Latest / Story Magic / 77 - Plot + character in the crime/thriller genre with Marybeth Whalen

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77 - Plot + character in the crime/thriller genre with Marybeth Whalen · Story Magic

• 2:28
  Emily: Hey, writers.
• 2:28
  Emily: Welcome back to Story magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.
• 2:32
  Rachel: I'm Rachel.
• 2:33
  Emily: And I'm Emily.
• 2:34
  Rachel: And today we are going to talk so many things.
• 2:37
  Rachel: Plot, character, crime, thriller, everything genre, with our very special guest, Mary Beth Whelan.
• 2:45
  Rachel: Thank you so much for joining us.
• 2:47
  Marybeth Whalen: Thank you for having me.
• 2:48
  Marybeth Whalen: I'm excited to be here.
• 2:49
  Rachel: Yay. Awesome.
• 2:51
  Rachel: Thank you so much for joining us, Marybeth.
• 2:53
  Rachel: We cannot wait to talk all things writing today.
• 2:56
  Rachel: But before we jump in, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your writing journey and what brought you here?
• 3:00
  Rachel: What brought you to this point in your writing career?
• 3:06
  Marybeth Whalen: So what brought me here was four years of tears and angst.
• 3:10
  Marybeth Whalen: And from 2020, when I began the book we're going to talk about today, to this moment has taken four years.
• 3:18
  Marybeth Whalen: And, man, I feel every bit of it.
• 3:20
  Marybeth Whalen: But prior to that, I do.
• 3:22
  Marybeth Whalen: I have written nine other novels, so this is not my first go round, but you could have fooled me because it felt like my first go round.
• 3:29
  Marybeth Whalen: It was the first time I wrote this book, which is very significant.
• 3:32
  Marybeth Whalen: And I. I mean, I majored in writing in college.
• 3:36
  Marybeth Whalen: I say I have no other viable skills, basically, except that's the only thing I know how to do is write.
• 3:43
  Marybeth Whalen: So that's what I've devoted my life to.
• 3:46
  Marybeth Whalen: That and being a mom.
• 3:47
  Marybeth Whalen: So I've got six kids, which we'll talk about probably later because everybody always asks about that and it kind of precedes me into most rooms.
• 3:59
  Marybeth Whalen: There she is.
• 3:59
  Marybeth Whalen: She has six kids.
• 4:00
  Marybeth Whalen: What's wrong with her?
• 4:00
  Marybeth Whalen: But I am a huge reader, always have been.
• 4:08
  Marybeth Whalen: I read very young, and my mom used to send me outside to play.
• 4:12
  Marybeth Whalen: Cause she thought I spent too much time reading.
• 4:14
  Marybeth Whalen: And I would pretend to go outside and sneak back in the house when she wasn't looking and hide in my closet to keep reading.
• 4:19
  Marybeth Whalen: So I just.
• 4:21
  Marybeth Whalen: I love words.
• 4:21
  Marybeth Whalen: I've always loved words.
• 4:23
  Marybeth Whalen: They are my dearest friends.
• 4:25
  Marybeth Whalen: So I love that.
• 4:26
  Rachel: My daughter is my daughter's four, and she is in her peak energy all the time mode, no matter what.
• 4:34
  Rachel: And she loves to play outside, and I love that for her.
• 4:37
  Rachel: And I'm like, hey, why don't we go inside and read a book?
• 4:40
  Rachel: She's like, no, let's play outside.
• 4:42
  Marybeth Whalen: I'm like, okay, yeah, I was probably a dream kid when you think about that.
• 4:49
  Marybeth Whalen: I much preferred reading to running around, but I. I love that.
• 4:55
  Rachel: So 10th book.
• 4:57
  Rachel: That's incredible.
• 4:58
  Rachel: 10th book.
• 4:59
  Rachel: Every moment since and every moment since is crime thriller are all of your books in that direction of crime.
• 5:07
  Rachel: What makes you love this genre?
• 5:10
  Marybeth Whalen: Well, I love.
• 5:11
  Marybeth Whalen: I have abiding love for true crime.
• 5:15
  Marybeth Whalen: And then honestly, this book was a reaction to that.
• 5:18
  Marybeth Whalen: And we can talk about that in a little bit of.
• 5:19
  Marybeth Whalen: But so crime informs my stories.
• 5:23
  Marybeth Whalen: I wouldn't say that my stories are about solely crime.
• 5:28
  Marybeth Whalen: It's mostly, I say I write aftermath stories, something tragic.
• 5:33
  Marybeth Whalen: Usually there's a crime involved, but something tragic happens to a community or a family, a group of friends, whatever it may be, and they have to learn to get past it and to find light and darkness.
• 5:44
  Marybeth Whalen: And I. I love to write redemption stories.
• 5:47
  Marybeth Whalen: I love, I say that I put everybody in a big soup pot, give them a big stir, and I love to watch them float back up because they will.
• 5:53
  Marybeth Whalen: It's just hard to.
• 5:54
  Marybeth Whalen: Sometimes it's hard to figure out a way to do that.
• 5:56
  Marybeth Whalen: And so all of my stories in one way or the other, I will say the first four I wrote were very sweet.
• 6:04
  Marybeth Whalen: Back in 2010s era, the Nicholas Sparks was kind of at the height of his game.
• 6:09
  Marybeth Whalen: So I wrote four very beachy, sweet, very sweet love stories that all surrounded an inanimate object that brought two people together, all set on the beach or at the beach where I actually now live, Sunset Beach, North Carolina.
• 6:23
  Marybeth Whalen: So those were the first four things I did.
• 6:26
  Marybeth Whalen: And I kind of cut my teeth on those.
• 6:28
  Marybeth Whalen: Learned how to write a novel as I was writing novels and then switched with the fifth one and did a story about a near drowning at a neighborhood pool and how it affects that neighborhood, which that actually came out of a real thing that happened in my neighborhood.
• 6:44
  Marybeth Whalen: And I just was very touched by the way, the neighbors, my real life neighbors responded to that and talked about it.
• 6:52
  Marybeth Whalen: It was almost like, where were you on 911 for our neighborhood?
• 6:56
  Marybeth Whalen: Like that.
• 6:57
  Marybeth Whalen: We would get together and people would say, I was at home when I got the phone call or I heard the ambulance.
• 7:02
  Marybeth Whalen: And so I wanted to talk about something happening like that.
• 7:06
  Marybeth Whalen: So that was the first book that I kind of diverged from the sweet, beachy romances and wrote that one.
• 7:13
  Marybeth Whalen: And people were like, okay, that's.
• 7:14
  Marybeth Whalen: That was sort of a hard write on your part.
• 7:17
  Marybeth Whalen: But it was what I really wanted to write the whole time.
• 7:19
  Marybeth Whalen: It's just to.
• 7:20
  Marybeth Whalen: I love to examine sort of suburbia and what we're all thinking and all hiding and possibly not saying so.
• 7:28
  Emily: I love that.
• 7:29
  Emily: I love that sort of.
• 7:31
  Emily: What did you say that you write?
• 7:31
  Emily: A aftermath.
• 7:36
  Emily: Yeah, the aftermath.
• 7:37
  Emily: I think that's such a beautiful way to think about crime stories because people often will say that I don't need to do character work for a crime story or a murder mystery or stories like that.
• 7:51
  Emily: And I think that that's a beautiful way to think about how powerful the character work of those types of stories can be because something terrible has happened, and that impacts the people who it happened to.
• 8:02
  Emily: It impacts the people who are responsible for it.
• 8:04
  Emily: It impacts the people who are investigating it.
• 8:06
  Emily: And so thinking about it as like, well, what's the character aftermath of this plot event that's happened, that's just like a cool way to think about it.
• 8:15
  Marybeth Whalen: Yeah. But I will say that that is the thing about, I said I'd get back to it, so I'll get back to it.
• 8:21
  Marybeth Whalen: Now.
• 8:22
  Marybeth Whalen: With true crime, we've become such a true crime obsessed culture.
• 8:26
  Marybeth Whalen: I mean, there's new true crime specials seem hitting every streamer all the time.
• 8:35
  Marybeth Whalen: And, you know, what's the latest case everybody's talking about and all that, and I'm chief among centers on that.
• 8:41
  Marybeth Whalen: I'm right there watching.
• 8:42
  Marybeth Whalen: But what I started thinking about a lot about which led to this book is we all can turn off a podcast.
