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Write the Damn Book Already
Writing and publishing a phenomenal book doesn’t have to be ridiculously complicated or mind-numbingly overwhelming. From myths and misconceptions to practical tips and sound strategies, Elizabeth Lyons (author, book writing coach, book editor, and founder of Finn-Phyllis Press), helps writers feel more in control of and comfortable with the business of book publishing.
Her interviews with fellow authors discussing their writing processes and publishing journeys aim to help you untangle YOUR process so you can finally get your story into the world.
Write the Damn Book Already
Ep 131: The Paper Palace and Beyond with Miranda Cowley Heller
Click Here to ask your book writing and publishing questions!
Miranda Cowley Heller's father was a book editor; her grandfather edited Jack Kerouac and was friends with Hemingway. That legacy, while inspiring, left her frozen when it came to pursuing her own writing.
Instead, she built a thriving career in publishing and TV, eventually heading up drama series at HBO. Then, in her 50s, she wrote the novel she’d been carrying around for years, The Paper Palace, which became a New York Times #1 bestseller and a Reese’s Book Club pick.
Now, she's returned to her first creative love—poetry—with a stunning new collection: The Deep Water Knows. “Poetry is almost like putting snapshots of your soul into the world,” she tells me.
In this episode, Miranda gets real about the myth of getting wiser with age, the vulnerability of releasing creative work into the world, and why your voice is never too late to matter.
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Okay, everybody, welcome back. I am so delighted today to be joined by the magnificent Miranda Cowley Heller. I have been waiting to do this interview, miranda, on like pins and needles. You just said that you are sweltering, but you're in the UK and I am sweltering and I'm in Phoenix, so I want to know which one of us has it worse.
Speaker 2:I think possibly you, but I don't know which one of us has it worse.
Speaker 1:I think possibly you, but I don't know Phoenix very well, to be honest, tell me what the temperature is and you're going to need to convert it to Fahrenheit because I don't know. Good news.
Speaker 2:I have no idea. Bad news somebody is knocking at my front door, so I'm going to ignore them.
Speaker 1:You can go get it. I can pause it. Pause for one second. Yeah, tell them to go away. Yeah, go tell them to go away.
Speaker 2:Tell everyone to go away, I'll be right back, so sorry, nope. That was not.
Speaker 1:It never is, miranda, it never is All right. I might leave that in because you know, no, like the whole basis for this podcast is what really goes on. It's usually what really goes on in the book writing world, but I feel like it's also becoming what really goes on just in life.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, that was a pair of Adidas being delivered and then the guy knocking at the door and then walking away with them. So that's what goes on in my life, by the way.
Speaker 1:Very, very exciting. I didn't need those anyway because I'm not going outside because it's sweltering. Do you have humidity over there? Yeah, it's England, so it rains all the time.
Speaker 2:Okay, fair, I've not been to England. It's very humid. I honestly don't know the temperature because I don't understand the difference between Fahrenheit and Celsius, and so they put it out there and I just go. It's really hot. He's knocking again. It's unbelievable. The guy does not get it. I can't.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to get my sneakers. Do you want to go get? Can you just scream? Leave it at the door. Like will he? I?
Speaker 2:asked him to leave it at the door.
Speaker 1:Well, feel free to go back and deal with that because, okay, this is so awful, but this is what goes on in Miranda's life, guys. Like it's not all roses. I really was going to pause this, but I think this is real. This is the real deal she's got to get her Adidas.
Speaker 1:I always thought it was Adidas and now I feel like it's Adidas. I'm going to ask her about that. We're going to get to the books, don't worry. Here she comes, here she comes with. Do you have the shoes? Oh my god. Just to prove this is so fun. Now do you say adidas or adidas? I say adidas and here they say adidas. So for so long people are, if you're listening and you're like isn, are we going to talk about books? We are. For so long. I said Adidas as a joke.
Speaker 2:That's British. You're very British.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, I also say garage.
Speaker 2:Garage is also. You're obviously British, Obviously. What are you doing in?
Speaker 1:Phoenix, I don't believe me right now. I don't freaking, know. I ask myself that on the daily, what am?
Speaker 2:I doing here? What is the temperature?
Speaker 1:there. Well, today it's supposed to be 115. Oh gosh, right. Okay, Not like that here, but here is super humid. So that's what I was going to say and if I had to, pick one, I'd honestly pick this Desert.
Speaker 2:Well, and also, they don't really have air conditioning in England. Oh, no. Oh, no, no, I don't have AC right now.
Speaker 1:So no On my daily gratitude. Like my mental gratitude list right now is air conditioning. My air conditioning went out in my car last week and I was like why does the universe like? I know the universe doesn't hate me, but in this moment I feel like it might be angry with me, like, really, it might be, it might be All right.
Speaker 1:So here, okay, your first book. Can we talk about the Paper Palace for a moment? Of course we're going to talk about the Paper Palace. We're going to talk about this delightful gem. This gem, by the way, so for people who are listening and not watching, miranda's just released, or is about to release, has this come out yet In the UK last month and not watching Miranda's just released or is about to release.
