Speaker 1: 0:04

My thing is I love to create. I love that humans are a creative animal. We talk about in my survey creative writing course. We talk about other animals that might be creative and are they creative? Are we just anthropomorphizing that? They are creative? And so the thing that concerns me with folks generating creative work from AI is that they're not creating. They're not the brain that's creating the thing coming out into the world.

Speaker 2: 0:42

Hi friends, this is Read and Write with Natasha podcast. My name is Natasha Tynes and I'm an author and a journalist. In this channel I talk about the writing life, review books and interview authors. Hope you enjoy the journey. Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Read and Write with Natasha Alright. So today we have with me author Rhonda Zimlich, who teaches writing at American University in Washington DC. Her writing focuses on history, grief and intergenerational trauma, with an occasional ghost story Nice. Her upcoming novel, Raising Panic, won the Steel Toe Book Award. Wow, Rhonda, you already won a novel even before publishing your novel, so that's very impressive. Thank you for joining me today. So, Rhonda, I think I want to start by talking about this award-winning novel and if you can tell us a bit about what's this novel about and what was the process of writing it.

Speaker 1: 1:56

Yeah, sure, thanks first, natasha, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here and to talk with you and others about writing about this book about literary arts. I first started working on Raising Panic toward the end of my MFA program at Vermont College and you know I really wanted to have a book-length project and I had been encouraged to work on short stories. Short story is a form that I love and I'm widely published in, but I wanted to see if I could extend my writing, and I found out that I could. I had a draft probably a completed draft around 2018 and started in revisions. I was able to attend a local workshop not really a workshop, but a residency, a place where you can go and have some time to write down in Virginia called Porches, which is a lovely place for people to be able to go and write, and I finished the final revisions. I got it out to some beta readers and then I was able to send it out to you know I went to agents, I submitted it to some contests, I got shortlisted in a few of those and that was thrilling, and eventually this last year, I found out that I had won the prize for the book award at Steel Toe Books, which was amazing. So the book, that's a little bit of the process.

Speaker 1: 3:26

I mean, there's certainly more to it, but the book is called Raising Panic and it's about two young girls who are growing up in rural Southern California in 1978. And the reason that I picked 1978 to focus the work is I'm actually from that part of the United States and I was raised in a pretty rural community. That is no longer rural, as you know, san Diego military town and just a short drive away from the coast and you were in a pretty rural part of California. So I wanted to write about space and environment. I'm an environmental writer, really wanted to capture the ecosystem, the chaparral in East County in San Diego, but I also wanted to historicize an event that happened in 1978.

Speaker 1: 4:26

And it's a historic event where a commercial jetliner PSA 182, crashed in the uptown area of San Diego. There was a midair collision and 144 people total were killed in this incident in 1978. And for a while that's all you heard on the news. Right, it was very traumatizing, of course, for people directly involved, but I would say for the entire county, all of San Diego. Every time network news was on, this is what they spoke about. They had cameras on the scene pretty quickly after the crash happened, so there were some very graphic images and I was a child and remember the trauma of seeing these images on TV.

Speaker 1: 5:12

I remember the community really coming together in you know, around this trauma, and then all of a sudden the history just went away. In fact it's the only mass casualty jetliner crash in the United States that doesn't have a permanent memorial at the site of the crash, and every year on the 25th of September, people that have some connection to the crash return to the corner of Dwight and Nile in San Diego and they write the names of those 144 people in chalk on the sidewalk. So it's very strange to me that it hadn't been historicized. But San Diego grew out of being an aerospace industry and so perhaps you know that has something to do with the fact that there's no permanent monument at the site. But I also wanted to write a little bit about, you know my own experience watching San Diego transform from a beautiful open space community to one of. You know it's very much developed now, except in the places in the east part of the county where it's just almost too steep to pave over.

Speaker 1: 6:25

Yeah, so the story really is about these two young girls, and one of them witnesses the plane crash, and that becomes the inciting incident for the novel, where the girls run away. They're in a really bad alcoholic family. They're trying to escape their abusive mom. As they go out onto, you know, down into the city to try and get a bus up to an ant they haven't seen in years. What they find are more perils, and so they sort of realize that, you know, maybe the dangers that they knew at home were better than the ones that they're confronting out on the road. Yeah, so that's about it in a nutshell.