• 8:50
  Marybeth Whalen: You know, we can binge it, and then we're done and we go on with our lives, or we can finish Dateline and go to bed.
• 8:57
  Marybeth Whalen: These people can't do that.
• 8:59
  Marybeth Whalen: The people that are living these, these things, and these are, these are real stories about real people.
• 9:03
  Marybeth Whalen: And I think it's very easy to forget when we're being entertained by this stuff, that fact.
• 9:10
  Marybeth Whalen: And so I really wanted to examine, I chose a missing child, but we could choose anything and examine the ripple effects of a crime.
• 9:21
  Marybeth Whalen: I mean, this one's through decades.
• 9:22
  Marybeth Whalen: I mean, these people, they are profoundly changed by one single night.
• 9:26
  Marybeth Whalen: And not just his relative.
• 9:28
  Marybeth Whalen: You know, Davey is the missing boy, not just his relatives, but people who were adjacent to that night.
• 9:33
  Marybeth Whalen: And it just, it's something I think that we should all be thinking of, at least as we consume this entertainment medium, if you want to call it that.
• 9:41
  Rachel: So, so what's your brain process like when you're approaching?
• 9:46
  Rachel: And we can use every moment as an example.
• 9:49
  Rachel: Did you have, like, the, the idea of what happened to Davey first, and then you were like, let me see how I can take this to each different character and how it impacts them?
• 9:57
  Rachel: Or were you thinking more along the lines of, like, these are people with a really with an event that happened that deeply changed them or traumatized them or affected them.
• 10:08
  Rachel: So what should that event be?
• 10:11
  Rachel: You know, how do you normally approach that?
• 10:14
  Marybeth Whalen: Well, I said soup pot earlier, and for a specific reason.
• 10:18
  Marybeth Whalen: I feel like when I'm going to write a novel, I am making a soup, and it's fall season, so this is perfect time to talk about soup.
• 10:27
  Marybeth Whalen: And, you know, you get, you have your, you pick a meat, maybe if you're not vegetarian, and you pick some veggies and maybe you want to starch, maybe potatoes or rice with noodles, whatever you're going to put in it, and you decide it's going to be beef broth or chicken broth.
• 10:40
  Marybeth Whalen: I mean, you decide.
• 10:42
  Marybeth Whalen: Can you tell?
• 10:42
  Marybeth Whalen: Did a lot of cooking for a lot of people.
• 10:45
  Marybeth Whalen: And you, you put it all in the pot, and you give it a good stir, you add some seasoning.
• 10:49
  Marybeth Whalen: And so when I am writing a novel, that's what I'm doing.
• 10:52
  Marybeth Whalen: I'm saying, okay, what is the pot?
• 10:54
  Marybeth Whalen: Well, in this case, it's a little boy goes missing in 1985.
• 10:57
  Marybeth Whalen: That's all I knew, actually.
• 11:00
  Marybeth Whalen: I didn't know the 1985 part.
• 11:01
  Marybeth Whalen: I just knew a child went missing, then it became Davey.
• 11:05
  Marybeth Whalen: And so that's the pot.
• 11:07
  Marybeth Whalen: And then I'm like, okay, who's gonna be in this story?
• 11:10
  Marybeth Whalen: Who's gonna go in this pot?
• 11:12
  Marybeth Whalen: That I'm gonna give a good stir?
• 11:12
  Marybeth Whalen: And you talked about character, so here we go.
• 11:17
  Emily: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:18
  Marybeth Whalen: They come to me.
• 11:19
  Marybeth Whalen: They just show up.
• 11:20
  Marybeth Whalen: And usually, especially with crimes involved, usually, they come to me to kind of plead their case of why they should be understood and why they're misunderstood.
• 11:31
  Marybeth Whalen: And so I hear them out, and my husband hates when I talk about this, but I'm talking about it anyway.
• 11:39
  Marybeth Whalen: So I called the waiting room, and when they come to me, I'll be like, that's very interesting.
• 11:43
  Marybeth Whalen: You sound like a really good candidate.
• 11:46
  Marybeth Whalen: Have a seat, and I'll call on you when it's time.
• 11:50
  Marybeth Whalen: And so I've got I don't know how many scenarios, like a boy goes missing in 1985 sitting inside my head.
• 11:56
  Marybeth Whalen: And so they're all in the waiting room.
• 11:58
  Marybeth Whalen: And when I go to pick who's going in the pot, I'm like, okay, who's sitting there?
• 12:01
  Marybeth Whalen: And a lot of times I will think about a book for years, and it's just not there yet.
• 12:09
  Marybeth Whalen: I might have the meat or I might have some rice, but I don't have the whole soup.
• 12:13
  Marybeth Whalen: And so I'll be like, have a seat.
• 12:15
  Marybeth Whalen: We gotta wait and see who shows up.
• 12:17
  Marybeth Whalen: And does this sound completely crazy?
• 12:19
  Marybeth Whalen: No, no, not at all.
• 12:20
  Emily: That's totally, totally.
• 12:23
  Rachel: We get it.
• 12:23
  Rachel: We're like, yeah.
• 12:24
  Marybeth Whalen: My husband tells me he's like, okay, this is schizophrenia.
• 12:29
  Marybeth Whalen: People who are not there.
• 12:30
  Marybeth Whalen: So if talk to you, but everybody else thinks it's cool, so let's go with it.
• 12:34
  Marybeth Whalen: But, so, and they really are, they're all, and I hear from them often, they'll kind of come up to the desk.
• 12:41
  Marybeth Whalen: It's almost like the DMV.
• 12:42
  Marybeth Whalen: They'll come up like, I've been waiting a really long time.
• 12:44
  Marybeth Whalen: I'm like, we're not there yet.
• 12:45
  Marybeth Whalen: Have a seat.
• 12:46
  Marybeth Whalen: We'll talk to you when it's ready.
• 12:47
  Marybeth Whalen: And so with, when I started thinking about the missing boy, first of all, he showed up.
• 12:52
  Marybeth Whalen: Like I said, I didn't.
• 12:53
  Marybeth Whalen: I just knew it was a missing child.
• 12:55
  Marybeth Whalen: Davey showed up and he was wearing the back to the future jacket.
• 12:59
  Marybeth Whalen: So I feel like everybody in the world has seen back to the future and if you haven't, you can google it.
• 13:03
  Marybeth Whalen: But it's a very distinct Jean Jacket that Marty McFly wore with the paisley on the cuffs when it was turned up and he was wearing that.
• 13:12
  Marybeth Whalen: And in that moment, I knew immediately he was the center of the story.
• 13:17
  Marybeth Whalen: And that's how I knew it was 1985 because I was, that's why I said it in fall of 1985 because that movie came out in that summer.
• 13:24
  Marybeth Whalen: So I was like, okay, he's eleven years old.
• 13:26
  Marybeth Whalen: This was his favorite movie.
• 13:27
  Marybeth Whalen: He begged anybody who would take him to take him.
• 13:30
  Marybeth Whalen: He wore the soundtrack out that summer.
• 13:33
  Marybeth Whalen: And for his birthday, this is not a spoiler.
• 13:36
  Marybeth Whalen: His mom made him like she, sir, she got a jean jacket and altered it so that he would have a Marty McFly jacket.
• 13:42
  Marybeth Whalen: And so that's, I started with him.
• 13:45
  Marybeth Whalen: And then tabitha showed up and she is his mother.
• 13:50
  Marybeth Whalen: And the first time I saw her, she had her back to me and she was standing at a kitchen counter and she was writing something.
• 13:56
  Marybeth Whalen: And I was like, what is she writing?
• 13:56
  Marybeth Whalen: Well, I had to figure that out.
• 13:59
  Marybeth Whalen: And this stuff takes time, you know?
• 13:59
  Marybeth Whalen: And so before I started that book in 2020, I had been messing around with it for probably three years.
• 14:07
  Marybeth Whalen: In my head.
• 14:07
  Marybeth Whalen: I, so I tell my husband a lot.
• 14:09
  Marybeth Whalen: I'm like, I don't look like I'm working, but I am because it's a lot of internal just hashing out.
• 14:15
  Marybeth Whalen: And eventually they all came.
• 14:18
  Emily: Does it just live there?
• 14:18
  Emily: Does it just live there?
• 14:21
  Emily: Or do you like, write it down somewhere?
• 14:23
  Marybeth Whalen: You know, this is so funny.
