Latest / Show, don't Tell Writing with Suzy Vadori / 62. In Conversation with Short Fiction Author Liz J. Bradley (Part 2)
Transcript
- 0:07Welcome to Show.
- 0:07Don't Tell Writing with me, Suzy Vadori, where I teach you the tried and true secrets to writing fiction nonfiction that are gonna wow your readers broken down step by step.
- 0:18We're gonna explore writing techniques.
- 0:21I'm gonna show you a glimpse behind the scenes of successful writers' careers that you wouldn't have access to otherwise.
- 0:27And I'm also gonna coach writers live on their pages so that you can learn and transform your own storytelling.
- 0:33Whether you're just starting out, you're drafting your first book, you're editing, or you're currently rewriting that book, or maybe even your 10th book, this show's gonna help you unlock the writing skills that you didn't even know you needed, but you definitely do.
- 0:48I'm so looking forward to helping you get your amazing ideas from your mind onto your pages in an exciting way for both you and your readers, so that you can achieve your wildest writing dreams, and you're gonna also have some fun doing it.
- 1:02Let's dive in.
- 1:04Welcome back to the podcast show.
- 1:06Don't Tell Writing.
- 1:07We have part two in my series with Liz J. Bradley from Team Suzy and her a hundred Rejections for short fiction.
- 1:16Last week's episode, she shared with us all the details, how many she submitted, what that process looks like and how she does it.
- 1:23This week's episode is part two.
- 1:26We're gonna talk a lot about Liz's writing process.
- 1:28How does she manage to juggle everything, and how does she do it, what she's learned, what her plans are, and how this is going to play into her plans for her next novel.
- 1:40Liz J. Bradley grew up in a small town in central New York, but followed a career in the theater that took her from the ocean to the tundra to the Eiffel Tower.
- 1:48And in a creative pivot, she began to explore new worlds on the page instead of on the stage.
- 1:54Now she spends her days as an executive assistant.
- 1:56She supports Team Suzy here as well as other executives.
- 2:01She spends her nights telling space stories through prose and poetry.
- 2:05She hosts the Sci-Fi Snacks podcast, which you can link to you and grab in the show notes, and you can also find her online@lizjbradley.com.
- 2:15Not the writing itself though, Liz, we're talking about all the submission and all the sort of noise around this process that you've built.
- 2:23But what about the writing?
- 2:24So if we're, if we're doing, I mean, that first story you said was several months back and forth.
- 2:29But what typical, like for a thousand word story, how much time are you spending on these stories and is it getting faster?
- 2:37It's getting faster in some ways, yes, because there are, you know, I draft a lot cleaner now than I used to.
- 2:46I can.
- 2:47For a piece of flash fiction, which is anything under a thousand words, I can sit down and write that in a day or two and have a pretty clean draft usually.
- 2:58And when you say a day or two, like that's not eight hours a day, that's, oh no, that's, how much time is it?
- 3:04What's your process?
- 3:05I, I can't usually write for more than two hours would be my top.
- 3:12And that we're doing like Pomodoro.
- 3:15Writing sprints in that time.
- 3:17Drafting is my least favorite part of the entire process of writing.
- 3:22I will plan for forever.
- 3:24I like to have like a really clear picture in my head before I sit down because drafting is painful.
- 3:32I have a really hard time like getting my inner editor to not talk.
- 3:37So the drafting part, I try to power through it as quickly as I can because otherwise I get stuck thinking that I'm just the worst writer in the world.
- 3:48So anything per flash, it's probably like four hours to write the piece and then editing, which is my favorite part of the process.
- 3:59I, I did the math once and I was really, really upset about it actually, because.
- 4:07I've been doing a contest where I write DRLs, which are 100 words exactly like not 99, not 101, 100 words.
- 4:17You have to tell a complete story and I'll spend a week working on it and like the actual sitting down writing process part is maybe only a few hours.
- 4:29But when you extrapolate that out to like a novel, I'm like, I spend a few hours on every single like hundred word chunk.
- 4:38My novel, like I literally will never finish anything.