Speaker 2: 7:05

Wow, is it autobiographical or semi-autobiographical, like, have you witnessed the crash?

Speaker 1: 7:13

Well, when the crash happened, I was seven years old and so, like I said, I didn't witness it, but I do remember the community talking about it and I remember people coming together. I remember there was a vigil at one point. These are things that stand out in my memory, but one thing that does play over for me, and I'll tell you that I was inspired to start writing about this because the poet Jamal May had visited our graduate program and he encouraged us to use sound as a writing prompt. And I thought of the sonic booms, because I was very close to Miramar Air Force Base, out in East County in San Diego, and so when the jets would fly over, they would make a sonic boom. And that morning people for you know, up to 10 miles away from the crash, claimed to hear the explosion, and I'm not sure if it was this. You know memory of a child, where afternoon and kids, you know having to walk home, and we had heard that there was a plane crash in a neighborhood. We didn't know where it had crashed. And you know we're walking home not knowing if our house is still going to be there, even though we were a few miles from where the crash took place. So in that aspect it is autobiographical.

Speaker 1: 8:44

I do have, you know, the disease of alcoholism is pretty rampant in my family. Although the mother in the book is, you know, she's purely fictional. My mom is not an alcoholic. My mom's still alive and well and doing great and she was never a drinker. But I did want to sort of use some of these. I wanted to use some elements of the trauma of family dysfunction to mirror the elements of trauma from the crash. So that part of it, I would say, is autobiographical, but the rest of it is. I did an exercise from Elizabeth Gilbert where I just shut my eyes and said, ok, who wants to tell this story? And I clearly heard the voice of this character, pj, who's the main character, and I followed her with a third person narrative voice and just followed her through the unfolding of this story.

Speaker 2: 9:38

So you're a busy person, you teach we actually met at the gym. Busy person, you teach you, uh, we actually met at the gym. That so you're, you're, you know, um, and I understand you also have a family and all of that. So when did you have the time to write this and what was the writing uh process like? So uh, were you? Are you someone who's very disciplined? You wake up in the morning and you, because everyone has a different writing process, so I'm curious about how you wrote this book.

Speaker 1: 10:11

Yeah, great question. And I ebb and flow with my discipline. So when I'm in a story I feel more inspired to sit and write daily. But for this book I had the idea. I'm very grateful that I was part of a writing group at the time and we met twice a month. For 10 years I worked with these same writers. I lived in Oregon then and I was working at University of Oregon then, so I met with these same writers and every you know, because there were eight of us every couple of months, you know, we had to have something new to share with the group and we workshop together. So that inspired me to get a lot of the work done. Like I said, I was also in an MFA program, going through the process of getting the book out into the world, marketing it, working with small press.

Speaker 1: 11:16

I have not written as much as I would like, but at the time I felt pretty prolific. I was writing almost every single day. I've also taught Julia Cameron's the Artist's Way. I've taught three times. I've taught it. That's a 13-week class that I've taught, and when I teach that book she talks about having your morning pages and writing every morning, and so I do feel very disciplined when I'm teaching that book, but when I'm sometimes when I'm not teaching that, I'm less disciplined. But really I try to have a regular practice of writing and I mean, for instance, I wrote a little bit yesterday. I would say I've written probably four or five out of the last week. I've probably written four or five out of the last seven days.

Speaker 2: 12:02

So you mentioned something about a retreat. How important do you think writing retreats for writers to finish or to even start a project? I've never been to a retreat, so I'm personally intrigued and I'm sure people who are listening want to hear more about it, and I've been seeing a lot more of retreats popping up here and there, so I'm curious about that.