• 14:24
  Marybeth Whalen: And I'm not going to take credit for this.
• 14:26
  Marybeth Whalen: I have a very good friend who is also a writer and her name is Ariel Lohan.
• 14:31
  Marybeth Whalen: She wrote the Frozen river, which was really big.
• 14:32
  Marybeth Whalen: Has been really big this year.
• 14:34
  Marybeth Whalen: And she says that you'll have a lot of ideas as a writer.
• 14:39
  Marybeth Whalen: And if you go to a cocktail party, you know, everybody pretty much wears the basic little black dress.
• 14:43
  Marybeth Whalen: Right.
• 14:44
  Marybeth Whalen: Okay.
• 14:45
  Marybeth Whalen: What about that woman that comes in and she's wearing this stunning red dress, and everybody can't help but notice her because she's wearing a red dress, and she said, you will have a lot of little black dress ideas come through.
• 15:00
  Marybeth Whalen: You may need to write those down.
• 15:02
  Marybeth Whalen: But the red dress idea, you never have to write it down.
• 15:04
  Emily: Oh, interesting.
• 15:06
  Rachel: Yeah.
• 15:07
  Marybeth Whalen: So. And that's.
• 15:08
  Marybeth Whalen: So, yeah, some things I will scribble down.
• 15:11
  Marybeth Whalen: You hardly ever go back and read them, though.
• 15:13
  Marybeth Whalen: I mean, because the ones that I feel like are supposed to emerge, do.
• 15:19
  Marybeth Whalen: And the people that keep talking to me, that keep showing up.
• 15:22
  Marybeth Whalen: I have a little girl right now.
• 15:24
  Marybeth Whalen: She's nine years old, and she's a fish out of water story.
• 15:29
  Marybeth Whalen: And she sees this family for who they really are, and I can't wait to write her.
• 15:34
  Marybeth Whalen: And she's been with me I don't even know how long, and it's just not.
• 15:38
  Marybeth Whalen: It's just not been time yet.
• 15:40
  Marybeth Whalen: And so she's waiting.
• 15:41
  Marybeth Whalen: So, yeah, they just.
• 15:43
  Marybeth Whalen: They're very.
• 15:44
  Marybeth Whalen: They're very real to me, all of them.
• 15:46
  Marybeth Whalen: And I root for them, and I want them to get their time on the page.
• 15:50
  Marybeth Whalen: And honestly, it's nice when I finally do write them, because they go away and it leaves more room for other people to show up.
• 15:59
  Rachel: So this kind of reminds me of.
• 16:02
  Rachel: I think it's Elizabeth Gilbert.
• 16:03
  Rachel: So, Emily, you're gonna have to tell me if that's true or not, but that idea that this person I'm thinking of talks about where, like, the ideas just kind of float around in the ether and you have to, like, snag them.
• 16:15
  Rachel: Right, like, that's Elizabeth Gilbert.
• 16:18
  Rachel: Right?
• 16:18
  Emily: Yeah, it's.
• 16:19
  Marybeth Whalen: I've read that.
• 16:19
  Rachel: Yeah, yeah, that's.
• 16:21
  Emily: Yeah. From big magic.
• 16:22
  Rachel: Yeah. That's what this reminds me of for you, Mary, where it's just like, you just grab them and you're like, this is.
• 16:28
  Rachel: They come to you.
• 16:29
  Marybeth Whalen: Well, she even says, if you don't, you risk them going to someone else.
• 16:33
  Rachel: Yeah.
• 16:34
  Marybeth Whalen: Which is sort of ominous and frightening.
• 16:37
  Marybeth Whalen: I have had ideas that, you know, I'll see come out and print.
• 16:40
  Marybeth Whalen: I'm like, well, you didn't move fast enough.
• 16:42
  Marybeth Whalen: That's on you.
• 16:43
  Marybeth Whalen: So.
• 16:43
  Emily: Yeah.
• 16:44
  Rachel: That's incredible, though.
• 16:45
  Rachel: I mean, I think you're so right.
• 16:46
  Rachel: When they stand out to you, they just.
• 16:49
  Rachel: It feels like they've got their claws in your brain and you can't let go, and they're there.
• 16:53
  Rachel: So for every moment since you took Davey, you took Tabitha, and you, like, started to build outward from there.
• 17:00
  Rachel: Like, you were really focused on them as characters.
• 17:04
  Rachel: Yeah.
• 17:04
  Rachel: So then you, did you pull in more characters?
• 17:07
  Rachel: Did you start to explore, like, what happened to Davey?
• 17:11
  Rachel: Or did that come almost later?
• 17:14
  Marybeth Whalen: No, I very much, I'm a plotter, and, well, I'll go ahead and tell that.
• 17:21
  Marybeth Whalen: So with six kids, when I did get to write, I started my first novel when the youngest was three.
• 17:27
  Marybeth Whalen: And so they ranged age at that point from 16 down to three.
• 17:31
  Marybeth Whalen: And it was a very lively, as you can imagine, busy household with lots of activities and lots of going and doing and all that.
• 17:38
  Marybeth Whalen: And so if I got a half hour to write, I had to be ready to go.
• 17:43
  Marybeth Whalen: I didn't have time to just sit at the desk and go, well, what are we writing today?
• 17:46
  Marybeth Whalen: You know, I didn't.
• 17:48
  Marybeth Whalen: I, so that's where plotting was instrumental to me.
• 17:51
  Marybeth Whalen: Otherwise, I would waste that 15, 2030 minutes figuring it out.
• 17:56
  Marybeth Whalen: And about the time I figured out, it'd be time to take somebody to baseball or, you know, whatever.
• 18:00
  Marybeth Whalen: So, yeah, I had to, I sort of, by no other choice, had to learn to plot.
• 18:08
  Marybeth Whalen: And once you do it enough times that way, it's just second nature.
• 18:12
  Marybeth Whalen: So I very much need a plot to feel comfortable at this point.
• 18:16
  Marybeth Whalen: I feel like I'm free falling if I don't have that net under me.
• 18:21
  Marybeth Whalen: And so I did spend a lot of time figuring, as you said, figuring out what happened, and that is harder for me.
• 18:29
  Marybeth Whalen: Character is, is very kind of organic and plot I have to work at, and I will spend a lot of time on that.
• 18:38
  Marybeth Whalen: And I'll have, I'll have plots that are like 120 beats or points or whatever you want to call them on a legal pad.
• 18:46
  Marybeth Whalen: But having that much makes me feel comfortable.
• 18:49
  Marybeth Whalen: It's like I can always cut.
• 18:51
  Marybeth Whalen: It's just very hard to add if you don't have enough.
• 18:53
  Emily: So, yeah, so you have these characters who are just hanging out in the waiting room, and then you're like, okay, I'm going to tell this story of Davey, and I'm going to pick these folks out of the waiting room.
• 19:05
  Emily: How do you then take those characters and make a plot out of them?
• 19:10
  Marybeth Whalen: Well, one of the things that I do that is I was taught, I don't know if you all are familiar with Susan Meissner.
• 19:17
  Marybeth Whalen: She is a historical fiction author.
• 19:18
  Marybeth Whalen: She's wonderful.
• 19:20
  Marybeth Whalen: And I mean, this was years and years and years ago.
• 19:24
  Marybeth Whalen: I went to a workshop that she taught, and one of the things she taught us to do was to interview your characters.
• 19:30
  Marybeth Whalen: And I have the handout she gave me.
• 19:33
  Marybeth Whalen: It's, you know, I don't know where she got got it, but I still literally use that same hanging by a thread handout that she gave me originally.
• 19:41
  Marybeth Whalen: It's almost like magic.
• 19:42
  Marybeth Whalen: I have to pull that one out.
• 19:44
  Marybeth Whalen: But I will sit down and interview the characters.
• 19:46
  Marybeth Whalen: And if you're interested, if you're listening this and you're interested, I'd say Google it.
• 19:50
  Marybeth Whalen: How to interview your characters, because I have done that just to make sure that I can say, that's a resource online, and there's tons of questionnaires that you can do to do it.
• 20:00
  Marybeth Whalen: Mine is maybe 1520 questions.
• 20:02
  Marybeth Whalen: I don't even know how many it is, but I will take a day.
• 20:05
  Marybeth Whalen: And if I have four characters, I interview all four.
• 20:07
  Marybeth Whalen: You know, I. And I make it, like, I have a good block of time, and I do it longhand, and I just ask them questions, these questions, and it is an amazing process to hear what they say back again.
