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"What is craft integrity?" w/ V.E Schwab
33 Plays21 days ago
In our finaleepisode for season one, author V.E Schwab, NYT bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and recently released Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, chatted with us about maintaining craft integrity in the face of commercial success and expectations. We learned about how to find joy in our work even with the pressure of publishing, and about how to keep your relationship with your craft fresh and engaging.
Leave us a comment or a review to be featured on the podcast! Or email us, send us an Instagram DM, or otherwise contact us with craft questions you’d like to hear answered!
Find V.E Schwab online.
Check out V.E Schwab’s books.
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Follow Karis on Instagram.
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Transcript
Addie's Foot Injury and Cancelled Camping Trip
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello, hello, Addie. How are you? i'm doing I'm doing sort of okay. I hurt my foot couple days ago. Yeah, it's the worst. I to cancel a camping trip.
00:00:14
Speaker
Bummer. Well, not really bed bound, but I've been hobbling around. But it's okay. We're on the mend. We're on the mend. I'm glad to hear it. I'm sorry about your camping trip, though.
00:00:25
Speaker
That sounded like it was going to be really fun. It was a bummer. But I can, you know, there's more camping to happen in the future. You know what? Never say, I don't know.
00:00:37
Speaker
There's always more camping. Always more camping. What about you, Karis? How are you doing?
Karis's Air Conditioning Woes
00:00:42
Speaker
How are surviving this week? My AC has been out since July 8th, which is ridiculous. I keep trying to harass my landlord about it and...
00:00:55
Speaker
Every three days they respond and they're like, we're calling a tech. And then they stop responding again. And then three days later, they're like, we're calling a tech. And I'm like, just text me back, baby. Let's go.
00:01:08
Speaker
I just need to know what's happening. So I'm actually ah hopping on a flight today to go visit a friend who has AC. And meanwhile, I will continue to harass my landlord.
00:01:23
Speaker
That's so frustrating that you had to deal with that. Also, i feel like like tenant laws need to change because like they have heat requirements. like You can't have non-functioning heat for over 48 hours or something.
00:01:37
Speaker
But with climate change, that needs to include AC at this point. Yeah, they literally changed our climate classification in New York to subtropical or tropical or one of uptropical. I don't know.
00:01:49
Speaker
So, like, with that, like, it means that it's getting hotter and more humid. Like, they need to make sure the AC is a right because it's not. And there are still so many old apartments that just don't have central air.
00:02:00
Speaker
And it's on the tenants to procure, like, a window unit or a portable unit. and it's ridiculous. Right. Like, a lot of those old apartments, too, are designed to keep in heat.
00:02:11
Speaker
Right. Because New York is in the Northeast. So, they they're, like, decent summers and... cold winters yeah yeah that's how it should be god damn it yeah well i'm glad that you're escaping the heat and going to someplace with ac yeah i'm going south which is ironic that's hilarious i know i'm i'm going to a carolina oh not my carolina but the better carolina uh if you're listening to this and you're from south carolina i'm sorry so am i um so i can say what i want
00:02:48
Speaker
Oh, so North Carolina is the better Carolina. Yes. Okay. Yes. I was born in South Carolina, so i and it's just too hot. And North Carolina has mountains.
00:03:02
Speaker
We do have Charleston in the south of Carolina, which is great. But anyway, I'm getting off track. um When are we? When are we? Sunday, July 2025. sunday july twenty seven twenty twenty five Indeed, we are dropping this episode within the next 12 hours.
00:03:21
Speaker
So we're really, i'm really excited to share this episode with y'all. um We'll get into a um everything later. But in the meantime, let's talk about what we're reading and
Addie on 'Bury Our Bones'
00:03:33
Speaker
what we're writing. What are you reading and writing, Addy?
00:03:36
Speaker
What I'm reading is bit of a spoiler for the guest for this episode. It is V.E. Schwab's Bury Ourselves in the Midnight Soil. Bury Our Bones. Bury Our Bones, not Bury Ourselves. How far into it are you?
00:03:50
Speaker
I have read 15 pages. What do you think? V.E. Schwab is my favorite is like one of um one of my favorite authors living today. um So I love it so far. I think that the way that she writes is so lyrical.
00:04:04
Speaker
i haven't. So gorgeous. Yeah. I mean, just, just beautiful, evocative, like, um yeah, just absolutely gorgeous fantasy prose that I'm very excited to fully dive into. I've had a very busy July, so I've not, not been able to do a lot of things. We just, we just closed an opera that I was nine managing. So that's exciting.
00:04:29
Speaker
And then I hurt my foot. So I've been cranky over that. But that's what i that's what I'm reading. Writing. We're still trying to get through these revisions. Okay. Still on track?
00:04:39
Speaker
Yeah. The revisions. The trying to draft a whole thing? Probably not. I mean, we'll see. I got three days. I got three days and two of those days are off. So ah yeah no days so I can definitely crank some stuff out. but You have four days.
00:04:55
Speaker
Plus today it makes five. oh Oh, you're right. You're right. Yeah. So you have almost twice as much time as you thought you did. That's true.
00:05:06
Speaker
That's true. There we go. Anyways, what are you reading and writing? So ah my reading is a little um wonky right now because I was traveling last week and I read absolutely nothing except for the books that I like owed reviews on.
00:05:23
Speaker
But I am also in the middle of Barry or Bones in the Midnight Soil. I'm 25% in. And because I'm traveling today and I only can take a backpack with me, i am unable to take the book on this trip.