Speaker 1: 12:26

Yeah, that's a great question too. I'll just say that I've gone to three different kinds of retreats. I've gone up to Vermont College for their novel retreat twice and even though she the writer that runs it is Connie May Fowler and even though it's called a novel retreat, folks working on memoir are also welcome, or longer projects, story collections, et cetera. So I've gone to that twice and that is where I finished one of the iterations of Raising Panic. So that has really helpful. I had the opportunity. The last time I attended that, which was just two years ago, I drove up with another novelist, liza Nash Taylor, and she and I swapped all kinds of great writing tips and I felt very inspired spending that time with her. In fact she was so gracious to blurb my book that's coming out, so that was just an incredible experience all around to be with other professional writers and, you know, sort of water rises to its own level. So surrounding myself with folks that are successful and published, really helpful.

Speaker 1: 13:32

Another retreat that I have attended that's a little closer to where I live is in Maryland, up in Sibilisville, and it's at Zigbone Farm, and this is a newer place for, you know, retreats they also host weddings there, but the writer's retreat that I've gone to every year now since they started. It is in winter and it's with a writer, diana Friedman, who runs it, and the owner of the place, dina, she's also a writer, and so it's just a gorgeous, gorgeous facility and everything is taken care of. There's lovely food, there's wine I don't drink but there's wine available and it's a wonderful experience where there's craft talks, there's time to write, there's readings. It's just got a little bit of everything. It's just the perfect amount.

Speaker 1: 14:23

I love that one. It's Zig Bone Farms, and then the other one that I first mentioned is Porches in Virginia, and that one is really more of a self-guided retreat. So the woman that owns it, trudy, she makes sure that writers have a place where they can come and work and focus and that was the first time I was able to go from page one through page 252 without stopping and working out all the kinks and get that thorough revision on the page. So it's very rural but it's a beautiful antebellum farmhouse and there are other writers there. Maybe you see that, maybe you don't, because everybody's really nose to the grindstone. So those are like three different kinds of retreats that I've been to and I think each of them has had something wonderful to offer.

Speaker 2: 15:17

I love that Now you're encouraging me to go to one. Probably I will.

Speaker 1: 15:22

I like the one that you mentioned, close to us in Maryland, and I'll say, just to add, Natasha, if you're a Maryland resident, or anybody who's listening is a Maryland resident. The first year that I went, I was able to get a professional development grant from the Maryland State Arts Council Just by applying to say I want to attend this grant. They paid for the whole thing. It was wonderful. Oh, wow, yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:46

Okay, I love that. Okay, that's good to know, all right. Okay, now I have a plan, all right. Another thing is so you won the award and the award was through a small press, correct? And the small press published for you and you did not have to pay any costs, correctly, so they took care of everything. That's right, okay, and so you don't have an agent. That's what I understood. Do you think? Now you know, with all of these opportunities happening, self-publishing do we even need an agent? Do we even need to go the traditional publishing route, which is very grueling and takes a long time? And, honestly, sometimes I feel like, you know, I might be dead before I get that like six figure publishing deal from a New York publisher. So where do you stand when it comes to that?

Speaker 1: 16:45

I actually am hopeful to get an agent. My next book, though, isn't fiction, and the few agents that requested the full of Raising Panic. I reached out to them and said my second book? I said it's won an award, so you know I'm taking it off the table and I'd still love representation, but my next book is a memoir project. If you write fiction, please send me your next fiction manuscript. Love to see it. And the third one said I'm interested in your memoir. So I'm really trying to finish the memoir now.

Speaker 1: 17:20

I, however, have talked to lots of different writers who've had a lot of experiences, and some who've been very successful in self-publishing, and I mean it's. The industry now is such that it's easy to get your book into print and to self-publish. That isn't something that I'm necessarily interested in, but because I am so busy, it would be terrific to have someone help me right now if I had an agent and they were scheduling my bookstore visits and places where I can come and promote the book, because I'm doing all that myself, because I am being published with a small press, so having an agent can help with that. I also know that some writers will hire a PR assistant to help with that sort of thing, but that's just not in my. You know, I'm putting two kids through college right now, so yeah, that's not in my cards.

Speaker 1: 18:12

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 18:13

Okay, so you mentioned marketing, and I know marketing is like the bane of existence for many writers who want to focus on the craft. So what have you been doing and what do you think has worked the most for you in terms of attention or pre-orders? Or is it social media? Is it going to the library? If you, you can tell us, what do you?