• 20:20
  Marybeth Whalen: My husband's like, very weird.
• 20:21
  Marybeth Whalen: Very, very weird.
• 20:24
  Marybeth Whalen: You're asking people, he's not a writer, he's an engineer.
• 20:28
  Marybeth Whalen: Like he said, okay, yeah, like my husband, yeah, we make one good brain, right and left.
• 20:36
  Marybeth Whalen: But, um, yeah.
• 20:37
  Marybeth Whalen: So he's like, okay, you ask questions of people who aren't there, and they answer you.
• 20:40
  Marybeth Whalen: I'm like, yes, they answered me.
• 20:41
  Marybeth Whalen: And they most surprising answers.
• 20:44
  Marybeth Whalen: And I will do that before I plot, because I get a lot of plot points out of that exercise.
• 20:50
  Marybeth Whalen: And I find out so many things as far as, like, their backstory and what they're hiding.
• 20:56
  Marybeth Whalen: And one of the best questions I ask is, what are you afraid of?
• 20:58
  Marybeth Whalen: And the things that they tell me that then gets woven into the story.
• 21:05
  Marybeth Whalen: And so I would highly recommend if you're not incorporating that into your practice.
• 21:10
  Marybeth Whalen: And then I also, I mean, I read all the same plotting books.
• 21:13
  Marybeth Whalen: Everybody else, you know, save the cat, writes a novel, trying to think.
• 21:17
  Marybeth Whalen: Michael Haig.
• 21:18
  Marybeth Whalen: If you've ever heard of Michael Haig, it's H A U g E. If you look him up, he's got a website.
• 21:23
  Marybeth Whalen: He was instrumental in me learning the plot structure that I use.
• 21:27
  Marybeth Whalen: He's even.
• 21:27
  Marybeth Whalen: It's like, you can get a bookmark with it on there.
• 21:30
  Marybeth Whalen: And he taught me a lot about the way that our brains interpret story.
• 21:35
  Marybeth Whalen: That's one of his big things.
• 21:37
  Marybeth Whalen: And that we as a society think cinematically, and we don't realize that we.
• 21:42
  Marybeth Whalen: We expect our stories to be cinematic.
• 21:46
  Marybeth Whalen: And so if you use more of the screenplay plotting, you know, I don't know which method.
• 21:53
  Marybeth Whalen: I'll call it a method.
• 21:55
  Marybeth Whalen: If you use more of a screenplay plotting, you won't know it.
• 21:58
  Marybeth Whalen: Like, people will say to you, it was like I was reading.
• 22:00
  Marybeth Whalen: It was like it was a movie.
• 22:01
  Marybeth Whalen: I'm like, well, that's not by accident.
• 22:03
  Marybeth Whalen: I mean, that, yeah, that's calculated.
• 22:05
  Marybeth Whalen: And so I use a lot of that sort of stuff to plot, and I do figure out, you know, I know the moment at the 50% mark where it splits into.
• 22:12
  Marybeth Whalen: And I do have all of that in, in my, you know, toolbox, so to speak.
• 22:18
  Marybeth Whalen: And I don't know, somehow it just all eventually comes together.
• 22:21
  Marybeth Whalen: But it is nothing.
• 22:23
  Marybeth Whalen: It's not an easy process, and it's not for the faint of heart.
• 22:27
  Marybeth Whalen: There's a lot of.
• 22:28
  Marybeth Whalen: There's a lot of groping around in the dark before you get to it.
• 22:31
  Rachel: So, yeah, so you've talked about how you develop characters and you're asking them questions, interviewing them.
• 22:38
  Rachel: Coincidentally, we're actually teaching a backstory workshop this weekend.
• 22:42
  Rachel: So.
• 22:42
  Marybeth Whalen: Cool.
• 22:43
  Rachel: We have been diving so much into backstory, but so you dive into their past and interview them to get to know them, figure out, like, what plot points come from that.
• 22:54
  Rachel: But then you also have done a lot of work to understand what structure works for you.
• 22:59
  Rachel: So when you're plotting the other pieces, the pieces that don't necessarily come from the character interviews, are you thinking, like, okay, I know I want this plot point to evoke some feeling in this character, and so I'm going to make this kind of plot point, or do you come up with, like, oh, no, this plot point needs to happen.
• 23:19
  Rachel: And then I know it affects these people in other ways.
• 23:22
  Rachel: My question kind of boils down to how do you merge these two things, character plot, into one cohesive story?
• 23:27
  Rachel: That's, as you were saying earlier, like, it's more about how they're dealing with the problem than about the crime itself.
• 23:37
  Marybeth Whalen: I guess I mostly think of it in terms of how, and I said this before, like, what are they hiding and what are they most of want to keep from coming out?
• 23:48
  Marybeth Whalen: And it's kind of a chess game of how, when and how do you reveal those things, and what do you keep from the reader?
• 23:55
  Marybeth Whalen: What do you keep, you know, when do you divulge it to the reader?
• 23:58
  Marybeth Whalen: And mostly that's what I'm thinking of while I'm trying to plot it out in a way that, number one, the pacing is decent enough that you don't give up on the book, and number two, that it's revealed in a way that doesn't seem contrived or forced.
• 24:15
  Marybeth Whalen: And so, like I said, I mean, I'm doing a lot of work of what has to be revealed.
• 24:20
  Marybeth Whalen: When is it going to be revealed?
• 24:21
  Marybeth Whalen: What can I give the reader a little early on that doesn't spoil everything, but still is a kind of a gift?
• 24:26
  Marybeth Whalen: So that's kind of what I'm thinking when I'm structuring it.
• 24:31
  Marybeth Whalen: I don't even.
• 24:32
  Marybeth Whalen: I'm sitting here thinking, like, I don't know, what do I do?
• 24:35
  Emily: It's so helpful.
• 24:36
  Emily: It's so fascinating hearing how every writer's processes different and, like, works for them.
• 24:42
  Emily: I think it's so fun.
• 24:43
  Emily: So I'm curious.
• 24:44
  Emily: You hinted earlier that every moment since has been a little different for you from your other books.
• 24:51
  Emily: Would you be willing to tell us a little bit about that and.
• 24:54
  Marybeth Whalen: Yeah, sure.
• 24:55
  Emily: Why and how?
• 24:57
  Marybeth Whalen: Well, the same that came with this book.
• 25:01
  Marybeth Whalen: No. So I wrote this book, and the original way that I structured it, there is a little bit of a book within a book, because Thaddeus David, Davey's older brother, had written, has written a memoir about being the brother of the family of one of the most famous missing kids in America.
• 25:19
  Marybeth Whalen: Book has done extremely well.
• 25:21
  Marybeth Whalen: He's traveling around, going to bookstores, enjoying a little bit of notoriety, and he's sort of become the de facto spokesperson of the family because he's put himself in this position.
• 25:33
  Marybeth Whalen: And so I thought that my original concept was that what happened the night Davey disappeared would emerge through the memoir, if that makes sense.
• 25:41
  Marybeth Whalen: So you would be reading along as the reader in the.
• 25:43
  Marybeth Whalen: In the story, and then there would be an excerpt from the memoir.
• 25:47
  Marybeth Whalen: And that's the original way that I did it.
• 25:50
  Marybeth Whalen: And it did not work until it went out, because actually, the truth of the matter is I. My agent and I parted ways over this book.
• 26:00
  Marybeth Whalen: I had been writing very thriller, more thriller, suburban.
• 26:09
  Marybeth Whalen: I don't even know what to call them.
• 26:10
  Marybeth Whalen: They call it suspense, I guess that's what domestic suspense, I think, is what they termed it.
• 26:15
  Marybeth Whalen: And she kind of wanted me just to go, and I had an idea and everything.
• 26:18
  Marybeth Whalen: She kind of wanted me just to do that.
• 26:19
  Marybeth Whalen: But this book was enough of a divergence that if I did it, the publisher wasn't going to that that wasn't the home for it.
• 26:28
  Marybeth Whalen: And so she was kind of pushing me not to do this book.
• 26:32
  Marybeth Whalen: And I just almost couldn't do anything else.
• 26:34
  Marybeth Whalen: There's just.
• 26:35
  Marybeth Whalen: I didn't have the passion for anything else.
• 26:37
  Marybeth Whalen: I really wanted to do this, and I kicked myself many times over the next four years without.