Speaker 2:Has this come out yet In the UK last month, but tomorrow is my pup date.
Speaker 1:It is. This is so delightfully timed. Okay, excellent timing. It's your first book of poetry and I want to talk to you about poetry after I ask you about something, about the Paper Palace, because this is a. What's the word I'm looking for? I, you know we don't have words here. It's. It's a misleadingly small. The word I want is not misleadingly, but I can't think of it right now. It's. It looks small, it's like it's a small little book, but it is. It is rich in all the things like okay, we're going to talk about that in a minute.
Speaker 2:So, before I lose my train of thought, the only thing I would just add quickly is that one reviewer critic called it a novel written in verse and I thought, well, novella, but in terms of, just like the size of the story, in a way that you can combine poetry and fiction in a certain way.
Speaker 1:Also to play off of that critic, although I heard critic and I got nervous. I was ready to go fight somebody, but then we have this one. Which is the difference between them. I want I'm going to ask you about this but the what would we call this? The pentameter? I don't know poetic terms at all, but this is written almost like an essay, not like a poem, which I loved and want to ask you about.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's go back to Paper Palace. So you are one of these unicorns who the exception, not the norm, but the exception. We all want to be where your debut is. Just because Paper Palace was the debut, right, okay, the way you're looking at me right now, all of a sudden I thought, oh my God, is she like? No, no, no, no, no. Okay, the debut does so well, it's a New York Times bestseller, it's a Reese's book pick, it's all the things. So I have a couple of questions. Number one how long did it take for you to get like? Was that the first book that you wrote? Pitched, all the things? Yes, okay, so you really are a unicorn, okay, how long did it take? How long was that process of writing the book and all that?
Speaker 2:Well, writing the book was a kind of on-again, off-again process, because you know, oh, am I going to try to write a novel? Okay, I'll try, and then maybe I'll fail, but nobody has to know. And you know, I remember when I got to like but I didn't even know, like we talked about word count in those days, I was like you know, oh, I just wrote page 100. Maybe it will turn into a novel, like it was. You know, I was just, and then I would go for sort of swathes of time and not write at all because I was busy doing other things for work or whatever, and writing poetry. Actually, because poetry precedes the novel. It just happens to be published after the novel. Okay, and in fact some of it ended up in the novel almost verbatim, almost verbatim, but in any event. So, yeah, so the process of getting from point A to a first draft was probably like four, four, four years or something, maybe five. I mean, you know, because I really wasn't doing it all the time.
Speaker 1:You know what's funny about that is, you said only four or five years, as oh I think I said almost, but I.
Speaker 2:Or maybe I said oh, I think I said almost, but I.
Speaker 1:Or maybe I said I don't actually know, okay, okay, well, I mean, let's clarify.
Speaker 2:Cause?
Speaker 2:I certainly don't want to put words in anybody's mouth, but I just fast, I'm not slow, I'm a very fast writer, but I am very, let's say, like very ADD. So I went up. So I either I'm doing it or I'm going to a flea market and looking for old pottery or something, somehow or other I'm you know they have that. I remember there's a term like you know, ass in chair writers, and that's what you know every morning or da, da, da, da. I am quite literally the opposite, thank you. So there's that, and we can talk about all that later if you want to.
Speaker 2:So that happened. And then I was in a wonderful writing group and I had a mentor in that who ran that, and so then I'd gotten an agent who I love passionately. Was that? You know, we put it out there into the world on a Friday, and I thought she said, well, it could take a few. I said, well, I'm supposed to go to London next Friday and this and that. And she said, well, just stay nimble. She said I don't know what's going to happen, and she'd sent it submitted on Friday. On Monday she already had like 10 meetings for me set for Thursday and Friday, and then I flew to New York on the Wednesday. I'd never met her, you know, had meeting, all these amazing meetings, which was incredibly fun. And then got on a plane on the Friday to London because a friend of mine was very ill and that's why I had to go.
Speaker 2:And then on the on the auction was Tuesday and that was like it was the craziest thing and it was just beyond. I mean, that part was so exciting. I was actually in a pub with friends in London and I'd have kept. You know, go out to the outside, I don't have good, I'm sorry, my terrible. You know it was so exciting. And then so that happened and, um, I went with riverhead, obviously, and sarah, and then then british auction was the was the day I was flying back. The week later was flying back was the. So that week in london I met all the british people. So it was just incredibly, incredibly exciting.
Speaker 1:Of course, duh, so yeah, Okay, so I have two questions related to that. I feel like we're going down this Are you of the? When you were in younger, like elementary school, did you have to do the diagramming of the sentences where it was like the noun, and then you have the? I don't even remember, but the verb came down on a diagonal line and then the subject.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm clearly much older than you are. No, I think I'm too old for that. I'm much older.