Speaker 1: 18:40

think worked the best for you. Yeah, sure, um, social media is number one. I I feel like that's something that's really important. Anyway, I've gone to a lot of different writers conferences and they've talked about having a platform. You you know where folks can find you. But also, because I've lived in a lot of different places, I have friends all over the United States and the world really now, and so that's very, very helpful. People are emailing me saying when are pre-orders ready? Or when I run into folks and they ask when they can pre-order Not yet coming soon, I hope, but in terms of getting ready to have the book out in the world, I have a great community here at American University.

Speaker 1: 19:22

I work with some wonderful writers that have a lot of experience. Melissa Scholes-Yogg is pretty plugged in with she's a novelist and she's pretty plugged in with the local community of writers in the DC area. Yeah, I know her. Yeah, she's terrific, Really really helpful, and so she has agreed to, you know, do an in-person interview with me at a bookstore. So, at current I'm looking at Busboys and Poets location in Tacoma Park possibly.

Speaker 1: 19:52

So I haven't confirmed anything, but this is the part that's very time consuming. I got to find these places on my own, you know, make sure that we can get books to them. And then I'll be attending AWP, which is the big writers conference that moves around the United States. That'll be in Los Angeles in the spring and so hopefully I'll be able to generate some interest in the book there. But then also additional contests. So I have a spreadsheet where I'm tracking debut novel contests, where when I publish in 2024, I'll submit it to contests in 2025, and that will hopefully give the book more exposure.

Speaker 1: 20:30

I've also been in contact with the Historic Society for the PSA 182 jetliner crash and they're interested in seeing the book and the book is dedicated to folks directly involved in the crash and that was really important for me to make that dedication clear. So for I think, typical, you know, getting it out into bookstores and doing readings and attending conferences and book fairs. There's the big Gaithersburg Book Fair. I'll attend that next year. That sort of thing, I mean it's still very new to me, so I'm learning as I go.

Speaker 2: 21:08

There's another one it's small but it's really nice called the Kensington Book Festival. Oh good, I'll write that one down. Thank you, I go there every year. It's really cute. There's a lot of local authors, tons of local authors Great, All right. So I want to shift gears a bit and talk about your teaching experience at one of the best universities probably in the country, and how do you feel about the new generation? I think you know I'm also a mom of Gen Z kids and they always get slack for not reading, being on TikTok all the time, and do you feel that? Do you feel that the reading and the writing is kind of disappearing because of our attention span and attention economy and all of that? And how do you see that in yours? I mean, obviously your students are interested in writing, reading, but in general, how do you assess the new generation? Do you think we're going to have a new generation of awesome writers coming up? The next great American novel is going to come from a Gen Z author. I'm just curious.

Speaker 1: 22:27

Yeah, maybe I have the opportunity to mentor students when they're working on their senior capstone and over the last few years I've worked with some very brilliant writers and I currently am working with brilliant writers this school year. I'm not at all disappointed. In fact, this group of students, you know, it seems like they're more imaginative. Every new class right, and I've had the opportunity to teach in not only our introductory creative writing classes you know we have a survey class that's writing across the genres but I've also taught the fiction workshop. I've taught the nonfiction workshop, which is the 400th level and up, and I'm very impressed with their, how inventive they are.

Speaker 1: 23:15

Now I'll say as well, you've mentioned some of the social media platforms and this generation being much more electronically savvy, technologically savvy. The other thing about it is they bring those elements into their writing, which I love. I had a student who was really playing with the format of text speak instead of dialogue in a story and it just evoked something different in the story. I found it very interesting and very textured, whereas typical dialogue with the speech markers of he said, they said, she said, you know, can become a little tedious, but what they were doing was even throwing in some of the acronyms, and you know there were it was very.

