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275 Madelyn Postman | Memoir and Creative Non-Fiction Author
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Creative non-fiction author, Madelyn Postman is here to chat about her linked memoir anthology, which is going through a hybrid publishing process. We chat all about what that means, Madelyn's writing tips and experiences and how much writers love to procrastinate!
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Ooh, a spicy question. love it. Because the writing is sort of everything, right? Like you can fix plot holes, but if the writer there. So some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this. So it's kind of, it's kind of a gamble.
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast. On today's episode, I am joined by a memoir and creative nonfiction writer, climate consultant and
Discussion on 'Staring into the Sun'
00:00:24
Speaker
podcaster. It's Madeline Postman. Hello. Hello. Great to be here today.
00:00:28
Speaker
Thank you so much for coming on. Let's jump right in and talk about, um very excitingly, your your new book, Staring into the Sun, which is out on the 5th of May. ah What is it? Tell us about it.
00:00:41
Speaker
So it is a linked memoir and true stories of my Chinese American family, and it spans 1895 to 2015. It's a collection of nine stories and each story could be read independently as short stories. um But I think that the order in which they are in the book um will allow the readers to get the most out of the the um experience.
00:01:06
Speaker
Okay. Is it chronological or or is it ordered in such a way that that is not chronological, but you think is, is like you said, the best experience? It's not chronological. um i i guess we'll probably talk about the history of the writing a bit later. But um originally, i had so one story set in 2015. Then I went back to 1895 and then worked my way back up to the present. And in a way, it does start in the present, it goes back, and it it still follows that general arc. It's sort of a loop or I heard some fancy name for it, which I can't remember right now, but it's, if you imagine a sort of circle with an, with an overlap on it, it it does that.
00:01:45
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Yeah. And and it's a, it's a linked memoir. So am I right in thinking that that means that it's, it is sort of biographical, but of, of different people that, that have stories that sort of um weave within one another.
Book Structure and Research Process
00:02:01
Speaker
Yes. So the, the, the linking is between the memoir and the, it's historical narrative or creative nonfiction. So the whole, the whole description is it's a debut hybrid memoir, historical narrative, nonfiction short story collection. So there are four memoir chapters written in the first person that are my, my memoir. And then five chapters that are historical creative nonfiction. So they're the the stories of my family with as many facts as I could humanly find. And then, you know, filling in a bit of dialogue and things that I thought were plausible from other sources.
00:02:46
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Right. So yeah I imagine there was a pretty heavy research part of this, just kind of speaking with your family and like going through old things and stuff. Definitely. Yeah. So I actually started writing at the beginning of 2017 and I began by researching both sides of my family. So I'm American, as you can hear, with a weird transatlantic accent from being in the UK since 2000. And my mother's side is Chinese um and they've been in the US since about four or five generations. And then my father's side is from Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia. um with Jewish heritage, and they're actually more recent immigrants, generally, with my dad's dad coming over in 1903. I began researching both sides of my family. And that was initially on the Jewish side ah through a genealogist specialized in Polish Jewish genealogy.
00:03:42
Speaker
and then through also another genealogist on that side. um And then it's mostly Ancestry.com and Newspapers.com records with a lot of the research.
00:03:54
Speaker
And then there were also quite a few interviews with family and some sort of family friends. And that made up the bulk of the research ah together with some books like ah Jade Snow Wong's um fifth Chinese daughter, i think i think it's the right order um of her, of her, ah anyway, the right title for Jade Snow Wong's essentially autobiography or her memoir. That was a great, a great source because it was ah a Chinese woman ah born in in San Francisco Chinatown, similar age to my great grandmother. So sources like that were really fantastic to sort of um fill in some of the color along with the family stories.
00:04:39
Speaker
Okay. 2017, this has been in the works for a long time then.
Emotional Journey and Writing Process
00:04:43
Speaker
Yes. When you when you first started doing the family history stuff, was that, but was that because you knew you wanted to write these stories or was it more, did it start off as more of a curiosity?
00:04:54
Speaker
um So I started on the family research with an idea to write write the stories. So I wanted to really find out more. And then because I just love writing so much, I thought it would give a project where I could write and find out more about my family history at the same time. um and to find out more about general history. um And then another aspect was that my mother died when I was young and I wanted to sort of deal with that. And I thought if I forced myself to to write, um and that's in a way why it went back to the past, because I knew I would have to get back and and sort of deal with her story at some point.
