Isabel Sterling on Changing Agents, Writer Burnout, and Avoiding Shame

November 28, 2022 Mindy McGinnis

Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see as a guest.

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Mindy: We are here with Isabel Sterling who is a queer YA author. Her debut was called These Witches Don't Burn. Isabel is also a life coach for writers and the host of the Author Burnout Coach podcast, where she talks weekly about different facets of writer burnout and what we can do about it. So, one of the things that I'm really interested in talking to you about is burnout for sure. Let's start on a positive note, and let's talk a little bit just about writing in general - what you write, why you write what you write, your experience in the industry and how you got into the industry, and the whole publishing journey for you.

Isabel: So, I started writing back in 2012 so I'm at my 10-year of writing anniversary, which is really fun. Writing actually is how I figured out that I was queer. One thing I always love to share is I'm on agent number three, and so many people think you get your agent and then you're done and everything's fine and dandy. And that's very rare these days that somebody stays with an agent forever. Yeah, so I wrote These Witches Don't Burn. I got my first deal in 2017. It took a year on submission. So I signed my first agent. We went out on sub, and then that agent left the industry. So I had to get a new agent, and we actually were able to resub that same book, which is something that can be kind of rare. So it sold almost exactly a year from when it first went out. And then I've been lucky enough to stay with the same publisher since. So I had a sequel come out, This Coven Won't Break. I love writing about magical girls and mystery, and there's always murder. There has to be murder. And then I moved on from witches. I had a vampire book come out in '21, The Coldest Touch. Right now, I'm working on a ghost murder mystery kind of YA.

Mindy: I want to talk a little bit about the number four, because you said it was your fourth book that got you an agent. So I want to talk to you about the first three - where they are and if you have any plans for them, or if they are just part of the journey and you already passed those milestones.

Isabel: The very first book I wrote... At the time, it was exactly what I needed. I loved writing, but I was like, being a writer felt like something that wasn't for me. Like I'm from a small town. I didn't know any writers. I never got to go to bookish things. Like I just, it wasn't part of my worldview. So I wrote my very first book during NaNoWriMo in 2012. I learned how to finish a book, and I learned how to revise a book through that process. I learned about querying, and I queried it. And I learned how to get rejections because I got all of those. I tried one time a couple years after I'd written it to go back and like, maybe there's something here. I can pull some threads and try to redo it. And it just wasn't working. And I think part of it is as you grow as a writer, not only do you grow in your storytelling skills, but you also grow in the types of stories that you want to tell. It's just going to stay in the drawer, and sort of be the thing that taught me that I could be a writer.

And I could sort of feel myself growing each time I wrote... Like my first dual point of view, and that one was also the first book I wrote with a lesbian main character. And this is before I knew I was queer. And I was like, "I don't know why I love this so much, but I love writing it." And I was like, "huh." It took two more books before I figured it out. But yeah, I was like, why do I love writing this? It's so weird. But I'm super straight. I don't know. And I think I've always had a really good mindset around like revision and critiques. So I actually went to music school. I was a composer, and so every week we would get critiqued on our work that we had written. Four years, every week I was getting feedback. So when I became a writer, I was like, oh, this is an old hat, like whatever. It's supposed to get critiqued. That's just the way it works. I realized I was trying to write a book that I thought would get an agent. Screw publishing. I'm just going to focus on what would be the most fun. And that's the book that ended up being These Witches Don't Burn.

Mindy: I also am from a small town. Knew no one. Had no idea how to go about the process of getting published. Had to learn everything. Had to learn the industry. All those things. Like you, you know, I had no one to go to. I had no one to say, "hey, you know, your best friend's uncle's wife is a writer. You can talk to her." No. My best friend uncle's wife is a farmer, and so is everybody else. So I did have four books that I wrote prior to my first one to get published. Interestingly enough, the very first book that I ever finished was The Female of The Species.

Isabel: Oh, wow.

Mindy: Don't be too impressed because that had nothing to do with the version that is published today. It was a completely different thing. Themes and ideas were the same, but absolutely none of the words have anything in common with the one that got published.

Isabel: I think that's common even just like from first draft to final draft. Maybe the first chapter stays the same, but that's about it.

Mindy: I love what you're saying about going back to one of your old books and being like, it doesn't fit in trad. There's a lot of reasons why this doesn't work, and I'm going to do it myself. So I just did this too. I think it would have been the second book, it might have been the third one, that I wrote. It was the very first time I tried to write YA. I had a wonderful time doing it. That book is so important to me, and it's a huge part of my writer identity in a lot of ways. I always say it's like if John Hughes directed an episode of the X-Files. There's no way that I could ever publish this book under my real name. I do write under a pen name. I've talked about this on the podcast before. I don't share my pen name because it would screw my branding so hard. But I just published that book, that urban fantasy, two days ago. I have made at this point in time, $4.08. And you're right. It's so lovely when you're not focusing on "what will my editor buy? What will my agent like? What fits the market?" And I'm glad it's there, and I'm working on the sequel now. And hey, we'll just keep going.

Isabel: It's funny too, you bring up pen names. Isabel Sterling is not my real name. My real name is Sam Adams. It's a beer. I was never going to be able to have Sam Adams dot com. So for me, when I did a pen name for indie, it's still me.

Mindy: One other thing I wanted to touch on about that you mentioned earlier was that you've been through three agents. So...

Isabel: Yes.

Mindy: I'm a little bit of an anomaly in that I am still with my very first agent. It's extremely rare. Adriann Ranta Zurhellen, she is currently with Folio Literary, is my agent. But she's been my agent for 12 years now, almost 13 years. I had been querying for 10 years - five books, 10 years - trying to get published, and I was working in a high school library. I made about $14,000 a year. I was barely making it. I watched the documentary all about the fact we may run out of water someday. I wrote Not a Drop to Drink, and dystopians were right on the curve of going out. But they were still in, and I queried. And for the first time, I actually had a lot of interest, and I ended up with two phone calls with two agents. One of them was Adriann. She only had one sale at the time. And then the other agent that I had a conversation with was a big name agent. She had sold 30 books that month. But she moved in the romance world, and that was where she was situated. And she really wanted my book to have a happy ending. And then I talked to Adriann, and Adriann was like, "I love that you kill the love interest." And then we had a long conversation about Dostoevsky. And I was just like, okay, so Adriann is the one that fits me as a writer and fits me for a career. She only has one sale, and she's with a really tiny agency. Then I have this mover and shaker that really wants it, but wants to change my tone and how I write. And I went with Adriann. It was the right choice anyway, even if she had remained in a small agency. So I don't know. I think you just, you have to go with the fit.

Isabel: Part of it for me, having switched so many times, is one, my needs have changed. Like I have changed as a writer in a lot of ways. So my first agent, she switched to like book scouting or something. So she left, and so I queried this new project signing with Kathleen Rushall, who is at Andrea Brown. We were together for... It was a number of years. So she was like perfect for me as a debut. She's exactly who I needed. And now I needed somebody a little bit different for where I wanted to go next. I think there are so many people who like, "Oh, I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings." And we still have those four books together. She's still the agent for those. We still talk every few months when we're talking about royalties or foreign stuff. We still have a great relationship. It's just that period of our time together is just over.

