233 Writing Tips and Novels with Mary Carroll Moore
Pencils&Lipstick podcast ·
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Transcript
SPEAKER_00
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Happy
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June everyone! This is episode 233 of Pencils and Lipstick. I'm Kat Caldwell, your hostess as usual and as you can see if you're watching on YouTube my office is going through a little bit of a revamp. I think I'm going to turn my table. I only have one window in here and it's like the lighting gets all weird so and I set up new shelves that I'm not going to show you yet because that area is still a mess and hopefully that will help me keep things a little more organized you know one can hope at least my husband always hopes that I will learn to be organized you know I'm only halfway through life so there is still a chance that that will happen. You know, we can hope. So June is here, graduations are piling upon us. If you have anyone who is graduating this season, good luck getting any sleep. We have a couple different graduations this season and only a few of them we are able to personally attend, but congratulations to all the grads. And you
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now we're going into summer, which means our writing schedule, if we have one, our writing habits, the way that we sneak time might change a lot. It always changes for me, even though I am, you know, at home with the kids. So from 2 .45 onwards, it is, you know I am at the disposal of my family I mean that sounds weird but I am I am family mom I put on the mom hat I run people around I make dinner you know all those things and that doesn't change obviously but you know just finding the time to do stuff while not ignoring your kids you know it's always a delicate balance so I'm gonna put together a couple ideas for next week on how we might find time and maybe turn things on its head of what is productive and what isn't. You know, writing a story requires a lot of thinking time regardless of what sort of the industry experts are saying. And that's a little controversial only because there are a couple different ways to write and to run your business. And I think even people who write quickly, there still must be a time that they're thinking, unless they're just geniuses, which I guess that's possible, right? Everyone could be a genius, but I don't think everyone
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is. And so for those of us who are not, how do we get some writing done? How do we still continue on with our goals? And how do we reorganize our thought process on approaching those goals? That is what I really want to talk about in the coming weeks. And then through July and August, We don't have the podcast because you all are out having fun and doing things and I will be revamping Just reorganizing my thoughts on the product on the podcast. I have a couple ideas of what I want to do next season I know I Know that I might change it a little bit So we'll be talking about that as for me in the last month I have been well if you can see this way everything's mirrored I am putting together the Kickstarter prints to go out that is the lovely little extra that people got for supporting the Kickstarter I'm still waiting for Bend and Love to get printed and to come to the house which is making me nervous I had a issue with IngramSpark maybe I should get someone from them on the podcast because wow I do not understand and I'm getting quite frustrated with it but it is only June 1st as I record this so we are really really crossing our
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fingers that things will just figure itself out right and come but after that I've been because I have been on the formatting warpath because I have formatted three books in the last two months I have formatted a book for another friend of mine. I have become quite adept at Atticus. I would highly recommend that program. Every program has its little flaws and little issues, right? You do have to learn a program. I mean, I am one of those people who wants to just like jump in and do stuff and I have to admit I've been using Word forever and probably don't use half of its functions maybe, but I do know more functions than some people and that's kind of the way that I have Atticus. Like I maybe don't know all its functions but I think I know a little bit more than some people just because I use it a lot. I have formatted a lot of people's books. And so I am probably going to start offering that as a little part of my business because I have found that a lot of people don't want to do their formatting and I admit like learning the software is probably the hardest part. It takes a lot of time and there's a bit of frustration involved and I think sometimes you just want that space from your book and I have to say I don't get half as frustrated doing somebody else's formatting than I do with my own because I think I have higher expectations for myself on my own stuff and just like it has to be perfect the first time whereas usually I format it I export it, I look, and if I see a little error, I go back and fix it, right? And that process, I get very frustrated when it's my book, and when it's a friend's, somehow I'm not frustrated. I just go do it. You know, it's part of the job. It's weird. Brains are weird. So I'm also working again with some nonfiction people, which is fun. I think that's a little bit of a break from my brain. It helps me use my strategy and figure out, you know, where things might go and brainstorm with them. And I have to say, it is like my favorite thing to do
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with writers, whether they are fiction or nonfiction, brainstorming, you know, all the information that they have for their book and where to put it and what to take out and where the story should go, what we should put in there and why, you know, really making those decisions on purpose, on especially for nonfiction memoir, you know, what what really needs to be there and why should it be there and and not just you know having the writer send it to an editor and the editor give their opinion back and then it it gets done you know it gets published I want the writer to always make that decision on purpose that is my biggest goal um so I've also you know as I've said before come back from Cuba and just sort of getting back into the swing of things, finishing off the Kickstarter. I am still writing as well as much as I can but this week I will be traveling and all the things just like you guys. So today we are, we actually have an interview and then for the rest of June you'll just have me where we're going to talk a couple different things. Today we have Mary Carol Moore on the show. As usual I had a lot of fun talking with Mary Carol Moore. She has a new book out which we will have the links to in the show notes and it's hit number one on Amazon already. It's called Last Bets and I really enjoyed talking to her about how she figured out that story. We also talked about her book A Woman's Guide to Search and rescue. And that also has a lot of really interesting ways of how she went about putting that story together and where it came from. I'm very interested these days in where these stories come from. And, you know, following that path of our thought process and how we get there. And Mary is somebody who really inspired me because she takes time to get certain things right. And you're going to hear it in the interview. But the lengths to which she went to make sure that she understood her story is I think very inspiring. And I'm going to pull on that string a little bit in another episode in June, just talking about, you know, what is the right thing to do for you as the writer, but I think that you're going to be inspired by her interview and be really interested in how she comes up with these very different, you know, even from each other, she's the writer of both of them, but they're very different from each other, how she's come up with the story, how she's put them together. And just her story in general, I think is very inspiring. So without further ado, let's get in to the interview with Mary Carol Moore. All right, welcome back, everyone, to Pencils & Lipstick. I am here today with Mary Carol Moore. She is an author of several genres, which we will get into. But before we get into all of her books, I welcome you to the show, Mary. Hello, it's so nice to talk to you today. Thank so glad to be here, Kat. Thanks. And can you tell us just a little bit about yourself? Where are you calling in from? And a little bit about Mary?