Speaker 1: 24:03

Yeah, it was very interesting and I thought that it brought something lovely to the story because they were really writing about characters of their own age and I thought, well, that makes so much sense because this is a really authentic way that you know Gen Z is communicating and so it comes across on the page in a very authentic way. So I think they're very imaginative. My concern and who knows what's going to happen is with AI, so with the creative writers. I think that they're always going to have that pull toward creativity because they, if they've shown up in a creative writing classroom, chances are they've found there's value in being a creative person. If you know, they're in my research writing class, which I also teach the research writing class on food justice here.

Speaker 1: 24:51

When they show up in my research writing class, I wonder about that AI, because it's really easy, I think, to you know, use some of these tools that are available to us to really not have to think. I mean, even Grammarly now can create a whole outline based on just a few keywords, which I want my students to go through the process of creating an outline and seeing the mechanics of putting together a good, strong research paper. So I would hope that they wouldn't become too dependent on AI, but I also don't want to just ignore it because it's here, so I think we need to address it.

Speaker 2: 25:26

You bring a very important topic and very contentious, and I wrote an article on Substack about why are we vilifying using AI for friction, and I got a number of comments, some pro and some against, and my idea was, like when electricity was first invented, people were scared of it People and then, you know, eventually we embraced it. So maybe we are in that and for me, when I think of using AI in fiction, I would personally encourage using it as someone who can give you feedback, and I tried it. So I would put my chapter. My chapters are based or what I write is based on how I grew up in the Middle East or whatever. So AI just cannot do that for me.

Speaker 2: 26:16

But what AI can do for me is I would put my chapter and I would ask whatever AI I'm using is what do you think and the feedback that the AI gave me was as good or maybe even better than being in a writing workshop, and why are we shying away from this? I mean, we take the same manuscript and we workshop it with others. What is the crime of using AI to workshop that for us? That's, I think, one of the taboo that you can say oh no, you can't, and now sometimes you have to even sign disclaimers if you submit something saying I haven't used AI in this, but we are missing out on improving our manuscript by using AI tools, and even sometimes you can brainstorm with the AI, so you can say, hey, what do you think this character should do, which I tried, and sometimes it actually gives you really good ideas and I can do the same thing with you.

Speaker 2: 27:23

I can, I can give you the manuscript and I tell you, rhonda, what do you think my character should do? And you, you can give me a really good idea. No one is gonna verify me for for asking you and using your advice. Why are we verifying AI? Because it does not have a pulse, because it's not human. I mean, where do you draw the line?

Speaker 1: 27:46

Yeah, that's an interesting question. I haven't thought of this idea of getting feedback. I've been thinking about students using it to generate work rather than using it to. We have built in editors in our word process. You know that corrects our grammar and spelling and sometimes even offers suggestions on. This is a passive verb structure. You want to, you know, switch it around a little bit.

Speaker 2: 28:14

Correct.

Speaker 1: 28:15

Correct that's. I find that very interesting. We have ongoing conversations here at American University, of course, because this is a topic that is everywhere. Everybody's talking about it In, I would say, in the lit department, and in fact we were just talking about this at our department council meeting yesterday. It is one of those things that folks are, you know, they're like you said, they're sort of vilifying it.

Speaker 1: 28:43

I have colleagues that have not even played with it and I played with it as soon as it came out. I went in and I said you know, I was doing generative work, just to see what it would do. And I said write a murder mystery in a bakery, and it gave me what I would say was about grade level three short story. You know wasn't very advanced or sophisticated, the language was very basic. Then I started doing things where I said revise this in the voice of Karmic McCarthy, and it did. And I said revise this in the voice of Yoda from Star Wars, and it did. Now I thought this was very amazing, so I told my colleagues about it and then I went to show them.

Speaker 1: 29:24

This is a few weeks later and when I typed in, rewrite this in the voice of Yoda, then it popped up with a message saying Yoda is a trademarked character and I cannot do this, and I thought, oh well, it's learning, or maybe there are some things in place, you know, that are, you know, sort of preventative measures for plagiarism. That's the thing that's concerning, and plagiarism always has been about, intellectual property of others, and so if you think about, you know, the body of AI, it's based on the electronic knowledge that we've been feeding into, you know, the internet and any electronic document that's been networked anywhere. That's what it's pulling from. So it's not really coming up with anything new, but it is. I think it's a really it's a very powerful tool. Now, I haven't used it the way that you're talking about. I haven't done that.