• 26:42
  Marybeth Whalen: I'm just kidding.
• 26:43
  Marybeth Whalen: I didn't.
• 26:43
  Marybeth Whalen: But it.
• 26:45
  Marybeth Whalen: I did question it a couple of times, like, you idiot, you probably should have just done the thing you knew how to do instead of this venture that took me to wandering through many wildernesses.
• 26:54
  Marybeth Whalen: But so when it.
• 26:56
  Marybeth Whalen: I had to find another agent, is what I'm saying.
• 26:58
  Marybeth Whalen: And so when it went out to agents, one of the words that I kept hearing repeated was, I feel removed from the action.
• 27:08
  Marybeth Whalen: And sometimes literary people will say things that I'm like, I'm sure if I were smarter, I wouldn't know what you mean by that.
• 27:14
  Marybeth Whalen: I don't.
• 27:15
  Marybeth Whalen: I don't know what you mean by removed from the action.
• 27:17
  Marybeth Whalen: And I puzzled and puzzled and puzzled.
• 27:18
  Marybeth Whalen: Like, what do you mean, removed from the action?
• 27:20
  Marybeth Whalen: And all of a sudden, it made me realize, if I tell you a story about something that happened, it's not nearly the same as if you were there.
• 27:30
  Marybeth Whalen: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:31
  Marybeth Whalen: And that's.
• 27:32
  Marybeth Whalen: That's what they meant by removed, but they didn't explain that to me.
• 27:34
  Marybeth Whalen: And it took my slow self many, many months to figure that out.
• 27:37
  Marybeth Whalen: And once I did, though, I was like, oh, that's what the problem is.
• 27:40
  Marybeth Whalen: Thaddeus is telling you what happened to him.
• 27:43
  Marybeth Whalen: You, reader, are not in the midst of the action.
• 27:46
  Marybeth Whalen: You're not happy.
• 27:48
  Marybeth Whalen: And also, Thaddeus is couching his language severely.
• 27:50
  Marybeth Whalen: That's part of the story.
• 27:52
  Marybeth Whalen: And so I finally, the lightbulb went on, and I was like, oh, I need to write the 1985 storyline that needs to be on the page, which, as you can imagine, was a massive revision.
• 28:03
  Marybeth Whalen: And also, ultimately, in that process, I had five characters.
• 28:07
  Marybeth Whalen: I took one out.
• 28:09
  Marybeth Whalen: So that drastically reduced my word count, which made me cry.
• 28:12
  Marybeth Whalen: And I had to add that back somehow, which I added it back through the 1985, obviously, but it was.
• 28:19
  Marybeth Whalen: That was another whole hurdle to get through, of just taking it back down to the stud, so to speak, and rebuilding it.
• 28:27
  Marybeth Whalen: And I ended up doing that and then had a whole nother round of trying to get an agent like I had never done it before, which was a humbling and transformative experience.
• 28:38
  Marybeth Whalen: It was good for me.
• 28:39
  Marybeth Whalen: You know, you look back on things like this and you go, okay, it was good for me, but it was hard.
• 28:43
  Marybeth Whalen: I mean, it was a very.
• 28:46
  Marybeth Whalen: Lots, like I said, lots of questions of why did I do this to myself and why this story?
• 28:48
  Marybeth Whalen: And will this story ever see the light of the day and all the things that pretty much any writer goes through?
• 28:55
  Rachel: So, yeah, I mean, so how did you answer those questions to yourself?
• 28:59
  Rachel: Was it just like, I can't let these characters go, or like, I.
• 29:03
  Marybeth Whalen: This is.
• 29:04
  Rachel: Needs to get out?
• 29:04
  Rachel: I mean, what, those are such.
• 29:06
  Rachel: Those are moments that every writer experiences, and there are some writers who give up, and you didn't, so why didn't you give up?
• 29:14
  Marybeth Whalen: Little weird things would happen.
• 29:16
  Marybeth Whalen: I mean, it just, like, I would be so close to being like, forget it.
• 29:19
  Marybeth Whalen: I'm not doing this.
• 29:20
  Marybeth Whalen: Forget it.
• 29:21
  Marybeth Whalen: And something would.
• 29:23
  Marybeth Whalen: Something.
• 29:24
  Marybeth Whalen: The power of love would come on the radio, which is, you know, Huey Lewis in the news, the theme song to back to the future.
• 29:30
  Marybeth Whalen: It would come on the radio at the exact time I was thinking, I'm done.
• 29:34
  Marybeth Whalen: Just, I mean, that's a very simple one.
• 29:37
  Marybeth Whalen: I can tell lots of stories about it.
• 29:40
  Marybeth Whalen: Ariel Lohan, who I've already quoted, I was on the phone with her, and I was like, I'm done.
• 29:43
  Marybeth Whalen: I'm not doing this.
• 29:44
  Marybeth Whalen: I'm going to write another book.
• 29:45
  Marybeth Whalen: This is not worth it.
• 29:47
  Marybeth Whalen: And she goes, you can do that.
• 29:48
  Marybeth Whalen: You absolutely can do that.
• 29:50
  Marybeth Whalen: That's totally your choice.
• 29:51
  Marybeth Whalen: She goes, I can't believe you give up on Davey like that, though.
• 29:55
  Marybeth Whalen: That is a low blow.
• 29:57
  Marybeth Whalen: And it's nothing at all, you know?
• 29:57
  Marybeth Whalen: And so.
• 30:00
  Marybeth Whalen: And she's actually.
• 30:00
  Marybeth Whalen: That's in the acknowledgments.
• 30:01
  Marybeth Whalen: If you read the acknowledgments that's in the acknowledgments to the book.
• 30:04
  Marybeth Whalen: I say to her, you know, if, if it wouldn't have been.
• 30:06
  Marybeth Whalen: If she hadn't put it that way, I'm not sure that I would have persevered at that moment.
• 30:11
  Marybeth Whalen: And I hung up the phone, I was like, she's right.
• 30:13
  Marybeth Whalen: I can't do that.
• 30:14
  Marybeth Whalen: And I picked it up and went forward again, and it was a. But there were a lot of little moments like that.
• 30:20
  Marybeth Whalen: You know, you have those moments.
• 30:20
  Marybeth Whalen: You're like, this is not worth it.
• 30:22
  Marybeth Whalen: I'm not doing this.
• 30:23
  Marybeth Whalen: I'll pick, you know, and then there's always that little, you know, if you want to use the red dress mentality, there's always that little flirtatious idea in the corner that's like, hey, I look pretty good.
• 30:33
  Marybeth Whalen: And you're like, oh, you are.
• 30:35
  Marybeth Whalen: You are so crisp and new, and you have not tortured me yet.
• 30:37
  Marybeth Whalen: Let's talk.
• 30:38
  Marybeth Whalen: You know, so you do kind of want to run away from.
• 30:41
  Marybeth Whalen: From hard ideas, but you know, sitting here on the day before it comes out, I would say it's all work.
• 30:47
  Rachel: Yeah.
• 30:47
  Marybeth Whalen: There were moments, uh, when I got turned down by an agent that I thought was a sure thing on our anniversary night, I.
• 30:52
  Marybeth Whalen: That was.
• 30:53
  Marybeth Whalen: That was a low blow.
• 30:54
  Marybeth Whalen: Yeah, that was hard.
• 30:55
  Marybeth Whalen: That was hard.
• 30:56
  Marybeth Whalen: But, um, you know, those things happen, too, so.
• 31:00
  Marybeth Whalen: But here I am.
• 31:01
  Marybeth Whalen: And it was worth it.
• 31:02
  Marybeth Whalen: I would say it was worth it.
• 31:03
  Marybeth Whalen: If you're out there and you're struggling with this, listen for the signs that you're supposed to stick with it, and then.
• 31:10
  Marybeth Whalen: And then heed them, because you might just be really, really glad you did.
• 31:13
  Marybeth Whalen: And I'm very glad that this story got told and that these people, I hope, will do exactly what we talked about at the beginning and make people think about real people struggling and I. And going through things, and it's not just entertainment.
• 31:30
  Emily: So, yeah, I love the tenacity that you had to cling to just, like, yourself, like, in, like, what you really wanted and the thing you really wanted to say.
• 31:43
  Emily: I think that's.
• 31:43
  Emily: And, like, how that.
• 31:45
  Emily: That all worked out in the end.