- 4:42So I spend more time per word on shorter stuff right now.
- 4:48But that helps when I'm writing novel length stuff because I've learned.
- 4:53I've learned a lot of things paying that much attention to the short fiction, so I know, you know, I'm not worrying about formatting stuff.
- 5:02I've got that pretty, pretty well.
- 5:04I know how to do dialogue with action beats, and I know what my voice sounds like, so I know how I like to kind of get a scene out there.
- 5:14So it helps me write the novel stuff faster because I've spent time.
- 5:19It's like doing a, a character study for an artist where they just spend like a week drawing hands.
- 5:27That's what flash fiction and drabbles and stuff is.
- 5:30For me, it's, I'm spending all this time working on.
- 5:34The pros itself, making sure it does double duty.
- 5:38Triple duty.
- 5:38Because when you don't have the space, every sentence, every word has to, yes, Liz, I've heard the wait.
- 5:46Yeah, absolutely.
- 5:48Double, triple duty.
- 5:49We talk about that a lot.
- 5:50Mm-hmm.
- 5:50And I know in terms of process, you said that you used Pomodoro or you a 25 minute Pomodoro.
- 5:57I'm, that's where you set a, you set a timer, typically 25 minutes and you write, and then you take a quick break and then you do it again and you stay focused.
- 6:04And I know too, Liz had shared we, she is part of my inner circle of writers that you can learn more about in the show notes, but.
- 6:14We, we did this exercise a couple of weeks ago where we were talking about our writing process and imagining what is the best writing day that you've ever had.
- 6:24And Liz had this aha moment where she'd been scheduling time in the evening after her kids went to bed and canceling on herself for these writing dates and realizing that she'd never really had a great, that's not when her energy was.
- 6:37And so she figured out that if she wrote on her lunch hour, she might be more successful.
- 6:41So.
- 6:42There's always things that you can tweak about your writing process.
- 6:45So if you're listening and going, oh my gosh, like she's talking about writing every day, or writing all the time, and I don't have that time, just use what time you do have.
- 6:55Just use what time you do have and figure out what process works for you.
- 6:58And that's, Liz is continually tweaking her process.
- 7:02And what's kind of neat, because you get to be immersed in this and helping and supporting other writers, and so you're always also thinking about your own process and how you can improve that as well.
- 7:11Okay.
- 7:11Yeah.
- 7:12So great results.
- 7:13Amazing story.
- 7:15Thank you so much for sharing all these detail.
- 7:17Is this what you expected when you started out?
- 7:19Like were you like, okay, I'm gonna get to a hundred rejections and I'm going to be doing this machine, and is this what, like are you happy with these results with nine published stories?
- 7:28I hope so.
- 7:29I, I'm thrilled.
- 7:31Honestly, I think it's really easy to get bombed down in.
- 7:36The rejections and the gatekeeping that comes when you want traditionally published goals.
- 7:44And there's always people telling you no and telling you you can't.
- 7:48I think when I sat down and I actually looked at like the percentages and numbers, I was surprised that I'm at average or above average on those statistics, which for me, it doesn't always feel that way because it feels like, oh, you're failing, you're failing, you're failing, you're not getting anywhere.
- 8:07You're not hitting these arbitrary goals that you know.
- 8:10I think it's really important to set goals that you can control.
- 8:14For a couple of years was like, oh, I'm gonna get an agent this year.
- 8:18I can control that.
- 8:19So that's not, that's not a goal for me anymore.
- 8:23My goal is to submit to agents.
- 8:25My goal is to write a better book.
- 8:27It's to write a better query letter.
- 8:30It's to do the things that I can.
- 8:32So like stopping and pausing for a minute and looking at all that I've accomplished and how far I've come was actually really.
- 8:42Really helpful and made me feel really good about my process.
- 8:46And actually I'm inspired because I looked at this list of things that I wanna write and I think people get scared in the beginning thinking that they'll run out of ideas and that's literally not are the problem.
- 9:01And as you more things.
- 9:04You're like, oh, well what about this idea?
- 9:06And this idea and ideas beget ideas.