00:05:34
Speaker
So alas, I can't dive back in for at least another week. um In the meantime, i will be reading some adult romances. I'm currently reading Carmen Leigh's The 7-10 Split, which is a sapphic romance, a black sapphic romance set in God, Georgia or Alabama, I'm not sure which.
00:05:54
Speaker
um Small town, bowling team, co-coaches, second chance, all the good stuff. And I'm having a good time with it. And I'm also reading Cold Wire, which is probably what I said the last time we did one of these because I'm, again, didn't do much reading over the past week.
00:06:13
Speaker
But I'm having a blast with it as well. It's the the first in Chloe Gong's new dystopian cyberpunk trilogy of YA novels. And am both obsessed with and terrified of the world she has created. i'm not going to lie. Because it's like virtual reality. And i am afraid that our AI bros are trying to get us into that reality. And I'm like, no, no, no I like to live on Earth. Thank you. Yeah.
00:06:46
Speaker
Yeah. Dystopian always, like, gets me creeped out. scares the shit out of me. And I feel like, yeah. Also, it's wild that like, I feel like for a long, for like a lot of years, like dystopian has been like, not as popular, but now it's coming back. And I don't want to think about the like socioeconomic implications of that.
00:07:05
Speaker
No, it's yeah, it's because whatever. Anyway, I won't get into it since you don't want to think about it. It's because we're in the bad place. so to The world ended in 2012 and we're all in hell.
00:07:17
Speaker
That's my conspiracy theory. Yeah.
00:07:22
Speaker
I'll believe that. I wish we had a little bit more magical powers. I feel like hell should give us more like. You would think. i should be able to fly on my own because like I said, I'm flying down to North Carolina today. They've delayed my flight twice so far.
00:07:37
Speaker
It's bummer. I can't believe this is the final episode of season one. ah You and Addy, are not getting much of a break between seasons because we are recording season two's episode tomorrow.
00:07:52
Speaker
we won't tell you what it's about are what the theme of the season is because we are doing a grand reveal on our Instagram. Follow us at the right way of life pod on Insta to keep up to date with everything.
00:08:04
Speaker
um But we're so stoked to close out the season with such a bang. um You'll know this by the end, like we we did our debrief on our conversation with our guests of today, who is the one and only V.E. Schwab.
00:08:18
Speaker
um We had such a wonderful conversation. I am so excited to share it with everyone.
V.E. Schwab on Creative Integrity
00:08:23
Speaker
um So do we want to go ahead and read v ease bio? Yeah. Schwab was born in California, raised in Tennessee, and currently splits her time between Denver, Colorado and Edinburgh, Scotland.
00:08:33
Speaker
She got her undergraduate degree in book design at Washington University in St. Louis and her master's in depiction of monstrosity in medieval art at the University of Edinburgh. In addition to writing books and hosting a podcast called No Right Way, she spends her time on tour or plagued by the knowledge of how short life is In terms of the number of books she'll be able to read and obsessively saving TikTok videos for recipes she'll probably never make.
00:08:57
Speaker
She also likes to run and cycle and swim, though not at all at once. Incredible. All right, let's go. l yeah. Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of the Right Way of Life podcast.
00:09:11
Speaker
I'm Karis and I am here with Addie and our fabulous guest today, the one and only Schwab, who has just released Barrier Bones in the Midnight Soil, which I am a quarter of the way through and having the best of times with it.
00:09:28
Speaker
I'm so glad. it is genuinely such a delight. I started it and I was like, oh yeah. like the vibe is in and i'm feeling it the vibes are there the vibes and bodies are on point um so we're here to talk about sort of um a wrap-up to our our first season which has been all about the basics of craft and we would love to talk with v. schwapp specifically about like craft and how you continue to maintain craft in the face of outside pressures, whether that's success or publisher, reader, whatever. Yeah. know We've got some questions just to sort of dig in.
00:10:05
Speaker
Oh, I'm so excited. This is like, I could talk about k craft all day, every day. Like, it's all I want to talk about. People are like, let's talk about the plot of your book. And I was like, what if instead we talk about how books get made?
00:10:17
Speaker
No, that's so real. And I know I read your newsletters, like religiously, they're one of my faves. um And I know that you ah you do often talk about like you're you open up about sort of, you know, what it's like to how to maintain the integrity of your craft in the face of um other pressures so that's kind of my first question is just like what does craft integrity mean to you like what does it mean to have the books that you want to write and yeah and stick with that idea I think it comes from like, you need to have a sense of what you want to accomplish as a writer, because that's really different. Like some writers, the thing they want to accomplish is broadest appeal.
00:10:58
Speaker
And if your your job, if you're like, what I want is I want to have the broadest audience appeal possible, then your craft integrity is going to look different from someone who's like, I want to write to a very specific audience and everyone else who gets it, that's a bonus.
00:11:14
Speaker
Also, it's like... What's the most important thing to you? For me, I like to set myself narrative and structural structurally ambitious goals. And that's kind of like how I play on my own part, regardless of whatever story I'm telling.
00:11:29
Speaker
I think I would be lying if I said, oh, my books are for me and nobody else. Of course yeah I'm aware i have 25 books. I'm aware of audience, but I know that the most important thing to me is ambition.
00:11:40
Speaker
and what I mean by that is not the sales ambition so much as the creative and narrative ambition. And what that means is very, very early on in my own career, i told my editor, Miriam, who's my tour editor has been with me since
Schwab's Career Struggles and Success with 'Vicious'
00:11:51
Speaker
vicious.
