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#201 - Raghav Rao
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Contemporary fiction author and creative writing lecturer, Raghav Rao speaks with Jamie about his debut novel and his long journey with storytelling and publishing that started with him writing fan-fiction of Redwall.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Ooh, a spicy question. I love it. Because the writing is sort of everything. You can fix plot holes. So some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this. So it's kind of a gamble.
Introduction to Raghav Rao
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast. With me today is an author who has lived all over the world but currently resides in Chicago where he teaches creative writing at Loyola University. He's a fiction editor at another Chicago magazine and now a published author with his debut novel coming out earlier this year. It's Raghav Rao. Hello, welcome.
00:00:36
Speaker
Hi Jamie, glad to be here. Great to have you on. Let's jump right in with your debut novel, Missy.
Plot of 'Missy'
00:00:44
Speaker
Tell us a little bit about it. Absolutely. So Missy is about um an extraordinary woman. She begins her life um as Savi in an ah a convent in southern India in Madras and um she's she's a quick learner and she manages to get a governess position and on a rural estate. But some events transpire and she's forced to
00:01:13
Speaker
run away, and she becomes an illegal migrant to the United States where she reinvents herself as Missy. And she becomes this owner and proprietor of a driving school in West Side Chicago. And everything seems to be going well. She has two daughters and her life, um you know, she has a lot of self-determination. And then the past returns in the form of a student who appears at her driving school.
00:01:42
Speaker
and um that's the story And then she has to deal with the subsequent fallout of that. So that's the story. Yeah, it sounds so interesting. It's always great to sort of span across multiple cultures in a story, and then that kind of adds on to the, oh, past is catching up with you kind of subplot. I do i just do want to ask, it within the context, what is the role of ah of a governess within this kind of context?
Role of a Governess in India
00:02:08
Speaker
I would say that you know um in India, and you know writing about domestic service in is is integral to writing about India because of our very stratified class system. which you know um we There is a lot of but a lot of people employed domestic help and within that domestic help context, there are many ah strata. So for example, drivers will have a different chauffeurs and drivers have a different status than governesses who have a different status than ayahs who may have a different status than um ah someone who's cleaning so or someone who's a gardener. So domestic help have a very
00:02:49
Speaker
um you know, there's an understanding of their hierarchy, and a governess is placed quite high because they speak English, they have some level of formal education, they're not just caregivers, but are also imparting knowledge. And um so yeah, so a governess would be a reasonably elevated position within the domestic service context of a big household in India. okay And then all of that kind of experience and knowledge that she's gained as ah through that kind of role gets transferred into her kind of integrating into the US as Missy.
00:03:27
Speaker
Absolutely. So when she comes to America, she has a much ah easier time than than her her husband who is doesn't know English and at least not to the same level or has to learn it. And so um she has a much easier time reinventing herself and giving herself a new identity and taking to this new culture because of her, you're right, her prior education and exactly.
Cultural Influences on 'Missy'
00:03:54
Speaker
And people often say that, um, the debut novel of an author is often the sort of closest to them as in the most sort of biographical. I know that you, I think I'm right in saying that you live, you have lived in l LA. You've also lived in, uh, Mumbai. I think you lived in, I think it said online that you lived in London for a bit yeah currently in Chicago. How much of that kind of, uh, your kind of own experience sort of migrating between countries has gone into this?
00:04:25
Speaker
massively so massively. So I think it's not a neat biographical mapping, because obviously, this is a woman from very different circumstances. But the, the rhyming nature of the migratory experiences, it certainly rhymes with my life. So 100% massive, massive in what ways, I think it's just in sort of subtle perceptions, rather than in massive life events.
00:04:53
Speaker
Yeah, I see what you're saying. It's more like um the sort of subtle ways which with which you're treated differently when you move between different cultures as opposed to like you were in a specific like and car accident or something and that's exactly what's happened in the book.
00:05:08
Speaker
precisely. And I think, you know, ah um you know in the the Jungian idea, like a single work represents many different facets of one identity. So I think that I use different characters to explore different conflicts I may be having between India and the US, so tradition versus modernity. um It's basically dilemmas that I face or have faced um and mean ah And then these characters embody them and live them out. ah Even if, the like like you said, the life events may be highly dramatized for you know to to create an interesting, propulsive, commercially viable book.
Emotional Impact of Publishing
00:05:48
Speaker
But um their dilemmas are ah yeah they are biographic.
