#32: How To Use Your Personal Experience To Write The Perfect Memoir- Elizabeth Wilson

Want to know how to write the perfect memoir, but not sure if you have the relevant experience?

In this episode memoirist and writing coach, Elizabeth Wilson shows you how you can use your everyday experience to write a memoir that not only captivates the reader but also sells. She also demonstrates how being part of a wider writing community and recording podcasts can also assist you on this incredible journey.

Perfect for writers and creators everywhere.

You can find out more about the author here:

whisperedwisdompress.com.

You can order her book here: 

https://www.amazon.com/Lonely-Girl-Unexpected-Love-Story-ebook/dp/B0H1TDCWLV/ref=sr_1_1?crid=VNYZMMFGKVZE&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.b5wCw274lHDWSCPB0uk146kBiN1ANtFg935GvYuBF_S-BGNaSU-AUX0n7-RnEmar_ferGTpnuzyqJTJD2Cw82UQ7RSSPocIjsFyTQL-SWFrTBJzSCmrCa1TePRmB9h7YvpIW6L_2GXgH3L3mQsknN8MNsTVEOEB99_Hc37CB2AbKk3TxJXi0Wf6nFOSuL3-hf8ZYN5oyqjYdKfXTxl9UODUHzEJ0UgDCWfF83w5VNFs.dPmhNRNo8s5P6127fpR3jYUEUUJBU_xJOLZUNA2OBGs&dib_tag=se&keywords=lonely+girl%3A+an+unexpected+love+story&qid=1780763991&sprefix=%2Caps%2C224&sr=8-1

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello and welcome to another episode of What the Haze? I'm your host, Hayes Wolfenden, and I'm here today with Elizabeth Wilson. Okay. Hi, Elizabeth. Nice to see you here. Please, can you start, please, by telling telling me and everybody about your exciting memoir that you've been writing and that you're going to release soon?

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Well, thank you first off for having me on here, Hayes. I appreciate it. I have just finished writing and publishing my debut memoir, which is called Lonely Girl, An Unexpected Love Story. This book, I've been working on it for the last three and a half years. As true for most memoirists, especially first-time authors, it's it's been a process, right? So when you talk to people who write memoirs, I mean, 10 years is not an uncommon time frame for people to give as far as how long it took them to write their book. And so the last three and a half years has really revolved around this project for me, sort of started in a typical way. Like it wasn't originally this book. I took a nonfiction writing email-based sprint writing program that was, you know, write your nonfiction book in 30 days. And in going through that, those exercises, I realized that that was really more geared to the people writing like self-help or like the how-to kind of books. It wasn't for something as in-depth as memoir, but it didn't matter because it's what got the ball rolling for me. And within the first four months, I had what I would consider as being a full first draft. Now, the book I hold today probably holds maybe 5% of those stories that I originally wrote. The timeline of my book has shifted through the writing process. And about six months into the writing process, I got divorced. In reflecting back on my life and doing the writing exercises, I couldn't ignore some of the cycles that were happening over and over and over again, especially in my marriage. And so I had to take a little bit of a break from working on the memoir. But ultimately, that situation really shifted the story. I did a massive amount of rewrites, and I'm really proud of where it's landed. I focus on themes of identity shift and belonging, especially with changes in divorce, motherhood, and then career and cross-country moves. Especially post-pandemic, I found it, you know, extremely difficult to get plugged into a new place. As I became a mom, a lot of my identity was wrapped up in that role. And I really lost a sense of who was Elizabeth. And so this book is a lot about that self-discovery. And that's one of the love stories that runs through this book is the love and the appreciation for myself. But there is a romance as well. And this is all true. This is all lived experience.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

Yeah, it sounds interesting. When you said about like, you know, when you have a child and it makes you kind of reflect on because you you do change as a person, your your priorities completely change. And I was thinking about this recently. Like when I was younger, when I was single, I just go hiking everywhere. Well, now I I barely hike, and hiking was a big part of my identity. And I'm lucky if I can just get a little walk here and there, and I've just had to try to kind of readjust and kind of look upon my son. He's my hike, he's my great wall of China. I want to know more about like the memoir where you said that you you wrote your first draft in four months, that's right. Yeah, I mean, that that's that's that's a really good effort, I think. But then you said that you were doing rewrites. It what was the reason behind like the rewrites? Was there like something wrong or you you wanted to change it? What?