• 31:46
  Emily: And I think it's even more impressive because you had a career behind you with, like, a proven, like, I can do this thing right.
• 31:54
  Emily: I can write these types of books and, like.
• 31:56
  Emily: And I know I will be fine.
• 31:57
  Emily: And I think it takes, like, once.
• 31:59
  Emily: Once you have proven that to yourself, it takes even more guts to be like, I'm going to change my mind, right?
• 32:06
  Emily: I'm going to go this other path, even though I know that works, because that's what my soul is telling me to do.
• 32:11
  Emily: And I think that that's really beautiful because there are so many writers, right, who don't have that proven path behind them, who are looking at something, at the book that they want to write and being like, am I crazy?
• 32:24
  Emily: No, you're nothing.
• 32:25
  Marybeth Whalen: I felt crazy many times.
• 32:26
  Marybeth Whalen: Trust me.
• 32:27
  Marybeth Whalen: Trust me, I felt crazy.
• 32:29
  Marybeth Whalen: And I don't think I've ever cried over a book, ever.
• 32:34
  Marybeth Whalen: I mean, it's always just.
• 32:36
  Marybeth Whalen: I mean, it might have been hard, but I didn't.
• 32:37
  Marybeth Whalen: I don't think I've ever cried.
• 32:38
  Marybeth Whalen: I cried so many times with this book.
• 32:40
  Marybeth Whalen: My husband blessed his heart that night, our anniversary, I remember he took.
• 32:45
  Marybeth Whalen: He, like, kind of scraped me off the floor, and he was like, we're still going out.
• 32:48
  Marybeth Whalen: And we.
• 32:49
  Marybeth Whalen: And I was like, well, I don't.
• 32:50
  Marybeth Whalen: I didn't want to go to our original place.
• 32:51
  Marybeth Whalen: It was like, really.
• 32:52
  Marybeth Whalen: It was going to be nice.
• 32:53
  Marybeth Whalen: And I was like, it's not worth it.
• 32:54
  Marybeth Whalen: I'm not in a good mood.
• 32:55
  Marybeth Whalen: And so we went to just this little quarter place, and lo and behold, we picked trivia night.
• 33:00
  Marybeth Whalen: And we live in a very retiree heavy area because we live at the beach and there were all these retirees in there doing trivia.
• 33:08
  Marybeth Whalen: And I'm just sitting there answering the questions because I'm like such a seventies and eighties music junkie.
• 33:13
  Marybeth Whalen: And so I'm answering all the questions, and lo and behold, I did have a good time.
• 33:16
  Marybeth Whalen: It's been a trivia night, so.
• 33:18
  Marybeth Whalen: Yeah.
• 33:19
  Marybeth Whalen: But it was the best thing he could have done is scrape me off the floor and say, we're going out.
• 33:23
  Marybeth Whalen: You're gonna be fine.
• 33:25
  Rachel: I love that.
• 33:26
  Rachel: Even though he doesn't, like, understand the character side of, like, these are people that talk to me and they're real.
• 33:32
  Rachel: That's still so supportive of him.
• 33:34
  Marybeth Whalen: That's so nice.
• 33:36
  Rachel: Come on, let's go do something fun.
• 33:39
  Marybeth Whalen: He's super.
• 33:39
  Marybeth Whalen: He's. He is really, I have to say, have been super invested in the story because he's watched me four years of just crazy.
• 33:46
  Rachel: So, yeah, we need a community.
• 33:49
  Rachel: We need the helpers, we need the writers, right?
• 33:51
  Rachel: Like Ariel.
• 33:52
  Rachel: And then we need our.
• 33:54
  Rachel: Our other side.
• 33:55
  Rachel: That can be like, I don't get it, but good job.
• 33:59
  Marybeth Whalen: I have a lot of those friends, too.
• 34:01
  Marybeth Whalen: Trust me.
• 34:01
  Marybeth Whalen: Trust me.
• 34:02
  Marybeth Whalen: So, yeah, that's good.
• 34:04
  Marybeth Whalen: Yeah.
• 34:04
  Marybeth Whalen: I say every writer needs friends who are writers.
• 34:07
  Marybeth Whalen: I don't know what I do without mine.
• 34:08
  Emily: That's why also, sometimes I feel like we need friends who aren't writers to remind us that we're humans outside of our books who could just be like, I love you as a person.
• 34:18
  Emily: You're actually not just your books.
• 34:21
  Marybeth Whalen: That's true.
• 34:21
  Marybeth Whalen: That's true.
• 34:23
  Emily: Like, your husband who's like, actually, it's our anniversary and you're a human who's married to me, and we're gonna go.
• 34:28
  Marybeth Whalen: Out, act like this is not the end of the world.
• 34:30
  Marybeth Whalen: Get up.
• 34:31
  Marybeth Whalen: Yeah.
• 34:32
  Marybeth Whalen: Right?
• 34:32
  Marybeth Whalen: Yeah.
• 34:33
  Emily: Love it.
• 34:34
  Rachel: So let's shift a little bit, because I do want to hear this story that you kind of mentioned to us about being a mom in writing and, like, locking yourself in a room.
• 34:44
  Marybeth Whalen: So. Yeah.
• 34:46
  Emily: How do you write ten books with kids?
• 34:49
  Marybeth Whalen: I have one kid.
• 34:50
  Rachel: I'm like, oh, well, I'm doing my best.
• 34:54
  Rachel: Right?
• 34:54
  Marybeth Whalen: Like, yeah, when you have one kid, one kid, it seems like a lot.
• 34:57
  Marybeth Whalen: You know, when you have two kids, every.
• 35:00
  Marybeth Whalen: Every iteration of our family has seemed like a lot at the time.
• 35:03
  Marybeth Whalen: You know, when you, short of having triplets, you take it on, usually pretty gradually, and you adapt and then you take another and you adapt.
• 35:09
  Marybeth Whalen: But no, I put off writing.
• 35:13
  Marybeth Whalen: I. I've wanted to write a novel for as long as I can remember, but I always would say, well, I'll just have to do that someday because, you know, I've got the kids.
• 35:21
  Marybeth Whalen: And everybody would noddingly understand with me, of course, of course you can't write.
• 35:25
  Marybeth Whalen: Look at all you have going on.
• 35:26
  Marybeth Whalen: And so I say, that's the most dangerous world word in the world is someday.
• 35:30
  Marybeth Whalen: Someday you get to keep your dream, but you don't have to do anything about it.
• 35:35
  Marybeth Whalen: And I did that for years.
• 35:37
  Marybeth Whalen: And I had the idea for what became the mailbox, which was the first, um, kind of sunset beach romance, and had told a friend about it, and she was like, you have to write this book.
• 35:51
  Marybeth Whalen: And I knew nothing about Flannery O'Connor said, everybody thinks they know how to write a novel till they sit down to write one.
• 35:57
  Marybeth Whalen: It's so hard.
• 36:00
  Marybeth Whalen: And so I, like I said, I learned how to write a novel by writing that novel.
• 36:04
  Marybeth Whalen: And my youngest was three and three year olds.
• 36:08
  Marybeth Whalen: As if you guys have kids that they're, you know, they're.
• 36:11
  Marybeth Whalen: They don't mind themselves very well.
• 36:13
  Marybeth Whalen: Yeah.
• 36:14
  Marybeth Whalen: And I did have the older kids, but they also were not the best babysitters because they could harsh and things like that.
• 36:20
  Marybeth Whalen: So I would.
• 36:22
  Marybeth Whalen: Once I dedicated myself that I was going to do this.
• 36:26
  Marybeth Whalen: I would, like, feed everybody and put a movie on and lock all the doors to the house, and they were not allowed to go outside.
• 36:34
  Marybeth Whalen: You know, I just wouldn't make rules.
• 36:36
  Marybeth Whalen: And I'd be like, I'm going to go in my room and write for 30 minutes.
• 36:40
  Marybeth Whalen: There are only three reasons that you should come in my room.
• 36:43
  Marybeth Whalen: You have been fed, you know where the bathroom is, and there's a movie on tv.
• 36:46
  Marybeth Whalen: You can do this for 30 minutes.
• 36:47
  Marybeth Whalen: I would have this talk every single time.
• 36:50
  Marybeth Whalen: And I would say, what are the three reasons that you should come and get me?
• 36:53
  Marybeth Whalen: And they'd say, blood, flood or fire?
• 36:53
  Marybeth Whalen: I'm like, exactly.