00:05:53
Speaker
Yeah. and you In terms of the sort of academia and the study of creative writing, you you you are someone that teaches at university. ah You've been very involved with writing and other sort of literary pursuits to that nature. it must have been Is it kind of ah a magical moment for you for this book to have been published and is now kind of exist out in the world? You you have your debut novel and lots of people are reading it.
00:06:18
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, magical, the culmination of a lot of work, immense gratitude to so many people who have supported me. It is totally all everything that I hoped it would be. I think I pinned a lot of perhaps too much on getting this debut novel out into the world.
00:06:37
Speaker
And I thought that, you know, you're not supposed to over fixate on external outcomes for self-love, right? You're supposed to, you know, focus on the process, do your part. It's statistically a difficult game. And if it happens, great. And if it doesn't, it's okay. But the truth is, it has been a huge weight off my shoulders.
00:06:59
Speaker
yeah So it sounds like you you know you knew the kind of healthy way to approach this, but you were sort of fighting your own instincts to maintain that. Absolutely. that That war is a constant. And um you know I think from having listened to your podcast and having spoken to other writers, I think a lot of people live with that struggle. ah We want external validation, but you can't can't also It can't be the motor for one's life either, but some degree of it is okay. we live in we We're social animals and it's okay to want to be seen by your fellows as worthy and as um contributing something to society. So yeah, I'm trying to balance the the idea that I am enough and self-sufficient without producing work.
00:07:47
Speaker
and also the fact that I feel as though I must produce at all times. That sounds great. I mean, just just the kind of self-awareness to know that that that you you have that struggle is is, I think, a really good thing. So publishing a novel, is this has this always been a dream for you? Has this been something that's been a long time in the making?
From Banking to Writing
00:08:08
Speaker
Yeah, it has been. And when I was when i was little, I wrote fanfiction for the Red Wall series, Brian Jacques. They had yeah a little anthropomorphized animals and yeah like fight battles. And i loved I loved that stuff. And I wrote fanfiction. And like I honestly repressed that memory for maybe a decade.
00:08:30
Speaker
And I just moved on with my life thinking that wanting to be a writer was juvenile, dilettante-ish, embarrassing. I went to college in America to become an investment banker. And I think it's almost an indictment of our society's values that I thought that was somehow more um socially acceptable than being a writer. But I told everyone I wanted to be an investment banker, and then ah and then I ended up at UNI just studying um English literature, so I didn't really materialize. I went into advertising. Again, I just kept
00:09:08
Speaker
course correcting to writing. And eventually I said, okay, I think I need to commit to this. And um so I did and I got my MFA. And yeah, I love teaching and it makes me a better writer. i know So I noticed a lot of writers find their teaching duties cumbersome or get in the way of writing. For me, it just ah makes me more likely to do my part if I have to turn up to my students the next day and ask them to do their part. So, yeah, but it's definitely been a long time in the making and a
Crafting 'Missy'
00:09:39
Speaker
lifelong dream. Absolutely. Yeah. It sounds like, like you said, it's been a long time in the making. It sounds like you probably have, have you written many manuscripts before came to Missy? Yeah. And I would say many, probably you know, probably, uh,
00:09:56
Speaker
two finished novels before I got before i finished Missy. So the first finished novel was what I used to get into my MFA program. And then the second finished novel got me my agent.
00:10:12
Speaker
And then very similar to the guest you had on a few weeks ago, Dave Goodman, um, you know, basically I rewrote, um, I wrote another novel on spec but ah for my agent based on the previous and that's how Missy came into be. Oh, I see. And so to sort of finish novels, how many, how many unfinished novels do you think there were?
00:10:37
Speaker
but Yeah, i don't I don't know. And you know that's just ah a sandbox, a playground for learning. So the you know I think fondly on however many there are.
00:10:53
Speaker
Yeah, because I think it's it's easy for writers to sort of think, oh no, I can't stop writing this. It will be such a waste of time. But I think there's something very healthy about sort of having a manuscript that you're only maybe a few thousand words into and saying, this has been a useful exercise, but um this isn't going to go any further.
00:11:14
Speaker
Yeah, I think um there's many ideas that appear to be novels, but are really not. They have the shape of novels, but they don't have the propulsion of a novel. And what that means is often it's a fully if it's a fully finished thought, it's not really a good novel.
00:11:36
Speaker
Like the novel needs to have room for maneuver, exploration. And I think sometimes we think of a premise which which is actually a fully finished thought. And then you sit down and you might get a few thousand words before you realize the thing was dead before it got started. And um what what what is often a better novel is something that is only half. A half thought is the better novel.