Mindy: And it's a business, and you got to remember that. I mean, I love what I do. And like I said earlier, I published something underneath a pen name just because I love it and I want to see it out there. And it's probably not going to make any money so that one is more of a sentimental decision. But when it comes to the business side of writing underneath my real name and the stuff that actually drives a career and how I make a living - yeah, those are business decisions. There are a lot of books that I would like to write that are just sitting because it's not their time right now according to the market and things that are trending. It's like that one is not going to go right now. This is going to sit. This is going to wait. You got to balance your art and your, your, I guess, checkbook.

Isabel: Yeah, I think part of it too is like when you are in it for a career, you understand that it's a long game and that publishing has cycles. So when I was first writing, everybody was like, "Don't you dare write vampires. Vampires won't sell." Now they're huge again. And you're like, eventually what I wanted to do would come back.

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Mindy: So I want to talk about burnout. I had an intimate experience with burnout this summer. I had never experienced it before, and I ended up in a situation where I had to write the vast majority of a book, probably I'm going to say 65-70,000 words in about three weeks. And I did it to myself, and it was my own fault. And that's where I ended up, and I had to do it. And I did it, and I've done that before, and I don't recommend it for anyone. It is not healthy, spiritually, physically, emotionally, creatively, psychically, sexually, like this is not a good idea, right? But I did it. So a couple of things came from that. Number one. I know that I can, and that is bad. Because I'll probably do it again. Number two. I was kind of non-functioning after that. That book was due September 15th. It's currently November 17th, and I just now started giving a shit about anything in the writing world again. And by that, I mean actually trying as far as being present on social media, being a literary citizen, reading even. I was just... I would love for you to talk a little bit about burnout because that was a new experience for me, and I really hated it.

Isabel: The way we talk about how we're showing up to our writing is hugely impactful of whether or not we burn out. There's a difference between being exhausted and being burnt out. You talked a little bit about how it sorta - it was your own fault that you had to write it this fast. I'm sure that does not feel good.

Mindy: I do write quickly, and I do tend to perform well under stress and I do well under stress. And I know these things about myself. When I say I did this to myself, I totally did. I'm sure that there are different avenues that I could have taken. In order to stay alive, I have five or six irons in the fire at all times. Obviously, I write underneath my real name. I have a pen name that is pretty involved, and I co-write with other authors. I have projects that are passion projects that may never go anywhere, but that I co-author with a buddy of mine. And then I also have an editorial business that I run myself. I have the blog and the podcast, which take up quite a bit of time. I also am hired out with a non-fiction book coaching editorial business underneath a different name yet that I work with. I had taken on too much editorial work both underneath my own shingle and then being hired out as a contractor with another company and I was being paid well. The editorial business pays well, and I needed money, right? Writing can pay well, but it also pays sporadically. And it's something that you can kindof put back. I don't think of it as my nine to five. My nine to five is keeping my little irons hot and burning, and then my big iron is something I just have to return to every now and turn it over.

And so, I left that big iron alone for too long while I was monitoring all my little ones and trying to keep them right where they needed to be. Just putting my efforts, not necessarily in the wrong places - just not distributing them evenly. The other thing is I had 25,000 words on this book already done. I don't know how long the book's going to be. I don't know what's going to happen in the book. And when I started actually getting into it, it was a lot longer than I thought it was going to be. It's really dark. I mean, I write dark, and this one is dark. It's a tough one. I don't want to return to this today. I don't want to go back into this world because my main character is depressed, and I'm in her head, right? And it's not a good place to be. I didn't really want to go back in there that often. And then I ended up having to completely like full immersion dive in for three weeks, and it was not healthy. I have edits due on that book January 9th, and I haven't even fully read my edit letter yet. I don't know if I want to go back in there right now.

Isabel: This is why I have a whole podcast on author burnout because it's so many facets. But I see a lot of what's kind of in play here, with what happened this summer, is when you try to write a book or do really do anything when you're fueling yourself with shame and pressure and I shouldn't have done this to myself, that is purely a recipe for burnout. Shame is always going to sap your energy. So like writing a book takes a lot of energy. And if you're shaming yourself to the page, it's like 10 X is hard. Say, you decide like, "hey, book's due in three weeks, and I really do want to get it done" and it's not a "I fucked up. I should have done this sooner. I didn't manage my irons properly." This is where we are, and I'm committed to getting it done because it's important to me to hit this deadline. You will still be exhausted when you're done, but you're not going to have like the two months like I can't function after. And so I'm in a similar place with my '24 release. So I am going to be getting edits on... I think December 8th or something, and then I have four weeks to edit because we have to get to copy edits by middle of March to keep that season. And so I could be like, "I fucked up. This is my own fault." That narrative is very normal in publishing. Am I willing to do it from a place of I want to and not I have to or else I am a loser and my book is going to get pushed.

Mindy: I wish that I was able to make healthier decisions for myself. I am a person that does not have a spouse. I don't have a significant other. So if I get pushed back a year, I won't make it. I will add to that that I could have asked for an extension. I chose not to. This is where Gaelic pride comes in. This is where I'm Irish, and I'm like, "I got a deadline and I'm going to hit it and no one's going to stop me. And I've never missed a deadline before." And it's a point of pride. So I very well could have said, "Hey, guys, I need another month." And they would have given it to me.

Isabel: So I'm in that boat now where my spouse developed epilepsy as a 30 year old. I am the only income earner, and I don't have a day job. We have to pay out of pocket for insurance. So I totally get like, oh, fuck, what do we do? At the same time, you can say, I'm not missing this fucking deadline because I need to eat. But you can do that without shame. You can do that without being like, I've screwed up. I messed up. And it's not easy. I'm not saying like you... Those thoughts are still going to come. Your brain is still going to go like, here's all the reasons why I screwed up because that's how we're socialized. We're socialized. We always look for all of the reasons that we are wrong. There's so much perfectionism, in books in particular, because we have so much revision that we do, yet we still put so much pressure on early drafts to be perfect. As if that's possible. And for me, like when I did bump the book, we were early in having our foster kid. And also, the biggest thing was I needed to scrap the entire idea and figure it out because it wasn't working. And then my editor left, and then it took like six months to get a new editor. So nobody was waiting for this book. I didn't have a deadline. But now I'm like, I'm going to be doing these revisions over the course of like three-ish months, and it's going to be hard because we don't have daycare. We have a two and a half year old, but I'm willing to do it because I'm like, "we need to pay for this roof because all our shit's leaking." But I'm not going to be like, "well, I should have done this and I should have done that." Like, no, this is where we are. I can have so much love and compassion, which took a long time to get to, for the version of me who was trying to figure out how to be a mom with like two hours notice as a foster parent and you're just like, figure it out. Of course, I struggled. And now it's still going to be hard, but I'm willing to do it. And I know that I'm choosing it because I want to pay for the roof, not because if I don't, I'm an asshole.