- 9:10And so as you keep writing, you keep thinking of things that you want to write about or you wanna try.
- 9:18And so I have so many, my only regret is that I don't have more time to write and.
- 9:25You know, that may be that pie in the sky goal of I'm gonna be a full-time writer someday, and maybe I'll build up to it.
- 9:33We'll make, I know you're gonna do it.
- 9:35You're gonna do it, Liz, and we are gonna miss you so hard when you do too much.
- 9:40It always takes longer than you think, but I think reviewing what I've done and looking at all the stories that I've written.
- 9:48I feel really good about it.
- 9:50Like I am excited, I'm happy, I wanna keep writing and I wanna keep submitting.
- 9:56Yeah, it's awesome.
- 9:57That's what I was gonna ask you.
- 9:57Are you gonna keep going?
- 9:59Two years For sure.
- 10:00Gonna keep going.
- 10:00What's the next goal?
- 10:03So a hundred rejections achieved?
- 10:06Yeah.
- 10:06Technically my goal for this year was 52 submissions, which was one for each week, and I've already like surpassed that.
- 10:15My new goal for the year was a hundred submissions, and the other goal that I'm kind of shifting to is clearing out my editing section on my spreadsheet and getting them to submission ready.
- 10:31So I really, really wanna focus on carving out that time on my lunch hour and things like that to get these stories that.
- 10:41I'm still editing.
- 10:42I have feedback on all of them from my critique partners and I know what needs to be done.
- 10:48I just need to put in the time to get them to a polished place to submit and like I've got one that I'm looking at that is a capture the flag on the moon story.
- 11:02That is, I'm so excited about it and I wanna share it with the world and I wanna talk with people about it, but like.
- 11:09I know it needs edits and I just have to do it.
- 11:12So the new goal is to really clear out that editing queue so that I can be submitting these new things and replacing the things that are getting published with stuff that can kind of go in after it for submissions.
- 11:27So, I mean, the cool thing for listeners, if they don't understand how short story works, there's this neat thing too where you can actually republish the same thing, right?
- 11:36Like it's a reprint and so.
- 11:38Even if it's been published somewhere, usually there's a grace period and then you can keep submitting that same story and get paid for it again.
- 11:45Is that something that you're doing with those stories that have been published?
- 11:49Yeah, so I'm tracking.
- 11:51Each of my contracts has actually been different.
- 11:53Anywhere from they hold onto rights for a year.
- 11:57Two, it's three months, I think is the shortest.
- 12:00So I have a list of dates on all of the ones that have been published.
- 12:05Um, when can I start sending this back out?
- 12:08And most of them have an exception for, there are a lot of like best of this year anthology type things.
- 12:16And almost everyone has an exception on their exclusivity period if you're submitting to those.
- 12:24So I've actually.
- 12:25Submitted a couple of times, some of the things that I've already published to those anthologies and things like that, so that would be really cool.
- 12:34So amazing.
- 12:35Okay, so if your head is spinning, just listening to quiz and everything that she's been able to accomplish.
- 12:40Yes.
- 12:41She's super human and she's really got this down to is science, but you know, many writers have the opposite issue that you were just talking about.
- 12:50It's not about more ideas.
- 12:51It's like, oh my gosh, I have 20 things on the go.
- 12:55I always tell them to pick one and get it done, you know?
- 12:58How do you keep from just getting totally overwhelmed if you've got 30 stories that are sort of on the go?
- 13:04I mean, if anybody can do it, you can.
- 13:07And obviously you've managed to do it.
- 13:08How are you doing that?
- 13:11The secret in writing for me has been sharing my work with critique partners.
- 13:18So I, at the same time I started doing this, I had just joined a local groups from my library and like, check out your library because there are writers groups usually where you can start one through your library and then they host it.
- 13:32For me, I share almost everything that I write with these critique partners.
- 13:38I also share everything with my sister who reads kind of my zero drafts, and she is a reader.
- 13:46She's not a writer, so she's really able to tell me this is exciting, like I like this idea, and I find that Then talking about the different stories with people.