Speaker 1: 30:17

I'm very curious, I'm really curious now you know because true too that sometimes in a workshop you'll get feedback that is just bonkers, right. You misunderstood what I was writing about. You know, I have a short story about a young girl who is engaged in self-harm and she is cutting herself and a workshop with with. There was a man in the workshop that said this is so far-fetched, nobody would ever do this. And I was like what are you talking about? Everybody in the workshop we were all looking at each other like he's never heard of this before. So it was. Sometimes you get, you know, you get feedback that just isn't right, it's not correct yeah, yeah so that's that is interesting.

Speaker 1: 31:04

I want to. I feel like this is something I'd like to do with my students and get their take on it.

Speaker 2: 31:08

Correct, correct. I'll send you the article.

Speaker 1: 31:11

Oh, that's great. I would love to see it. I jotted it down too Great Okay.

Speaker 2: 31:16

Another thing that I'm here playing the devil's advocate. I guess that's my job here. My background is in journalism, so bear with me All right. So you mentioned about you know it's basically stealing ideas, but at the end of the day, we all steal, we all, and there's even a book called Steal Like an Artist.

Speaker 2: 31:40

And the idea is, yeah, exactly by the idea of St Cleon. So the idea is we're all influenced by this author or by this author, and the outcome of what we write is a conglomerate of things that were fed in our brain, and then we took it, and then we added our style and spin to it, and that's exactly what AI is doing. I'm feeding it, I'm feeding our brain, and eventually you can customize it to come up with the result that you want. So, when it comes to copyright, like, where do you draw the line? I mean, where do you draw the line of what you put in your head? What you put in your head, are you stealing? And that's also a very murky situation that we have to look into. It is when you're feeding the AI, but we're also feeding our brain. So that was my spiel.

Speaker 1: 32:38

I would be you know, my thing is I love to create. I love that humans are a creative animal we talk about in my survey creative writing course. We talk about other animals that might be creative, and are they creative? Are we just anthropomorphizing that? They are creative. And so the thing that concerns me with folks generating creative work from AI is that they're not creating. They're not the brain that's creating the thing coming out into the world. Now, you know, using it for an editing tool, I think is different. But there's also something interesting that happens in editing and I'll just give an example from my book.

Speaker 1: 33:23

I was at the novel retreat in Vermont and a novelist, ellen Lesser, was there with a little exercise workshop for us and she talked about how you know. She said take one of your characters from your book and pull them out of the story and just write a quick secret that they have. This isn't part of the story. Just write a secret down they have. This isn't part of the story. Just write a secret down, you know, and then see if you can drill down into that secret. Why are they keeping that secret?

Speaker 1: 33:49

You know what's at risk if people find out about that secret, and I love that exercise so much that it actually made it back into my novel and it changed the course of my novel. I feel like I could go to AI and I could say you know, here's this character and invent a secret for them, and maybe it would invent a secret. But then I don't have that in. You know, my synapses haven't created that. I'm not the one you know. I feel like I might not have been able to put that back into the book in the same way. I don't know for sure, but I would like to see. You know, we are a creative animal and we've grown in our creativity exponentially since the beginning of humanity, right, and especially so in the last 10,000 years, and so I just feel like I would hate for us to then start relying on electronic intelligence. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1: 34:46

Yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 34:48

I mean, for me, I think of it as being in a writing workshop and I don't have the time to actually find one and go, actually find one and go, and this. It's like using Zoom, but I use AI as my workshop. Whatever critic works, but again, what I write about, ai does not understand, but it can give me some really good feedback on the structure, the character development and all of that. I don't think we should vilify it and I don't think we should shame it, uh, and but it's again, it's very contentious debate and we can talk for hours about it.

Speaker 1: 35:34

Yeah, and if you think about an analogous issue, you know I'll say natalie goldberg argues this she her book, famous book, writing down the bones. But she I wasn't. I had an opportunity to meet her in Arizona. Wonderful writer, great person.