Mindy: Definitely what I turned in for my first draft was nowhere near to perfect. Ben was like, "I know you had concerns about this one. I know that you were worried about it." I had also just weaned entirely off of my own depression medication at the time. And so like everything was a little fuzzy in my head, and he was like, "You did way better than you think you did." And so, I think that that is something that we should carry within ourselves too, is that we are our own worst critics all the time. You have to give yourself a little bit more grace. And I'm really good at telling other people you're doing fine. You're doing great. It's going to be okay. You can't be the best at everything. In fact, you don't even have to be the best at any one thing. Just show up, and do the best you can at everything you try. And hopefully you'll be able to, at the end of the day, always go to bed tired.

Isabel: One of the things I teach clients is setting a minimum enoughness measure. The minimum amount of something you can do and be like, I at least showed up for that. So like on a day when you have a bunch of shit lined up, you don't even plan to write 2K. Like maybe you plan to write 500. And if you write more, hell yes. But at least you're not setting yourself up for something that's going to be so hard. Because if your brain thinks it's hard, your brain doesn't want to do it. Your brain is designed to not do hard things.

Mindy: So why don't you tell listeners specifically what the name of your podcast is so that people can find you and find your podcast. And also just talking about being a life coach for writers, because obviously... Obviously, you know what you're talking about. What are the kinds of services you offer for that?

Isabel: So I run the Author Burnout Coach podcast. It drops every Tuesday. I just released recently - how do you answer all those awkward questions at family dinners about like, how's your book going and can I have a free copy? Also by the time this comes out, I think I'll also have my episode out about setting boundaries with the toxic people who ask those kinds of questions. And how do you keep proper boundaries so that you're not just feeling miserable. But yeah, so I work with both new writers, and with new writers I do a lot of some of the basic storytelling skills because I am also a book coach. And then we do a lot of just how do you get to the page, overcoming the perfectionism, like that kind of stuff. And then with the published authors, it's all really like, you don't need my help in your book. You know what the hell you're doing. It's the perfectionism. It's the burnout. It's the, you know, I'm afraid to say no to shit because I think that I'm going to lose opportunities, and then I'll never get them again. And then you take on too much stuff, and then you're burnt out. How do you make decisions about your career that you feel really good about? You're not just trying to constantly please everybody else to your own detriment. So sort of more of that kind of like being both a storyteller and an entrepreneur as a writer. But all that stuff's at my website, Isabel Sterling dot com, so they can see all of the different services I offer. And then yeah, the podcasts, they're typically pretty short. They're like 15 to 30 minutes typically. And each one is a very targeted, like here's a cause of burnout, and here's how you can work on dealing with it in your own life.

Mindy: Last thing, why don't you let listeners know where they can find your books and you online as an author.

Isabel: Yeah. So I am online. I actually recently deleted my Twitter because I haven't been on it really since 2020 and I'm just like, I'm done. So find me on Instagram, isa underscore sterling. And then my books are wherever books are sold. They're available in English and Spanish and Russian and Polish. If you're going to pick up any of my books, I would recommend starting with The Coldest Touch if you love vampires. It is about a girl named Elise who whenever she touches someone, she sees how they're going to die. And she meets a vampire who is there to recruit her to join a mysterious organization. But then a teacher is on the block to get murdered, and they have to try to stop it.

Mindy: Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.

Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson on Co-Authoring, Writing Mysteries, and Plotting vs. Pantsing

November 14, 2022 Mindy McGinnis

Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com . And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see as a guest.

Mindy: We're here with Liz Lawson and Kathleen Glasgow, and we're going to talk about their new series, The Agathas, as well as co-authoring and writing mysteries. So let's start with each of you just introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about what you write outside of this series that you have worked on together.

Kathleen: I write mainly contemporary, realistic teen novels when I'm not writing mysteries with Liz Lawson, and I tend to focus on somewhat sad books. And it was a joy to write The Agathas with Liz because we were determined to make it fun. What about you Liz?

Liz: Other than The Agathas, I have published one other book called The Lucky Ones. It is also like a sad emotional contemporary, and it came out April 7, 2020, which was the worst time ever. Kathleen and I have written two books and I'm working on a solo second book.

Mindy: I also write sad books. We're in good company. Yes, I also had a release right before the pandemic. That was a horrible experience. I do wanna talk a little bit about co-authoring. You each have written on your own, of course, and have careers outside of co-authoring. I also write underneath a pen name, and I do co-author with friends. And whenever people talk to me about that process, they're just endlessly fascinated by how it works, if it works, and also why you would decide to try it in the first place. So if you guys could talk to me a little bit about how you decided to come to a place where you wanted to work with a co-author and how you found each other.

Kathleen: Liz and I have the same editor, and we met online because I really loved T he Lucky Ones. We were messaging for a while, and then we met in person. And we have the sort of same dark anxiety written sense of humor. So we got along really well. And when Liz's first book, The Lucky Ones, came out, as she said, during the pandemic, plans were scuttled. Things shut down. All the great things that she had hoped for for her book didn't happen, and we were messaging back and forth. I think that we were both feeling very isolated because of lockdown. What if they wrote something just for us that no one knew about to keep ourselves active and busy during lockdown? And to just write something for the pure joy of writing it, and Liz is a big Agatha Christie fan. And I like true crime. And we just started noodling back and forth over messages and text. What would we like to write that would be surprising and engaging for us to write? That would be different from our sad solo books? And we sorta settled on writing a fun mystery. It wasn't even like a question, like how we would co-write it. I think that we just naturally sort of slid into making a dual POV. Do you think that's right, Liz?

Liz: Yeah, we had a very, very, very brief conversation of like, "Should we do this from one point of view or two?" Writing from one POV sounded really daunting. So it just naturally ended up, very quickly, we agreed to write from two.

Kathleen: And then it would be easier to trade chapters that way. And also we agreed that we would write quickly. I feel like if you're not gonna do dual POV and you're both writing the main text, things can move slower, and I think that we agreed that we wanted to write very quickly to keep the pace fast and to challenge ourselves. It was sort of obvious from the get go that Liz would be Alice Ogilvie and I would be Iris Adams. It's not that we set down ground rules, 'cause we've never done this before, but we had an element of flexibility built in. Liz said, 'cause she's really great at plotting, "You know, we're gonna need a spreadsheet in the beginning 'cause this is a mystery and we have to hit certain beats and we have to drop red herrings," and that really helped us keep writing at a quick pace. If you're gonna co-write with someone, I think that you have to have similar personalities and that you do need to set your boundaries. And you have to agree in the beginning about how you're gonna write the book... Like how quickly. Are you gonna have a spreadsheet? And also you have to be flexible so that Liz could come into Iris' chapters and change Alice's dialogue, not the context of it, but how Alice would say it because she knows Alice better than me.

Liz: And I think this is something you learn, you start to learn, with having an editor, and probably even before that, just having like other people look at your writing. You have to learn how to sort of let go of what you've done, particularly when you're co-writing. You have to allow the other person into your work. I think some writers are very precious with their writing, and I can be that way too, but when you're co-writing, it's really important to be able to say, Okay, this other person is also involved in this. They have opinions, and they have a point of view. And it is important that both of our voices are heard.