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I live in New Hampshire with my family. I have a grown son and I'm a dog mom now in my later years. I have a huge garden and I write and paint. I paint landscapes outside. So I toggled between the two genres.
SPEAKER_00
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Oh, nice. Yeah, that like feeds different creativity, doesn't it? Like, yeah, it
SPEAKER_01
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helps me get unstuck. Yeah, when I'm really working hard on a writing project, like a scene that is just not coming together, I can either go out in the garden and, you know, mess around there, or I can paint and something frees up inside and I get an idea and I can move forward. So it's really great to have more than one artistic avenue.
SPEAKER_00
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Yes, I am not good at gardening, but I do it because it helps me think. Yeah. It's more like weed pulling and praying my plants will not die.
SPEAKER_01
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Well, we all do that no matter how much gardening experience we have. You know, if you kill something, then you're a gardener. That's what I was always told.
SPEAKER_00
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So I'm definitely a gardener, I that one down. But it does help to get out of the house
SPEAKER_00
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and to do other things, for sure. So let's talk a little bit about how many different genres you teach writing, you write all these different things. I mean, you have a cookbook that won the Julia Child Award. So where did you start when it comes to writing?
SPEAKER_01
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Well, I started as a food journalist. I was I lived in Paris in my late my early 20s and I came back to the US and I didn't have a job. So I got a gig teaching cooking in my apartment actually in a little apartment in Arizona and then the local magazine for that area found out about me and they needed a cooking column. So I started writing this cooking column every month and then that led to just a ballooning career, where I opened a cooking school in the Bay Area, it got reviewed in USA Today, I got all these cookbook contracts from it, and I became a syndicated columnist for the LA Times. So that was like enormous career move for me. And it was a fairly successful career for maybe, I'd say two decades.
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Okay.
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And then I got cancer, I got breast cancer. And it was kind a wake -up call for me because I'd always wanted to write fiction. And so, you know, you face yourself when you have a life -threatening situation. So I faced myself and I said, is this really all you want to do with your creativity? And I said, no. So I quit my cookbook career. I finished my last contract and stopped my syndicated column. I went back to grad school, got my MFA and began writing fiction.
SPEAKER_00
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So,
SPEAKER_00
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I know it was radical. That is radical, but did you study cooking? Like, or did you just, are you just good?
SPEAKER_01
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I studied cooking. Yeah, I studied cooking when I lived in France and I've worked in restaurants all my life, you know, all my young life, cause that was an easy job to get.
SPEAKER_01
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And I moved from, you know, wait person into the kitchen and then learned how to cook. But I've always had a real kind of natural flair for cooking and my family, we're all into food. So we ate everything you can imagine, all kinds of cuisines. So it came naturally to me.
SPEAKER_00
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Okay. So it was like a natural thing to think, well, I don't have a job that's open. A cooking school. A my house.
SPEAKER_01
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I know. I know. I've always done risky things like that with my creativity and my career. And it, you know, most of the time it pans out. Most of the time I'm lucky.
SPEAKER_00
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Okay, so then writing cookbooks, is, does it take like, what kind of skill does that take to sort of put that together? It's hard. You have
SPEAKER_01
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to be like, I don't know, a seductive writer in a sense, like if you ever read food magazines, they always kind of seduce with sensory details, like how the texture and the smell and how it looks. So I had to learn how to do that, how to use descriptive words that would kind of put the person who's reading into a taste and smell situation so that they would want to try the recipe. That makes sense.
SPEAKER_00
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Then you
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had to do the recipes, which were you come up with the idea, and you test it, and you test it again, and test it again. And it's a combination of basically two skills, one fairly linear, like a formula, like a recipe, and one fairly, I don't know, sensory, which is the writing.
SPEAKER_00
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So it was a
SPEAKER_01
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cool thing for me. I loved it.
SPEAKER_00
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Yeah, those are two skills. I mean, you have to write directions that everyone can understand, right? Because I'm sure once you know something so well, it might be, it's like learning from grandma, you know, where she's like, put in some salt, and you're like, no, grandma,
SPEAKER_00
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I need to know. But then you also have to sort of, I mean, the reviews and things, your vocabulary must need to expand quite a lot. And just to be able to describe it in the correct form, I guess. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01
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and I trained, you know, I trained. I started young and I started with a, you know, a local magazine and then I got into bigger magazines. I for Food and Wine and some other big guys for a while. And then the LA Times Syndicate was 86 newspapers, which was like, wow. So there was a lot of training that went on during those decades. And I think it's a skill, you know, as a particular niche in cooking, cooking as a particular niche in writing, food writing. And then I got into trouble though when I moved into fiction because I had developed this incredible lyricism in my writing because of the food, all about the senses and everything. And then I got into writing fiction and I realized I was way over the top.
