Episode 52 is here to share our big day job news

In Episode 52, we cover some great real-life stuff in a candid (read: very lightly edited) conversation.

We talk about the big day job news we were super shady about a month ago, and then we talk about how that’s changed our approach to our writing. We specifically like how making a big choice in your personal life can take away the pressure of making choices in your creative life – it’s weirdly freeing. And we talk about feeling like a writer when you’re too busy/sick to write much, and how the daydreaming and thinking about your novel is part of the novel, too.

You can find the episode and show notes here.

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Maybe you’re not bad at it, maybe you just haven’t practiced

I was listening to this week’s First Draft podcast, in which the host Sarah Enni interviews author Emily X.R. Pan. It is a good interview anyway, but at the beginning, she talks about how she learned to tell stories through practicing with her father when she was a child. First, he told her stories, and then he started asking her to tell stories, and they would collaborate together.

This was an epiphany for me, even if it’s a really obvious one. I realized that, usually when I hear about writers and how they always naturally told stories, I think, “I didn’t do that, so maybe I’m not supposed to be a novelist.”

In fact, I specifically remember the one time I ever was asked to write a story. I did it like I do everything else – at the last minute, late at night. I think I was 8, but this procrastination thing is really ingrained. I didn’t really know how to do it, and so I worried about it and avoided it, and then it wasn’t very good. My story is lame, and I have always known that. I am sure my grade was fine, but I wasn’t proud of that work.

So I loved hearing Emily X.R. Pan tell how she learned to tell stories, not in a one-off assignment randomly, but over time, gradually, and in a trusting and open environment. And I didn’t have that. And that’s totally fine – it just means I didn’t practice it. But it was also a bit liberating because it also means that I am not necessarily bad at it. Maybe I just didn’t get trained.

So that’s what I’m doing now – training myself to tell stories, to write this novel.

I love simple, obvious epiphanies that hit you at just the right time.

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This week, we’re pepping you up

Meghan and I have both had a lot of work travel, and we have also been recording pep talks that we wanted to share with you. So, instead of a full-length episode, we have not just one but three pep talks to share:

Pep Talk #4 from our Episode 33 interview with poet and book publicist Abigail Welhouse, where she reminds us that people probably don’t care, but if they do, it’s such an amazing gift. And that writing is all about connection:

 

Pep Talk #5 from Meghan that should calm your nerves if you’re in one of those times where you’re not writing. Are you still “a writer”? Listen to this:

 

And Pep Talk #6 is a real-life conversation that Olivia and Meghan had, when Olivia wasn’t sure if she should continue with this novel, her first. Meghan had some great words of advice:

 

All our Pep Talks can be found here on our new Pep Talk page.

Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe to Marginally on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever get your podcasts.

 

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On Episode 27, Hamid Ismailov reminds us how a day job can help your writing

In today’s episode, we talked to the BBC journalist and prolific novelist Hamid Ismailov. Hamid has a fascinating day job – Editor of the Central Asia service at the BBC World Service – but he still makes time in evenings several months a year to write novels. He shared with us his system for averaging one novel for year, but still having time to daydream about your next project(s), and why he doesn’t want to quit his day job.

Tilted Axis Press photo

Hamid is the author of numerous books in Russian and Uzbek, which have been translated into English and many other languages. His most recent book is The Devils’ Dance. One of his first books to receive widespread acclaim in English is The Railway, which has an untraditional, folkloric structure and many fantastic characters. Since then, in English he has published several books, including The Dead Lake, about the area of Kazakhstan where nuclear testing had occurred previously, an elegy about Moscow called The Undergroundand A Poet and Bin Laden, and many more books and artistic projects that have not been tranlsated. He was formerly the BBC’s Writer in Residence, and during that time he wrote many lovely blog posts.

We enjoyed talking to him, and we think you’ll learn from and be inspired by our discussion with him this week.

Full show notes are here.

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Our Episode 23 chat with filmmaker Ashley Maynor

Episode 23 is live, and we are super excited to bring you our wide-ranging conversation with Ashley Maynor, who is a university librarian by day and an award-winning filmmaker by night. Ashley is a long and dear friend of Olivia’s. This conversation is anything but boring – we touch on divorce and our inner octagenarian, as well as farm animals.

Using her mad librarian skills, after our chat she put up this great Resources for Creatives page, with things to get you unstuck, a crash course on starting a podcast and a guide to microbudget film production. We thought you’d like to check it out!

Full show notes are here.

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This, too, is my life

gal gadot as wonder womanFriday night, my family settled in to watch Wonder Woman for the zillionth time. I love that my boys love Wonder Woman and argue over who gets to be her when they play Justice League. I have wistful memories of my childhood best friend (and inspiration for my current novel) and the Wonder Woman mittens of hers I coveted fiercely. I love the anti-war message of the latest incarnation.

But I also find myself wrestling with other feelings. As I sat watching Gal Gadot, in awe of her strong legs and body, frustration with my own slide toward 40 and 5-years-post-partum body set in. Again (like I said, this is the zillionth time we’ve watched it). I’ll never be Gal Gadot.

In this week’s episode, Olivia and I talked about jealousy and how to deal with it. It’s such a common part of life, and it sucks. Not only is it unpleasant, it can spoil the good things, too.

I’ll never be Gal Gadot. But she’ll never be me, either.

We recorded this particular discussion on Thursday, so as I lay in bed that night after the movie, I decided to just sit with it. And I realized, yes, I’ll never be Gal Gadot. But she’ll never be me, either. So take that, Wonder Woman.