Kathleen: 'Cause you're sharing a story. It's not just like the story I'm writing. Liz and I came up with it together. So you're sharing a story. You have to get along well enough that you're like, "You're right, I need to change that whole chapter or that whole paragraph. You're absolutely correct." What matters is the story - not my ego or Liz's ego.

Mindy: I think it's a real place of vulnerability too, because like Liz said, you have to be open to... Not just as a solo writer - criticism. Because you always have to be open to that 'cause you're going to get it no matter what. Like you were saying, whether you have an editor, beta readers, or whatever it is, criticism is always gonna be there. But when it comes to someone literally going in and changing some of your words, or smoothing some of your words, or changing some dialogue that you wrote of the character that isn't necessarily your prime POV, there's a real level of trust there, I think.

Kathleen: If you don't trust the person that you're writing with implicitly, and you really need to think about that before you start writing with them, you should not write with them at all. It's a collaboration. You need to have that implicit trust in another person that they can share this story with you and the writing of the story.

Mindy: I think that's very true. My experience with being a co-author also comes in with knowing what my strengths and weaknesses are. I have a hard time writing warm, positive, fuzzy emotions. I struggle writing it. I can write sadness. I can write anger. I could write frustration. I can write any of those darker spectrum emotions. Writing romantic feelings or thoughts that - even just friendship. I struggle writing those warmer, kinder, lighter, lovelier moments. And so in the books that I co-write under a pen name with my friends, we have another writer in the trio of us that we really rely on to write those things. So do you find yourself dividing the strengths and weaknesses as well?

Kathleen: We were committed to making this a fun book - a friendship wrapped in a mystery. Every time I would start drifting into much darker territory for Iris, even though her story line is a little bit dark, Liz would say, "Kathleen, this isn't your solo book. You got to pull way back. Come back from the darkness." And I was like, "Oh right, you're right. I can't go there because this isn't that type of book." I can't write romance to save my life. I cannot write a good romantic relationship, and so I was really relieved with this book that we were not going to have a central romance and that we were just gonna concentrate on these girls and their friendship.

Liz: I enjoy the romance, so I think I keep trying to veer us in that direction and our editor's kind of like, "That's not what the book is." And I'm like, "Well, but it could be... " The biggest thing is, because we do have these solo books, Kathleen and I have worked on other books during The Agathas process. And so, because Kathleen writes such sad stuff, like she said, I could always tell when she was working on her solo book. Because it would be like all of a sudden, Iris is being real sad and I'm like, "Umm, maybe we need to lighten her up just a smidge."

Kathleen: You write your first book in a bubble 'cause no one knows what you're doing. It's just you and the book. Can you write a book? Things change because there are contracts and deadlines and marketing, and it's hard to get out of that space then when you're writing every book after your first book and to get as close to your writing as you were when you were in a bubble. One thing that was really great about writing The Agathas with Liz was that no one knew. We didn't tell our agents or our editor. We just wrote it by ourselves, and it was back to being quite joyful and a really lovely writing experience where it was just me, Liz, Alice, and Iris.

Mindy: Yeah, there is something really, really nice about that. I don't share my pen name for a few different reasons. It would skew my brand terribly, 'cause my pen name is very silly and funny, and we have a wonderful time writing very, very, very silly things. And there is a freedom to that. I don't have to stick to any one thing. I don't have to worry about a brand in terms of my name - my real name on my other books. Now, because the pen name has started to take off a little bit I do have to worry about that brand now, but that's a lovely problem to have. So I wanna go back to something that Kathleen touched on a little bit. You're saying that you're both also writing your solo projects at the same time that you're co-authoring The Agathas together. Liz was saying that she could see when you had been working on your own project, that voice kind of slipping then into The Agathas and affecting those characters a little bit. So how do you as individuals keep those things separated in your minds?

Kathleen: Well, for me, it was realizing really quickly that I cannot write two books at once. Especially two books that were so different. I put a hold on that other book and concentrated on The Agathas, and that was a good learning lesson for me. I know that some people can work on several different things at once, but I learned that I cannot. So that was a good thing to learn.

Liz: For me, honestly, I've had a journey with my second book. It's changed and it's morphed many, many times. And I do think there was a brief moment back at the end of last year... We were writing the first draft of The Agathas and I was writing a draft of that book, and it just did not work very well. The voices were too similar. There was just a lot of crossover. I kept trying to put The Agathas into that book almost, and so I would say it's really hard to write two books at the same time. I know people do it. Clearly people write Adult and YA - like, different categories, and publish two books a year. But that is a skill, and I'm not sure I have it.

Kathleen: I don't know how people do it who have kids, either. 'Cause Liz and I both have kids. I can't write when my kids are in the house with me. It doesn't work, and I wanna pay attention to them. It's hard. Some writers are so prolific. It's almost disheartening when you see it on social media and you're like, "How did you write four books in two years? What is going on?"

Mindy: Well, it is difficult. People ask me all the time, "How you do everything that you do?" And I always say that it's at the expense of my mental health and personal relationships. And that's a joke, but it's also not. Like, that's not a joke. Making a living as a writer is almost impossible.

Kathleen: It is almost impossible. I've always still had a day job, and I remember when my kids were smaller. They were sharing the bed with me 'cause they were little and sitting up between them with my laptop on my knees, writing in the dark to meet a deadline, because sometimes you just do what you have to do. If you're writing and you have that deep desire to write, sometimes it happens when you least expect it. You'll do anything to make it happen.

Mindy: I wanna talk specifically about writing mystery. Co-authoring a mystery. So specifically with The Agathas, did you plot and plan ahead of time, or did you guys kind of write and discover what was going to happen?

Liz: We definitely did our best to plot it out because I think we both knew that writing a mystery is a whole different ball game than writing the emotional contemporary books. It's hard in a different way, right? With the books that we had written before, at least for me, I know it was so hard because of the subject matter. Putting yourself in that emotional space while you're writing can get really challenging after a while. For a mystery, it's almost the opposite. The emotion is still there and the characters still hopefully drive the plot, because I think those are the more interesting books, personally. There are certain things that you have to happen in your plot. You have to hit certain beats, and so plotting was very important to us. We had a whole spreadsheet on Google Docs where we tried to kind of plot out each chapter. I would say for the first book, we stuck to our outline pretty closely. Don't you think, Kathleen?

Kathleen: Yeah, we did, and it was very helpful for me 'cause I'm mostly a pantser. It was very helpful to have everything laid out in front of me so that we would know the direction we were going in and what had to happen in the next chapter. We left a little room for... Well, maybe that's not gonna work. Or little things that could happen in individual chapters, and then I would get to text Liz something like, "Oh, by the way, Iris is jumping out this window. Or this has to happen to Alice in the next chapter, because I did this." And Liz would be like, "Oh, that's fine." We had to plot it out beforehand because it is a mystery, and we had to know what things were gonna happen when and how we were going to insert them into the plot. And then we had to make sure that we had enough twists and where they would appear. It was good to plot it out, and I'm interested to see at the end of writing the solo book that I'm writing, having actually plotted a book now rather than being a pantser has affected my process of writing by myself.