00:11:51
Speaker
I said, i never want to write the same book twice. That's the rule, right? No sequel should ever simply be an extension of the first book. I don't ever want to just like find a road and stay on the road. I need to try and push myself in new directions every time.
00:12:08
Speaker
And she has held me to that, even when it's uncomfortable. I have rewritten two books over the course of my entire career. One was my debut novel because it a debut novel. And one was Vengeful, which was the sequel to Vicious. And the reason I had to write the sequel to Vicious again was not because the sequel I wrote was a bad book, but because it only succeeded as a sequel.
00:12:30
Speaker
And my editor came to me and she was like, this is a really good book for your existing audience. But you have told me that you have always wanted to challenge yourself in new ways and break new ground with every book, regardless of whether it's a standalone or a series.
00:12:46
Speaker
So I'm asking you, which is more important to you now? And so like, it's not important to just hold yourself accountable to whatever your goals are, whatever your definition of creative integrity is.
00:12:57
Speaker
But it's important to like have the people helping you hold you accountable too, because i am now at a point in my career success wise, where it would be very easy to not be held accountable. Wherein, ah you know, I'm constantly hearing, oh, you don't need as much editing or like, that's good enough. I never want to hear it good enough.
00:13:14
Speaker
Because good enough is the enemy of great. And so I want to push myself in the ways I can control. I can't control sales. I can't control the industry, but I can control what I put into the work.
00:13:25
Speaker
who This is so good for me to hear, I think, especially because i i come at everything with a lot of ambition. And obviously, like, sometimes that ambition, like, ah over the years of trying to get published, it has sort of morphed into the, like, got to get published, got to get that, like, successful sales. set And it's, like, a great reframe for me to be like, no, no, no.
00:13:47
Speaker
you can control the book and the shape it takes and the way it presents to the world and the story. Exactly. You can't control anything else. And so like sort of shifting my ambition into that.
00:13:58
Speaker
Well, it's like also you can couch it as disappointment, right? What is going to, like, if you write to an invisible audience and you try to write to publishing and you try to like guess and game,
00:14:10
Speaker
It can work or you've invested time and energy and you feel disappointed when it doesn't. But if you have written a book that you are genuinely proud of that accomplishes the the goals that you set out, then no matter how that book succeeds or doesn't succeed, you don't feel disappointed in the effort that you make.
00:14:28
Speaker
Right. So it's how like knowing that basically beyond the end of the book, very little is in your control. What you can control is how proud you are of the finished product. So I guess the question is like to sit with yourself and say, what makes me proud of my work? Is it sales? Is it sales?
00:14:46
Speaker
Is it structural accomplishment? Is it the one person who like gets it and I don't really need it if anybody else gets it? I try to, to be very frank, I have a bullseye mentality, meaning like I have a center nexus of what my definition of succeeding on a work is.
00:15:02
Speaker
And then I have it, I have, ah larger circles expanding outward from there. And so obviously like I want it to appeal to a very specific audience. I want somebody to get it.
00:15:13
Speaker
And then outside of that, maybe the next biggest circle is like, I want to achieve this kind of structural sleight of hand. And then the next biggest circle is like, I want it to then and be able to appeal to people who think they don't like X. And so, but I have to understand what the center point, if it achieves nothing else, what's the bullseye look like for me?
00:15:35
Speaker
Okay. No, that sorry. I'm just, that's so cool. My brain feels like it's rebooting a little bit. i okay. Yeah. Well, I just want to say also, it can feel really...
00:15:48
Speaker
easy for me to say that based on where I'm at in my career right now. And so it's really important to understand that like that has been a mentality that I had since Vicious, which was book number four.
00:16:00
Speaker
i My first novel was The Near Witch and then I had The Archive and The Unbound and The Archive and The Unbound was supposed to be a trilogy. It got canceled. Like I broke up with my first publisher. Everything was going badly.
00:16:11
Speaker
And for those first three books, i I was young and in publishing and definitely trying to write what I thought people would read. And it wasn't until Vicious, which was essentially supposed to be a little bit of an F you to the entire game, where I was like, fine, let's take all of the other things out of the equation.
00:16:27
Speaker
What do I want to read? So I put myself at the bullseye and I was like, I'm going to write a book that I want to read. And here's what I want to do with it that will impress me. And then I did that. And because that's the book that then transitioned me into adult publishing, I then applied that rule for everything going forward. Okay, what do I want to read?
00:16:47
Speaker
What do I want to accomplish, regardless of whether this has one reader or a million readers? Yeah. And I think um
00:16:57
Speaker
i think that's a really like powerful... story to have and just genuinely appreciate like I don't I know i don't know I was gonna get into something else but like no no it's okay go is I you this is 25 books yeah and you didn't break out with your first book and that's almost like comforting as a story to an aspiring writer to be like it you don't have to break out with book one like you can have
00:17:29
Speaker
Also, the vast majority don't. Like, what a weird pressure. I always joke like, so weird me like we're never like, oh, this is my doctor. He's never performed surgery before. I'm so excited. Like, no.
00:17:42
Speaker
right like you were hating that Also, if you think about it, your first published book should be the worst thing you ever published. And that's a really weird paradox to think about. but you should always be improving. And it's not a matter of looking back on your past work with regret, but you should always look on it as like, for the vast, vast majority of writers, your career will be made of a body of work, not a single title.