- 13:57Is the way that I can kind of prioritize in my mind what I'm excited about working on.
- 14:04And I think that following that excitement, really thinking about which story is the most exciting to you, it's how I got through my last novel that I wrote.
- 14:16I had been writing a young adult fantasy that was really dark and kind of sad and heavy, and I was like.
- 14:24COVID hit and I was like, I can't do this.
- 14:26Like I cannot keep working on something that's just so heavy and dark and isn't bringing me joy.
- 14:33I literally sat down and was like, what are things that make me happy?
- 14:37And I put them all together and I said, I'm gonna write a book with all of these elements like Kesha's, rainbow Album and Theater People.
- 14:46Space because it's gotta be set in space and all of these things that bring me joy, and that's kind of what I follow.
- 14:53I look at these stories and I go, which ones bring me the most joy?
- 14:57And those are the ones that I work on because I highly limited time, you know?
- 15:01Yeah.
- 15:01And you are really smart about it, like when you, because you do, you schedule your writing time because you have to, because your life is crazy.
- 15:09And you schedule your running time and when you sit down you have that spreadsheet, you look and you choose one thing when you do your timers for 25 minutes and you work on that one thing.
- 15:19Yeah.
- 15:19So even if you've got more things on the go and you're able to manage that because you have these systems in place, but it's still about finishing that one thing.
- 15:27Okay.
- 15:28So the elephant in the room here, we're doing all these other things, talk about,'cause we set out to write a novel.
- 15:37Mm-hmm.
- 15:37And.
- 15:38Honestly, I can't believe I'm even saying this.
- 15:40Please don't try this at home.
- 15:42But Liz is still writing novels, so can you talk a little bit about that amazing novel that you did that brought you joy, where that ended up?
- 15:52And I know the answer to this one because I don't read all of her short fiction.
- 15:56I could have possibly, it would take be a full-time job, I think.
- 15:59But I do help and get to, you get the privilege.
- 16:03Of critiquing some of the novel Link stuff.
- 16:06So talk about where that novel ended up and what you're working on now and how you're doing that.
- 16:10Yeah, and also doing all this other things and also being the most amazing.
- 16:15Team member word retain Suzy compartmentalizing.
- 16:18It really is about compartmentalizing your projects and so that, that joy novel for me is, it's technically still out on submission for queries, so I think that there are still e queries that are out.
- 16:35I have two full requests that are still out, that I have been out for a really long time.
- 16:41And yes, publishing moves very slow.
- 16:44I've kind of, I've emotionally moved on from the querying stage, so if I don't hear back from those last eight, I've already moved on essentially.
- 16:54Well, and and to be fair, because you're not gonna toot your own horn, you received some extremely warm.
- 17:01Rejections, um, where the feedback is.
- 17:04So positive agents absolutely love this book, and yet they can't figure out how to sell it because you combined a lot of different things, which were your joy spots, right?
- 17:14And you're like, what if maybe I can't sell it to this market?
- 17:17So true to Liz form.
- 17:19What are you doing now?
- 17:21Now I started from my query.
- 17:24So the first thing I wrote for the next book was my hook and my query, because it was.
- 17:30It was so hard to write a book that was 94,000 words and then distill it to her page, and that was, it really was.
- 17:38The marketability of that last book was tough because it didn't have a clear hook.
- 17:44It didn't have a one sentence thing that somebody would go, Ooh, I wanna buy that.
- 17:49I wanna read that.
- 17:50So I started.
- 17:53With that for the next book.
- 17:55So when I wrote the query, I did some pitch events.
- 17:59Blue Sky is actually kind of trying to bring back those pitch events and I had done those for the Joy novel that used to be on Twitter.
- 18:10And actually one of my girlfriends, one of my good colleagues, originally got her agent on Twitter.
- 18:16And yeah, tho those have died out.
- 18:18But Blue Sky is a new social media.
- 18:20Check it out.
- 18:21Um, sorry.
- 18:21Keep going, Liz.
- 18:23Yeah, no, and I think doing these pitch events, they have a lot now for work in progress pitch events where it's kind of just more about building community and sharing your story.