Liz: Did you plot your solo book?

Kathleen: No, 'cause I had written a draft of it before we started The Agathas. As I'm revising, I did make a spreadsheet of things that I needed to...

Liz: Wow! Look at you.

Kathleen: I know. I feel terrible 'cause you know, I come from a poetry background. So I'm used to just going off and so this is a whole different world for me.

Mindy: Yeah, I also am a complete and total pantser. That can be difficult when you're co-authoring and one of my other co-authors claims to not be a pantser, but she will occasionally just very, very randomly have a character jump out a window or... She has even killed characters that we were not anticipating them dying. And then you open up the shared document and it's like, "Okay, so you killed the character we were going to use for something else."

Kathleen: Those things would happen to Liz and I too. I'm the worst at it 'cause I would insert something and say, "You know, you don't like this one character, but make them integral to the last twist of the books."

Mindy: I think there's a lot of strength to be found in plotting and then leaving room for discoverability.

Liz: Yes, I very much agree.

Kathleen: I think that's where the flexibility in co-authoring comes in again. You just really have to let what's gonna happen, happen if you think it's gonna make the book better.

Mindy: Once you had finished writing your draft, how did you then just approach your editor and say, "Hey, the two of us wrote a book together."

Liz: Well, I'll let Kathleen tell this 'cause she loves this story.

Kathleen: This is where I found out exactly how devious Liz is and how like her character, Alice, she is. I didn't tell my agent. We didn't tell our editor. I was just happy as a little bumble bee writing this book with Liz. And we got to a certain point, and I was like, "Well, this was really fun, but I gotta go back to my solo book now. Because I gotta revise this." And Liz was like, "I already told my agent. I showed it to her and she loves it, and she thinks that we should show it to our editor. She thinks it's gonna be really great." And I was like, "What?" I had to write a very sad email to my agent, 'cause I didn't tell my agent, and I didn't know how my agent would react that I had written something quite different than I usually write. The subject line was, I'm sorry. I didn't know what to say.

Liz: I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I wrote a book.

Kathleen: And my agent just called me and she's like, "Are you leaving me? What's going on? I don't even wanna read this." And I was like, "No, I just... You should read the whole thing 'cause I just wanna let you know I was writing this book with Liz and you don't know anything about it. And also it's like a mystery and it's kind of fun and it's completely different. And I know we hadn't talked about it, and so... I'm super sorry. And please don't be mad at me." Our editor also was like, "You did what? What now? The both of you? Hey wait." She read it, and she was like, "I love this, and I think it's a great move for the both of you." I think that Liz and I are really lucky in that respect that our agents and our editor were on board with us making the writing change. Because sometimes agents and editors are like, "No, you have to stick with what we represent you for. We're not into that other totally different thing that you're writing." We were really lucky that everyone on our team was on board and really liked it.

Liz: I assumed everyone would 'cause I liked it. So.

Kathleen: It can be a little bit difficult once you've written a few books that are one type of book to suddenly make a switch. And sometimes your agents are like, "I can't represent that," and sometimes your editor's like, "Oh God, no. I don't want that at all." We were quite lucky.

Mindy: Yeah, well, that's why I write under a pen name because I can be very silly and have a fun time and be a little bit ridiculous, and that is not what I write underneath my real name. And so when people meet me in real life and they've read my books, and they expect me to be a certain way. And then they meet me and I'm actually pretty funny and light-hearted, and I have a good time. And I'm quite silly. And they're just like, "Oh, this was not what I was expecting." So...

Kathleen: Are they... Mindy, are they like, "Wait, why are you smiling? You wrote The Female of the Species. What? This isn't you."

Mindy: They expect me to show up wearing all black and carrying around like a bag of detached testicles or something.

Kathleen: Right?

Mindy: I think the biggest reality check - it actually works the opposite direction - it's people that have known me my whole life. And I still live where I grew up, and it's a really small town. And I've got a super happy, normal, very Midwestern farming family that I'm from. Everybody knows everybody, and then I got published and people read my books and they're like, "Oh my god. Are you okay?" I very often, I can't tell you how many emails I have received where the subject line is literally like, "Are you okay?"

Kathleen: That's my favorite thing to do a response video of on TikTok. Anything I post inevitably three people are like, "Hey, are you okay?"

Mindy: Last thing. Why don't each of you share where listeners can find you online and where they can find The Agathas and then your individual books - the titles of your solo books as well, and also the sequel to The Agathas, which is coming up.

Liz: You can find The Agathas pretty much anywhere books are sold - bookshop, Barnes & Noble. There's a Barnes & Noble special edition, which was really exciting, and it has a very beautiful pink cover. The next Agathas is coming out May 31st of 2023. You can find me online on Twitter at LzLwsn. I'm also on Instagram at the same handle. I'm on TikTok on the same handle, except I'm currently locked out of my account. So I'm trying to deal with that.

Kathleen: The Agathas sequel, which is called The Night in Question, does come out in May 2023. So we're very excited about that. And you can get my books, Girl in Pieces, How to Make Friends With the Dark, and You'd Be Home Now, anywhere. If you wanna support my local indie store, it's called M ostly Books Arizona. So order there, and if you'd like it signed, put a note in the comment box. And I'm on social media at kathglasgow on Twitter, Miss Kathleen Glasgow on Instagram, and then Kathleen Glasgow on TikTok. You can always go to my website, Kathleen Glasgow books dot com and send me an email if you wanna ask me if I'm okay.

Lorie Langdon On The Long Haul & Hard Grind of A Writing Career

August 22, 2022 Mindy McGinnis

Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com . And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see as a guest.

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Mindy: We're here with L orie Langdon, who is the author of The Happily Never After Disney Villains series. I've known you for a long time. You're a fellow Ohio author. We've been hitting the same locations and the same audience and the same festivals since 2013. You were just saying right before we started recording that you actually have not had a US release since 2018, even though you have been working back to back to back to back. So, why don't you explain that statement.

Lorie: It's actually an interesting story, I think, for writers out there who may be going through a lull in their career because that's exactly what happened to me. 2018, Olivia Twist came out to all this fanfare. It was in Target stores in the US. I got a film production deal, and then it just didn't sell. It didn't sell the way that my publisher had anticipated that it would or hoped that it would. So they said, 'Okay, we can't publish any more books with you. Sorry." So then I kind of took a break. Reassessed. You know, what do I wanna do? During that time, I taught writing workshops in Ireland and China, and did a lot of soul searching. Came back from China and decided I needed to write fantasy. I need to step into the genre that I actually love to read. I finished a book called The Princess Trials, which is kind of a romantic fantasy young adult. I was really proud of it. Went out on sub and got rejection after rejection after rejection. Part of it, I think, was the timing. Romantic fantasy wasn't as big as it is now, and also I think because my sales from my previous book were killing me. This is something that a lot of people outside of the industry don't realize. That if you have a previous book that doesn't sell, that it can actually tank your career. So probably about a year and a half I was just kind of spinning my wheels. Out of the blue, my agent emails me and she was like, "Hey, would you be interested in writing a Disney villain series?" I about screamed when I saw it, and I said, "Yes, I would." Come to find out they had been searching for an author to write this Disney villain origin love story series. It's about the younger version of the Disney villains. The editor at Disney Publishing Worldwide read Olivia Twist and thought I would be perfect for it. So we talked and they offered me the series within a week. It was a super fast turnaround, under the caveat that these books are to release internationally. They'll be releasing in countries all over the world, but not in the US. And that is because there are two other Disney villain series that are being released on a regular schedule in the US, and they didn't wanna compete with those other series.