00:18:07
Speaker
So no one title has the power. Like the thing I always tell people is like, just keep writing books because if the book you're working on does well, you need another book. If the book you're working on doesn't do well, you need another book. The reason I survived at the really big dips of my career is because I had another book because when I broke with Disney, my first publisher,
00:18:28
Speaker
I had two things happen simultaneously. I had been working on Vicious, which sold for a penny and a prayer, could not keep the lights on because Tor even did not think that book was going to do well, but they were excited to see what I did next.
00:18:40
Speaker
yeah And then at the same time, I did a work for hire job for Scholastic. And for those who listening who don't know, Work for Hire is essentially a package deal where a publisher comes to you and says, we have an empty spot in our market. We need you to fill. It's more of a tailor-made situation.
00:18:55
Speaker
You're still writing it. You can find ways to inject your voice, but it's the equivalent of the day job of writing. And at Scholastic came to me, I had said, I'm never writing middle grade. I'm never writing like...
00:19:07
Speaker
uh what did I say angels and i'm never writing illness and they came to me they're like could you write a guardian angel series about I'm like the first book is about a girl whose brother has cancer And I was like, you know, my initial inclination was like, of course not. And here I am though, I'm like 25.
00:19:23
Speaker
I want to stay in this game. And I basically, I countered with Scholastic and was like, here's the version of it that I feel like I can tell. Let me re-envision it a little bit so that it feeds you. It also feeds me.
00:19:34
Speaker
And the combination of Vicious, which was an adult, and the guard the Everyday Angel books, which were in middle grade, Those are what allowed me to financially afford to keep writing. But I was just continually writing more books.
00:19:46
Speaker
Addie LaRue is my twentieth Like my first book to hit the New York times list for ah a single minute was gathering a shadows, which was number nine. And like, i it's so
Financial Struggles and Creative Freedom
00:19:57
Speaker
important. I want all the listeners to know I have not put a different amount of love and care into any of my books.
00:20:03
Speaker
Like Addy took off because I think it's a good story at a good time in the right context, but I didn't put less love into vicious. We don't control The same way an actor doesn't control which roles their face gets associated with, which roles they become known for or popularized, we have to find ways to psychically divest a little bit from success as a marker of worth because this isn't a meritocracy. There are so many factors into what sells well.
00:20:33
Speaker
And I think we have to, I know we need the monetary aspect of it, but ah the monetary aspect aside of advances and royalties, we have to find a way to separate our sense of self-worth from the number of copies of a work being sold.
00:20:48
Speaker
he And that's really hard. I know, like, I haven't even sold a book yet and I'm already worried. Sure. 10 steps in advance. And you'll be worried. You'll be worried if you get a small advance. You'll be worried if you get a big advance.
00:21:01
Speaker
I didn't get a big advance until, like, 12, 13 books in. So I actually had like, in retrospect, I'm really grateful because what it meant in retrospect was the stakes on me were so low that I had a level of creative freedom a lot of my colleagues didn't have.
00:21:18
Speaker
Because literally they were like, well, what do we care? We paid her not a living wage, right? We paid her five, 10 grand, which is still money. It's money, money, money. But like, you know, when you're getting 10 grand and someone else is getting half a million, they're going to let the person with 10 grand actually do what they want to do creatively because they they're not banking on you. And when no one's banking on you, you discover one, creative freedom and two, the power of royalties because you stay in the black.
00:21:47
Speaker
And then that... it allows you with each book to get weirder and bolder and to avoid being cornered by publishing and saying, here's what you write now. Yeah.
00:21:58
Speaker
And do you think the fact that you had that, um, the smaller advances and more creative freedom early on, like allowed you to then maintain creative freedom as potentially? I think so.
00:22:11
Speaker
I think so. Like, I don't want to glorify it in that, like, People are always like, oh my God, you're so prolific. I'm like i'm prolific because for five years straight, i there was the only way to pay bills. The only way I was ever going to make ends meet and stay in the game was by diversification of my portfolio, by doing middle grade, YA, and adult at a pace, even if I wasn't desiring that pace.
00:22:32
Speaker
But yeah, the lower stakes... early on allowed me to avoid being cordured later because I had set up, if you look at my first 10 books, like they're so wildly different because nobody cared. So I was just writing whatever I wanted to write.
00:22:47
Speaker
And now I get to, um, lean into the weirdness. Like Gallant, my 21st book, never gets published as somebody's debut. it is It is genre defying on purpose. it doesn't It's not middle grade YA or adult. It has illustrations. It's about a 14 year old girl and death. like It doesn't get published as a debut, but I was able to leverage the breadth of my work at that point.
00:23:10
Speaker
And I think in a way that a lot of my friends have had a harder time being like, I want to write something in a different quadrant because they've spent their whole career being pushed into one of those where I'm like, I don't know.
00:23:22
Speaker
I guess it'll have magic, but otherwise who knows? You're like, what's a quadrant? I don't know. Exactly. Why touch one quadrant when I can have all four of them? Yeah. And I think that's so, it's the kind of thing where like the, like publishing careers are so, you can't plan for it.
00:23:39
Speaker
No. You can't like, it's almost like alchemical what's going to happen whatever. And there's no pattern, like there's no pattern. And I think, you know, you can, if you can grass is greener it, or you can like be like, ideally I would have this model. Look, 22 year old me would have taken a six figure advance in him in a heartbeat, like, because it would have made it easier to keep the job.