00:05:33
Speaker
Oh, wow. This sounds like a ah pretty healthy and like enlightening experience for you, creating this book and researching it. It was. It was very multidimensional um in terms of that sort of a almost more so like cerebral research or you know yeah historical, um academic, maybe it's better than cerebral. um And even the interviews, sort of dealing with these really difficult conversations by framing them as an interview to do book book research.
00:06:01
Speaker
And it gave I guess I gave myself the permission and the people I spoke with um, gave that permission to talk about these things that I'd never asked about before. Yeah.
00:06:12
Speaker
I mean, it's, it's quite amazing because I think of writing is such a sort of personal process. And then to put for an author to put their writing out there, you're sort of, you leave so much of yourself on the page. It's a very vulnerable thing to do, even if you're writing fantasy or whatever it might be, there's still so much of you, but when it comes to memoir,
00:06:32
Speaker
there's like, obviously it's not like, like it's not subconsciously you it's, it's very actively and clearly you, is there a certain, like, did you, do you feel, does it feel scary with this book coming out knowing that you're kind of like putting so much of yourself out there?
00:06:47
Speaker
ah Definitely. I mean, I was thinking the other day, i feel like I'm just completely naked. like yeah my way i I have the book launch coming up. but I thought I could just like go there naked. It would be the same thing as people have but people reading my book. um yeah Because it's you know it is all out there. And it's sort of ironic that it was... um particularly around my mother's death. And I don't know how far I'll get into it or how much I can actually talk about it because I feel like I've written about it and I i still don't know how much I feel comfortable talking about it. um But having this topic that I never talked about and having it, you know, extremely public, um it it is a kind of a weird feeling, but um I'm also happy that I did it and feel like it's um sort of a necessary thing to do to get that story out there.
00:07:34
Speaker
Yeah, I imagine it will come when it when it comes out, when you speak to people who have read it, there'll be i imagine there'll be a catharsis, like ah a sort of setting free of yourself, knowing that that's out there and that you know that there's there's not really anything to hide in a way.
00:07:48
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, definitely the the writing of it was like that. And then particularly with her chapter, I know I have to sort of be careful because when I went through different rounds of editing, I got through a particular round and I just thought i wanted to to just like chuck the whole thing away and yeah stop. I was like, i'm going to start a new project based on the same people, but I'll make it, you know, I'll put time travel in there. And, you know, and then I realized, oh, I just need to sit with this and know that it's difficult. um And it was similar because there's actually an audio book as well. So it's been a similar process, you know, each stage of, um so I read the memoir chapters and a friend of mine who's an actor reads the non-memoir. So just, you know, sitting with her through the reading, through the audio editing, you know, I just have to say like, oh, this is a
00:08:35
Speaker
um I just need to be like gentle with myself, ah particularly for that chapter. Was this the first time that you'd written memoir or had you written other things in that vein before?
00:08:47
Speaker
So I started writing with different stories. me think. I guess I started writing this book, which was originally called 16 Stories because it was about both sides of the family. So it was myself and my brother, our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. And so from about 2017 to was doing the research and writing and And then around 2022, I started listening to different podcasts and doing more classes and just, I think, generally improving my writing. And I did at that point some flash and some short stories. And that's what eventually got it into the more of a short story format. And I think making each story stronger as well. so
00:09:37
Speaker
So I hadn't written a separate memoir to this before, but in the whole process, it was very iterative as you can tell. yeah There were different stories and I wrote sort of a, um, a, um, the words are skimming me right now, but, um, uh, it's a basically fictional short story flash piece about my great grandfather who appears in the book as well. Uh, speculative, that's the right word. um ok and And that actually was shortlisted in the um Oxford Flash Fiction Prize. So that was published a couple of years ago now. So just sort of like playing with the different subject matters and in different ways as well. um And there's another short story I wrote, which I'm...
00:10:20
Speaker
I'd like to base my novel on, which would be the second half of the family, um but in fictionalized form so I've got a bit more leeway and don't have to sort of footnote all the references, which I did do in Staring Into the Sun, which was lots of fun to do 20 pages of of end notes for that.
00:10:36
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. So it sounds like your kind of writing experience prior to this was working on short fiction and doing sort of these short snapshots somewhere between your own experiences and then creative nonfiction.