Mindy: Different threads in my life have coalesced lately. And you're talking about Olivia Twist, and I remember when Olivia Twist came out. It was a big deal, and there was this huge canvas across the Internet. Everywhere I went, I saw it, and it was everywhere. And your name was everywhere, and you had gotten a film deal. And it was just like, "Oh my god, Lorie hit it. Like Lorie's doing great." And then it's like, "No, actually, that was almost the end of me." Things can look amazing and just simply not be the case. I was actually having a conversation with Beth Revis, I hope she doesn't mind me name-dropping her, but Beth Revis wrote Across the Universe, which came out, I think in 2012. Huge deal, right? She writes for Star Wars now. She has a Star Wars book. I was having a conversation with Beth just about different things in the publishing industry, and we were talking about non-traditional ways to go out and make money. Anything that you can in order to keep some money coming in. Like you were saying, you went overseas and taught. Beth and I were talking about these things and she was like, she said, "you know, I hope you don't mind me asking," but she's like, "You know, you're talking about how you are always trying to quilt pieces together in order to make something happen, and I'm not naïve. I know the industry, but looking online, I would imagine that you're fucking killing it." And I'm like, "No."

Lorie: Yeah. Not at all.

Mindy: I am not killing it. So if you could talk a little bit about how there is a little bit of an Instagram filter on that.

Lorie: Yeah, I think it is the perception, and we have been taught to make sure that the perception is that our books are doing well in order to make readers want to jump on board. I don't think I've ever seen an author come out on social media and say, "Guys, my books just aren't selling. You know, they're tanking. You probably don't wanna read them." I think that we just really try everything we can, and we do love our own books, right? So it's genuine. The passion comes from our hearts. It's not that we're being fake. We do want everyone to read our stories, so we put that out there and we hope that it comes back to us. But something else I forgot, talking about non-traditional routes. In between when I finished The Princess Trials and I got the Disney contract, I took a write-for-hire job. And it was a woman who had a story that she had told her children all the years they were growing up, and she wanted to turn it into a young adult book. And so we worked together and created a plot, and I wrote that book. They paid me to write it, of course. It hasn't been published as of yet, but that kind of also opened the door to Disney because when they found out that I had already worked with someone in a write-for-hire scenario, they were 100 percent on board. I do encourage people to look for those non-traditional paths, and a lot of times they can end up taking us exactly where we wanna go.

Mindy: Absolutely. They can bolster some skills that you never expected to need, and then you have them, and it is another tool in your work belt. So I write underneath a pen name... enjoy doing it, but it is a grind. You and I were talking earlier before we started recording about the grind which I definitely wanna come back to. But I write underneath a pen name. I do have an editorial service that I run underneath my own name. But I also hire out underneath a different name where I work as a freelancer for an agency. I also do collaborative writing through them as well. I also work extensively in writing non-fiction book proposals. It is something that I found completely boring and had no skills for and was just like this is a part of publishing that I do not care about. And this agency head-hunted me, and they contacted me, they were like, "Hey, we think that you would be good at this, and we'll teach you how. You get the clients, and the money gets split." And I was like, "sure, I'll give it a try." And I like it. Once I've got a template - it's like I understand how a non-fiction book proposal works now. I can put one together with someone else's material fairly easily, and it's just really kind of cool to have this...

Lorie: Yeah. That's an amazing skill to have.

Mindy: Yeah. I can't advertise it because I do it underneath a different name. If you aren't NYT and you aren't actually killing it, and even if you are NYT, I know plenty of people that are NYT that also have day jobs. So there is no one indicator for, yes, this person is doing just fine.

Lorie: That is so true.

Mindy: You were talking about that constant drive. The mix of loving what you're doing and loving the work. Like you were saying, you loved your princess book that you wrote that ultimately didn't land anywhere. You end up with these books that you love that, quite frankly, no one else does. So I have a book that I wrote, I mean, shoot, I probably wrote this book in 2005, and I am getting ready to publish it underneath my pen name. I wanna publish it. I care. Nobody else cares, and that's a hard place to be creatively when you have something that you love, and literally no one else does.

Lorie: Yeah, and I'm still hoping that The Princess Trials finds a home now that Disney is becoming more of my brand. And you can tell by the title that even though this is a fantasy, The Princess Trials also... is kind of fairy tale. I think I could fit in with the Disney brand that I'm building. I'm still hoping, and I hope that - you should self-publish that book because it's something that I've thought about many times.

Mindy: Yeah. I am, and that's what I do underneath my pen name. It's all self-pubbed, and that particular racket is its own monster. Everything is different. Nothing that you learn from trad-pub, as far as marketing and finding your audience carries over, and it's always changing. It's so dynamic, and you gotta pay to play. I know people don't wanna hear that, but you got to spend money to make money. You gotta market. You have to pay for ads. Everything's out of your pocket, and it's painful. And there's no guarantees, but that's true of everything. You were talking about the trad world and Olivia Twist getting so much attention and then just not actually performing. I've had that happen too. Not to the extent as far as coverage and marketing. But I tell a lot of people, fellow writers, when we talk, my publisher does a great job of making it seem like I do really well and everyone loves me. Because I always tell fellow writers, if I showed you my royalty statements, you would fall over dead. I don't sell that well.

Lorie: Yeah. That's interesting. It does seem like you're doing amazing, Mindy.

Mindy: I just keep writing.

Lorie: Sometimes it's timing. Like Olivia Twist. If it had released right around the time of Bridgerton, I believe it would have been a huge hit because it is a romantic historical retelling. It's very difficult to compete when... especially when it's not a new release, it's not in bookstores anymore. It's hard to bring it back out of the dark.

Mindy: So hard. I do sell pretty consistently and well within the library and educational markets. General reading public, honestly, I don't think really is very aware of me. Within education and library, I do well. I've been around long enough that I am also just so thankful that I get to do this for a living. I'm continuously grateful for everything that my publisher does for me and that they quite honestly keep me around. But I think that's where the perception of success comes in my world is simply because I produce consistently. It may not ever break out. I've never had a movie deal. I've never had a TV show. I've had rights sold. But as you know, that doesn't really count. But I can write consistently. And I sell pretty consistently.

Lorie: It's the author career. Typically, I know a lot of people who published a book or maybe two, and then they're out. But then if you want to make this your life-long career, I do believe it's consistency, and very few of us have that breakout moment. It's what we all hope for.

