental form. So where people do. I think sometimes the most experimentation in literature is the short story form. As, you know, as far as prose, narrative is concerned, also the essay, because the shorter forms can hold that right. You know, a novel or a memoir, you have to keep people turning the pages. And there are certain sort of expectations of what a book is supposed to feel like and how you're supposed to feel at the end of a book. Whereas the short story is sort of. I feel like it's just like, ooh, little bit of a fling and let's see, you know, so I've written story. Like, for example, Eat My Moose, the other story that you folks read. It really doesn't have the Rising Action. I tell it in montage. I'm like, this happened and this happened, you know? Whereas if that were a novel, Rising Action is most of the book. [00:32:11] Speaker D: Right? [00:32:11] Speaker C: It's most of the story. So I just kind of blooped over it. I was like, oh, well, you know, a lot of things happened there. Here they all are now. You know, let's move on to the good stuff. You know, let's get to that climax. So I think that's something that you can do with a short story. I think I've written short stories that are mostly denouement to resolution. There's. I mean, there is technically a beginning because everything has to begin. But I just went straight there. Some stories just round out that curve of like crisis climax, you know, and then some stories really are exposition to inciting incidents. So you guys know that. That Freytag thing. Have you learned about this where it's, you know, when a story starts, it's the exposition, and then inciting incident happens and messes everything up. And then there is a long rising action of the story. We hit a crisis sometime around there, climax, and, you know, it's the peak of emotion, the falling action of the. Where we sort of learn the consequence of everything. And the resolution is the end. Right. But with short story, you get to mess around. You know, I read some stories that are all that exposition, that beginning period, and they're wonderful. [00:33:30] Speaker D: Right. [00:33:32] Speaker C: So I think that's one thing I love about short stories that. That you can't do in a longer. In any longer work as easily. I'm sure people have. I've seen people do it, actually, but they're kind of, you know, for us mortals, it's easier to do it in the short story, and we have a higher likelihood of success. So I think playing around, especially in shorter forms, is almost expected. You know, I've seen stories that are just. They're just lists. Have you seen that? List stories? [00:34:06] Speaker G: Yeah. [00:34:07] Speaker C: Or how to. Or interview. Like one was. There's a story that I really liked that was like a police interview. So there are all sorts of ways to tell a story, and if you only have to tax a reader's attention for a shorter amount of time, you get to do that. Does that answer your question, Zach? [00:34:31] Speaker H: I believe so. [00:34:32] Speaker C: Yeah, probably. You believe so? [00:34:36] Speaker B: Sarah, you have a question? [00:34:39] Speaker G: Yeah. I was wondering how you maintain character voice, especially with dialogue. I feel like sometimes with dialogue and switching between characters, I hate writing dialogue because I Trying to come up with. Okay. And this side character, who I haven't invested a lot of time in, what would they say? [00:34:57] Speaker I: Right. [00:34:59] Speaker C: Instead of, like, what would they say? Maybe ask yourself what could they say? Because a lot of the exploration of characters comes through watching them do stuff and watching them say stuff. And we don't really come to the page knowing. [00:35:15] Speaker D: Right? [00:35:16] Speaker C: We don't. I mean, I don't. Maybe someone does, but I think it's really hard to say, oh, well, I've got it all planned out, and I'm just. All I have to do is type. Now we're really. We're exploring, we're investigating where we're discovering. And sometimes if you just sort of leave it open to, like, hey, this. This person is a little bit of a wild card, I don't know what they're going to say next, then they end up saying something really cool that helps define that character, that helps you understand them a little bit better. I'm really interested in dialogue, and there are a lot of exercises where people say, oh, go to coffee shop and listen on someone's conversation and write all down all that dialogue. But that, you know, most people are kind of boring when you do that. It's not as good as your imagination, right? If you allow yourself to say, okay, what could they say? What could they say right now that would really make this person uncomfortable? What could they say right now that would change the power