Speaker 1: 35:51

She talks about that, the organic connection between your hand and your brain when you're writing with a pen or pencil, and she really encourages folks to like write things out longhand. There's something that happens, however. You know, people have been using a keyboard now for a very long time, and students nowadays I will have a couple who will write longhand, but I don't tell them you should write longhand. It's a more organic connection with your brain. We read Natalie Goldberg, we read other writers that talk about writing out longhand. It's a more organic connection with your brain. We read Natalie Goldberg, we read other writers that talk about writing out longhand, but most of them are using a keyboard and they're still, I think, just as creative.

Speaker 1: 36:29

So this is a new technology AI, right? I mean, people were concerned when electronic books became popular, thinking, oh, what's going to happen if we're not holding a book made out of paper? You know, will people stop reading? Or are we only going to listen to audiobooks? Now that audiobooks are available, and it turns out that that's not true at all. People still find pleasure in writing longhand or typing. They find pleasure in reading electronically, reading a hardbound copy. So I feel like maybe being open-minded to this, you know. I think that that's the route to go. I can't wait to read your article. I'm very interested.

Speaker 2: 37:07

Yeah, I'll send it to you, all right. So before we conclude, what tips would you give to an aspiring author who is really in the trenches, very frustrated, pitched to a few agents, got rejection. Where do you think they should go from there?

Speaker 1: 37:27

Well, one of the things that got me when I was very frustrated with the marketing process was I returned back to my love of writing. Instead of thinking about the outcome, of what's going to happen if and when this book makes it into the world, I remember the pleasure that I get when I sit down and I create a character or a place for a character or in memoir. I'm writing about a memory or a situation that I can bring to life on the page. So getting back to the joy of writing, I think is number one. Writing, often having a practice for writing, even if it's every other day or I'm going to write 500 words this week, you know just something that's a goal goal-oriented writing practice. You know you don't have to meet, like I did for 10 years with the same eight people. You know having an accountability partner, even just through email. During the pandemic I had accountability partners writing nonfiction and I had accountability partners writing fiction, and you know I still keep in contact with all of them, still trade work with them, which is wonderful. All of them still trade, work with them, which is wonderful.

Speaker 1: 38:43

And then getting into the minutiae again of the joy of writing, I would say writing into the senses can be very liberating and generate more words on the page for you. And by the senses I mean return back to a smell that you know, that you remember from last week or last year or your childhood. Uh, something that you tasted once that you know was either very terrible or wonderful, you know, and really drill down into what that taste was like for you. Um, the sensation of, you know, scruffing your dog's fur, or you know, hearing your cat purr as she jumps onto your lap and then feeling her purr, you know. So those sensory details, I think, can really help folks to get back into the love of writing. And returning back to the love of writing is really what has kept me. You know, when I'm slogging through, this feels like a very slow part of a manuscript and I just got to get it on the page, remembering that I love writing about, you know, the sensory perception of the world around me. I love the show, right?

Speaker 2: 39:56

Yeah, and I want to start a new ritual in my podcast, which is I want to end it by asking and you're the first one I'm trying with by asking what are you reading these days?

Speaker 1: 40:08

Oh my gosh, Right now I'm reading Miranda July's All Fours. It's maybe a little racier than what I typically read, but it's also wonderful because I love her writing and I love her writing style. But she it was. They just talked about it in New York times last week. It's a terrific novel, but it's about a woman in midlife and she's perimenstrual, so she's writing about all of that. She's writing about sex and family and you know some of the crazy things women go through in midlife, and I am absolutely loving it, loving it.

Speaker 2: 40:44

Great, I'll check it out. Thank you very much, Rhonda. This has been really amazing and eye-opening, and I will see you at the gym. I guess. For anyone who's listening or watching. Thank you very much for joining us for another episode of Read and Write with Natasha and until we meet again. Great Thank you.

Speaker 1: 41:08

Natasha.

Speaker 2: 41:25

Natasha Tynes. If today's episode inspired you in any way, please take the time to review the podcast. Remember to subscribe and share this podcast with fellow book lovers. Until next time. Happy reading, happy writing, Thank you.