Mindy: Yes, it is. It's the pie in the sky.

Lorie: And everyone is like, "Hey, Lorie, you've made it. You're writing for Disney." It is amazing because I've always been a Disney girl. I used to sit in my bedroom and, I'm outing my age right now, but I would listen to those records that you have the book with and dream up additional stories for these characters. That's come full circle for me, and I have been given tremendous creative freedom at Disney. They've said, "Okay, we wanna write a first love story for these villains when they're young." Then they just said, "Go." And so I was able to do that for all of these books, and then they do have to go through levels of approval. So my editor and then Disney Animation Studios, as well as Live Action Studios on some of them, have had to give input. But typically it's very small changes that they ask me to make. There is an exception. So I just finished writing Captain Hook's story. When I submitted that outline Live Action Studios came back and said, "Why isn't Peter Pan in this book?" And, "We wanna see James Hook's first meeting with Peter Pan, and we wanna know why they don't like each other so much." And I about fell over. I'm like, "What? You want me to write this?"

Mindy: That becomes cannon now, correct?

Lorie: I believe so. Now, these books are not releasing in the US. I do have hopes that they will come here some day, but they are releasing all over the place. I just got word yesterday that Vanessa, which is Ursula/Vanessa, the first book in the series, is releasing in India, which that hadn't previously been part of the plan. They're coming out in Japan, in Australia, in New Zealand, France, the UK, Turkey. My US readers are like, "Why?" They're crying. They're like, "Why can't I get these?"

Mindy: Is there a way for them to get them?

Lorie: They can order Vanessa from Book Depository. The English version is on there, and it's around $23, but that includes the shipping from Australia.

Mindy: We were talking before we started recording about the grind, and about how you can hit a point where you are just working. The magic is a little bit gone. There may not be love in your heart. Very few of us are running towards our laptops first thing in the morning - bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and like I am gonna write today. There have been times when I felt like that, but it is rare. Especially lately. You and I are both talking about how we supplement our traditional income through different routes - teaching and non-traditional publishing routes. You hit a point where it is just a grind, and it is emotionally and mentally exhausting.

Lorie: I wrote four books for Disney back to back. I had six months to write each book. They're fantasy. They're not just little romance books. They all have fantasy magic. Huge plots. And especially with Captain Hook, he was one of my dream characters to write. And I wrote an origin story about him and Peter Pan, as I talked about, but it's mainly about him. And I feel like I poured everything into that book, my whole heart and soul into that book, and then I didn't even take a day off before I started the next one - which is the evil queen. I don't feel as connected. And I wanna feel connected. I wanna feel excited because this is a privilege to be able to do this, and I really am excited to be able to do it. But at the same time, I can't fight that burnout. I'm gonna get 600 words down. I'm gonna get 800 words down, or I'm gonna get a 1,000. If I get a 1,000, that's a good day. It's just not flowing out of me because I've kind of hit that creative wall. When you're on back-to-back deadlines, you just don't have that luxury. It's like, I feel as if, as a creative person, I really would prefer to have time to step back between each book to fill that creative well with nature and great movies and family and friends and experiences. And then when you come back at it, you come back at that next book, you're fresh. This is what I do, but I haven't really had that. And at the same time, when I think, "Do I want that?" Because I went through that long stretch of time where I did not have a book contract. And it was scary and upsetting, and I questioned whether or not I was going to continue in my author career. So having this contract is security. So you kinda have to balance those two things.

Mindy: Emotionally, it is a hell of a weight. I feel the same way. I grew up on a farm. I grew up bailing hay and getting stepped on by animals - throwing manure around. So the fact that I get to write books for a living is ridiculous, right? The fact that I sit down in front of a laptop and move my fingers and I get paid for that is just stupid to me. Sometimes if my publisher sends me on tour, they're like, "We've got you here, here, here and here. You've got two events on this day. Don't have a break in between. You don't have a day off. Is that okay?" And I'm always like, "Yes." You're asking me to put myself in front of people and talk about myself, or my book. This is not hard. Yes, I can do this, guys. And people are always like, “Man, you're such a workhorse.” I am, but I too have hit a point where it's like, man... why aren't words coming? It's not writer's block. I know what needs to happen next. It's not that I don't know what happens next. It's that I literally don't wanna sit down and work because it's hard. I'm tired. I don't have that love anymore. Different projects hit different points emotionally. Right now, I'm on a super tight deadline and it is my own fault. I have to, I absolutely must write today, and I have to write probably 3,000 words every day for the next four weeks, if I am gonna hit this deadline. There aren't options. There isn't... "Oh, you deserve a break. Go get ice cream." No. You're writing. Shut up, right? I did it to myself so this is not poor me. You just get so worn out and you feel it emotionally, mentally, and physically.

Lorie: And I think though, if you want to be an author, you have to put on your big girl panties and you have to do it. And it's like... I think so many people that I've known over the years are just maybe not able to.

Mindy: Yeah.

Lorie: For whatever reason. Whether it's outside influences, their life is too stressful, or they have another job or whatever it may be, internally, they're just not driven. But if you want to be an author that's published consistently, you have to be able to sit down and write. You have to put your butt in the chair and you have to do it, and it's like... sometimes you don't feel it. Sometimes it's not fun. But that's okay. This is what we do.

Mindy: If 43-year-old Mindy was talking to 33-year-old Mindy, and was like, "Hey, guess what. You write for a living now, and you're able to do this consistently. And you've got contracts coming, and you're self-publishing. And you've got these great little side gigs, and everything is going really well. But you're tired." I would be like, "Who fucking cares?"

Lorie: Yeah, right.

Mindy: Oh, poor you. Poor 43-year-old Mindy. Shut up, right?

Lorie: Get it together. Yeah, I mean, writing for Disney, it's like, if I could tell my younger self that I was going to do that, it would have changed my whole perspective on myself and my future. I wish we could go back and whisper that. It would take away so many insecurities and the fact that I grew up thinking I was not good at anything. When you get in a place, you don't wanna ever take it for granted, but I think it's hard not to sometimes. Sometimes when we're in one of these slumps, it's like, the work really is not good. But recently I sent the book I'm writing, The Evil Queen, to some friends and I was like, "Okay, what is wrong with this book? You guys have to help me." And they're like, "It's great. It's wonderful. It's you." You're just... It's me mentally, just not connecting with it, even though the words are coming out and flowing. Emotionally, creatively, I'm just not feeling it.

Mindy: I feel that way with pretty much every book I write. While I'm writing it, I am convinced it is shit. I remember writing The Female of the Species and being like, "This one's getting phoned in. You're not doing it. This is not working. This one's dead in the water. You flubbed it. You're just gonna have to get this one out and then move on to the next thing." And it's my best-selling book. The Female of the Species is the book that people know me for. So yeah, you don't know it. When you're in it, you have no clue if what you're doing is good or not, and generally, I just think it's terrible.

Lorie: When I was writing Hook, I was so like in it, and I knew it was good. And that feeling is a high. Those books and characters that flow out of us and that we connect to... It's such a rarity these days. That then I go on to something else and I'm like, "Okay, I'm not connecting. This sucks." But it's not the case.