SPEAKER_00
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They're blaming you for purple prose. Yeah, exactly, I did
SPEAKER_01
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totally trim
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and my advisors and my MFA would like take red pens and cross out entire pages and I'd say okay well I learned how to write but I learned how to write in a certain way and now I have another language I have to learn with
SPEAKER_00
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fiction. Although I'm sure it comes in in handy because that is something that I actually just ran a workshop with Beth Birani and she was teaching senses, because a lot of writers kind of have to do the opposite. They have to go, you know, put that in there. And yeah, it is a delicate balance, isn't it? Between like, how much description to put in? Yeah, how much to sort of dig your heel in and say, this is my voice versus this is going to make the reader stop reading. It
SPEAKER_01
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is my voice. And I did find when I went to the MFA program I came out much more minimalist but I had to find myself again and find my natural voice again and embrace it because that's who we are you know that's what gives us the juice when we're writing but at the same time I had to learn how to balance the tendency I had and that was kind of cool you know when somebody once told me your talent is your tendency developed or tendency balanced I thought well that's kind of an interesting idea
SPEAKER_00
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yeah I like that Yeah, because I have talked to a couple of different people who have done MFAs and some people really, most people enjoyed it, but I think if you don't find your voice afterwards, because you know, it's a group of people who know what they're talking about and on the other hand, they are still just humans, you know, and sort of correct, it's like with working with any editor, you have to know when to say, no, this is okay for my story, you know and hey when you're a student it's like you guys know better right but some people when they can't find that voice they sort of leave with a bad taste in their mouth but it sounds
SPEAKER_00
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like you sort of were able to um go through that and then and figure out your own writing afterwards.
SPEAKER_01
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I I think it was because my my novel which came out of my MFA program my first novel is called Qualities of Light and it's a it's a YA kind of a YA adult hybrid novel And I was lucky enough to sell it to a publisher and the editor I worked with really loved my lyrical voice. And because of her, I got to expand it back to what was really my natural voice. And she liked the things I had learned in the MFA program and the idea that you have to have a plot. you can't just do this kind of lyrical beautiful stuff. But she brought back some of the, she helped me bring back some of my natural writing style. And I'll never forget her. She was just, you know, for a new fiction writer, that was such a gift.
SPEAKER_00
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Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah. And I think, you know, that's a good reminder to that sometimes, even if maybe if you don't feel that sort of connection with your professors or the editor, you can always find someone else, right, that can help you develop, like you said, your natural tendencies into what your voice is and what, because in the, like you said, I think writers have two different tendencies. Either they're so much plot that the characters are really flat or they have a lot of character
SPEAKER_00
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and the plot just doesn't seem to be there. We all have to sort of figure out that magic middle part, right? So when you came out of your MFA, you got, you sold your book quite quickly?
SPEAKER_01
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Well, two years or so, it was hard. I needed to revise it a bunch of times and I knew where the problems were, but I had gotten a lot of guidance. The MFA program really helped me. So even though I have heard about MFA clones, that people come out kind of all writing the same, I had a really nice experience with mine. And then I decided I loved the book and I really wanted to sell it. And finally, I found somebody that the day she called and said, we'd like to publish your book, I was, I didn't know who she was, first of all, and it was she was coming from California, and I'm in the East Coast. And it was like 930 at night. And I thought, who in the world's gonna be caught? I must have answered the phone. Right. And then she said her name. And she said, the publisher, and I said, Oh, my God, you know, you're like, this is real. So I had gotten a lot of rejections until then. And so, you know, that's normal. I 40 to 50 rejections for every sale is
SPEAKER_01
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normal in publishing today
SPEAKER_00
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hard, though, right? It is very hard. Yeah. So your first one was a why a then? What was it called again? It's called qualities
SPEAKER_01
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of light and has a young narrator, 16 year old narrator, but the topics are more adult. It's about a young boy, her brother who gets almost killed in a boating accident and she causes the accident. And so the boy's in a coma and her family almost disowns her and she has to live there with all that she's done in front of her and at the same time she falls in love that summer. So she's trying to work with this process of forgiving herself and the idea of deserved happiness. Do we deserve happiness even when we have committed a grave error?
SPEAKER_00
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Yeah. I mean, do
SPEAKER_01
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we get second chances? which is one of my themes I basically work with in all my books.
SPEAKER_00
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Yeah I love second chances. Yeah I do too. Did that come kind of from like from you completely changing your career do you think?
SPEAKER_01
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It's a good question. I didn't think of it but yeah I think probably I have practiced second
SPEAKER_01
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chances in my own life so much that it was natural to write about somebody that was facing that like But she was young, when you're 16, you're kind of in a more sheltered environment. You have as much control over your life. And if your parents kind of set you aside and you're ostracized from the family love, then it forced her to kind of find her own pod, her own found family.
SPEAKER_00
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And yet she, I mean, this happens, right? People cause car accidents or they're just not paying attention and things happen even very young. and gosh you still have a whole life to live without. I actually have a friend who it took him years to reconcile which it wasn't even his fault it's just that he was at the wheel
SPEAKER_00
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you know so these are important things to write about I think for other people to to read through the fiction because sometimes fiction can be much more healing than non -fiction.
SPEAKER_01
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I agree yeah I agree and I wrote this for adults because I know a lot of Adults still struggle with the idea of do they deserve happiness or not? So even though it was a YA character narrating this story, it still gets read by, I think, mostly adults. So it's kind of that hybrid between two audiences.
SPEAKER_00
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Yeah. Do they kind of put it into women's fiction, do you think? Yeah, kind of
SPEAKER_01
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women's fiction, YA. It's caused a little trouble with reviewers. I got lovely reviews, but some of them said, I didn't know where to put this, you know, so I thought, well, welcome to my life.