• 36:58
  Marybeth Whalen: Get me until.
• 37:00
  Marybeth Whalen: Unless one of those three things are happening.
• 37:01
  Marybeth Whalen: So I'd go in my room.
• 37:02
  Marybeth Whalen: I'd get started.
• 37:03
  Marybeth Whalen: Never failed.
• 37:04
  Marybeth Whalen: I'd be just going, you know, you get in that groove and not, not, not.
• 37:10
  Marybeth Whalen: Who is it?
• 37:10
  Marybeth Whalen: Brad.
• 37:13
  Marybeth Whalen: Brad.
• 37:14
  Marybeth Whalen: Blood, flood or fire?
• 37:15
  Marybeth Whalen: Long pause.
• 37:16
  Marybeth Whalen: None.
• 37:17
  Marybeth Whalen: Go away.
• 37:20
  Marybeth Whalen: That's how I did it.
• 37:21
  Marybeth Whalen: It's not glamorous, and it probably should not be anybody's parenting advice, but that's how I did it.
• 37:27
  Emily: So I love it, though.
• 37:28
  Emily: I love, like, that you carve that space out for yourself.
• 37:32
  Rachel: Yeah.
• 37:32
  Marybeth Whalen: Yeah. I mean, pretty many.
• 37:34
  Marybeth Whalen: They.
• 37:34
  Marybeth Whalen: Yeah, they can watch a kid show for 30 minutes.
• 37:37
  Marybeth Whalen: They are fine.
• 37:38
  Emily: It's not like you're out of the.
• 37:39
  Marybeth Whalen: House, like, right down the hall or fire.
• 37:43
  Marybeth Whalen: The door was locked.
• 37:44
  Marybeth Whalen: I did lock the door because otherwise they just come zooming in.
• 37:47
  Rachel: Yeah.
• 37:47
  Marybeth Whalen: Because they closed doors.
• 37:49
  Marybeth Whalen: Never mattered to them.
• 37:51
  Marybeth Whalen: So I would lock the door, just not to keep them out, necessarily, but have.
• 37:55
  Marybeth Whalen: They would have to knock.
• 37:55
  Marybeth Whalen: They couldn't just bust in my door because that's even more disturbing.
• 37:58
  Marybeth Whalen: So. But I got really good at writing with interruptions, like, going out of the story back in.
• 38:05
  Marybeth Whalen: Out of the story back in.
• 38:06
  Marybeth Whalen: I can't do that anymore because they have to.
• 38:10
  Marybeth Whalen: And it's.
• 38:10
  Marybeth Whalen: I'm like, you used to be so much better than you are.
• 38:13
  Rachel: So I.
• 38:15
  Emily: But that just goes to show we use the time we have.
• 38:18
  Emily: Like, our business coach said that one, she was like, time doesn't mean anything.
• 38:21
  Emily: It's just like, if you're gonna.
• 38:25
  Emily: If you're gonna make it happen in whatever time that you have or you're not.
• 38:29
  Rachel: Exactly. Yeah, I taught a. I taught a workshop two weeks ago to a lovely group of writers, and what we talked about was, like, like, you can't change the practical things that are gonna interrupt you most of the time.
• 38:43
  Rachel: Like, you can't change how many kids you have.
• 38:45
  Rachel: Like, you can't change your kids.
• 38:46
  Rachel: You can't change your job.
• 38:48
  Rachel: You can't change, like, that stuff exists, so you have to figure out how to write, like, in the midst of it.
• 38:53
  Marybeth Whalen: Right.
• 38:54
  Rachel: And so our workshop ended up being a lot more, like, mindset heavy because we.
• 38:58
  Rachel: We tend to shoot ourselves in the foot way more on the mindset side than we do on, like, I don't.
• 39:05
  Rachel: Like, I have.
• 39:05
  Rachel: I'm a caretaker, so I don't have the time, because you can write with literally any amount of time that you have if those other things aren't presenting, you know, the huge problem of, like, oh, I'm such a perfectionist.
• 39:17
  Rachel: Whenever I have 30 minutes, I can't figure out how to do anything.
• 39:20
  Marybeth Whalen: I will.
• 39:21
  Marybeth Whalen: You just saying that made me remember one of the books that was hugely influential on what I just described was taking the 15, 2030 minutes that I had instead of.
• 39:30
  Marybeth Whalen: I used to tell myself, I can't write a book because I don't have 3 hours out in a field with fawn sprawlicking around in a waterfall.
• 39:40
  Marybeth Whalen: So trickling in the background.
• 39:42
  Marybeth Whalen: I. That's kind of.
• 39:43
  Marybeth Whalen: I was very precious about the whole thing.
• 39:44
  Marybeth Whalen: And I read a book called Pen on Fire, and it's, I'm sure you can get a copy of it if you want.
• 39:51
  Marybeth Whalen: I highly recommend it.
• 39:52
  Marybeth Whalen: Her whole thing was, all you need is 15 minutes.
• 39:55
  Marybeth Whalen: And I read that book, and I was like, she's right.
• 39:58
  Marybeth Whalen: And she would literally write in her kitchen in the middle of, you know, dinner time if, if this, you know, if the noodles were coming to a boil.
• 40:07
  Marybeth Whalen: And it just, it.
• 40:08
  Marybeth Whalen: I, it taught me, you're being way too precious about this, and you need to just get real, and how if you really want this that bad, then you will fix it.
• 40:18
  Emily: So that reminds me, Rachel, of the little game that you play.
• 40:22
  Emily: Micro sprints.
• 40:24
  Rachel: My grace.
• 40:25
  Rachel: Friends, I was thinking the same thing.
• 40:26
  Rachel: So in our writing community, we have a writing program that we teach craft mindset, and it's a community for our writers.
• 40:33
  Rachel: And over the summer, I mean, with a, she was three then, she's four now.
• 40:39
  Rachel: But, like, constant interruptions.
• 40:40
  Rachel: Right?
• 40:40
  Rachel: Like, her attention span is only so large, and she's an only child, so she very much wants to play with me all the time, or my husband all the time.
• 40:51
  Rachel: And I was trying to finish this draft, and I was like, you know what?
• 40:54
  Rachel: I'm just going to write until she interrupts me.
• 40:57
  Rachel: And however long that is, great.
• 40:59
  Rachel: That's however long it is.
• 41:01
  So I started at like 07: 00 a.m. and I called them micro sprints.
• 41:06
  So I started at like 07: And I, like, posted in our community, I'm just going to write until she comes to talk to me.
• 41:10
  So I started at like 07: And when she comes, then we'll take a break, and then when she goes to do her own thing again, I'll come back.
• 41:15
  So I started at like 07: And I think I did maybe like ten or 15 throughout the day, but I wrote, like, I think I wrote 1700 words that day, and it was literally just like eight minutes at a time.
• 41:26
  So I started at like 07: I was like, how much can I do for eight minutes?
• 41:28
  So I started at like 07: And then she'd come and I'd be like, okay, we're stopping.
• 41:32
  So I started at like 07: And I posted it all in this thread in our community.
• 41:34
  So I started at like 07: And since then, we now have, like, adopted this practice of, like, I'm gonna do some micro sprints today.
• 41:40
  So I started at like 07: Let's see how much can happen.
• 41:42
  So I started at like 07: It was like, super low pressure.
• 41:43
  So I started at like 07: Just like, how much can I do before I get interrupted?
• 41:46
  So I started at like 07: It worked really well.
• 41:50
  Marybeth Whalen: I mean, yeah, you, you can come up with stuff and you can get it done.
• 41:54
  Marybeth Whalen: And I, like I said, I was a little too precious about it back in the day.
• 41:58
  Marybeth Whalen: In fact, even listening to y'all talk.
• 41:59
  Marybeth Whalen: I'm, I've gotten a little too precious about it again.
• 42:01
  Marybeth Whalen: I need to fix some stuff about myself.
• 42:04
  Marybeth Whalen: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:05
  Rachel: Go do some micro sprints.
• 42:09
  Marybeth Whalen: That three year old is now, she just left for college, so.
• 42:12
  Emily: Oh, my God. Big moments.
• 42:15
  Marybeth Whalen: They say it goes so fast.
• 42:16
  Marybeth Whalen: They're, they're not lying.
• 42:17
  Marybeth Whalen: The old ladies in the grocery store, they're not lying.
• 42:19
  Marybeth Whalen: It does go so fast.