Speaker 1:I think it's like when I people have a visceral reaction I mean I'd place money, I'll take that bet when people have a visceral reaction to that memory of the diagramming. So if anyone's ever done it, they know what I'm talking about. If they are confused, they've never had to do it, so I'm not going to use that as an example. But the point is I'm seeing myself going down multiple different paths here. The first one is you always, or had you always, wanted to be a writer? Had you been writing poetry or something for so long?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean as a very tiny child. First of all, I come from a family of writers and editors, and so the whole concept of literature was always very, very present. My father was a book editor and he's also a writer. My grandfather was a poet, a writer, a book editor. He was Kerouac's editor, he was, you know.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh Really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so he was a sort of a literary you know giant among the, among the editorial world or the world of people chronicling writers. He was best friends with Hemingway, blah, blah, blah. So that whole world was very much a background noise all the time. And I spent an enormous amount of time with my grandparents in Connecticut because my parents had gotten divorced very young and lots of new marriages and the original kids get happily left with the grandparents. So I was very, very influenced by that.
Speaker 2:Having said that, I recently found last Christmas, actually on Cape Cobb, I found apparently my first published piece of writing which was written out by my stepfather, who's a painter, but in one of his sketch pads I found in pencil he'd written a poem out with my name at the bottom and the date from when I was five years old. So that was like the first right. And then I also found this, not at that point but at a different point, I guess I would call it my first book I published, which was a book of nature poems that I wrote when I was eight for my grandfather's birthday present, on like little construction paper, these little pieces of paper. And I saw, you know, I put my like Miranda Cowley, you know with the author. I mean I really took myself far too seriously. One of my favorite things is that the five-year-old poem at five, then the title was the Path is Long and the main poem in my first book was called Life.
Speaker 1:Talk about foreshadowing.
Speaker 2:Well, by the way, the Path is long. So I wasn't completely wrong. If you're lucky, the path is long. But yeah, I was like this is hilarious. When I saw that I just couldn't believe it. So the answer is yes. I always thought literature, literary world, always, you know, big, huge reader, wanted to be a writer, you know, went off and ended up being in the editorial side of things instead, you know, and I was too scared actually, Really, I got really really overwhelmed with the critiquing of my family. I remember my father I was, you know, he was it was my first like big, actual school paper or whatever, and I'd done it on Dutch painters and I had so proud of it I was probably 11. And I brought it out to you know, wherever he and his wife were living, and the first sentence was the Dutch painters were the greatest painters who ever lived. And he literally just looked up and went. I'm sorry you can't say that, you have to say they were among the greatest painters who ever lived.
Speaker 1:So that was what I was dealing with. My mom is an editor. She was not a book editor, but she is. I mean, she's still with us, thank God she is a well, she's an editor, and what she edited, though, was like corporate, very corporate stuff. So, from the time that I could speak and I could say, me and Katie my sister, you know want to be the president of the United States, she'd say Katie and I Katie and I right, and so I'm so grateful for it now. At the time it did give me that sometimes I was almost afraid to speak, and did you have, I'm curious, if your family's immersion in the literary world did that? Did it feel almost like too much pressure, and or did it make you feel like, well, this isn't hard? I have all these people who have done it, and they have connections and fill in the blank.
Speaker 2:No, it was absolutely too much pressure. My grandfather said constantly you have to get your name in print, you have to get your name in print. When I was in high school, when I was in college, you know, and you have to try out for the paper and you have to do this and you have to do that. And as a result, I was like a deer in the headlights. I couldn't do anything because I was so afraid of failing. I mean, that's the reason I didn't publish a novel until I was in my fifties is because I was so in my own head All I could do was like get like absolute panic oh gosh, it won't be good enough, I'll get credit Right. So that is, I had to really learn to get out of my own way, and that clearly took a while.
Speaker 2:I had a lot of divergent paths along the way, but I did start out my quote unquote career after college as a well, first as an assistant and then as a book editor magazine editor, but book editor. So I went straight into that world. Then I fell madly in love a couple of years after I'd been made editor and moved to Italy for love. But I was living with this painter and my idea was 100% this will work, because I'm going to write the great American novel and it just was crap. I just couldn't do anything. I was just so self-conscious. The writing was not coming at all from an organic place and poetry is actually what got me back. Going back to poetry is what got me back to the organic place and freedom and like loving the blank page, because with a poem, you have nothing in your head when you start.
Speaker 1:All right, Before I get to the poetry, because I don't want to forget to ask you this question when the Paper Palace, just in this sort of whirlwind way, it sold quickly, it hit New York Times quickly then the Reese's book, Did that give you a sense of well, I don't want to even lead you. What was your reaction to that? What was it?
Speaker 2:I mean unbelievable thrill.
Speaker 2:I will say this and I think this comes from having been an editor for many, many years as well, and I did some ghostwriting and so on. I'm very lucky that I have the ability to write something and then go back to it as if I'm not me and read it as an editor, as if I'm somebody else, and see the weaknesses and see the flaws. And I think part of why it took me so long to write the book I write fast, but it was because I would go back and go, oh, that needs to be filled out or this needs to happen here and that hasn't happened and because I could see it right. I could hear it through somebody else's ears in a way, and I think that's just something. I'm very, very lucky to have been raised, you know, with that sort of editing gene. Yes, yes. So I will say this that when I put it out into the world, like even just to get an agent and I didn't use any connections is that I knew that it was good. What I didn't know was if anyone would get it, because it was to me so sort of odd and specific and it's a literary novel but it has a pulse and you know I just thought you know and obviously has an odd structure and I thought you know it is possible that this will not sell at all and I will be crestfallen, but I know that I'm putting something good into the world and that's like. That maybe sounds egotistical or something. I mean, it took me a very long time to get to that place, but I did know that. Having said that, the rest was just unbelievable, of course, and the most amazing was that the week that it was published, they had said at Riverhead like it seems like there's a possibility that you might make the New York Times bestseller list, like there's a possibility, we don't know, don't get your hopes up, and so on.