SPEAKER_00
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I mean, it's kind of funny because when we were growing up, you just went to the fiction aisle, you know, I think mysteries had their own section, you know, but other than that, it was like fiction, like To Kill a Mockingbird was just fiction. We never thought of it as like, kid, I don't know, I never did. So never did either.
SPEAKER_01
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That was one of my favorite books, too. And it was a young narrator, right? She's eight. So
SPEAKER_00
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she's grappling with the adult world, but I mean, you know, now we have to label everything. I know. The industry.
SPEAKER_01
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So when did that book come out? 2009, and it was nominated for a Penn Faulkner, which was just like blew me out of the water, and a Lambda Literary Award, and it was reviewed in the New York Times, and it did really well as far as the reception, even though it was confusing to people, and I felt very attached to the characters. So decided to write a sequel, and that's the second book. A Woman's Guide to Search and Rescue takes place three to four years later, and it's written from the point of view of the mother, who is a pilot, and her estranged sister, who is also a pilot, who is running from the law and they have to, they have to reunite and rescue each other because the sister's in trouble and is going to be killed. So then I moved into thrillers, you know,
SPEAKER_00
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that was more of a trailer. Well, it's funny though, because I, again, with all the genres, it's like these it's life, right? Like when you come up with a character and you're thinking, well, what could happen? And it sounds like a very complicated family anyway, that you sort of started with, with qualities of life, light, and then you sort of like, well, what would this mom be doing? And the sister be doing and then it just sort of comes into like, well, she's got to run for her
SPEAKER_00
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life. I don't know about you, but I never think of like, oh, it's going to be a thriller. No, it becomes this thing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
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And it was fun because I had no idea what thrillers how to do a thriller. So one of the agents I worked with said, Well, you you really need to write, find somebody who writes thrillers and study with them a little bit, because you don't have enough of a plot here. You've got beautiful writing and not enough of a plot. So I said, okay, and I found this guy who teaches at UCLA, Robert Evers, who's a wonderful thriller writer. And I emailed him and I said, you know, would you take me on for like a few months and help me learn how to do a thriller plot? And he did. And it was, it was wild, because then I, I recreated the manuscript, went back to my agent and said, here, I put the plot in now. And she said, well, now you have too much of a plot. You have to go back to your natural self and put in more of the, you know, the thing that you do well, which is characters and descriptions. So I again, had to rebalance, you know, I'm constantly learning this as a writer.
SPEAKER_00
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Yeah.
SPEAKER_00
00:26:06
I think this, these are great reminders though, because I think for some reason, every time we finish a book, I feel like we think we've arrived, you know, I don't know about you, but it's like, okay, I learned a lot with this book. And then, then you start a new project. Yeah. You're like, oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_00
00:26:23
And it's all different. It's all different, and it's really important, I think, to find people who can teach you more and to be open to this idea of like, well, I know how to write beautifully, but I might not know how to, what a thriller needs in order for the reader to be really satisfied. So to keep that open mind of always searching for that information, right?
SPEAKER_01
00:26:45
Yeah, I love being open -minded about learning. I'm a lifelong learner, I'm sure. I'm gonna be doing this, you know, in 20 years still. And I really love going to classes and, you know, I think I learn tremendous amounts from reading. So I study how writers do their work, you know, basically, because I know I have more to learn and each book, yes, just as you said, is like you feel you've come someplace, you've arrived, and yet the next one presents a whole nother slew of problems that you have to solve, you know,
SPEAKER_00
00:27:17
so. You'll probably move on to mystery or something. Maybe. So what is your next book? Was it a thriller as well? No.
SPEAKER_00
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The
SPEAKER_01
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latest one, Last Bets, just came out two weeks ago, actually, and it's a completely different type of book. The thing that drew me in when I was writing about the two sisters who were pilots who got back together, the second book, was how women rescue each other. How do women play roles in each other's lives? What kind of relationships are there? And also the intergenerational creation of relationships like friendships made with a girl in her teens or a young woman in her 20s and then someone in their 40s or 50s. And how does that work? How do they teach and rescue and save each other? And so Last Bets is about two women who meet, both artists who meet on a tropical island right before a hurricane and they're trapped there.
SPEAKER_01
00:28:14
And what happens, how they save each other, they're at first enemies and then how they save each other in the end. And
SPEAKER_00
00:28:21
it's
SPEAKER_01
00:28:21
very, it's fascinating to me cause I think that's about found family. That's about the pod of people that we find that maybe we didn't grow up with but that accept us as who we are now. And we we get more nurturing maybe from them in this part of our lives. And I wanted to show that. Yeah. How how women nurture each other in unexpected situations.
SPEAKER_00
00:28:44
Right. I mean, somebody who doesn't know everything about you. So do they sort of like misjudge each other at the beginning and their enemies or like their.
SPEAKER_00
00:28:53
Well, that's the natural woman.
SPEAKER_01
00:28:56
Yeah, it's it's it's a man. They're both after the same guy and that'll do it, but the twist is that one of them is young, she's 16 and she's totally, it's a totally inappropriate relationship. And he hires her to help at the scuba dive shop on the island and doesn't know that she's that young and she crushes on him and at the same time the older woman who's also at the island and is there to paint his portrait. She's an artist and she's had a commission from him. So the two women tangle over this guy, even though one of them is, you the portrait artist really doesn't want a relationship with him and the young girl really does want a relation. So it's like very messy. And at first they're enemies and then they end up really realizing the truth of each other and how they have better connection than anyone else. and they can learn from each other and all these good things start to happen.