***

madeleine l'engle's summer of the great-grandmother (crosswicks book two) and yellow index cardsLast week, I also finished reading Summer of the Great-Grandmother by Madeleine L’Engle. Listeners know how much I love the woman I call St. Madeleine, in all her complexity — much has been written on her revisionist approach to truth and memory, and it was sad to read her version of her children and know how different it is from their version of her (Gabrielle Zevin wrote in The New Yorker of her children “who love her deeply, but with a kind of desperate frustration spliced with resentment.”). She rewrote herself.

Anyway, I finished the book, and made some notes, feeling a little disappointed. Summer of the Great-Grandmother is about the summer of her mother’s death and decline, and is full of family history and storytelling, which while pleasant, wasn’t illuminating or inspiring to me right then. I wanted her to tell me a different story, to give me her life, but differently.

Madeleine looked back at me and said, not just “It was hard,” but also, “This, too, was my life.”

I tell a story often of a podcast I once heard. The host shared what was to her a devastating interaction with a long-time hero: She was in the process of trying to write while also raising her small children. At a book signing for one of L’Engle’s books, she asked L’Engle, “How did you do it? How did you write and take care of your family?” L’Engle looked at her for a moment then said only, “It was hard,” then went back to signing books.

This is a favorite story of mine because my reaction is one of joy and intense relief. If it was hard for Madeleine effing L’Engle, how in the world do I expect it to be easy for me?

As I was copying down passages from Summer on yellow index cards, I realized I had been reading the book for advice and motivation as a writer, and Madeleine looked back at me and said, not just “It was hard,” but also, “This, too, was my life.”

***

And it hit me — these things too are and will be my life, and that’s good. I don’t know what Gal Gadot wants from her life, but as I look around at mine, I would not trade it for anyone else’s. You can’t give up the bad without giving up the good, because they’re entwined. Nothing in our lives is wholly good or bad — kids are going to bring sleepless nights and fragmented workdays, but they’re also going to bring knock-knock jokes and spontaneous hugs and so much wonder. That delicious cake? Probably not helping me look like Wonder Woman, but SO DELICIOUS. A period of intense loneliness many years ago has wound its way through my current work, and allowed me to write about someone who isn’t me doing things I’ve never done, but feeling things I have felt.

This, too, is my life — not L’Engle’s, not Gal Gadot’s — and I’m the only one who makes it what it is, and it makes me.

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Episode 18 has the January writing prompt!

Episode 18 is live! Show notes are here. In it we read through our December writing prompt responses, and then we introduce our January prompt, which is to browse some CV or resume pages, find one person, and write about their job interview experience. It’s adapted from the helpful book Writer With a Day Job, by Áine Greaney.

We’d love to hear your responses.  Send your response and let us know if you want us to share it on the air!

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Is it too late to follow my writing dreams?

Did you read this advice column by Roxane Gay in the New York Times? The one that says this:

The older I get, the more I have to say and the better I am able to express myself. There is no age limit to finding artistic success. Sometimes it happens at 22 and sometimes it happens at 72 and sometimes it doesn’t happen at all. No, you are not too old to have a writing career, no matter your age.

I did read it, and then forgot it completely (I haven’t been online much the past couple weeks). And then one of our listeners sent it to me again, and reminded me that I wanted to write about it.

In the conversations Meghan and I have – on the podcast but especially off – we often talk about feeling like we have started late, or that particular nostalgia-for-what-never-was feeling (there must be a German word for that) of reading about a writer who is 22 and accomplished and amazing. That feeling that makes you feel like it’s not worth trying.

Which, of course, logically: what?? First of all, we aren’t old. Second, if it took me 70 years to tell a really good story, that would also be okay. But a lot of celebrity writing culture glorifies the young writers. Every year, it seems, an entire generation of new writers is born, at age 20-whatever, and they are breathlessly hailed as the “new [insert famous writer here, like Nabokov or Roth or whoever].”

(By the way, that is also completely okay. It’s awesome if you figure out what you want to say and how to say it when you’re 20-whatever, and I love being in awe of so many talented people.)

One part I liked of the column was this: “The writing world was passing me by.” Because that’s what it does feel like, right? That there is a writing world, and they don’t even know you want to get in, and if they did, they’d completely laugh in your face.

That’s why I especially liked her advice, which was to measure your success in a way that doesn’t depend on other people, on the people in the writing world (we could call it a writing bubble):

Sometimes, success is getting a handful of words you don’t totally hate on the page. Sometimes success is working a full-time job to support your family and raising your kids and finding a way, over several years, to write and finish a novel.

Let’s all just chant her last line to ourselves and each other every day this year:

You are not a late bloomer. You are already blooming.

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Open Thread: December writing prompt

Hey hey! In case you haven’t figured it out, we really love seeing your writing. It’s so cool how people interpret the same prompt so differently, and we’ve seen some very clever responses. SO, we totally respect wanting to keep your responses private, and get it if sharing them with just us is putting yourself out there enough, BUT just in case some of the rest of y’all want to get in on this writing prompt every month, here’s the open thread for posting your responses and critiques.

As a reminder of how this works: We do what most people do with writing prompts – i.e. use them for 10-15 minutes to get warmed up. That means we don’t edit them (we write by hand, so when we type it up there may be some basic changes, but we resist the urge to do real work on it).

Otherwise, the rules are simple — note something positive, and make sure suggestions for improvement are constructive. In other words, don’t be mean.

While it’s ok to offer critique without sharing your response in turn, we’d like you to really think hard before doing that, and let it shape your comments.

Ok, enough chatter. The prompt:

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