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Yeah, so that initial version, the uh initial concept I have, probably because of the program that I was, you know, guided through in the writing, was a combination of self-help and memoir. And as I read back over that completed draft, I even sent it off to a developmental editor at that point. And just the overwhelming sense that I had about it is that the writing was so much stronger in the memoir sections, the anecdotes where I was reflecting back on my own life versus the parts where I'm telling other people how they can go and into a new town and get connected and find people by embracing these different, you know, sides of their own identity. I really resonate with memoir as a genre because it provides the reader with the invitation to take from it what they're ready for versus being force-fed, you know, the concepts from a self-help style. So that was the first major rewrite was taking out all the self-help components where I was talking directly to the reader about what they should be doing and how I thought they should move through these spaces and be letting the book become a hundred percent memoir and my own story. And then after the divorce, then I was able to go back and felt more freedom to write this book about loneliness and this battle I constantly had with loneliness. But now pulling back the curtain on the fact that one of the places I was most lonely was in my own home, in my own marriage. And that was not something I had broached in one of the, you know, the early drafts of this book because I didn't know where the relationship was going. And I certainly didn't want to put a nail in the coffin by writing something if that wasn't if we were going to repair that in any way. And then I have put together a memoir course, and as part of the course, I have my writers go through an outlining process using the Save the Cat beats by Blake Snyder as a way to help wrestle the real-world lived experience into a more reader-friendly narrative arc. And I put my own draft through that at the time, and it really became super clear to me that my inciting incident was happening too far into the book. So I ended up cutting 30,000 words from the beginning of the book that were more historical. It went back as early as like third grade, and then there were some snippets from college and grad school. And so I cut all of that. Some stories got plugged back in as flashbacks, but I really changed the timeline of where the story began. And I also then felt latitude because I'd lived enough life to include some more at that time present-day stuff that was happening in my new relationship post-divorce.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Yeah, you you mentioned about like, you know, cutting and like deciding where to start. Again, I think for all kinds of you know, nonfiction and fiction, I think that's one of the hard points to to know. How do you know where to start in in your book? You know, what things can be, you know, left out, for example. What, you know, where do you enter? I think I think it's a hard, I think it's a hard one. I think I know where I want to start when I when I do books, but how do I know? I don't know. I think I think it's an interesting one. Yeah, I I'm really interested with the you know, you're talking about you're doing a memoir course. You were saying about I forgot what's going on, Blake Schneider's six deaths. Right. Well, what is it? I've not heard of it, so what is that?