SPEAKER_00
00:29:58
Okay.
SPEAKER_00
00:29:59
And so like without the hurricane, they would, she would have gone home, the artist would go home and who knows, hopefully the man would not have made a relationship with this girl. But yeah, that's really interesting. And isn't it like, well maybe men do this too, but this sort of misjudgment of character a lot of times that we have in the different generations, right? So like, I'm sure the artist can see the young woman and how she is. And it's true.
SPEAKER_01
00:30:28
Yeah, that's wonderful. I think women sometimes compete, and they compete for men, they compete for attention, they compete for beauty, they compete for, you know, who's thin or fat or whatever. And I wanted to show
SPEAKER_01
00:30:39
the opposite of that the the intense relationships of nurturing that women can develop between each other. And so, you know, all of my books are about all of my novels are about that in a way that found family that women find in midlife or early life when they find people that love them from them for themselves. They're not, they're not the people they grew up with,
SPEAKER_00
00:31:01
so. Yeah, yeah. So even with the sisters, they're kind of estranged and they come, do they reconcile?
SPEAKER_01
00:31:08
They do, but very reluctantly because the one running from the law is crash lands basically in the territory of the other sister and the sister who finds the plane is on the search and rescue team, and she's obliged by law to report this woman, this basically person running from the law, but instead her daughter decides to hide her, hide her aunt in a cabin, and so when the three of them come together, eventually, about the mid book and the sister who's the search and rescue pilot realizes that she's harboring a fugitive and she can't tell anybody because it'll get her daughter into deep trouble. It's a very twisted situation, but they end
SPEAKER_00
00:31:59
up. Yes,
SPEAKER_01
00:32:02
reconciling. It's
SPEAKER_00
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very
SPEAKER_01
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tense. It's very tense.
SPEAKER_00
00:32:05
Yeah. I mean, I guess that's what thrillers need, right? To have that, like, that point of no return. Like if I do this, this will happen and but that's a wonderful theme too of can blood family reconcile because lots of us have different blood family that things just don't go there the right way quote unquote right and we get estranged and um whether or not there's reconcile it's nice to read it in fiction of like it is possible right i wanted
SPEAKER_01
00:32:34
to give hope that's one of the reasons i wrote that book because the estranged sisters are because one of them is the product of an affair.
SPEAKER_00
00:32:42
And
SPEAKER_01
00:32:42
so the betrayal involved in the father having an affair, and then a daughter coming into the into life because of it, and then the daughter being taught how to fly, then the the biological child goes, you know, or the legitimate child goes, Wait a minute, I'm the real daughter, you love me, you know, you taught me how to fly. But no, the sister also got taught how to fly. And this is like the precious relationship is destroyed. So what do they do with that betrayal, how do they reconcile what their father did, basically abandon the family, so.
SPEAKER_00
00:33:15
These are deep subjects. I
SPEAKER_01
00:33:17
I'm really kind of a complex person in how I think about life and I really love going into these gnarly topics in my writing.
SPEAKER_00
00:33:29
And do these come from like, I mean, you must have encountered a lot of people with your cooking classes and the newspapers and all that, just so many people in your life. You must have encountered a lot of stories, I guess. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01
00:33:44
I did.
SPEAKER_01
00:33:45
But the woman's guide to search and rescue, my second novel, was inspired by my mom. My mom was a pilot. So I grew up with this woman legend in my family who flew bombers in World War II. And was like so amazing. And she never talked about it. She had four kids and worked full time. So she never talked about it. But when my friends would ask me, what does your dad do? I say well, my mom is a pilot Yeah, so she really inspired that book and I wanted to get into the head and heart of a woman pilot because Especially search -and -rescue. It's a very dangerous job You know flying is high risk and search -and -rescue is even more
SPEAKER_01
00:34:29
So I wanted to find out what what makes a person do that? like, I was trying to understand my mom, you know, what, what made her take those huge risks in her life? Like, what is what right goes on inside her that drives her towards that. So it was my way of understanding her better. And honoring her too.
SPEAKER_00
00:34:48
Yeah, yeah. So she she didn't leave any. I mean, she's still living. No,
SPEAKER_01
00:34:52
she's she died about five years ago, but she and she left scrapbooks. But really, she didn't want to talk about it. she moved on to being a parent. And I really questioned that because I kept asking her, well, tell me about your flying. And she'd tell me these little stories about landing at LaGuardia when her engine was on fire, you know, things like that. I whoa, mom, how did you get here from there?
SPEAKER_00
00:35:20
Was it Vietnam? Was it World War II? No, it was World War II. Yeah, it was World War II. That generation just didn't talk as much. We needed more memoirs. You know, we needed people to go in and sort of dig these stories out of them. My grandpa always claimed that he was going to record tapes. And I always thought he did. And then when he passed, we couldn't find them. And I was like, grandpa, come on.
SPEAKER_01
00:35:43
Yeah, they had such stories. She was only, my mom was only 20 when she started flying. And, you know, she was part of this really elite group called the Women's Air Force Service Patrol, the WASPs. And only, I think 20 ,000 women applied and only 2 ,000 got accepted. And was like really special. And I, as her kid, you know, I never knew really about her. So
SPEAKER_00
00:36:08
you - I'm
SPEAKER_00
00:36:09
I know. I'm gonna go fly a plane. I mean, they were new. Like we all, you gotta remember, like planes were a new thing. Most people hadn't ever been in one. Like, oh no, I'm gonna go fly in the sky. I mean, that would be like, oh, I'm gonna go to the moon. I it was so crazy.