00:10:51
Speaker
Yes. I'd say really not prior. So this is, um, you know, it is my debut and I haven't written anything, um, full length before this. So I would say I started with this book and then during that process, um, broadened out to some shorter pieces.
00:11:07
Speaker
Okay.
Publishing Strategy and Platform Insights
00:11:08
Speaker
That's interesting. I, I saw online, um, you have a, a sub stack called the spark. Am I right in thinking that you, you, you've put some of this book on the sub stacks and excerpts of it.
00:11:20
Speaker
Yes. Um, actually the whole book, um, the whole book. Okay. Yes. Yeah. So i met someone called, um, Elena and Strother who's really brilliant and she's published both, um, traditionally and self-published and hybrid published.
00:11:33
Speaker
Uh, and she was talking about serialization on, on sub stack. So people do serialization in different ways. Some, write every day. That's what she did. um Just, you know, publish every day, no matter what. ah Some write sort of, you know, live and publish it as they go. And then they might go back and clean it up a bit and then publish it as a whole piece. um And then inspired by her, I thought, well, I'll It's basically written. um I've got the rights to publish it online because my publisher has the the paperback rights and the the print rights. And so so i just I did that. you know It was really to create more of an audience, um to engage with some readers. And I think I forgot to, well, I haven't quite figured out if people can still access it or not, but I'm not too concerned about it being out there um while also having the paid version out there. So I'm more concerned about, you know, AI and things like that sort of scraping it, but that's sort of hard to avoid anyway.
00:12:34
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So, so you kind of, did you, at what point did you meet Eleanor? Was it before you'd started writing it or was it, had you already started writing it and then you were like, oh, I could serialize this on Substack?
00:12:47
Speaker
I just, I met her after. So I met her ok probably last, I can't think of the timing, probably last, ah maybe last spring, like spring of 2025. And then I serialized it um over a certain number of weeks between August and December last year. So every Saturday I would publish, I sort of chopped it up. I think it was 22 maybe installments. So I just chopped it up um in terms of word count and and put it out there.
00:13:14
Speaker
Okay. Were you using, we were you already on Substack or did you literally create the Substack with that intention and then you kind of grown it out from there? ah So I got onto Substack around the summer of 2023 and i did, um I think it was 12 weeks of a weekly Substack and that was um reading recommendations, of writing tips and author interviews.
00:13:43
Speaker
and then updates on whatever I was doing. So I did that for about 12 weeks. And then i tend to sort of get into things that take time away from the main, the main thing. I just thought, well, I can't, you know, if i'm trying to pull this subset together every week, I don't really have time to write and do other things because i you know, work full time on top of all of this. So ah then I stopped. And then July, I,
00:14:07
Speaker
july twenty twenty four I think it was, um I started a monthly a author interview. I'm getting mixed up now. But anyway, at some point, i brought the author interviews in. maybe i i think I didn't have author interviews in the first round. That was it. And then I think July 2024, I started of the author interviews, which first they were written.
00:14:29
Speaker
And then i had the authors do a little soundbite and then I would kind of edit it together. And then I went to live ah interviews. So that's been going um every month since then.
00:14:40
Speaker
and then ah for the past few months, I've stopped that and I've just done ah an excerpt from the audio book. And I might get back to author interviews in the summer. um Again, I'm just wary of taking on too many things and not yeah getting the main things done. so yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Do you, what do you think of Substack as a place for authors? Because it start one when I first started this podcast, every, everyone in the writing kind of community and publishing was on Twitter, but that for various reasons is, has massively diminished. And now people are all over the place, you know, blue sky, Instagram. What do you think of Substack now that you've kind of used it, uh, quite extensively as a place for the kind of online writing community to to go to?
00:15:26
Speaker
I think it's ah it's a great place. i don't actually I do it more in sort of an outbound way. I don't actually spend that much time on Substack. But I think if you want to spend time there, um there's a lot a lot there. There's some really great Substacks that are often – so I used the platform to – it's my podcasting platform as well, which was really handy. So um I'll record the podcast. And then if you get it by email, you'll have a link to listen in the browser, or you can find it on all the regular podcast um ah platforms or not platforms, but you know, like um where you would normally listen to podcasts. And then um most people i would say have,
00:16:08
Speaker
it's more of a newsletter format and that might be any frequency that they choose. And I know, again, there's just some really excellent, um, subsects out there and there's a great community through the note, the notes app also.