SPEAKER_01 7:34

So his analysis is geared towards movies, but you know, written stuff follows the same formula. What he's looked at is all of these movies and the the ways in which you dedicate scenes to these different plot points. So you're when you equate it to writing, your inciting incident is typically happening around page 50. Someone like an agent who's considering your book should be able to go to page 50 and see that that thing that's going to take you and uproot your world. He has, I mean, the beats can be super, super specific, but it's your classic basically hero's journey, but drill down a little bit deeper. There is a section of debate that happens before you go into act two. And act two is characterized by entering a different world. Like something has fundamentally changed enough in your life that whether physically or mentally, emotionally, you're entering a new space. But before you do that, there's like five scenes of debate. And the example he gives in his book, he uses um legally blonde and the character of Elle Woods. And the way you see that is act two is her going off to Harvard, right? But what we see in the scenes leading up to that are these debate beats, which is in that story, less of her decide debating back and forth about whether she's going to do it, but more so her preparation. So you see her studying for her LSATs, making her admission video, getting, you know, buying the clothes that she thinks are going to be appropriate to represent herself as a lawyer. And so he does a great job of breaking down those beats related to movies. And I don't remember the name of the author who has since taken that concept and and rewritten the book specifically for writers, but I've worked off of the original Blake Snyder concept and and just translated it to okay, if it's this much is for a scene, you know, that's gonna be around 1,500 words in a book.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Yeah, it sounds interesting. I'd say what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go back through the books I've written and I'm gonna go straight to page 50. It is a good point. I think that the discussion, the dialogue and the talking, it resonates with me as well. But I'm gonna check page 50, everyone know. But I think it's great that you you take something that's maybe for movies or screenwriting and you apply it to novels. Like, yeah, why not? Why not? I think novels these days or memoirs, they're becoming more like movies anyway. So I think that's really, really interesting. I think it does definitely transfer. I was gonna ask as well, you mentioned about doing, you know, a memoir course, as in you know, you're leading it with other memoirs. What's that like? How does that help you? How what's it feel like to be able to help and assist others?

SPEAKER_01 10:28

I I have absolutely loved it. And like I mentioned, like I did not feel like I had that support in the beginning from that, you know, email-based 30-day sprint program. And I was kind of appalled that, you know, other nonfiction memoir writers may find something like that and be wholly unsupported in the emotional journey they're about to go on in trying to tackle their story to the page. There is so much emotionality that goes with it. There's so much grace you have to give yourself as you're getting ready to write those really difficult parts of your story that maybe you haven't spoken out loud to anyone, or you certainly haven't thought about sharing in any sort of broad way. There's a whole dynamic to capturing your lived experience that I don't think the standard writing programs, whether they're geared for fiction or nonfiction, are really wholly supportive of the memoirist. And so what I did is combined the, you know, all these different books like Blake Snyder's Save the Cat, but other ones as well, that I were really fundamental in helping shape my story. And so I translated them, just like how Blake Snyder is geared towards film, I translated all of these for memoirs. So whether they were rich written for how to do character development and fiction, well, I then put the mirror back on myself of like, okay, how do I show character development of myself as, you know, the person, the main character of the story. And so I've guided people through that process. And it's been so rewarding because, especially in the early stages of writing, people come to memoir usually as their first writing experience. Like it's not as common to see someone who's written some fiction and now they want to write memoir. It's more so, oh my gosh, I have this story that I just feel like I need to unburden myself with. And so they start writing, but they don't know, I didn't know any of the like writing standards or how to outline or or how to build my story uh rooted in a theme so that there would be a completion, a beginning, a middle, and an end that is satisfactory to the reader. And in this course, I think one of the biggest things that is beneficial is not only getting that, you know, framework of information, but having that early support. And I've run them as a group-based program so that it's, you know, a couple of writers, they're always small groups, like three or four people max, and they're cheering each other on. I'm cheering them on. I'm validating for them that their story is important, that there is value in their story that other people will learn from. And I think that's so pivotal, especially in the early writing stages for memoir, because we're just so judgmental of ourselves, not only as writers, but certainly as writers writing about our own lives. And it's it's extremely common to already have those worries and those fears about how will this story be received? What are my parents gonna say about this? What are people who know me gonna think, you know, as I write this story? Am I am I playing the victim too much? You know, and writers worry, I did, you know, a lot about those things. And it keeps too many of them from sharing their beautiful stories. And when you read memoir, one of the the beauties of it is yes, you're reading someone else's story, but if done well, you're seeing pieces of yourself reflected back to you. And that's something that I try to instill in those writers early on that, like, yes, it's your story, but once you put it out there, it becomes something so much more. And as readers experience your story, they're thinking back into their own lives. Like you mentioned earlier at the the top of this episode about hiking and how hiking was a big part of your life. Hiking was something I got back to in this book and was a huge place where I felt freedom to figure out who I was again. So it would not surprise me that if you read this book, that when you read these hiking chapters, you're remembering your own journeys, not just reading mine.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