• 42:20
  Marybeth Whalen: So. Yeah, yeah, I know.
• 42:23
  Marybeth Whalen: Bad news, but true.
• 42:25
  Marybeth Whalen: So, yeah, so I am, I have an empty, empty house most days.
• 42:30
  Marybeth Whalen: My husband's working, and then I am back to the, like, oh, well, I'm not going to have 3 hours, so I just won't write today.
• 42:37
  Marybeth Whalen: You know, that's ridiculous.
• 42:41
  Rachel: It is funny, though, how, like, our process adapts to, like, our phase of life or our season, whatever we're in, because what worked for you back then shifted.
• 42:50
  Rachel: And now maybe you have to shift a little bit back and, like, refine some of that urgency or the ability to write in those short periods of time.
• 42:59
  Rachel: It changes.
• 43:00
  Rachel: It changes with wherever else we're going, whatever else is happening in our lives.
• 43:04
  Emily: For sure.
• 43:04
  Marybeth Whalen: Yeah.
• 43:05
  Rachel: Yeah. Well, as we get to kind of the end of our time together, I did want to ask you, I know also you are the part of the host of the booktide or a founder of the booktide, so could you tell us a little bit about that?
• 43:17
  Rachel: The book tied, why do, what's it do for readers?
• 43:21
  Marybeth Whalen: I run that with Ariel Lahan, my friend.
• 43:24
  Marybeth Whalen: And we actually, years and years ago, started a site called she reads that ended up going, oh, my gosh, no, it's not the same.
• 43:34
  Marybeth Whalen: She reads.
• 43:34
  Marybeth Whalen: The one we started preceded that one.
• 43:37
  Marybeth Whalen: That one has come in since we stopped ours, but a lot of people think it's the same.
• 43:42
  Marybeth Whalen: That's not us any, but.
• 43:44
  Marybeth Whalen: So we have, we did.
• 43:46
  Marybeth Whalen: She reads and then we took, we both were writing, you know, a book a year.
• 43:49
  Marybeth Whalen: We had.
• 43:50
  Marybeth Whalen: She has four kids, I have six.
• 43:51
  Marybeth Whalen: We were kind of in the throes of just chaos.
• 43:54
  Marybeth Whalen: And so we took a break and did nothing.
• 43:56
  Marybeth Whalen: And January of this year, we came back with the book tied.
• 44:00
  Marybeth Whalen: And our tagline is a rising tide raises all books.
• 44:03
  Marybeth Whalen: And we just want to really share books and share authors.
• 44:08
  Marybeth Whalen: I mean, both of us, like I said, have written, I don't even know how many she's written, six, seven, something like that.
• 44:14
  Marybeth Whalen: I mean, and I've written ten now.
• 44:16
  Marybeth Whalen: So we've, we've met a lot of writers along the way, and we just want to promote our friends and, and new friends and just reading in books.
• 44:27
  Marybeth Whalen: And at the, like I said, in the beginning, we were both readers.
• 44:30
  Marybeth Whalen: And the way we started she reads was we noticed that people would come over to our house and we would press books into their hands.
• 44:37
  Marybeth Whalen: They would leave.
• 44:38
  Marybeth Whalen: We ran kind of our own lending library, and we said, well, what if we, and they would come back and say, that was so good.
• 44:44
  Marybeth Whalen: Give me something else.
• 44:45
  Marybeth Whalen: And so we said, well, we said, what if we just did that online?
• 44:48
  Marybeth Whalen: And that's kind of how she reads came to be.
• 44:50
  Marybeth Whalen: And so we're not necessarily doing the same thing this time with that.
• 44:55
  Marybeth Whalen: Like, we're not going to choose a book a month.
• 44:57
  Marybeth Whalen: We sort of started out that way just because that's what we knew, but really more just creating, you know, that community around reading, kind of what you guys are doing with, with writers and just sharing books.
• 45:08
  Marybeth Whalen: I will say we've took the summer, accidentally took the summer off, but we are coming back strong in the fall.
• 45:14
  Emily: Love that.
• 45:15
  Marybeth Whalen: Yeah. So we're kind of learning as we go, but we figured, you know, done is better than perfect and let's just at least get it off the ground and, and see what comes of it.
• 45:25
  Marybeth Whalen: We've done some, some podcasts with authors and we may bring that back.
• 45:29
  Marybeth Whalen: We're just kind of learning as we go.
• 45:31
  Marybeth Whalen: But it is a, it is a fun thing to do with your friends and you guys can probably testify to that if you're friends and you share a love like this and to just kind of make it more official and do something together like that.
• 45:45
  Marybeth Whalen: So we had missed doing that with she read.
• 45:48
  Marybeth Whalen: So that's, that's what we're doing now.
• 45:51
  Marybeth Whalen: Yeah.
• 45:51
  Marybeth Whalen: Stay tuned.
• 45:52
  Marybeth Whalen: It's the booktide.com.
• 45:54
  Marybeth Whalen: and come follow us.
• 45:56
  Marybeth Whalen: We've got a sub stack, we've got content coming up and we are excited to share it and, and just stay tuned and see what happens.
• 46:06
  Marybeth Whalen: We don't really know yet everything we're going to be up to, but we are.
• 46:10
  Emily: I love that.
• 46:11
  Emily: I love the openness.
• 46:13
  Marybeth Whalen: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 46:14
  Marybeth Whalen: Well, yeah.
• 46:15
  Marybeth Whalen: I'm not, not one for making things up if they're not true.
• 46:20
  Marybeth Whalen: I only make things up and that aren't true in fiction.
• 46:23
  Rachel: In fiction.
• 46:24
  Rachel: Exactly.
• 46:25
  Rachel: I'm like, I think my job is making things up.
• 46:29
  Marybeth Whalen: Do enough of that for my job.
• 46:31
  Rachel: Also, we're going to put a link to the book tied in our show notes and every moment since comes out tomorrow.
• 46:39
  Rachel: The podcast will come out later this week.
• 46:42
  Rachel: So everybody, by the time you're listening, it's out.
• 46:44
  Rachel: Where should they go?
• 46:45
  Marybeth Whalen: Find it well, all the links to purchase it are at my website, marybethwayland.com.
• 46:50
  Marybeth Whalen: and then, of course, anywhere you buy books, it should be there.
• 46:53
  Marybeth Whalen: Barnes and Noble, Target, Amazon, all the indies.
• 46:56
  Marybeth Whalen: And I'm a big indie lover.
• 46:58
  Marybeth Whalen: I'm doing a tour.
• 47:00
  Marybeth Whalen: I think I'm going 17 different stores in the next six weeks.
• 47:04
  Marybeth Whalen: So if you want to look at my events and come see me, I'd love that.
• 47:08
  Marybeth Whalen: And come.
• 47:10
  Marybeth Whalen: Yeah, patronize the indies because they're.
• 47:12
  Marybeth Whalen: They're the champions of the book world, so.
• 47:14
  Emily: Yeah, we love that.
• 47:15
  Emily: Well, congratulations on everyone.
• 47:18
  Emily: Sounds like it was a big project for you.
• 47:20
  Emily: This is a big moment, so I hope you really take time to soak it in.
• 47:23
  Emily: That's amazing.
• 47:25
  Marybeth Whalen: It's surreal to be here, you know, just all this time and here we are and it's like.
• 47:30
  Marybeth Whalen: It's like your wedding day.
• 47:31
  Marybeth Whalen: You're like, okay.
• 47:33
  Emily: It's really.
• 47:34
  Marybeth Whalen: Yeah. So very excited.
• 47:37
  Marybeth Whalen: But thank you all for having me.
• 47:38
  Rachel: Oh, you're so welcome.
• 47:40
  Rachel: We'll put links to everything in the show notes.
• 47:42
  Rachel: Go. Also get on Mary Beth's newsletter too, so you can stay up to date with everything she's up to.
• 47:48
  Rachel: And thank you again for joining us.
• 47:49
  Rachel: This is an awesome conversation and we so appreciate your time.
• 47:53
  Marybeth Whalen: Oh, thank you.
• 47:54
  Marybeth Whalen: It was fun.
• 47:55
  Emily: If you want to build a successful, fulfilling and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list.
• 48:01
  Rachel: Sign up now to get our free email course.
• 48:03
  Rachel: The magic of character arcs.
• 48:05
  Rachel: After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night.
• 48:10
  Emily: Link in the show notes.
• 48:11
  Emily: We'll see you there.