Speaker 2:And I was on Cape Cod actually, and I was on the phone with my shrink and call waiting, and I saw it was my editor, and so I answered the phone and, sarah, I was like all nervous and she said so, you just debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. And I became hysterical in tears. I'm talking to my shrink. I went back. Well, I have to go. I got to call and I called my father. He started weeping, he yelled down to my sisters. Then I call my mother and she goes I'm having a martini with Flossie, it's just on the pond. And I told her and she went well, why are you crying? That's good news. And I went, uh, and she went, anyway, my teeny's going to get. You know, I can't let it get warm, bye-bye, you know so, right, but it was cool.
Speaker 2:I like the fact. I mean, it was just such a good classic. You know the two. So that was one of the like, unbelievable moments. That was one of the like, unbelievable moments. The funniest thing is that the my first sale. Actually it was, uh, in Croatia, I believe, before it sold in America. I'm pretty sure it was Croatia. It might have been Serbia.
Speaker 1:Anyway, that was my first Like sale to a reader.
Speaker 2:No sale to a publisher. Yeah, okay, Like before the auction, they'd gotten an offer from. Anyway, they'd gotten an offer. I'm probably getting this embarrassingly wrong, but anyway, cut it out if I'm getting it wrong, but anyway, that was really hilarious to me. Now it's been life-changing, To be honest. It's been life-changing in many, many ways.
Speaker 1:Tell me what those are, if you would, because one of the things I really do love to do and it's not because I'm a negative person, I mean I have a sign. I show it with frequency. Right up there it says everything is possible. I firmly believe that I'm a huge optimist and I'm also a realist, and one of the things that I love to do is to just clarify people's expectations, because I think sometimes people think, oh my gosh, if I hit number one on the New York or if I get on the list or whatever my life is made Like, I am in the machine, every book I write from this point forward will be accepted. I'm financially secure forever. No one can touch me. And again, it's not to negate the beautiful moments and the beautiful things that happen as a result of that kind of and see the air quote, but success, because everybody has to define that for themselves. What for you was maybe it didn't. It did work and didn't work the way that you thought it might.
Speaker 2:That's a really interesting question because I think part of it does have to do with age. And, by the way, you can tell anybody you know it doesn't make you financially secure forever. Just sell a book, just FYI. Not that that's an issue here. But the expectations are so high, of course, for me, because I'd spent so much of my life on the other side. I'd spent my career even when I was in television, when I was in producing, when I was always being the editor, the critic, the person who's correcting, not the artist, as it were, and for me I had defined myself young as a writer and then I just wasn't.
Speaker 2:And I spent so many years thinking, you know, and sort of making little attempts at not writing a novel, and when I finally decided to do it, it was like a last gasp. I'd gone back to get a graduate degree in art history, all sorts of things that happened that are now, in retrospect, incredibly lucky With my husband's work. He was going to be transferred to New York and I had been accepted to a PhD thing in California and then the New York thing got shifted back and I'd blah, blah, blah and one of my best friends said you've been talking about this writing and that you feel like a failure. As long as I have known you, you've just said I had this one year and I don't know what to do now, because I said yes and no to two different things. She said why don't you make the decision? You're going to try to write it, you're going to give yourself this year and if you don't do it or don't start something, that's it. I went okay and that's kind of how I started right.
Speaker 2:But I think more specifically to your question. I always have been the person behind the person. I always have been the person behind the person and that is a great role in many ways. To have a dream and write to me out of the blue from all these different countries and talk about something that's become so meaningful to them. That makes me feel whole, like there's this whole community of people out there who share a feeling with me and it's a really wild feeling that for me is by far like the best part, but also obviously like then having the confidence, and it made me much more independent as a person because also I was going through my marriage, was breaking up, sort of during it and after, really, although I'm still married, as it happens, I mean technically, but anyway, you know.
Speaker 2:But so then, having to, like, go out into the world and reinvent myself, yeah, yeah, uh, you know the book had started while I was married for a long time, you know. But and the two things don't have anything to do with each other, much that people love to always think, you know, fiction is memoir, but the thing of being suddenly alone for the first time and empty nested at the same time for the first time, and having this book, was like it's like having a third child, but it was also like I could stand on my feet and go. I did it, and that is a if anybody, you know, that's the main thing I would say to put out there is that if you do the thing you always wanted to do, no matter how old you are, there's nothing like that.