Mindy: Well, and the disparity between how you feel about it at the time, or while you're writing it, and how it performs can be a little bit of a gut punch. When I was writing my fantasy series, Given to the Sea and Given to the Earth, I was like, "Oh dude, you're killing it. These are good. You're a fantasy writer, right?" Literally, no one has read those books - like my mom and my editor and my mom didn't even really like them that much.

Lorie: That's how I feel about Gilt Hollow, which is a murder mystery that I wrote. A young adult suspenseful kind of romantic mystery that everyone in my family and friends, who have read all of my books except for the Disney books, they're like, "This is your best book. This book is amazing. I love this book." And no one read it. No one read it. Didn't go.

Mindy: It isn't a reflection of the quality of the books. You were talking earlier, it's just timing. And I am not a fantasy author, I just happened to have two fantasies in me. So I wrote them and the fantasy market was like, "Who are you?" And my readership was like, "What is this?"

Lorie: Yeah, that's true. It's like me with the contemporary mystery. They're like, "What is this?" Because I just had this mystery in me, and I'm really a fantasy writer.

Mindy: So we were talking about just writing in general, and that burnout feeling. And how sometimes we do feel super connected to something that we're writing, and sometimes we're just not. Sometimes we are just plugging and we are writing words and we are not feeling it. When it comes to what I always call the shiny new idea - the bright, shiny, new idea - those always feel so good when they come, and you're like, "Yes, this is magic." Though once you start trying to write it and you touch it, it does get tarnished a little bit because it's never going to be what you have in your head. You're just getting as close as you can with your words. Can you talk a little bit about where you get your ideas from? 'Cause that's such a common question.

Lorie: That is the most common thing that people ask me who are not authors, obviously, and it's very difficult to answer because inspiration comes from everywhere. For example, I was originally signed to write three books for the Villain series, which was Vanessa, Gaston, and Yzma from Emperor's New Grove, which was hilarious, by the way. It was so fun to write. And as I was finishing up Yzma, I was watching a baking show, and this woman made a cake that was a pirate scavenger hunt cake. There was a little like icing ball that you drop into a tunnel and it opens up a cave that opens up into a waterfall and then the treasure comes out. And for whatever reason, I saw that and I was like, "I'm gonna write Captain Hook's story." I called my editor. I said, "Hey, I know our contract is ending, but I have this amazing idea." And she's like, "Yep, you're gonna do that." And it was like cake. It can be anything. I think when we get that inspiration though, it's so exciting. And it's not, for me these days, not super common. How about you?

Mindy: It is random. I think part of it is just the jaded end of being in the business for so long. I'll have an idea - "cool idea. I like that." But it's not in your market. It's not what you write. The audience is different. Dead on arrival. You don't write that. I had an idea for a middle grade. It would have been in verse and it would have been highly cloaked so that only the person that needed this book would understand. I had an idea about writing a book about a girl that was being abused by her older brother, because it happens, and people don't wanna talk about it. And I had it. I spent like three days walking around cleaning the house, and I'd be like, "Here's a phrase. Here's a phrase. Here's an idea." And I was just living in this little girl's head so completely, and I never wrote a damn word down. I never did anything with it because I've never written anything in verse. There's been chapters in some of my books that are in verse, but I've never written in verse. And my editor has said to me before, "I'm not sure that I would even know how to edit something in verse." Number two, I don't write for middle grade. That would be a big leap. Number three, content. And especially where we are at right now with the general public and schools and the education market, which, as I said before, which is where I sell well, like school and libraries, being heavily watched. And all these eyes on it and watch dogs, and it's like, "Yeah, sure, you're gonna write a book about a fifth grader being sexually assaulted. That's gonna get published." So it was like there were three things. There was market. There was a format, and there was public perception at the time. And I was like, "This is what I wanna write. I am on fire. This is in my head, and it won't get out and I wanna write this." And I never even bothered to write a single thing down because...

Lorie: That's so hard.

Mindy: I know. I knew it was pointless. I knew it was a waste of my time.

Lorie: It does feel like though something like that could come back and the timing could be right, even though middle grades, something that your readership would latch on to.

Mindy: I agree, and I had all of these thoughts. And it was like I had this thing that I was just kind of living for three or four days, and it really had a hold of me, you know how that goes.

Lorie: And it could be important. It could be a really important story to tell.

Mindy: But at the same time, it's like I have actual deadlines. I've got things I'm writing under this pen name. I got online classes that I wanna put together. I've got editorial work waiting on me. You can make money on this, this, and this. But right now, your time is better spent doing the things that you know can work.

Lorie: A similar thing is when there's something that you did pour your heart and soul into. It was a great idea. You wrote it, and then something similar is out in the market, like the same time. That actually is happening with Hook because there is a book that just came out with Disney, and it's part of the Villain series where the movie is told from the villain's perspective in a book. I knew that Hook had a version of that coming out this year. I have not read it, but the blurb says that it is James Hook's origin story, which is completely out of format for that series. And it's exactly what I wrote and exactly what I was told to write. So I wonder, what is the future of this? And it was a little heartbreaking. You know, those things are like our babies, right? The books are really part of me, I feel like.

Mindy: There are only so many ideas. There are only so many ideas, and there are only so many plot lines. Publishers Marketplace will be like so and so sold this, and it's a gender flipped Count of Monte Cristo. And you're just like, "Well, okay. I guess I'm not writing that."

Lorie: Yeah. Well, I have kind of a similar situation with Doon, which is my first series that I co-write with Carey Corp. And it's a re-imagining of Brigadoon, and it's set in Scotland. Fantasy. It's not time travel, but the girls do travel to a mystical land. The portal only opens once every hundred years. But right when those books were coming out, Outlander started releasing their television series. Well, I had read Outlander back in the early 90s, and it was an inspiration for me. But it was so old, like nobody cared about Outlander anymore. I named my prince Jamie, as an homage to Jamie Fraser, because he's one of my favorite characters of all time. But my character was worlds different than Jamie Fraser. But I still to this day get people saying, "This is just a knock-off of Outlander." And if the TV series hadn't come out, this never would have been an issue. And it's so dissimilar, but that's kind of what happens.

Mindy: I know. When The Female of the Species came out, you know how many people were like, "Oh my God, have you seen Hard Candy?" No, I haven't seen Hard Candy, and they're like, "Well, because that's what your book is." I'll never watch it because I'm tired of hearing about it. So last thing, why don't you let listeners know where they can find you online and where they can get some of your books. I know that your recent releases aren't necessarily available in the US, but you definitely have other things available.

Lorie: Yeah, you can find me on Amazon, and all of my books, that are not the Disney Series, are available on Amazon still. And actually there's a promotion right now that the first book in the Doon series is free. So the e-book is free right now. Our publisher decided to bring it back out because it's something we feel is a classic. So that is a free option for you to read one of my books. And then Vanessa, as I said, can be found on Book Depository and probably Gaston soon as well. You can find on Instagram at Lori Langdon underscore author, and that's basically where I hang out.

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