00:16:20
Speaker
Um, so yeah it's a great place. Um, personally I use Instagram a lot more and then I'm, ah I'm on blue sky a little bit, but I think it just depends for me. It's more like having one platform and using that mostly. So yeah not trying to be across all the different platforms. And for me it's, it's Instagram.
00:16:37
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a better way of doing it is focusing on just one and building your kind of community there. um Let's change change lanes a bit here. ah Go back onto a bit more of your writing.
Future Writing Plans and Inspirations
00:16:51
Speaker
um So obviously this is your first book and this is um creative nonfiction.
00:16:57
Speaker
Are you, know, going forward as a writer, are you mainly focused on more of the nonfiction side or do you want to... work, ah you know, work in some fiction at some point.
00:17:08
Speaker
I definitely want to move to fiction. um it's, it's, I find it a lot more freeing, because I've like, I'm a little compulsive about, and you know, information. So when I'm working in nonfiction, I get really bogged down in getting the facts right. And which is, know, it's a good thing, but at the same time, like when I'm, um, especially through listening to the audio book, I'm going through and doing little edits and, And I come across something that I didn't put in the end notes on the back and like, I can't just let it go. I need to, you know, I need to put that in. And I find that very, um, it's like too much of an obligation really. So, so I think in terms of fiction, it will allow me to focus more on the craft and not worry about having every little fact sort of backed up. um with, yeah you know, a newspaper reference or something like that. So um yeah, definitely going toward fiction.
00:18:05
Speaker
Okay. And have you started writing and like, you know, trying out a few ideas within fiction or is that still kind of pending? Yep. So one of my short stories that I wrote during um a short story class I did with City Lit um in 2023, it's called Data Double. And it's about a um PR consultant who's a control freak and she basically loses um control of her identity and her assistant who's well-meaning um sets up an avatar, which is like a a data double for her boss and just creates all kinds of havoc essentially. so I'm taking that, that plot and, ah and then having a backstory of the half of my family who didn't get into staring into the sun. So the PR consultant has, will have this,
00:19:01
Speaker
Jewish genealogy and she'll start to do research as she's losing control of her identity. She wants to go back to the past to research her family, to get more of a sense of of herself. um But then when she does the research, she finds out that her name isn't the name she thought she had her her surname. And so again, that's, you know, just sort of pulls the rug out from beneath her. So that's the, so I've completely outlined that book and I've written maybe 20,000 words of it. Uh, and so that's what I want to go back to hopefully in the second half of this year. Um, seeing how, you know, how much time my, my current book takes up at that point.
00:19:39
Speaker
Okay, cool. That sounds really interesting. And, and like, uh, a sort of, um, obvious expansion and sort of growth from, from this book, which you've done all this research in.
00:19:50
Speaker
Yeah. It's it's a cool idea to kind of grow those themes into a cool nonfiction idea, yeah which would work perfectly with that. um Have you found, you know, mapping out and stuff, obviously without the referencing, which which you worry about, but do you feel like the the process is quite different when you're writing fiction or nonfiction or other than the notation, it's kind of the same?
00:20:12
Speaker
ah So I'd say that the overlap, so I i used, bounced back and forth between Save the Cat Writes a Novel and ah by um Jessica, I can't think of her last name, um and Story Genius by Lisa Krohn. Um, and it's funny as story genius says save the cat doesn't work. You know, none of these, um structural plotting devices work. Uh, but I find that using them in conjunction really helps because with story genius, it's about what's driving your character. And she calls it the third rail. and It's like this, um, this charge that goes,
00:20:50
Speaker
ah throughout your character and drives them and it's what they want to accomplish. So even in the, and and in Story Genius, she's got these scene cards where you're saying, what are the plot points?
00:21:03
Speaker
What are those driving? And then what are those sort of third rail underlying um progressions at the same time that are are going in parallel to that? So when I was rewriting um the chapters in Staring into the Sun, i used these scene cards to plot out every um every single a chapter.
00:21:26
Speaker
And I think that really helped. And I would have a sort of, I've i've then added to that. So... I would have a theme of ah like in the chapter called Gold Mountain about my great grandfather. There's a theme of twins. So it's him vacillating between wanting to stay in China and emigrating to America. So I added that to the um the scene card. for that. So I just say like, this is my theme twins, you know, bring it in as a, um, sort of in the language without being too heavy handed about it.