Speaker 2:It's better than having like for me. For me, that experience had I written 20, like medianly, this was what I wanted was to write a literary novel. That experience had I written 20, like medianly, this was what I wanted was to write a literary novel that would speak to people. That's what I wanted, that's what I dreamt of. So it has really changed my life.
Speaker 1:Definitely I mean working on the Sopranos. For God's sake, how did it feel to suddenly and very quickly almost jarringly so perhaps be the not the target, but the? You know, all the reviews start coming and with good reviews come. You know, of course, people who don't like the book or who are just having a bad day and they're taking that out or they're envious of who knows why they do what they do. But how did you navigate that without having a lot of years to slowly acclimate to what it would be like to be not behind the person or, but not behind the camera, but in front of the camera?
Speaker 2:I mean I think that it said what I was saying earlier is almost the same answer, which is two things. One is I was, I knew that it was good, like I knew the writing was good. And when you, when you can feel confident in something, and also, having been an editor in so many different iterations, one of the things I learned really early on when I was working for I worked as a book doctor for all these different literary agents at a certain point in my life and whatever is there's really I hate to say it, but there's no such thing as the great unpublished novel unless you haven't actually submitted it anywhere. When you're a reader looking through that pile, anybody, you're desperate for something really good, and so you know all you want is to open something and go, oh yeah, oh my God, this could be something. That's you know what you want.
Speaker 2:And, of course, a lot of people don't have the courage actually to put their work out there, and that's really sad. What I'm, I guess what I'm trying to say is what I had was this sort of I can be very insecure, so it's not that, it's just that I didn't have a particular kind of doubt that I'd always had. It was like, if you know, like you've given, I was a musician, like I knew when I'd flubbed something and I knew when I'd done the in the orchestra, done my part. What did you play? Flute Me too.
Speaker 1:Really, I mean not in the orchestra, but go ahead.
Speaker 2:No well, I mean high school, please you know school, I was in the marching band way back when. So when you know, I think it's like that, that when you know it's not like an ego thing going, oh I'm so good. That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is that when you are doing anything like that, particularly with music, you go, oh, that tone, that was, I did it and you also know when you didn't. So on that level I was like, if people don't like it, they don't like it. Not everybody's going to like anything.
Speaker 2:That part I have been, I'm old enough and have been around enough. Do you like it when somebody hates your work? Of course not. It's hoppable, right, and the you know the personal attacks, of which there are a lot. That's really a different issue.
Speaker 2:And I and I really do take issue with people assuming something about you or saying, oh, you, you know, I had people on the craziest responses, people calling me names, calling it sickening, pornography, whatever, but like. But then not even just saying that, but then saying, like you know I was a whatever, like it was just horrible, yeah, that I really think is upsetting. So then I just stopped reading anything, did you? Yeah, I just stopped. I mean, you can't. After a certain point you're like you know what doesn't help to read any of that stuff and everybody always says don't you read when you're first time, any, I mean please. I was like, of course, of course I mean please. But then after a while I'm like there's nothing to be done here and people, people are going to, there's going to be haters and I think you feel about anything is people are going to like something or hate it, but when they attack you personally that hurts for most people the line.
Speaker 1:it's almost like it starts to infuse into your cells in a way that you kind of can't, you try to block it, but it's like there's no logical way to block that, because our initial reaction is to try to defend ourselves and say like wait, I'm not that. And then we worry why would they think I am that? And so it can start to, really, if we're not careful and we don't have good people around us therapists and friends and et cetera, right, god bless the therapist to bounce things off of and kind of assess well, why am I feeling this way? Could there be a piece of truth? Certainly not to the really horrible stuff, but yeah, that's. And I find that an interesting and almost not enjoyable in a masochistic way, but I anticipate or maybe I don't know, I anticipate it and so I'm kind of fascinated by it when it happens Certainly not when people are just piling on, it's just being shoveled, but I think it's when people don't anticipate that and they're like why is this happening?
Speaker 1:What is this going to do to my career? She's like just let it be for five minutes. There'll be another drama or another pile on.
Speaker 2:unfortunately, that will happen, but it is. I mean, it's sort of like those people who decide to go personal. In that sense it's almost like really mean girls in high school or grade school, you know, who are turning people, trying to turn people against you and like mark you as the loser, whatever. It's kind of that same feeling and, like you're saying, it can be very destructive even though you're a grown-up and you go this, whatever it's like somebody out there is trying to hurt me, or doesn't you know, and or you know and it gets in under your skin. Yeah Well, you just stop, like stop thinking about it and, like you said, people around you.
Speaker 1:And I think for people and I'm just thinking this right now, but for people who did experience that kind of mean girl, I'm outside the cool clique, the popular clique. If you did experience that in high school, elementary school, middle school, it starts bringing it all back. Because I've often said, as women specifically, I feel like we never really leave high school, those cliques and the jabbing. We try to stay away from it. As adults we can recognize it more and say that's not for me, but it's still out there. It's still out there. You want to go find a Mean Girls clique? It's easier to find than they're everywhere still they're everywhere.