dynamic, then you have a better chance. I think a lot of conversations. Power is a big part of conversations, and if you let that power shift and shift and shift, it can be really fascinating. There are dialogues that I teach in, say, a dialogue class where maybe it's just like this much text, it's like maybe five, six inches of text, and the power dynamic will shift four or five times just in that little space. So if you kind of look at that, like, who's saying what? What's their agenda? [00:36:53] Speaker I: Why. [00:36:54] Speaker C: Why are they talking to this person? What are they trying to get out of them, you know, And. And how is that being received on the other end? And what are. What's their agenda? What are they trying to do? Then it can really. You can really start having a lot of fun with your dialogue. And dialogue is where humor gets to come out. A lot of times, dialogue is where a lot of changes in relationship get to happen. So if you think, like, okay, this dialogue starting out and they're feeling this way, they're both having this one experience. And maybe by the end of the dialogue, I want it to be a different experience. I want them to not. Not be the way they were when they started out. Set these little challenges for yourself and see if you start to like dialogue a little bit more. Does that make sense, Sarah? [00:37:43] Speaker G: Yeah, especially the, like, piecing together, like, what is this person trying to get out of this situation? I think a lot of times maintaining the character's unique voice becomes tedious and difficult. When you're. [00:37:59] Speaker C: You've got a. [00:38:00] Speaker G: You know they're not the main character. [00:38:03] Speaker C: Right. And also, no one has it. A consistent voice. I mean, really, if you think about it, we might have some things that we say that are, you know, a little bit more uniquely ours, but we're always changing. And even in a. When we're interacting with a person, we might go from this tone to that tone to the other. And none of those things are necessarily consistent. I don't think people are consistent. So if you relieve yourself of that expectation, if you just say, okay, I'm gonna write. I'm gonna write whatever comes out of these people's mouths, and it's gonna be their voice because they said it, then maybe freeing yourself up from that might allow you to get some really cool stuff that makes sense. Yeah, that's correct. [00:38:57] Speaker B: Jban. [00:39:00] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:39:00] Speaker J: I really liked your stories that we read, and one of the elements that I really liked in them was the magical realism that you had in them. And I just wanted you to sort of talk about, like, how do you balance having magical but grounded elements? I thought that really worked well in your stories. How you had, like, for example, the cancer becoming healed in. How do you insert the magical but while also keeping it real? [00:39:33] Speaker G: Right. [00:39:35] Speaker C: I had never written magical before that story. So I encourage you to just, like, again, throw the spaghetti at the walls. But with Eat My Moose, I wanted to look at. So that story came from a really, really different place. A student actually told me this similar story in class, just unprompted about how she assisted with a suicide and [00:40:09] Speaker B: how, [00:40:11] Speaker C: you know, what that was like for her. It was really, really interesting. It was a very interesting moment. It just came out of nowhere. And we were all listening, and it was amazing. And I said, you have to write that. And she's like, okay. And then every time I saw her, I was like, you have to write that. And she's like, okay. And then she never wrote it. And then finally she said, I'm not gonna write it. Stop bugging me. You can write it. You write it. So the first story I wrote about that, it didn't come out right. I was trying to actually reproduce her story in a way a little more closely. I changed, like, you know, half of it, but I. But I was trying to stay faithful to it, and there was no magical realism. And it wasn't working. And I revised it four times. And then I was like, it's just not working, so I was going to throw it away. And then I was like, okay, I'm going to go through this story. I'm Going to highlight everything that's working, I think. And I only highlighted a few things. I highlighted the setting of Alaska. I highlighted a line and the death scene. And that was all that. I was like, oh, these three things are working. Okay, what can I bring to make the rest of it work? And I changed everything. I changed the main character and the narrative voice. So it was a young woman. It turned into a slightly past middle aged man who was a veteran. But it still needed this