- 18:35And it can feel like, well, what's the point?
- 18:38The point is knowing your pitch going in.
- 18:41And now whenever I'm writing a chapter or I'm looking at it, I can look, I have my pitch posted like right on my wall, and I can go, what is the essence of this story?
- 18:51And is this chapter resonating with that?
- 18:54Because I don't wanna write.
- 18:5750,000 words that I have to cut because it doesn't fit in the novel.
- 19:00So this time I wrote that back jacket copy and I know what the story is, and now it's about zooming in and expanding those pieces and making sure everything fits with this idea and this theme.
- 19:17So when I go out to query, it may shift a little bit based on kind of what I find as I write.
- 19:24But I'm somebody who works really well within structures.
- 19:28I think that's why I love like flash fiction so much is give me boundaries and I will work right up to the edge of the boundary and be as creative as I can within the box.
- 19:40So I've created that box for myself with this novel.
- 19:44Like, it's not that it can be anything.
- 19:46'cause that that's really hard when you sit down and it's like a hundred thousand words.
- 19:51That's how people end up with like 500,000 word epics.
- 19:54I'm kidding.
- 19:55People are like, should I just break it into three books?
- 19:58And I'm like, no, it doesn't work like that.
- 20:00Right?
- 20:00Yeah.
- 20:01So you gotta work within the confines.
- 20:04So I gave myself those confines.
- 20:06I wrote the pitch.
- 20:07And now I'm exploring what.
- 20:11The different characters that I've created, how do they exist inside the world where this is what we're talking about and this is what we're exploring.
- 20:21Yeah.
- 20:22I love how you've taken what you've learned in this short fiction journey and I mean, I've seen your writing just absolutely blossom and explode since we've, you know, since.
- 20:32Since I've met you and you were a newer writer when you first started working with me and my team and, and now it's like just so solid and you know what readers and what editors are responding to and all of that, you're able to take that and actually move it into that novel space.
- 20:50And so whenever happens, and you know this and you can kind of, I mean, it was hard, right?
- 20:54I know I was there.
- 20:56Yeah.
- 20:56It was hard to put that first book.
- 20:58To kinda let it go.
- 20:59We had many discussions about it, but it, it is, but you know that that's gonna come back from your experience of, I think, you know, when you get this more marketable one and get that out there, the hope is that, that there'll be some space for this other one that kind of doesn't have a home to your readers are going to just Absolutely eat it up because Yeah, I'll have, so things that are, make it you.
- 21:24Yeah, no writing is ever wasted and I think really internalizing that helped me move on from that book into the next one.
- 21:33And I always have something on the back burner that I'm really excited about that I don't let myself touch.
- 21:40So I already know the next, next book, and I'm not allowed to work on that until I get through the hard parts of this novel.
- 21:49And I think.
- 21:50It might be controversial because you hear it all the time in online spaces where people say short stories are harder than novels, and I don't think so at all.
- 22:02Like I am, I will fight.
- 22:04Tooth and nail novels are harder.
- 22:07I think they're different skill sets, but yes, say slightly.
- 22:11But I think that a lot of people, what it is, is they don't encounter the whole process in a novel.
- 22:16They write a first draft and they think I've written a novel.
- 22:20So novels are easier because I haven't engaged with the rewriting and the, the whole process being, being as strong as I can do.
- 22:29Yeah.
- 22:29Yeah.
- 22:30And 'cause people say, oh, well a short story has to be really, really polished.
- 22:33So does your novel.
- 22:35Yeah.
- 22:35You know?
- 22:35Absolutely.
- 22:36You have to do both.
- 22:38And so I think they're both very hard in different ways, but you can get through the hard, faster, and the shorter stuff.
- 22:47So yeah, I like that part.
- 22:50I think what's neat about the job that we both have on Team Suzy is that we get to see so many other writers' processes that we get to reflect on our own as well.
- 23:00And I don't, I don't write short stories and it's not because I think they're harder or anything else.
- 23:05I actually love the challenge of a novel, like holding all of that in my brain.