00:12:03
Speaker
Yeah, i can because then you can sort of discover the second half whilst you're writing and also as ah as a reader, then it it doesn't sort of, the question isn't answered in the sort of title in many ways. Precisely.
00:12:19
Speaker
I mean that's kind of applicable to now I think about it when you think about sort of science fiction and like the the kind of great short science fiction and those are obviously all concepts very neatly kind of put together but it works in a short story format but it would be hard to string those out into full length novels.
00:12:38
Speaker
Yeah, and um I've heard you reference Sichin Lu on this podcast and Three Body Problem, and and that is such a great novel series, but it's almost a series of fully finished thoughts and little concept pieces that manage to be strung together across a narrative arc. But you're right, when you have a finished thought, a short form is a better um a vehicle for that for that finished thought, I think. And for um for exploration, discovery, um the propulsive nature of plot where one thing leads to another, um I think not the novel, um they're stillborn or if they if they if they're completed, you know they don't they don't get off the ground.
00:13:25
Speaker
yeah Yeah, because I guess it's less an exploration of an idea because you know exactly the sort of exact size and kind of trajectory of that idea and it just exists there already. So you're like, like I'm just writing around this as as opposed to writing towards it.
00:13:41
Speaker
And it'll feel stilted. and And I know this because I've had that experience, and I'm sure other writers have, where they sit down, and it's just too fully formed to go anywhere. And you're like, oh, this is this is done at 3,000 words. But it's not even a story because it's just a full, of full i I see this world, or I know this person, but there's nowhere to go with it. And I should find something where there's ah where there's a question. I mean, maybe I can follow that question somewhere. Yeah, yeah, exactly. um an Interesting discussion for sure.
Finding an Agent
00:14:16
Speaker
I'd love to talk a bit about um your literary agent. So you did the MFA, that was the first novel that you had written, and then you wrote the second novel whilst you were doing that course. At what point did you sign with your agent Priya Dora Swamy of Lotus Lane Literary?
00:14:36
Speaker
So I finished my program in the summer of 2019, at which point I was close to done with my um novel, but I still needed a few more months to go. So I think by the next year, I was i was done with my book and was ready to start in the spring um querying. And I began querying and and I wanted Priya But um her she was closed for submissions um until for the summer, so until October. And what this meant was I had a chance to hone my querying ah skills because querying is a skill and you get better at it as you go. So it was I'm glad that she was close to submissions, ironically, even though at the time I was very upset by that, but it it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
00:15:31
Speaker
So I started querying, and um I was querying this quite bloated novel that I had written in my program. And I have heard back from agents who were, ah most of them ghosted me, I queried 72, which is on the higher side. And most of them ghosted me, which is normal. But several wrote back to say that they liked the writing style, and would like to see my next book, but weren't really clear on why this one wasn't commercially viable.
00:16:01
Speaker
When Priya's submissions opened, I had a really good um targeted letter for her. I answered all of her requirements to a T. And then she wrote back saying that basically, again, very similar to a guest you had a few weeks ago, this falls too neatly between two genres.
00:16:21
Speaker
I don't know which acquiring editors will but'll pick it up. It's also very complicated and long for a debut traversing three geographies, India, the Middle East, and the United States. That'll make it difficult to sell.
00:16:35
Speaker
so if you are it was It was looking like a polite decline and I was reading it with a heavy heart. And then towards the end, she was like, if you're willing to consider a revise and resubmit, you know I'd be open to it. And then she said she'd actually get on the phone with me to discuss. which is a good sign. So we got on the phone and there she said, look, I love this, you know, this stem, the first 20,000 words. If you can rewrite the book off and foreground this character Savi and make a story about her, I think I could sell that.
00:17:10
Speaker
And in the night in the matter of days, I think four or five days, I just wrote what would become Missy and sent off a partial to her. And she's like, this is it. And then she signed me on the partial. And after that, we were off and running. Wow. So it sounds like it was a pretty major change.
00:17:30
Speaker
Massive. But I just said, look, this is what it is to be professional. I need to make a decision here. Am I going to be precious and an artist or am I going to accept that this is a this is the intersection of art and commerce? And this is an industry person with industry mouse who who's helping me. Everyone else up until this point hasn't let me in on why this isn't viable, but she is.