00:24:03
Speaker
But at the same time, a six figure advance comes with so much pressure. And it's one of the reasons that the mortality rate in publishing is like five years, because it's so hard once you,
00:24:15
Speaker
don't get into the black. If you stay in the red, it becomes a psychology game as well as a financial game. And so I don't think that there's one way to do it. I don't think that there's a hundred ways to do it. I have yet to meet someone who's had the exact same road that I have. But what I will say is that the the psychic struggles, the mental struggles are universal. And that's one of the reasons I have the newsletter is to let somebody know whether they're at the first book of their career or the 20th. Like,
00:24:43
Speaker
It's still you versus blank page. It's still you versus yourself. It's still the same creative hurdles. If anything, I find that the creative hurdles get a little harder as the room gets bigger.
00:24:56
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And how do you sort of... i guess, like, um both mentally and craft wise, like, how do you psych yourself up to, like...
00:25:10
Speaker
be the person who can overcome those hurdles, right? to like I mean... Are there ever moments when you're like, okay, this is, you know, I'm going to write toxic lesbian vampires and someone in the room is like, don't know, man.
00:25:22
Speaker
every day. How do you stick your guns almost? like I mean, the problem is I'm also the one in the room going, I don't know, man. like it's I am my biggest... like I'm not my biggest champion. I'm my biggest critic, which I think on the one hand pushes me really hard. But on the other hand, it makes like the act of first drafting such an unpleasant white knuckling experience because the whole time I was writing Barrier Bones, all I was thinking is it's not going to be as epic as Addy.
00:25:49
Speaker
It's not going to be as big as Addy. People aren't going to love it. Like Addy, what are you doing? How do you make it bigger? A lot of these voices, which are not helpful to have, in a first draft situation where you're truly just already fighting to get words done on paper. um A lot of what I do is a coping mechanism. And I talk about this a lot in the newsletters. Like I recognize that I have extreme anxiety and extreme neuroses and that my desire is to quit.
00:26:13
Speaker
And so everything that I have figured out for myself in terms of creative process it has been a coping mechanism to prevent that from happening. And so a lot of what I do is I do a huge amount of planning before I start writing to convince myself that I have a good enough story so that I don't abandon it along the way. And then I probably spend about a year outlining and brainstorming and making a skeleton so that I have essentially a roadmap to work on so that I can't bail.
00:26:40
Speaker
Because I have an ending and I just have to get there. Right. And then I, I'm cutting down the work into the smallest bites possible when I'm struggling, especially at the beginning of a project, I'm talking 10 minute creative sprints.
00:26:51
Speaker
You can do anything for 10 minutes. And it is amazing how you can trick your brain into 15 minutes and then 20 and then 30. Cause I think that starting is the hardest part. And I don't mean starting the book. I mean, every day.
00:27:04
Speaker
every day starting feels like standing at the edge of a diving board and just being like or I could just not like I don't have to get wet today you know yeah that's such a perfect but also so I break it down I make it tiny I make it like we're not writing a chapter we're not writing a scene can I figure out a line of dialogue for this scene that excites me and I can kind of grow organically outward in each direction from the center of the scene um I'm a I'm a Oh, poetry background. So for me, like a lot can hinge on the beauty of a single sentence. And so if I can find a sentence for the scene, even if it's not the first or the last or the most important, but one that I feel is nice enough that I can scaffold around it.
00:27:50
Speaker
So I think it's about figuring out how to hack. your brain to work to your advantage. I'm very good at outlining. And so what I've discovered is that like outlining is exactly like drafting, but without the pressure because an outline is not the final words, but it's the form.
00:28:08
Speaker
So I will start outlining a scene. And then what will happen is if I spend enough time just building the scene at some point, I will just simply slide into the drafting of it.
00:28:20
Speaker
Yeah. Like you, you almost like, you you're drafting before you even realize you're drafting. Exactly. and Because it's like no pressure. Yeah. And for me, I feel very like, because of the size of my audience now, I am very aware of the fact that like the words I'm writing are potentially the words other people will be reading. They'll be the words that they're quoting. They'll be the words they're tattooing. That's a lot of like psychic pressure to build up when you're trying to make a sentence, right?
00:28:46
Speaker
yeah I still remember when I was writing Bones, I would start getting panicked if I felt like I had written too many chapters without a highly quotable line. Oh. And then I would get in my own head, like, you haven't written anything save, like, saveable as in somebody else would save this quote.
00:29:03
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And then those Kindle will tell you how many people are saving each individual quote. That's so much like mental. That's why I say it's the one thing that's gotten harder book over book. Like my coping strategies have gotten easier because I've learned so many of them, but I just feel like I'm just unfortunately a font of personal wisdom that hopefully helps other people because I've gone through it so many times.
00:29:25
Speaker
yeah It's like, not that I know what I'm doing. It's just, I have more empirical data, but, ah but that's the thing is like coming off the, the wake of a book like Addy or Shades of Magic or Vicious, even where I know how important it is to people, the the road feels like it's getting short because I feel like there's just so much pressure. and And everyone has a critic in their head. And my critic says one sentence over and over again every day of my life. And it they will say your last book was better.
00:29:52
Speaker
oh And that's the thing I live in fear of and the thing that pushes me. But it's like, I'm not my biggest i'm not my biggest fan. I'm my big critic. Yeah, that's unfortunately so very relatable, as all of my friends can attend.
00:30:08
Speaker
Yeah. Speaking of the, you mentioned the five-year mortality rate in publishing. So I did have a question like sort of around that, which is you recently passed the half-year life.
00:30:19
Speaker
Yeah. Like you spent over like half your life and as a professional publishing person, which is massive. Congratulations. and Thank you. Thank you.
00:30:29
Speaker
But do you have any advice for other people who are looking to like, maybe not that specific mark, but just like have longevity? and Yeah.