sort of turn just be about assisted suicide. It had to. Needed to have a thing. And I was like, oh, what if? So it brought back to that, brought it back to that other question. So most of the story is realist. It is absolutely what happens. I've researched all these things. I went to Alaska. I mean, they're like, it's all sort of true except for that one piece. And that's the difference between, I think fantasy and magical realism. Magical realism is like all of the whole world is the way we know the world. Except what if this one thing we're different? And then that's that magical element that I brought in that by him and Bonnie having this job assisting, helping people die, their cancers were in remission. And it could be a coincidence, right? Could it just happen that way by total coincidence? But we don't believe that. [00:42:51] Speaker G: We. [00:42:51] Speaker C: We think it's magic, like this magical element and this sort of cosmic deal that they're making, but we don't understand why. [00:43:01] Speaker E: Right. [00:43:02] Speaker C: For a while. Does that answer your question? Yeah, yeah, it's great. [00:43:07] Speaker B: Yeah. Thanks. Gloria, you want to. You have a question? [00:43:12] Speaker E: I do. I have a question. Just about writing in general. And this may not even be relevant to you, but maybe it is. At what point did you go from writing for yourself and enjoying writing and just the whole process of it to actually wanting people to read it because we just posted our first stories and it feels so vulnerable. I want to delete it. I don't. And I have never reached the point that I want people to read what I have written. Was there a point where you crossed that line? [00:43:49] Speaker C: I think I was always very terrified to show my writing to people for. For a very long time. And then I took a class in college. There wasn't a creative writing major then. There really were very few of them. Again, I'm old. So I took this class and I started out with poetry and I wrote this poem that I thought was like baring my sou to the world. And now everyone knew everything they that there was to know about me. And I brought it to workshop, and everyone read it and no one understood a word of it. They're like, what is this? What's, like, what she. What's even saying here? You know, they're like, oh, there's some pretty words, but they don't make any sense. And I realized, like, oh, if I'm actually going to be a quote unquote good writer, it means I. It's. The hard thing is, actually is doing that. The hard thing is saying, here I am and here, will you please read it? And this is me. That's the hardest part is putting your soul on the page. That's what you end up with if you try very, very, very hard and work, you know, work forever and study and, you know, write and write and write and learn and learn and learn. So that was a little bit. That was a game changer for me. And it made it a lot easier for me to show my work because I was like, well, I'm never going to get there. I'm never going to really get to a place of full disclosure, because that's the goal, really. I would love to write a short story and be like, okay, I finally did it. This is my entire identity. [00:45:28] Speaker D: And. [00:45:29] Speaker C: And now anyone can read it. And there it is. I've never gotten there. So I think I do understand the vulnerability, but you contain multitudes. You contain much, much more than the writing that you have shared and felt so vulnerable about. Right. You have so many stories in you. You have so much in you. And I really do believe that without writing offers you this. This opportunity to connect in a way that you never, ever could. Like, have you ever really felt that you could be known to someone in regular life? You know, maybe a little. People like, oh, I know her. I know Gloria. Right. But they only know a facet of you. They only know the part of you that. That you. That you've allowed them to know. But writing allows much, much more of you to be shared with the world. So. And I really think that's part of why we're here is to connect with each other. And. And it's so hard. It's so hard to do. Right? So I. I don't know if this helps that helps at all, Gloria. [00:46:45] Speaker E: It does. Thank you. [00:46:46] Speaker C: Okay, good. I think. Will it always feel vulnerable? Yeah, Especially the more personal it is. It's always going to feel vulnerable. But I think at some point you'll. You'll realize that that's good. [00:47:00] Speaker H: Right? [00:47:00] Speaker C: Because that vulnerability means that you're taking a chance and that you're More visible. I think there's a tendency for a lot of us to feel like we shouldn't be visible, that we should hide, you know, but then why are we even here? [00:47:18] Speaker H: Right. [00:47:20] Speaker C: Sorry. I went to a place there. [00:47:26] Speaker B: That's great. Kate, [00:47:30] Speaker F: on the topic of you said working really hard, writing a ton, learning a ton, Are there any particular books about writing that you really, really like? [00:47:39] Speaker C: Oh, you know, everyone loves the craft books. I don't tend to love them because they. They're always an opinion. And I. I feel like there, you know, there is. Here's the artist way, and you should write morning pages. Well, that doesn't work for me. You know, here's. Here's this other way, and here's this other opinion. I feel like it's good to sort of know all the opinions about writing, because then you can really see how a bunch of people try. Right. There is one book I kind of like, and it's. And the reason I like it is because it's a collection of opinions. [00:48:15] Speaker G: Right. [00:48:16] Speaker C: But this is. It's actually made more for speculative. It's called the Wonder Book. [00:48:21] Speaker D: Have you got. [00:48:21] Speaker C: Do you guys know this? Does anyone know this book? [00:48:26] Speaker J: I love the pictures. [00:48:27] Speaker C: Oh, it's so cool, right? [00:48:28] Speaker J: It's so pretty. [00:48:31] Speaker C: It's got all these, like, different pictures of different ideas, you know, and it's. And it doesn't have. It's not like, oh, this is the wonder book way. You know, it's just like a bunch of people giving their opinions about how they do it and saying what works for them. And I think that's kind of cool. But generally, I learn a lot more from the writing itself, from fiction, from nonfiction, reading books, you know, that someone wrote, like, a really incredible, beautiful book. I learned so much more from that than I do from a craft book where. Telling me how to write. And I'm not trying to disparage anyone who gets a lot out of craft books. If you do great, tell me how you do it. Because for me, it's not necessarily been the most instructive. [00:49:26] Speaker B: So going off of that, you have talked about your novel and that it taught you lessons that you use with your students. Now, can you talk about that and what. What those particular lessons are? [00:49:44] Speaker C: My novel that bombed. That one. My bomb novel. Yeah, yeah, sure. That taught me so much because I. I didn't know how to write a novel. I had only written short pieces at that point. So it's a novel called Contenders. I think it's out of print, and it. I just messed up a lot. You know, I worked on it forever and I kept kind of getting it wrong and I kept, I approached it in this scattershot way and then finally I was like, nope, I'm gonna. I think I gotta do the thing that everyone shudders at and make an outline and figure out structure and actually learn about how stories work in a more engineering kind of way. And it doesn't mean that there are rules. It means that you just know tendencies and you can, you can. But how do you break those if you don't really know what they are? So I did a really deep study into narrative and I learned as much as I could. I read, I don't know how many books. I did read a lot of craft books, and I just read a lot of books that were similar to what I was trying to do. And. And then I actually did write. Well, it's a kind of equivalent of a craft book. And I just. And that's what I teach off from with my students, with handouts and things. And that's how I, that's how I was able to, you know, write that book. And again, like, I worked on that book for 10 years, but really I just kept rewriting it. So I really only worked on it for two years, really, because the last iteration, you know, and it. So it didn't read like a ten year book, certainly. And even the final version now I look back, I'm like, oh gosh, inciting incident is way too late and I should have, you know, done this. This psych here doesn't make sense. So, so, you know, we're always learning, but writing, you know, my, my mistakes helped me with my memoir, which, you know, I was like, okay, I'm not messing around. You know, I didn't say messing around, I said, I'm not fucking around. That's what I said. And I was like, I'm not gonna. And I could do it to myself again. So I, so. And since it had this, you know, it was a book about a, about a case, you know, and my work as a private investigator. So I really, I wrote a very extensive outline. My outline was 100,000 words, which is as long as the book was. They weren't all my words. You know, there were court documents in there and journalism and stuff like that, but. But I kind of put it all together and then when it was time to write it, it was so fast for me. This current book that I'm writing now too, I spent a couple months outlining it and intensely outlining it. I have all these