Speaker 1:They're still everywhere, I know. Okay, so this gem, let us talk about what the deep water knows. My question really is this because there's just deceptively that's the word I was looking for, miranda. It's deceptively small, because you start reading it and all of a sudden I found myself being taken back to like it was reminding me of things that I didn't remember, that I remembered about my own life, whether it was marriage, growing up, being a parent, any of those sorts of things. Poetry is such and I'm going to use this word, it's not meant to be negative, but it's such a weird thing to me, because it's really like there really are no rules. It feels like. But are there rules? I won't edit poetry for the most, unless we're talking about well, there are certain instances, but the majority no because I just don't feel like I fully understand the rules around it. How?
Speaker 2:do you? I know, yeah, it's a very that's a good question. I think it's more like if you were going to like paint on somebody else's painting. You can't really do that, can you? Yes, so it's a much more. It comes from a much more unconscious or subconscious place. You write from a kind of dreaming brain, if that makes sense. You know it comes. You know you just open up and you don't know what you're going to write Rules.
Speaker 2:I don't you know, unless you're doing like iambic, pentameter or whatever you know there are rules if you're doing, if you're writing a sonnet, there are rules in terms of if you are writing form or meter, or you know poetry. In that sense, of course, I think you're saying something that I say a lot, which is that poetry, which used to be like the main and most accessible, you know, when it was Keats, shelley or whoever form of writing for everybody and sort of emotional writing it became something that people think is somehow either over their heads, out of their grasp you know it's an insular, it's also. Poets are almost like academics. There's a lot of them, not all obviously, but there's a very like of course you're not going to get it kind of a thing.
Speaker 1:Do you think it's an elitist kind of sometimes space? Yeah?
Speaker 2:I mean, it's not an elitist space or medium, but I think that there is. That is a piece of, you know, this little world where to get recognized in any way as a poet is incredibly difficult to be heard above anything, for starters. So poets kind of hate every other poet. So there's that, you know, there's enormous amounts of jealousy and envy, which is you know which I get, by the way, and uh, and also it's completely a personal. You know, all poetry is personal, right, there's no, that does not mean it's about you or that it's memoir. What I mean is you don't write a poem about a gentleman I don't even know what, a gentleman in Moscow, a spy in wherever, china. You're not going to write. That's not a poem that you're going to write, right, right, it's about transmuting feeling or experience or something into words, and the words in that sense are much more like musical notes. Actually, it's about, often, it's just about creating feeling, right, yes, but it's.
Speaker 2:I think if there's anything for me, it's that you write into, you write with nothing in your head and out of it emerges something, and then you can go and go. Oh, I want to dig into that, but it comes very much from one sort of dreaming brain, and so it's really a funny, amazingly freeing medium. In a way, it's also terrifying to put it out there. I mean, I would say it's like putting out poems is like, to a certain extent, it's like putting out sort of snapshots of your soul, and you know it's really much more difficult than putting out a novel, honestly. But I do feel very strongly that poetry is, and should be, one of the most important mediums for people. And I mean I'm going to just talk about women, but obviously men and women, right, but you read somebody that really speaks to you and it is a punch in the gut. It's so incredibly important. And there's amazing poets, like a Mary Oliver who is so popular that people start to go, oh, but she's so popular, she's an amazing poet, right, and I'll read something of hers and just go, god, like, and you just want to carry it with you. You know you want to carry that thing, that image, that like you know.
Speaker 2:So I feel like one of the things I really wanted was to not to write poetry that's accessible in any way that's not what you're thinking but to like write something that somebody else can feel, you know, because you can share it. You know it's very similar. I mean, I think fiction and poetry are, for me, incredibly similar. But that notion of you just write from this place and then if somebody else is like moved or touched by it, that's what you want. And, by the way, it's like comparing you know you're a musician. It's like saying you know Strindberg is better than Brahms. Well, just because you know you can feel Brahms, you know, doesn't mean Brahms is a commercial writer, right. It's not about level of quality, right.
Speaker 1:But there's no reason that something should feel like it's so dependent upon what moves you as the writer when it's coming out and what moves someone who would read it. One book of poetry that I did work on as an editor recently is Lindsay Shigemoto wrote a book called Revenge of Love Letters of Hope, and she doesn't even really like to and I don't mean to put words in her mouth, but she doesn't like to call it poetry. She calls them letters, and I'll have to ask her if that's because she feels uncomfortable calling herself a poet. I'm not. I'll have to ask her that. I don't know.
Speaker 1:But what's interesting is in working on it from an editing standpoint, I wasn't looking at it like, okay, this doesn't work from a narrative arc. It was more like there was a consistency issue or something felt. It felt like she could go deeper on something, like I could feel it's all on feel. I could feel her hovering on an area and then it was up to her to decide do I want to go deeper with that or not, which is sort of true with fiction or memoir as well, but it's just. It's such a more digestible. I can get more in a two-line piece of poetry than I might get from an entire hundred thousand word book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, by the way, that's sort of what I was saying earlier. That's why that's one of the most important things, ps, you know, particularly as our children are growing up with shorter and shorter attention spans, you know, by the way, and me and me.