SPEAKER_01
00:36:26
Four engine bombers, you know, I mean, yeah. So that was really a cool assignment that I gave myself to write a story about women pilots and find out more about my mom in the process. And I, I think I did, I really honored her. And I really love how these characters kind of helped me solve the mystery of my mom.
SPEAKER_00
00:36:47
Right.
SPEAKER_00
00:36:48
And so for for research, did you did you talk to other female pilots? I had
SPEAKER_01
00:36:54
one of my students in my writing classes was a flight instructor and so one day after class I cornered her I said Sylvia could I hire you or ask you to kind of consult with me about flying and she said oh I'd love to do it and I have a whole cohort of other flight instructors and we would get together and talk so they did I would send her a chapter a flying chapter and they would like spend the weekend discussing it and then come back to me with rewrites and know you have to do it this way or this way. And yeah, that was a that was a gift. And I did the same with search and rescue. I had a one of my students was a search and rescue operator in California, ground ground crew.
SPEAKER_01
00:37:35
And she helped me she put me in touch with organizations and had me, you know, get all my chapters double checked. So
SPEAKER_00
00:37:42
I think that
SPEAKER_01
00:37:43
it was really it was really fun. That part of the research. I just loved. Yeah, I learned so much. Right?
SPEAKER_00
00:37:50
I'm We could make it up, I guess. But that that doesn't make it now. You gotta you gotta get it right. Otherwise, you're gonna have pilots reading and be like, that's not right.
SPEAKER_01
00:38:00
And I did take flying lessons. So that I Yeah, I wanted to get in a plane. I wanted to see what it was like what it's like. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00
00:38:07
So that you can get the right sensory. Exactly. You know what,
SPEAKER_00
00:38:11
how
SPEAKER_01
00:38:11
it is. It was fun. It was like so noisy. And it smelled and it was like so different than I expected and yet when you're up there above the you know above the trees way up high it's just exhilarating and I could see why my mom loved it and that was really something I had to do for myself is to really understand
SPEAKER_00
00:38:30
as long as the engine doesn't you know explode oh yeah I wouldn't want
SPEAKER_01
00:38:35
that hers I mean she had more stories you can believe but
SPEAKER_00
00:38:39
anyway I'm sure it's safer these days than back then I mean it was just war. They're just like setting people off. And right. Unfortunately, we didn't treat the wasp very well as a nation afterwards. Now the first wasp just got she got buried here. They they pushed and pushed and they finally got her into Arlington, which is that's
SPEAKER_01
00:38:57
good. It's
SPEAKER_00
00:38:58
um,
SPEAKER_01
00:38:59
my mom finally got her congressional medal when she was really quite old. And, you yeah, there was a lot of things that women were very looked down on as as pilots. The my mom had a lot of stories about the prejudice.
SPEAKER_00
00:39:13
Yes. I talk about glass ceiling that was that was a rough glass ceiling that just kept putting put back on them. So it's really
SPEAKER_00
00:39:21
true. It's good. It's good to remember where women have come from. And that lots of women still want to do these things. And that we should, you know, that's just really cool. And to write about that.
SPEAKER_01
00:39:33
Yeah, I wanted to give people hope, you know, women can do things. Yeah, never
SPEAKER_00
00:39:37
too late, right? Yes, absolutely. So in the middle of all this, of writing your novels, you're teaching, right? Yeah. So talk to us a little bit about that because you have a nonfiction book for writers called Your Book Starts Here. So in the middle of all this, so you've written all these books and then you're teaching and then you're writing the nonfiction. So when did you start teaching? I started teaching in 2000, right after I had cancer.
SPEAKER_01
00:40:01
My first class was a benefit for a women's cancer resource center in Minneapolis and I decided I wanted to teach people some of the healing methods I'd used, using writing to get myself through chemo and all, and the class sold out. And then I did another one that sold out. So then the school asked me to start teaching, you know, regular writing classes, not just for people going through illness, but just people that wanted to learn writing as a tool for creativity or to develop a book or whatever. So So over the years I worked on that and I taught for them for probably 12 years and loved it, loved it. It was great. My students were some of the best people I've ever met. You they're so enthusiastic about creativity and they really want to learn. They're adult learners.
SPEAKER_00
00:40:50
Okay. And this is in California?
SPEAKER_01
00:40:52
This was Minneapolis. So it's called the Loft Literary Center. It's the largest in this, the oldest one in the country.
SPEAKER_01
00:40:58
And it's I was fortunate enough to live in the city where it was founded and still happen. So
SPEAKER_00
00:41:04
yeah You got to do in -person classes. I did I know but I did
SPEAKER_01
00:41:10
online as well. Yes Eventually, I moved in and I still wanted to teach so online worked great
SPEAKER_00
00:41:17
And then do you do you still teach now? You're in New Hampshire now. So do you yeah,
SPEAKER_01
00:41:21
um, I teach not classes but I write a weekly Substack newsletter that has many thousands of subscribers. And it's basically my version of teaching. I take a topic like, I think this week it was about time management for writers and how we work with our day and try to find ways to fit in our creativity. And that's kind of crazy for someone like a parent or somebody working full time. And how do you do that? And so those are my ways of teaching now is through the Substack.
SPEAKER_00
00:41:57
That's amazing, though. Those are things we all need. Because if you're a creative person at all, I it really diminishes something in you if you can't find the time to do something creative. I mean, I always tell some of the writing teachers of writing every day for some people is very difficult. That can't be the only thing we tell people. There's got to be other ways to feed that creativity. And yeah, it can't just be right every day.