Sustaining a Writing Career
00:30:37
Speaker
I mean, like I said before, you have got to keep writing.
00:30:41
Speaker
And you'll watch this happen with like, authors will come out the gate and have a big success and it'll stop them in their tracks. Or authors authors will come out the gate and they'll have wanted a big success and not have a big success and it'll stop them in their tracks.
00:30:52
Speaker
There are so many ways to stall yourself out. And I think that like everything that I did was in the interest of continuing to write. And so what that means is like, I am a I'm a little bit militant about this, which I admit, but like, I'm a voracious reader.
00:31:10
Speaker
And I believe that one of the, worst things that happens is when authors stop reading. And I will encounter authors of very large caliber and I'll be like, what are you reading? And they're like, oh, I don't have time to read.
00:31:21
Speaker
And I'm like, but you have time to write. and I'm like, what if you only have time for one of those things? I think it should be reading. Because like, where's the creative pollination coming from? Like I can pick up a book and I can tell when the author only reads the genre that they write because it feels like it's a diminishing road of of ideas. And So one of the biggest pieces of advice I give to people is like, don't stop writing, but especially don't stop reading.
00:31:46
Speaker
Don't stop reading so far outside of your comfort zone. Like I am a fantasy author. I do not get ideas from fantasy novels. I get ideas from memoir and poetry and nonfiction and TV shows. Like you don't get the ideas from the same soil that you are actively trying to grow things in.
00:32:06
Speaker
You have to, nurture yourself from elsewhere. And so I think to be a, you don't need a degree, You don't need to go spend money on it, get a library card and a TV subscription and consume like it is your actual job because it is. And that's how you're going to keep yourself continually creatively filled so that you can come up with new ideas so that you can work on new things. And it will also help improve your sense of story, your sense of narrative, what works and what doesn't. Like that's the best education you can give yourself is to be a curious consumer of content.
00:32:43
Speaker
Yeah, I know ah half the time if I'm like, oh, I want to write, but actually I don't want to write. So I'll just put on. Sorry if you can hear. this yeah okay um I'll just put on like the summer I turned pretty, which is yeah. And then two seconds in, I'm like, no, I'm sorry, I have to write my story. And I exactly close ah close the TV and I go and I like type for a while. And it's so like invigorating. Yeah.
00:33:07
Speaker
Yeah, find the art that makes you want to make art. And like, I remember when I walked out of when I saw Sinners for the first time, and I was like, Oh, I left that theater. And I was like, my fingertips were itching.
00:33:18
Speaker
yeah Right? I was so creatively enervated. And I think that sometimes we as our careers begin, especially become a little too mentally self absorbed with our own work.
00:33:31
Speaker
and our and think of o ourselves as like a universe. And I'm like, no, we're in conversation with everything that is coming into it. And so I think when in doubt, go find something good to eat.
00:33:43
Speaker
And by that, I mean, go go nourish your creative self and see what happens. Because I remember like reading this memoir by Hope Yarin 10 years ago called lab girl and she's like combines botany and mental health and something she said about a seed and like how it you know can wait 10,000 years to sprout and then once it does there's only one chance right like just not like that makes me think stuff about like deep sea documentary anything anything you just never know um what is going to be like it's not even the spark because sometimes we think about ideas as like
00:34:20
Speaker
one thing. And I'm like, ideas are ingredients in a complicated meal. You might need 20 of them. Like 20 ingredients go into a story, not one. And so you just have to constantly be like collecting.
00:34:32
Speaker
And then not all of those ingredients are going to go into the meal that you are actively preparing, but you just never know when they are going to find their place. Yeah, I love that. I love that. it Like the ingredients metaphor.
00:34:45
Speaker
um I know we're coming toward the end of our time. So I think, Adi, I'm going to pass it to you for your question. And that can be our final. Sorry, I'm so verbose. We can go on over too if you need to.
00:34:56
Speaker
No, this has been fantastic. I think my question oddly sort of encompasses what we've what you've been talking about this whole podcast, which is Like, how do you handle finding joy in your writing when it becomes your job?
Maintaining Joy in Writing
00:35:09
Speaker
Like, do you ever worry that your craft will suffer because you've monetized it? Oh, that's such a good question. It's something I think about a lot, not in terms of my craft suffering, but in terms of my happiness suffering. Because, you know, people often ask, like, what advice would you go give back to your younger self? And I'm like, honestly, it would be to enjoy the time that she was writing because at the time I was so impatient to get published. And what I didn't realize then was that it was the last time that my work would ever belong to me.
00:35:36
Speaker
It was the last time that it would ever be just me and my work. And the fact is like writing was my escape for the first 19 years of my life. And now at 38, writing will never be my escape.
00:35:49
Speaker
It is my job. It can't have that role in my life anymore. It can be so important to me. And so I think it's less about the craft suffering and more about the way that I keep it novel. Like it's like shaking up an old marriage. Right. So like, I think so much of what I do in terms of creating new structural gambits or rules for myself, um, trying new things like bury our bones is three novellas in a trench coat. Right. I wrote it as three separate women's stories and I wrote each one in its entirety.
00:36:16
Speaker
ah from beginning to end and then braided them back together. So stuff like that where it's not even really for the reader. It's like ways that I keep storytelling exciting for me. So I'll like set a challenge for myself. Can I tell this entire story without doing X?
00:36:31
Speaker
Or can I sell this entire person's point of view and say, what can I write an entire vampire novel where the word vampire is used one time? You know? so like you can, you can make it fun and you can find new ways to play.