Processes that I use now, and that really helps me to do it. But I think if I hadn't made those mistakes, I would still be sort of floundering around and trying to figure out, you know, what do I do and what is a story anyway and what makes a story a story? Now I really have concrete answers to that question from all my many, many, many failures. So I think also there's something about failing at a long project that you try for such a long time where you realize it's not going to stop you. You know, like, what are they gonna do? Take away your pencil? You know, you still. Even if you mess up, even if you fail, well, you've learned something from it, Right. You know, like, what did you learn? You learned. Well, that's not how I want to do it. Or at least that's not how I want to do it for this project. So it teaches you a lot about your own endurance and helps you understand your own commitment to writing. If you have that commitment, does that make sense? Joe? [00:53:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, yeah. [00:53:51] Speaker C: Have you experienced anything like that, where you're like, oh, that. That one thing that didn't quite hit it taught me more than everything else. [00:54:00] Speaker B: Yeah. And, you know, going through revisions of my book, there. There are. It's more closer things, like things that I do too much, you know. [00:54:14] Speaker C: What do you do too much? [00:54:15] Speaker B: Physical actions, winking, nodding. I read a book by a really big novelist right now, Tara Jenkins Reed, and I. And I liked the book a lot, but in little spots, I saw the stuff that I had to cut out, and it's like, wow, there it is. And it annoyed me that she left in it was that nodding, smiling, grinning, those kind of things. [00:54:54] Speaker C: I think some of those things never really go away. I use the word that too much. So before I send anything out, I always have to go through, search on that and cut it. You know, you. You don't usually need to use that word. So. [00:55:08] Speaker F: Yeah. [00:55:09] Speaker D: And. [00:55:10] Speaker B: And this is not a. A knock on Tara Jenkins Reed, right? [00:55:14] Speaker C: No, no, of course I like your stuff. Right, Right. Yeah. No, it's fun to see it, though. [00:55:19] Speaker B: You just start seeing stuff. [00:55:21] Speaker C: Yeah. You know, people have no idea how hard it is. Right. Like, stuff so hard. [00:55:28] Speaker B: But what is the revision process like for you? [00:55:32] Speaker C: Oh, it's my favorite. [00:55:34] Speaker I: I. [00:55:35] Speaker C: There are overwriters and underwriters. Right. Some people, like, they write a lot. [00:55:39] Speaker I: A lot. [00:55:40] Speaker D: A lot. [00:55:40] Speaker C: And then they have to cut to find the story. Like, kind of like, you know, the finding the statue inside the marble. Right. And I'm an underwriter I build, you know, I just have a bones and then I have to add some like, like flesh and tendons and all that stuff. So for me, revision, it's something I'm doing right now, actually. And so, you know, the generation I just write and it's a bunch of garbage. And then revision is where I do lots of different kinds of revisions. So for me, first revision, which I'm doing right now, I'm just seeing if the story works. I'm seeing if this plot is a plot. Is it ridiculous? Is it boring? Where is it? You know, where is it those things. And then the nice thing with writing that isn't true with other arts like dance or sculpting out a marble is you can fix anything. You can really fix anything. So, you know, with a performance based art, you're kind of stuck with what you did. But I think there's this. So I do this sort of revision where I'm trying to make the plot work and I'm trying to make the characterization motivations, all those things work. And that's that first revision. And then I go through and I start to build in layers and complexity and narrative echo where this happens here in one way and then it plays out here. There's this, there's this director I love who he wrote and directed the movie. Michael Clayton. I don't know any of you know. Have you seen Michael Clayton, Joe? Yeah, I'm obsessed with that movie and it's so well designed, you know. And he said that in the first half of his movie he's writing the checks and in the second half of the movie he, he's cashing them. And I love that idea of like this, you know, you're writing the checks and then you're cashing them in the story, you know, you're sort of laying this groundwork and then you're seeing its fruition with the connections. And I think that idea and those, I think that movement happens in later revisions. And then there's a text, more of a textual revision where I'm, you know, and you know, I do revisions where I just make sure everybody's