SPEAKER_01
00:42:25
Some people write in bursts, like my my MFA advisor, she said she writes in three months segments. So she writes like a crazy person for three months. And then she goes back and lives her normal life. And she does fine as a writer, right? So everybody has a rhythm. And it's a matter of finding a rhythm and then finding the time to implement it and make it a priority for yourself. Because it's so easy, especially again, for women to
SPEAKER_01
00:42:48
get swept up with all the things we carry. And
SPEAKER_00
00:42:52
you know how it is. Yes, it's so true, though. So when did you write the book, your book starts here. Talk to us a little bit about what that what that does. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01
00:43:01
that was that came out in 2011. So that was after my first novel. And one of my students who's an editor used to be an editor for Reader's Digest magazine, she came to my classes and she said, you know, you really need to put all this down and, and writing. And I was writing my weekly newsletter then, but it wasn't enough, she said, she said, you really have to create a manual for for building a book, how do you build the structure of a book, because that was my specialty at that time. Yeah. So she worked with me over a period of two, two years, a year, something like that. And I took all of my
SPEAKER_01
00:43:34
lessons from my classes and created a flow for them. And she, you know, was like my MFA editor, she would cross out whole pages and say, Whoa, no. And then, but she helped me a lot. And I was able to complete the book and, and it published in 2011. And I, I'm very happy with it. It's still selling really well. And I created a YouTube, a series of YouTube videos to go along with it. And so it's been fun.
SPEAKER_00
00:44:01
It's fun. So you're kind of like, as you're learning, you're sort of taking what you're learning and putting it back out there for the others. I
SPEAKER_01
00:44:08
try, you know, because I think we never learn everything. So I'm certainly not, you know, at my end as far as learning. So I but I wanted to have a book that would be kind of a companion for someone that was completely lost about how to structure all their material, you know, what, what do you do if you're not really good at outlines and stuff like that. So I teach what what I call a storyboard, which is a kind of a moving diagram that filmmakers use. And you can flow in the parts of your book and see what works and what doesn't. It's very intuitive and works
SPEAKER_01
00:44:42
with the random side of the brain real well.
SPEAKER_00
00:44:44
That's wonderful. Since we're on the sort of writing and starting your book and time management, what is do you have a writing routine? What is your sort of flow?
SPEAKER_01
00:44:53
When I'm working on a book, I write every day. And I'm, I'm so dedicated to it because I'm so involved in the characters. They're almost like I'm almost a sleep sleepwalker in my life in a way. It's good that my son has grown and out of the house because when he was like eight or nine, it was pretty impossible.
SPEAKER_01
00:45:10
I would get up very early before I had to work with him, the rest of the family. But right now, I'm in the post -book stage, so I've just published Last Bets, and I'm in the kind of letting out my breath. I don't know how to say it, but you need recovery time after a book is born, and I'm in that stage right now. but I have another book in process and I have a book of short stories in process. So I try now to still write every morning if I can, even though I'm kind of, I feel a little bit dried up from the effort to produce this book.
SPEAKER_00
00:45:49
It was
SPEAKER_01
00:45:49
so, so much work. And so it came out so well in my view. And then you just feel like, oh, I got to rest for a while.
SPEAKER_01
00:45:57
Right.
SPEAKER_00
00:45:58
I mean, you get so entangled in fictional relationships and like rooting for your characters, they almost, they feel real. It feels like you've gone through family trauma, but you're like, all fiction.
SPEAKER_01
00:46:10
I Last Spets has this weird twist. I was in, it takes place in Bonaire, which is a Caribbean island. And I was visiting there as a scuba diver once. And I got into this really cool conversation with this guy at a bar who said, they have backgammon games here that that are like Legion. People come from all over the Caribbean and they win huge amounts of money. And he said, he turned to me and he said, and I lost my yacht yesterday.
SPEAKER_01
00:46:36
And I thought, wow, is that possible? First of all, backgammon for me has always been like this little family game, right? Like cribbage.
SPEAKER_00
00:46:45
But evidently - I rules for it. I know.
SPEAKER_01
00:46:47
So I went back and I researched that because I'm so fascinated.
SPEAKER_01
00:46:51
And it turns out backgammon is the one game that really serious gamblers go for because it's only based on skill, not luck. You can't win it from luck. And so I started thinking about this whole idea of having a backgammon tournament. And what if I put a woman who had paranormal abilities, kind of Queen's Gambit thing. So she was able to see the board ahead of time. And she was desperate to get some money because she lost her money in a divorce. And she comes to the island, she realizes they have these tournaments, and she starts playing again. And she has this experience, this paranormal experience where she can see the moves ahead and what happens. So that was the basis for the story that meant inspiration for the story. And it's nothing that I have anything to do with. I am not a gambler. I barely know how to play backgammon. And so I had to, just like flying, I had to go in and research and create a world that was completely separate from mine. And it was fascinating. And it's like you say, you know, you live with these worlds that you create. And I'm walking around, you know, thinking about gamblers for
SPEAKER_00
00:48:03
years.