- 23:10Mm-hmm.
- 23:10And trying to piece through it.
- 23:11It's the reason I love developmental editing, 'cause I do it for other people as well, but holding all of that in my brain is part of the fun.
- 23:19Do I think I could write short story.
- 23:21I mean, we all think that we should.
- 23:23They haven't.
- 23:24Um, we don't.
- 23:25Okay.
- 23:25Yeah.
- 23:25Right.
- 23:26There are different types of stories.
- 23:27You're not gonna tell the same story in a hundred words as you are in a novel, like in 100 words.
- 23:33That story is about one single moment, one single choice flash fiction, where you've got a thousand words.
- 23:42That's about one change.
- 23:44And then a novel is about kind of.
- 23:48Transformation and whatnot, that you get to explore a a thousand of those little choices.
- 23:55And so what I think is great is that you can work on having a full story in each format, and that will help you because if you can write a complete story in a hundred words.
- 24:09What the important things are that get people interested, you know?
- 24:13Absolutely.
- 24:14And then that goes into your novel.
- 24:15Absolutely.
- 24:16Many, many writers do start there with a novel and then they add a bunch of stuff to make it not a hundred thousand words.
- 24:22And, and you've gotta be really careful that you're not just adding tea sipping, I always use that example, but making tea, it's gotta kind of be a lot more and, but it still needs to weave together.
- 24:34Amazing.
- 24:34This has been such a valuable discussion.
- 24:36I'm sure that the listeners are really jazzed and probably gonna go out and be your competition.
- 24:42Now, with all of these hard story submission.
- 24:46Bring it.
- 24:46I love it.
- 24:46Bring it, right?
- 24:48No, maybe outcome.
- 24:49Would you do it again?
- 24:51A hundred percent.
- 24:52A hundred percent.
- 24:54It's all about the journey and what I've learned about myself as an artist, as a writer, as a person.
- 25:02The amount of personal insights where I've had writing a story and just being like, oh, that's who I am.
- 25:09That's what I believe.
- 25:11That's invaluable.
- 25:12And so I would, I would never give it up for all the tears that I cry for.
- 25:17All of being hard making track right now.
- 25:20Just like, this is what writing should be, Liz, and this is what writing and immersing yourself in this space can be.
- 25:28And you've also gamified it for yourself, for those dopamines.
- 25:32Yeah.
- 25:32And, and several, you're, you're seeing a lot of success and I love that.
- 25:36Okay, so where can we find you?
- 25:39You also have a podcast, which is a really cool thing.
- 25:42Tell us about your podcast.
- 25:43I do, the podcast is called Sci-Fi Snacks, and each episode I talk about a short science fiction story that I've read, and I pair it with a snack because nothing is better than reading and eating good things.
- 26:01Season two is just about to drop, and that's gonna be all punk stories.
- 26:06So like steam punk, cyberpunk, pop, punk.
- 26:09All of that.
- 26:10It was a project for me that I chose to do it, to read more, to become a better writer, but also as the one project that I could do that had no gatekeepers.
- 26:21There's nobody telling me, no, you can't do this except for myself.
- 26:26So that's another joy project.
- 26:29Follow the joy.
- 26:30That's the theme.
- 26:31Do the things that make you happy.
- 26:32Great condo of you.
- 26:33Very me.
- 26:33Condo of you.
- 26:34Yeah.
- 26:34Okay.
- 26:34Yeah.
- 26:35So yeah, so check that out.
- 26:36If you love science fiction, if you're interested, Liz could like.
- 26:41Totally educate you on all the different sub genres and things, which if you are interested in pursuing something, especially in science fiction, but it's really important when you're looking at short story to understand all these different markets.
- 26:53You've gotta understand what it is that they're asking for as well.
- 26:56Thank you so much for being on the show today.
- 26:58Liz, come on the show anytime.
- 27:01Thank you so much, Suzy.
- 27:02Bye.
- 27:10Thanks for tuning in to show.
- 27:11No.
- 27:11Tell Writing with me, Suzy Vadori.
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- 28:05See you again next week.