fed. I go do revisions where I make sure there's color everywhere. So that, you know, I, I kind of go through and I put myself through all these different paces and I do a read aloud revision where I'm, you know, I'm reading it aloud, I'm noticing where I'm bored, where I'm bored myself and, and fixing, just noting those parts and then going through and Then just like the editing. So for me, revision is very different from editing. Editing is, with revision, you're sort of tearing things apart and putting them together in a different way. It's like if you watch Project Runway where, you know, Tim Gunn comes in or whoever comes in and says, you know, hey, this dress, it's a pantsuit. And then they, they tear it all apart and they make a pantsuit. You know, that for me is revision. And then editing is like the hemming and the, you know, threads and making sure nothing's poking anybody that, making sure that it fits, you know, so it's long for me. [00:59:17] Speaker B: Can you talk about the book project? [00:59:19] Speaker C: Sure. Love the book project. So I mentor at the book project. It's a two year program and it's, you know, MFA is for people who want a degree and they might end up with a book at the end of it or they might not. Most people end up with, you know, some kind of a manuscript, but it might not be book length. Book project is about writing a book. It's for people who want to write a book and also who maybe don't want to spend 30 to 60 thousand dollars on a degree or move and teach, you know, composition 101 for two years so it's, it's more affordable. And for two years you learn how to write a book. So it's a mentor based program and you work with one on one with a mentor and also in a cohort of six. So there'll be, you know, you have five other people in your year with that, with that mentor that you work with. There are also intensives where you meet the whole book project and there are six mentors with each two years of people. So it's a lot of people and you meet a lot of. And you know, there are people come in and teach craft classes there. You also get a certain number of classes with Lighthouse and they're taught by the overall faculty. That is a really cute dog. And then you also, at the end of the book project, you get your manuscript read, your book read by your mentor. So it's a hundred thousand words, up to 100,000 words of a manuscript read. So it's a lot of bang for your buck. And a lot of people go through and they feel like it changed their life and they'd always wanted to write a book and now they have. So it's, it's really cool. There's also a one year program that we've made from it, Jo, since you graduated, called the portfolio year, where if you're like, I can't do two years. I don't necessarily want to, you know, write the whole book, or I don't. I don't want to commit to that much time. That's a one year program where again, it's the same model where you work with a small cohort of six and you have the one mentor that you work with who gets to know your project really, really, really well, and you decide what your portfolio is. Is it a book? Is it part of a book? Is it, you know, a book proposal? What, you know, what do you want to do in that year? It's self designated. And then you do that. And that's a little bit more affordable than the book project. [01:01:51] Speaker B: So MFA programs tend to teach you to write short stories, and this program teaches you to complete a book, right? [01:02:02] Speaker C: Yeah. The workshop model in MFA programs do tend to encourage shorter work because you're doing a workshop and there's that feeling like if you're writing a novel, well, maybe you should workshop that first chapter over and over and over again at every single workshop. You know, whereas it's hard to get a continuity of someone who, you know, a group of people who understand what you're trying to do in a larger program. But you can also do. I do have people working on collections in the book project as well, so people working on essay collections or short story collections as well. [01:02:38] Speaker G: Yeah. [01:02:39] Speaker B: And Erica was my second reader. [01:02:42] Speaker C: Yeah. I got to read it. I was so excited. It's such a good book. [01:02:45] Speaker B: It's changed pretty drastically. [01:02:47] Speaker C: Really? I'd love to know how. [01:02:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:02:50] Speaker C: Yeah. That was wonderful. Yeah. [01:02:53] Speaker B: I think we're out of time. [01:02:55] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. So thank you for having me, everybody. Thank you for inviting me. Thanks, Eli. It's been a pleasure to get to know you guys a little bit and I. I hope you all, I wish you all, all so much luck and success with your projects.