00:17:57
Speaker
And if I listen to her, I have a feeling good things can materialize. And so I did. And she was right. And not just right, absolutely spot on with many editorial suggestions starting from that point onwards. So I'm ah i'm um very grateful to her. And she is instrumental in getting Missy the readers and also for Missy being the woman she is. If I think about The women who influenced Missy during the writing of Missy, Priya is one of them. And then even my editor at Canelo, Keshni Naidu, is another. I mean, these are like... really savvy, smart leaders in their industry who are moms, who have incredible energy, are also values driven. And I think that ironically, not ironically, but interestingly, my editor and my agent have somehow made it into this novel in the title character, which I think is unusual and which is something I'm happy about.
00:19:08
Speaker
It's obviously a very strong partnership. and you you and priya of it like It sounds like you have a very good understanding of what you're both trying to achieve so that you can sort of come together and
Navigating Publishing Challenges
00:19:18
Speaker
the sum of the parts can be greater than the individual parts. Totally. i mean She's really experienced. She's brought so many books to market. um and you know i'm I'm just smart enough to know when when to listen to someone and I'm grateful that I have that um but i have that skill.
00:19:38
Speaker
Yeah. And speaking of the like, you mentioned your editor, the kind of publishing, the process of publishing a novel, once you and Priya had taken this on submission, did you know kind of how it all worked or was it ah very much like a learning experience for you as as you went through the various different stages?
00:19:58
Speaker
Yeah, it was a learning experience. I didn't know. um And especially with selling in different territories, you know, I thought, so we went on submission. It wasn't selling in the US. I started to become nervous.
00:20:14
Speaker
I was traveling with my wife in Japan, and it was a very important trip because my wife is half Japanese. It was her first time going to Japan since she was a toddler, so in over a couple of decades. It was a very important trip.
00:20:29
Speaker
and Priya told me, look, we need to do something. We need to like revise this book. So i I remember in Japan over the course of just several days, I i did an absolutely surgical revision where I removed huge sections and like we went You know, all things that you're not advised to do while out on submission, you know, create another version of the manuscript for a different editor and things like that. But I did it. I think that emotionally freed me up. I've just felt more like a professional, like now I have different versions of this book flying around the world. Some going to US editors, some going to Indian editors, some going to UK editors. i'm I'm in this, I'm in the mix.
00:21:12
Speaker
And then it sold with Penguin Random House. I remember ah we were in Kyoto and it was just surreal. I was like, my book is sold with Penguin Random House. I'm in Kyoto. It's annoying. What's happening? my life like How's my life turned out this way? I'm so glad. And then you know no um and I thought this is it. like The US is going to follow now. I mean, Penguin Random House, come on. But nope, that's not what happened. My book sold in the UK and then my US rights did not sell.
00:21:42
Speaker
For whatever reason, I think the US editors felt that the first nine, 10 chapters being in India would prove a impediment to American readers. So it did not sell, did not sell. And then basically, finally, in the end, I became reconciled to, all right, you know many books do well in Commonwealth, UK, India markets and don't sell in America. And it is what it is.
00:22:06
Speaker
um So we brought Missy to market in those two, in India and the subcontinent and the UK. And now finally, after it's been out in the world for a couple of months, we have some US interests and I'm hopeful that it does sell. But it's definitely was something I did not, I had no idea what would happen. I didn't understand the ins and outs of the world. i thought I thought it's like dominoes, you know, one thing, and then the next thing and then the next thing. It's not like that. Each thing requires connective tissue and work. And yeah, it's humbling.
00:22:43
Speaker
Yeah. That's really interesting though, because obviously there's a kind of strong historical connection between England and India. But, and you know, a large portion, most of this book takes place in the US. So I'm surprised that the editors but it wouldn't come back with at least like, oh, maybe we could reorder this, you know, weight it more towards the US at the start.
00:23:07
Speaker
there was some of that. And at that point, we had done so many of those flips and etc. And I think we had found the shape and architecture of the book that worked. And I, and Priya, we just didn't think that you know, ah reordering it would and then that then it would just become too different from what had sold to UK and India. And then you would have a problem you can't, you know, that would be cool. If like Missy in America was an entirely different story than Missy in the UK, that would be cool. But I don't know how many books that have that. No, that's true. And then the super fans could get both editions and compare the differences.
00:23:48
Speaker
I'd love nothing more. We are at the point in the episode where I ship you off and maroon you on an island and ask if you were stranded all by yourself on a desert island with a single book, which book do you hope that it would be?
Favorite Book Choice
00:24:06
Speaker
I gave this a fair bit of thought and came up with um a loophole answer, which is And omnibus because I own this omnibus so it is a real book but it is the collected uh, the carla trilogy tinker taylor soldiers by the honorable schoolboy and um, and this is the john lakare trilogy That follows george smiley and smiley's people is the last one and it is my
00:24:41
Speaker
just like the book the um the book I most return to when I am looking for inspiration. I just open it to any page and I find some something technical, something he's doing. Maybe he's using the ah settings of the of the scene to deepen the emotional resonance of a scene or he's advancing time in a skillful way.