Speaker 2:But that's for me it's. But you know, truly it's a form that I think is well, I think it's really important. Obviously, I don't know how I mean. I know how I feel if something is working or isn't, or it speaks to me or doesn't. You know and a lot of that is if you want to go back and reread it a lot you know, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:If it stands the test of time, right, yes, and so there's that. But then you come across something and you just it takes like a long, it's something, let's say, so simple. And then it's like there's a moment where it hits you, because that is one of the fun things about poetry is it's almost, it's mysterious, because they'll when you unpack it. That's why they kind of make you learn how to unpack it in school. Right, each metaphor, each piece. It's not purposeful, but it somehow comes out. Does that make sense? It's like people go what was the theme of your book? And you're like, well, I didn't go, like, oh, I'm going to write a book with a theme. You write a book and then the theme comes out, because if you try to write a theme, it's going to be a kind of shitty book, let's face it right. Right, because you're writing to a theme. You're writing it, oh my God, yeah, and you don't write to the metaphor.
Speaker 1:It comes out, and then you're like oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 2:You know that interests me. Where the hell did that come from, you know?
Speaker 1:Well, and also a poem might not reach you in one moment. And then fast forward a couple of years. You pick up the book again and you read a poem and all of a sudden you're like, oh God, because of stuff you've gone through. I've told this story before I'm looking at it, but it's too far for me to be able to see it. It's this book of essays. You're going to know exactly what this is. I'm trying to read it from here, but you could make this place beautiful. Maggie Smith, oh yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:I had heard someone very literary, we'll say say at one point I read this book, I didn't like it, it didn't speak to me. Put it back down, fast forward six months, I believe this individual's either husband or partner had left or she had left. Something had happened. She picked up the book again and fell madly in love with the words, because now they just hit differently. And so I think that's true of books period. But I think that's part of their magic is that something won't work, and then it will work, and then it won't work, and then it will work.
Speaker 1:And poetry is so easily digestible and yet so. So again, it's like deceptively easy, because people think, well, how hard can this be? You know, I've got this like like milk and salt is a. It's not a good example because that's a longer one, but in the very beginning you have, you know, the yew tree or 16, kind of these little shorter poems that were vertigo.
Speaker 1:I loved vertigo. Wow, like for me and I'm someone who's not to take it too literally, but people also take it how they take it, and I battle vertigo like a lot and just the way that you you weren't really writing about vertigo, but it felt vertigo, like I was, like this is how I would describe vertigo, right? So if someone if I didn't, if I met someone and they're like I've never had vertigo, like I was like this is how I would describe vertigo, right? So if someone if I didn't, if I met someone and they're like I've never had vertigo, I don't know, I'd say, read this and tell me if you understand this Right, and if this feels familiar, now you understand vertigo. You just didn't know how to put a name with a feeling yeah, right, so what are you?
Speaker 2:second to last question what are you excited about with the launch of this one? How did it does it feel? Sort of like a coming home, because you started with poetry and it kind of made its way into the Paper Palace. Of course it's like pieces you know out of God knows how much work I had to boil down. Boil down to what. And the best part of the sort of discovery for me was that when I printed out the ones I'd finally chosen to give to my editor, who would, then I knew that you know they'd want to get rid of some and keep some and went okay, what's the book? That's when I switched gears into like an editor head and went oh, wait, a second, those are da-da-da-da.
Speaker 2:And if I arrange them in a chronology of a woman's life, and not necessarily my life, it's always really important to say there's lots of mothers in there, there's lots of women and narrators, and some of it is completely, but it's all personal, it's just not literal, of course. Having said that that, when I saw that there was this arc, what really interested me was that it's about point of view, that when I was writing from the point of view of myself now, or an older me, the narrator is a more evolved character, evolved person. The relationship between the narrator and her mother is completely different by the end of the book, right, and it's so interesting that that, like you're writing so viscerally, so when you're writing something and you're writing from a point of view of a child, that point of view is so different and the feelings are different, and so that was really interesting to me. Like I feel like the narrator, you know, develops like a more of a sense of humor about things as well. You know, in places, and but also you know panic, and also also you know panic, and also you know all of the things that we all you know some somewhere in there.
Speaker 2:I think there's something that everyone has gone through. You know, not in every part of it, but you know whether it's heartbreak, betrayal, falling in love. You know fear for one's children, love for one's children, childhood stuff beautiful stuff too. You know. Fear for one's children, love for one's children, childhood stuff beautiful stuff too, you know. And aging, coming to terms with things. It's the story, it's. I just feel like I hope it's a sort of it's a more transcendent arc in it and maybe, and I think when you say it's deceptively small, it's because I think it has a. It has a big arc. Because I think it has a big arc.