00:36:44
Speaker
I guess that's the thing that I talk with my agent about a lot. It's like, finding the play because when it's work, it feels like there's no room for play because anytime I'm just playing is at the cost of my occupation. Right.
00:36:56
Speaker
So it's hard to justify. It's also as a self-employed person. it's really psychic trick tricky because you're like, I should be working right now. I have this feeling like if I am awake and there's a time in the day and I'm not actively writing that I am somehow quote wasting my time because, but, but it's like turns me into a human doing instead of a human being. Right. And so I think it's a lot about figuring out how to be playful with yourself and your work and your art.
00:37:25
Speaker
um And I think that's kind of the only solution that I've found so far. that makes sense well I think part of it is maybe not having a creative comfort zone like because I've never really let myself linger in one space long enough to have a creative comfort zone it keeps the stakes up for me because I'm constantly playing a game of like reinvention or or stretching in new quarters I think the other thing you learn is that like um growth is not linear meaning like vertical it's like with each book now i have to grow in new directions that are not just up like can I
00:37:59
Speaker
grow out as well? Can i challenge the boundaries of a genre or of an audience or of a theme? Things like that. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And yeah also what a lot of wisdom within that because, yeah, it's it's difficult when the thing that you used as your escape yeah you are is now your work and you have to have to figure out.
00:38:23
Speaker
i love I love the analogy that you said about it being a marriage, right? So like the relationship isn't how it was when you were in that honeymoon phase, but it doesn't mean that it's necessarily like harmful or, you know, that you have to break up with it or that you need to get divorce. Exactly. you For the stage of life that you're in at that moment.
00:38:42
Speaker
Exactly. It's like, I think that it's about like reinventing and keeping it novel and saying like, okay, what if we need a change of scenery or maybe we need, You know, we need role play it, right? mean We need to do something. What can we do here to like, to change it up, to make it fun?
00:39:01
Speaker
where Where can we take the pressure off? Can I like blindfold my ego in a way, right? can i Can I find a way to, you know, invigorate myself toward my work?
00:39:13
Speaker
And I don't think I've ever felt bored by my work, but I do get really daunted. I get really daunted by like this, the, the stakes. Cause there used to be so few and now it feels like there are so many.
00:39:27
Speaker
Blindfold my ego. I need that like tattooed on the inside of my eyelids. just It's hard. It's like, where's your ego? No, don't, yeah no. And also I want to be really frank. I, I fail out a lot of days. Like there are days when I opened the document and I, I just like can't get past the first hurdle of, of getting into the work.
00:39:47
Speaker
Luckily, like I am at my heart, somebody who loves combining words into phrases and phrases into sentences and sentences into paragraphs. And so what it usually comes down to is I just need to like whet my appetite with a couple of sentences that excite me.
00:40:02
Speaker
But some days I don't get it. Some days i get in my own way enough and I go and I do something else. Yeah, but it's um it's accumulation of the days that work and sometimes the days that don't work as much, not the individual. one i see I'm so bad at that. i I am always so zoomed in. And one of my friends, Laura, an author, she says, she's like, you keep acting like it's a day-to-day thing instead of it being the work accumulated over weeks and months and years. Like one day does not actually matter in the grand scheme of your work.
00:40:34
Speaker
you are putting so much pressure on every single day. And she's right. I wake up and it feels like I've set a blank slate instead of, and so that day is either an absolute success or an absolute failure, but depending on how it tallies to the whole.
00:40:48
Speaker
When the truth is like, it's about patterns. It's about the longterm. Yeah. That's okay. Thank you so much. You're so welcome. I got chills at points. I was like, whoa, everything.
00:41:01
Speaker
it just resonated so much. Thank you so much. I'm glad. Being here and giving us your time and your sharing with us. We're so excited. It's my pleasure. And it's nice to be able to like,
00:41:12
Speaker
It's nice to feel like when you're struggling that maybe there's something that you can glean from it to help other people. And even if it feels like you can't really help yourself, like I'm in a bit of a window right now where like I'm struggling to get out of my own way. And so even if I can't get out of my own way this week, maybe I can help somebody else get out of their own way.
00:41:29
Speaker
I think, I think that's so fair. And like, I feel like, i don't know. I just feel like reinvigorated to right now. Good, good. I'm so glad. Thank you for having me on.
00:41:40
Speaker
yeah How are you feeling? You started before it started recording. Oh, no. Yeah. you You see, this is why you do it. care How are you feeling? Dude,
00:41:52
Speaker
i ah need to process for like a year, I think, because I don't know, man, I just so many points during that conversations. I like got chills where it was like I was resonating or what she was saying was landing so hard.
00:42:08
Speaker
And I was like,
00:42:11
Speaker
I needed to hear this. And um I don't know. I just I find it so lovely that she is generous with her time and experience and story.
00:42:23
Speaker
um And I find that like I get a lot out of what she share shares. And I'm so grateful. And I, there's so many points where I was like trying to like take a mental like bookmark to the point. So i was like, okay, mention this in the outro.
00:42:39
Speaker
The only one that actually worked is the final one, which was the the part about reading, ah which like, again, I remember, I remember I had a conversation with an author once who was like, no, authors don't read. Like none of my author friends read. Like we don't have time. And I was so sad because like reading is how I got into writing. like In fact, the other – or a couple weeks ago, I was like, if I have to get – like, if writing burns me out and I have to give up writing, like, does that mean I lose reading too?