00:25:07
Speaker
or he's using dialogue to do characterization as well as advance the plot. I just feel that John Lekare, he managed to be genre, literary, propulsive, introspective, stay deep things about society. He managed to do it all um in a commercially viable package. and that's why and yeah the just that I think all of us are a living through conflict, and a spy is always in a state of internal conflict. And therefore, um spy novels are really good for psychological depth. So John Nakari's Carla trilogy is what I would take on a desert island. And I don't think I need anything else.
00:25:58
Speaker
yeah That's great. I ah wasn't expecting that. And also, like, the way that you talk about it so passionately, obviously, you know, I fully believe that this is one of the most influential books on you as a person. But that's so interesting, because I wouldn't have expected a sort of clandestine spy story to to be the the thing that based off, you know, your debut novel, is that something that you think you'd want to maybe try writing at some point?
00:26:25
Speaker
Yes, yes, I would. I would really like to. And I think that my, ah you know, I know you'll come to future projects, but in some ways, it's tricky being a um ethnic or minority or non-white writer and that to some extent I feel like with my debut I gave the market what I thought it wanted from me, if that makes sense, which was an immigrant story because I'm an immigrant or because I have this um biography in different continents and all that stuff. So I gave the market
00:27:03
Speaker
that story.
Future Writing Ambitions
00:27:05
Speaker
And I hope I haven't pigeonholed myself as some sort of ethnic writer who just writes about spices in India, you know, I don't want that. So I'm trying to rectify that with my next book. I'm very proud of Missy. But I also think that in some ways, I was, um you know, writing to fit an unknown market niche, if that makes sense. And now I have to pivot.
00:27:32
Speaker
Okay, right. And the pivot you would like to be into spies? If I would like to have a a large range, and I would love to write something with espionage spies, international skullduggery, it doesn't need to be, you know, the cold doesn't need to be like government spies could be corporate spies too. I think that's fascinating corporate espionage. But I like what you know Actually, the previous the book before Missy was a bit like that. It was it had an FBI special agent in art fraud, <unk> into investigating um someone who was a member of the Qatari aristocracy, and I had timed it in the lead up to the World Cup in Qatar, et cetera.
00:28:21
Speaker
and it was you know it was um spies fiction just with art fraud. So I do have that in my locker. I want to come back to that. But yeah, I just want to have a wide range and not feel as though I only have to do India and Indian stories.
00:28:39
Speaker
Yeah. And there's definitely precedent for it. and i'm Thinking of Rebecca Kwong, who has absolutely not put herself in any genre and is writing whatever kind of genre she wants to write with with whatever whatever book comes out next. So I think that's, yeah, I think you could definitely do that. Fingers crossed.
00:28:59
Speaker
Fingers crossed, yeah.
Extended Writing Process Discussion
00:29:00
Speaker
ah Next up, I'd love to go into a bit about your your writing process more more kind of specifically, as well as what um what I imagine is a wealth of experience from from all of your kind of teaching and writing and things. um And that would all be in the extended episode available on Patreon.
00:29:18
Speaker
um I get it. it's It goes all the way back to what we talked about right at the beginning of the interview with the constant fight between wanting external validation, but knowing that internal validation is actually much more valuable to you. Right.
00:29:34
Speaker
Well, that brings us to the end of the interview.
Conclusion and Social Media
00:29:36
Speaker
Thank you so much, Raghav, for coming on the podcast and chatting with me. It's been so interesting talking to you about um Missy and that book and the kind of the journey that it went on to get to publication, as well as ah everything that you've been doing in your writing process and style and technique. It's been awesome chatting with you.
00:29:53
Speaker
Yes, it's been an absolute pleasure, Jamie, and I really feel like we're on the same page with them with this creating art, and I'm glad to chat with someone. Yeah, no, it's been it's been awesome. And for anyone listening, if you want to keep up with what Raghav is doing, you can follow him on Instagram at Raghavrao underscore rights.
00:30:14
Speaker
or you can find his substack raghavrao.substack dot.com. To support the podcast, like, follow and subscribe. ah Join the Patreon for extended episodes and check out my other podcasts, The Chosen Ones and other tropes. Thanks again to Raghav and thanks to everyone listening. We will catch you on the next episode.