00:22:00
Speaker
So yeah, that was my, my device within staring into the sun. And I think that made it stronger from the first round when it was a bit of a, like an info dump and Hey, look at all this research I did, you know, just adding facts because I knew about them, but they weren't necessarily relevant. Um, so I think that that approach is, is very similar for, for fiction because I was writing, staring into the sun as if it were fiction. I wanted it to read like fiction.
00:22:24
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. But, but then you are using, you weren't using save the cat in the same, weren't implementing it in the same ways with the, with, with this previous one, as you are with, you would do with fiction.
00:22:36
Speaker
Correct. Yeah. Cause Save the Cat is the, of the overall arc of the whole book. And I think ah a short story is a little bit, you know, it's a bit short to do the whole Save the Cat. That's true. Yeah. All of the beats in there. Um, so I have mapped out, um, uh, so the working titles, i am gone for my next book. Uh, so I have mapped that all out, um, according to Save the Cat and then working with the scene cards for what I've written so far, um, to write each scene from Story Genius.
00:23:05
Speaker
Okay, that sounds great. It sounds like you've really found the kind of best of of both of those worlds that works for you and and and combine them together. yeah i Looking forward to to hearing more about that in the future. ah We are at the point in the episode where I ask you, Madeline, if you were snowed in at a cozy woodland cabin in the middle of nowhere, which book would you hope to have with you?
00:23:26
Speaker
ah So I've got it here. i haven't read it yet, but it's on my bookshelf. It's Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin. yeah, yeah, yeah. So I have not read much fantasy. It does it is fantasy category, right?
00:23:40
Speaker
I getting this absolutely. All right. Quintessential. um I haven't read much fantasy, and I thought if I'm snowed in a cabin, i will read this book and because it's been...
00:23:52
Speaker
So many people love it and maybe I would hate it, but I, you know, I have a sense that I would love it. And I just, it's quite thick, you know, just give myself the time to, um to sink in with it and to enjoy it.
00:24:04
Speaker
Yeah, oh absolutely. I mean, ah Jamie Cohen, literary agent was on just the other day and he picked, he's a huge fantasy guy and of all the fantasy he's read, he picked the Earthsea sequence as well. And yeah, I mean, it's, Ursula Le Guin is one of, in my opinion, one of the greatest writers of all time. She's just so good. Everything she's written is just a work of, a work of genius, I think. Yeah. And, uh,
00:24:27
Speaker
I'm excited for you that you haven't read that and you get to experience Earthsea and Ursula. Have you read Ursula Le Guin before? Would this be your first? Yeah, it'd be the first one. yeah Okay. Yeah. She's got some incredible. The one for me is The Left Hand of Darkness. Okay. Like blew my mind, but just a fantastic, a fantastic writer. And yeah, i'm I'm excited that you've picked that and excited that you will be um reading that at some point soon. When I get to the cabin. Yes, exactly. Yeah. You're just waiting now. Yeah.
00:24:57
Speaker
I'll send a car around.
Episode Conclusion
00:24:58
Speaker
Um, uh, next up, we are going to chat a bit more about the publishing side of things, working with a hybrid publisher submission and everything that led to that that leads up to publication that will all be in the extended episode available on patreon.com forward slash right and wrong.
00:25:19
Speaker
It's like a whole cleaning service set up just so that people don't have to write. Like they'll go and clean your house so they don't have to write. yeah yeah, yeah. That makes sense. At least at least at least writers are making ah their procrastination productive. Yes, exactly. Perfect. Okay, well, that's that's great. um And it's been so ah so great chatting with you. We're at the end of the episode now. Thank you so much, Madeline, for coming on and telling us all about your your debut book, Staring Into the Sun. um It's been so interesting hearing about your journey and hearing everything about 1016 and the kind of the new emergent hybrid publishers. um
00:25:54
Speaker
Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you, Jamie. That was really, really fun. And for anyone listening, if you want to keep up with what Madeline's doing, you can find ah her substack, the spark at madelinepostman.substack.com. You can find her on Instagram at Madeline Postman and she has a website madelinepostman.com.
00:26:13
Speaker
Staring into the Sun is out May 5th in the US s and the UK. And to support this podcast, like, follow and subscribe. Join the Patreon for ad-free extended episodes and check out my other podcast, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes.
00:26:24
Speaker
Thanks again, Madeline. Thanks to everyone listening. We will catch you on the next episode.