00:43:07
Speaker
and I was just devastated at the thought. And so I remember – I can't remember if it was a newsletter or a social post or something, but I saw and I was like, oh, my God, okay, if you 12 years, like, over 100 books a year, like, we're good.
00:43:20
Speaker
Right. Yeah. We can do it. And it's just – it is so important, like, to read and to read widely because – I don't know. And I have, like, I have a plethora of small ideas. I just keep this running notes doc that's, like, random concepts or, like, a situation or, like, you know, male ex-boyfriend's sister.
00:43:44
Speaker
Because we're sapphic in this house. You know, like... yeah And they don't they're not full stories, but they eventually, like, I can combine them and they eventually do grow into something like the ingredients.
00:43:56
Speaker
Yeah, like she said, like, you know, you have you have little tiny ideas that come to you in various ways and sometimes they don't add up to, like, a full story, right? But you add them into into the creative soup that you're writing.
00:44:10
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, that's great. Soup. I always forget that soup is an option for a food metaphor. But that does make more sense than like a cake because it chemistry. Anyway. um I don't even like soup, but soup.
00:44:23
Speaker
I don't like soup either. Oh my God. People always act like absolutely insane when I say I don't like soup. Wait, Karis, did we finally at the end of season one find something that we both dislike that's weird?
00:44:36
Speaker
my God. Amazing. This season, guys, we did it. We did the season. We have a creative narrative arc, folks. And yeah, that brings me to this is our final episode of season one.
00:44:50
Speaker
How are you feeling? I'm feeling good, man. what ah What a way to end on a high. I mean, v e Schwab is probably like, is my like writing idol.
00:45:02
Speaker
i was trying so hard not to fangirl during the conversation. Thank God, Karis, that you were like, Addie, you have a question, and I did have a question, but I would have just sat there in awe and been like, please keep talking. This is amazing. No, I mean, absolutely same, but there's sometimes I'm like, think...
00:45:20
Speaker
You have to like, sometimes, yeah. um You have to be an adult and actually hold hold hold an interview. Yeah, you're much you're much better at that. I can just be here like, I'm tech support.
00:45:33
Speaker
This is an amazing conversation. No, i think I think this season overall, I mean, we talked about this last episode, right, on Reflections, has just been
Reflecting on Podcast's First Season
00:45:41
Speaker
so fantastic. And just to end it on this note has just been a beautiful, beautiful,
00:45:47
Speaker
It was a culmination of, um you know, when we started coming up with authors that we wanted to interview, ah like V.A. Schwab was one of the first ones. And we were like, okay, let's reach out to her publicist. Yeah, shoot for the stars. Yeah, and then we were i was genuinely shocked that, like, it worked out because I was like, what do you mean? Like, what do you mean?
00:46:12
Speaker
But, yeah. It's been a truly epic season of interviews. We had the incredible Martha Brokenbro to break down what is craft.
00:46:23
Speaker
We got to speak with Emily XR Pan about voice. MK Lob came and chatted about theme with us, which was so incredible because theme has always escaped me. Hannah Kaner and plot. I swear that was a masterclass.
00:46:38
Speaker
Amna Kramny and I spoke about genre and it was just like the most delightful conversation. Naseem Jamnya and audience, i that was like a whole MFA. um Kara Kennedy, we talked about setting.
00:46:51
Speaker
We talked about character with Camilla Cole, which I had such a fun time doing. And Jen Ferguson on stakes. And then Addy and I chatted through generative just with us.
00:47:03
Speaker
And then we've had some some other episodes just scattered throughout that were just me and Addy. yeah yeah what a wonderful season what a great way to start off a podcast yeah we did a good job and i'm so i'm just shocked that we were able to speak to these fantastic authors dude i know was like so boldly reaching out all these people like yeah sure let's talk to like this author that i've never spoken to on the internet before let's go
00:47:37
Speaker
And we did it. Just so grateful that they were willing to spend an hour with us chatting craft. Very generous. Very generous. And that we have our fantastic listeners who are also willing to spend an hour with us chatting craft.
00:47:49
Speaker
Every other week, baby. Yeah. yeah Yeah. Those are are incredible guests. It's been... Just, i'm I feel like I've learned so much, I feel like I'm going to have to re-listen to the episodes and take notes on what they all said, because i wasn't taking notes the first or second times I listened to the conversations.
00:48:10
Speaker
And... I really hope that if you listened to this episode or other episodes, we really hope you got something out of it. We really hope it brought you laughter at the shenanigans between me and Addie. We hope it brought you joy. We hope it brought you encouragement and comfort and wisdom and some craft tips.
00:48:30
Speaker
um And we hope you'll stick around for season two, which we will be announcing on Instagram shortly. yeah So follow us at the right way of life on Instagram. Yeah. Season two starting this fall.
00:48:42
Speaker
Yeah. Is that anything else we want to say before we log off for the month? I don't think so. stay safe.
00:48:54
Speaker
The world.
00:48:57
Speaker
Stay safe. i I just read I was about to say something and then I realized it's the favorite ending of a crime podcast that I listen to. Probably a lot of people say it. and yeah like Copyright infringement.
00:49:10
Speaker
Incredible. Okay. All right. Oh, I was about to be like, keep your pen sharpened, but nobody sharpens their pen. Sorry that i just like snorted on camera on podcast.
00:49:24
Speaker
You got to keep that in though. um Yeah, we'll see y'all soon for season two. um Shout us out if you ever want to hear and like talk to us about anything. You can message us on Instagram or anywhere, frankly.
00:49:39
Speaker
Yeah. Bye. Bye.