Speaker 1:You just made me think of something. Do you think that with poetry, when you're doing it in this way, where it's like the way you just described? So you start at an earlier point in your life, maybe your childhood, and you're writing from that perspective and then by the end you're writing from your current self or maybe even your future self? It's when we read fiction we see the arc of the main character and her or his growth, but when we read poetry, in many ways not in every instance we see the growth of the author.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. I think. What's interesting, though, is that it's not. I mean that a poem that I will write right now about a child, about childhood, let's say that we'll have. We'll even written at this age, because so many of those were. Whatever is it still has, because you're still you're accessing something. You're accessing a truth, an emotional truth that you're trying to transmute into something, and that emotional truth is what evolves. Your relationships with people evolve. But if I'm writing about some woman in her twenties, say I don't know what, but like I will, that character is going to come out as a different character, right, exactly, yeah, like she's still up in there.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I've evolved at all, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:I have that whole idea of being wise.
Speaker 2:That was always one of my things with Paper Palace. I was like, you know, there's this whole. The only characters like where there's a sexy older woman, you know a woman in her fifties, is like it's never that. It was always like you know that she's the mother who knows everything and she's found somehow wisdom. And I'm like I get less and less wise. I knew the path was long when I was five and all I can tell you now is like that, the shoes just arrived and I won't go for a run.
Speaker 1:You know, these are the things I can tell you today I am wearing workout clothes just because I'm tricking myself for the 30,000th day in a row that I'm going to go work out. And I'm not. It's too hot, see. Like 50s as, oh my God, you know, those people are so well, a old and B wise. And now I see posts on the socials and people will say, oh, I'm having my 50th birthday and I think, god, you're so old. And then I go well, shit, like I, I'm there. And then I think, why am I not wiser? Like well, I really thought that came with this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, there's that. By the way, there's a line in one of the, in the one that's called shrink wrap, which is basically you know exactly that where the character is saying you know, I don't want to spend the rest of my life feeling with like a child, and you know he says but you're going to die a child, you're always going to be your mother's child. You're going to always be your father's child, like guess what? That never changes.
Speaker 1:That never changes, which I kind of like. Yeah, you know, you know, I kind of like that I'll always be younger than someone.
Speaker 2:That's the way I look at it, okay last question what are you reading now or what have you read recently that you just really loved? You know I. Finally, one of the things I loved most recently that I read was a memoir by this author, peter Godwin. It's called Exit, wounds and God. He's a good writer. Highly recommend it. It's about his whole life in a way, but it's also about the year of his divorce and his mother dying. And he's a British writer who lives in New York and has been writing for years and years and years.
Speaker 2:But this he's really funny and I was so moved and so many moments, like you say, I don't know if at any other time in my life I would have felt the exact same way. But I'm reading, going, oh my God, that's me. That was me as a mother, that's exactly, you know, doing his kid's homework, you know like you know, oh damn it. My son's, you know, now taking a course on Egyptian history. I'm going to have to learn about all that to help him write the paper. You know you're just going, oh my God, but there was stuff like that and I was just like, I recognize that. I recognize that it's. I couldn't, you know, I can't recommend it more more highly.
Speaker 2:One of the problems right now which is, you know, a good problem to have, but is that I'm I can't really talk about a lot of the things I'm reading right now, because I'm reading a lot of books that haven't come out yet. Yes, uh-huh, but um, that one is one that I just finished and then I, like, as I say, I really loved. Like, as I say, I really loved, I have so much on my pile, but you know, when you just suddenly come out of something, you go everybody has to read this. That's how I felt when I, when I got to the end of that.
Speaker 1:Really yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Well then, I'll add that to my pile. It's getting bad. It's getting bad, miranda. Like you know, my mom reminded me a couple of weeks ago of something my grandfather used to do when he would finish reading a book, he would put his initials and the date at the beginning of the book, so he would remember that he had read it. Because in the, in the vein of, like, forgetfulness, I keep pulling books off my shelf and I'm like did I have? I? I feel like I've read this. I mean, I do the same thing with movies on Netflix and stuff. I started. I think this is feeling familiar, but I don't remember this scene. So I'm going to start doing that now. It's just putting my initials, because I have so many.
Speaker 2:I have so many, there's just not enough time. Yeah, by the way, there's not enough time. And then, of course, I end up kind of like rereading you know comfort books and all that stuff. And then you're like I know I should be, you know, delving into you know whatever. And then, and then no, I'm like, oh, I think I'm just going to go back and read Pride and Prejudice again.
Speaker 1:I'm just going to ask you will you tell me one of your comfort books that you go back and reread? Pride and Prejudice.
Speaker 2:I mean just ridiculously so so yeah, how about you?
Speaker 1:Well, I am a little cliche in this world. I reread the alchemist with frequency, um, and I love Anna Karenina. Wow, well, that's yeah those are not that.
Speaker 2:I think those are pretty big books that are very impressive to keep.
Speaker 1:Well, the alchemist is a simple read, but it's just so profound and I get something different from it every time. Anna Karenina is not a simple read, but I just I. It's a connection to my grandfather and I just absolutely I just love it. I cannot thank you enough, oh this was so fun, thank you. This was so fun. I will put all of your info in the show notes. So excited, so many congratulations for your launch tomorrow. Thank you Well.
Speaker 2:I hope people read it. I you know it's poetry. I know people are scared, but it's not scary, I don't think it's not scary.
Speaker 1:I can attest to this. It's not scary. Yeah, it's not scary, it's not light, but it's not scary.