SPEAKER_01
00:48:04
Backgammon boards. I know, I'm thinking,
SPEAKER_00
00:48:06
this is not me. Well, now that you say that, I can see it on the cover. Like that's a really clever cover. because you don't you can't see the once you once you look at it you can see the little triangles of the backgammon board but but it's not overpowering either it's very subtle that's a very clever cover I like that yeah
SPEAKER_01
00:48:25
the
SPEAKER_00
00:48:25
designers
SPEAKER_01
00:48:26
so good
SPEAKER_00
00:48:27
yeah I mean it's sometimes it's a real miss but that that's a great well I'll put the link in the show notes so people can go see that cover so so you You
SPEAKER_00
00:48:39
you write every day. Does that mean you work on the book, like the next book every day, even in the sound period? Or is that like including journaling and sort of free verse or whatever? It
SPEAKER_01
00:48:50
Yeah, I include free writing in it. I include making notes for my new books, just working on my sub stack, which takes me a lot of time and research. So anything, I count it all really. You that's all writing. Anything that takes my pen and moves it
SPEAKER_01
00:49:08
takes my fingers and moves it on the keyboard.
SPEAKER_00
00:49:11
I think that's important to remember because I always have to remember that I like oh I didn't write today like that's not true I just didn't work on the book today and so to sort of train our brains as writers I think we're I don't know I'm hard on myself I always group everyone in with me but like but how long does it take you to write a book you know there's this sort of like scramble these days to get books out Thankfully, that's ending. But the last few years, it's like, you have to get out six books a year. Oh my goodness, that's so exhausting. But do you give yourself a timeline or do you just sort of let it come out as it comes?
SPEAKER_01
00:49:48
My goal is to have a book I'll be proud of in 10 years. Okay. And I learned early, I guess with my food writing, that if I make big mistakes or if I go too fast and it's not well done, I'm gonna regret it. So I don't set that kind of goal for myself. I set a goal of quality, not not time. And my books take as long as they take a woman's guide to search and rescue because I think I was processing my mom and my relationship as I wrote it took me 10 years. That's a long time.
SPEAKER_00
00:50:20
Yeah. But it's not uncommon. No, it's not.
SPEAKER_01
00:50:24
Yeah, last bet was only three years. But still, I feel like, you know, I put in, I'm not a fast writer.
SPEAKER_00
00:50:30
Right. And I mean, you have things to research. And that's what I tell people like if you want to research it well you have to learn to fly you have to you know i mean i guess you don't have to learn to fly but you know you want to do these things i always tell people you know i want you to know enough to like make the decisions on purpose for your book and be proud of it yeah you can't market something that you're not proud of like it's really hard to sell your book if you're like i really
SPEAKER_01
00:50:54
love my books and i love them now even though qualities of Light has been out over 10 years, I still love it. And I don't, I can see my younger self in the writing, but I don't feel ashamed of it or regretful. I didn't make mistakes that I regret. So I like that feeling. I think that's what I encourage when I teach writing. I encourage my students to take the time it takes because you'll be proud of it. Books are long marriages, you know, it's going to be around for a while. It's not like a short story that gets published and then it's gone.
SPEAKER_00
00:51:28
Right, right. I kind of wish my short stories would stick around longer. Yeah, I know. Me too. And you're putting together a short story. Do you publish the short stories? Are Yeah,
SPEAKER_01
00:51:37
I've been published. I've published about 10 short stories so far. And so I'm going to keep submitting them to literary magazines for a while before I send the collection off to submit it.
SPEAKER_00
00:51:51
Yeah. Do you encourage other writers to try short story? I mean, I find short story intriguing and creatively challenging. I don't know about you. Yes. They're very hard, actually. Completely than a novel. I
SPEAKER_01
00:52:04
think they are. It's a whole other language, just like fiction was a whole other language from food writing. So I love short stories as a break because my brain doesn't have to hold this 350 -page thing in its mind. you know, I can take 10 pages or 15 pages and it's compact. It's a compact little snapshot of life rather than this long saga.
SPEAKER_00
00:52:27
Yeah, absolutely. Well, if you give me some links to if they're if they're still up. Yeah, people can go read them on my website. Yeah, they are they live as well. It's just that we're kind of in that weird place in society where
SPEAKER_00
00:52:40
we don't publish as many short stories. I mean, to to your friend who is the editor of Reader's digest. I loved that magazine. I loved it. I would read it cover to cover and then be sad that it was like, you know, 28 days until it would come again. So, you know, I it's unfortunate. I wish I hope that short stories will come back again. I do
SPEAKER_01
00:53:01
too. And there's a there's a strong movement in that direction. I think on sub stack a lot of people that are writing short stories. So that's wonderful.
SPEAKER_00
00:53:09
Yes, yes, it just gives us a nice little jolt of creativity or something, you I don't always have time to read a novel, but I could read a good short story. Me too. I feel good about it. So where can people find you? Do you do any social media? Oh, yeah. All right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
00:53:26
So my website's the most comprehensive place with all my stories and my links to my books, books, etc is marycarolmore .com and it's two R's two L's and two O's Mary Carol Moore and I also am on Instagram threads Facebook LinkedIn Okay,
SPEAKER_00
00:53:45
your sub stack will put yeah
SPEAKER_01
00:53:47
and my sub stack the sub stack comm slash Mary Carol Moore is very much of a place You know, it's a free subscription people get a weekly article on Friday mornings and they can comment and there's a nice community building. It's really a wonderful place. I like it.
SPEAKER_00
00:54:03
Nice, nice. So I will have all the links in the show notes below. And all of your books are out as the podcast goes out. So you guys can go find them. We'll have the links as well. And thank you so much, Mary, for coming and talking to us all about your books and your writing.
SPEAKER_01
00:54:18
I loved it. You're a great conversationalist, Kat. I just really loved your questions. Thanks so much. Thank you.