Yeah, for sure. I must I'm really looking forward to reading your memoir. I've got to say, during these podcasts, I've had on another couple of memoirists, and I've read their books as well, and they're two of the best books I've read recently. And you said in particular about, you know, when when you're reading a memoir, you can be part of it. It can be very immersive. And there's a writer on here called Curtis Chin, and he was writing about his upbringing in Detroit in the 1980s, and he's talking about his family's Chinese restaurant. And as I'm reading it, I'm thinking, well, hey, I I was in the 1980s too, and I'm growing up in the UK, and I'm having my own experience with Chinese food in the 1980s, and that was that was quite powerful to me. I was like, wow, yeah, okay, it's really interesting, you know. I was gonna ask you as well about like main challenges about writing this memoir. I think obviously the biggest one for you. Obviously, you had you know some relationship trouble and you stopped writing. What what got you, you know, started again? What got you writing again?

SPEAKER_01 15:52

I really had to overcome and wrestle with that mental shift that I think happens for a lot of writers, especially in memoir, of whether this whether I was writing the story for me or whether I was writing the story for other people, like in the sense that I wanted a reader to eventually have this story. Because when I got to the end of those four months where I had that completed initial draft and sent it off to a developmental editor, there was a level of satisfaction that I had with, okay, I've written about that hard, icky thing that happened to me that forced me to leave my career in forensic science that I had spent a decade in and gotten a master's degree for. And so there was a lot of healing for me that happened just simply in the writing of that initial draft. And for a while, I wondered if that's all I was ever meant to do with it. If it was simply meant to be an avenue for some self-reflection and healing. I had done a lot of that drafting alongside therapy. So it was very helpful for me in my therapy journey, in sort of immersing myself back into those past experiences. But there was a switch that flipped after the divorce settled. So, you know, a couple months after that draft was finished, come fall, I was, I felt like the things I were was living, I had seen them reflected in other people. I felt extremely lonely in my divorce process in the sense that I didn't have friends or family members, very many of them that had experienced divorce or or people that had experienced divorce and then were dealing with custody situations. And that feeling of isolation in those moments is what pushed me over the edge to believing that there are other people like that that need this story just so they don't feel alone in this, so that they don't feel crazy, so that their feelings in those moments are validated because they're able to read my story and see that I've been there too. And once I made that mental switch, once I understood and got to a place where the story wasn't just for me anymore, then it was just full steam ahead.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Yeah, I can imagine. I yeah, I often think with things like this, sometimes I think it can be double-edged sword writing. You you're going through obviously a divorce and you mentioned about custody issues, there's a lot of things to sort out, and that must be, you know, very emotionally and mentally draining because you're thinking about it. And something I I I think with writing novels is it takes a lot of thought and it takes a lot of even if you're just writing, say, for an hour a day, 30 minutes a day, it doesn't seem like a lot, but over time it builds up. And if you've got other things going on in your life, I think it can be really hard to truly, you know, you know, I I'm a big believer in when I when I sit, you know, in front of my keyboard and in front of my screen, I switch on and I do that for an hour and then I switch off. And I don't think I'd be able to do that if there were some bad problems happened. The only times I've stopped writing in my life have been not relationship issues, it's like I've been studying as well. And and I've kept on writing while studying. But then I've got to a point like if I'm doing like say an online course and it's a year, I get to April, I start to completely crash and I'm exhausted. And I'm like, I realize like, dude, you're exhausted. You you're like probably got mild medical exhaustion, and you have to just stop and have to start writing for three months. But then I always said the best way to just get back into it is just to get back into it and just start again. And I always say to anyone else that dad just just write a sentence a day if if that's what it takes, if that you know, lower your goals. And I do believe that most people will, you know, exceed their goals every day. But I think I can yeah, you're right, it can be hard to just get back on the horse, you know, and and keep going. And I think in the end, like I say, if you if you want to publish your book, and I really like your idea about helping other people who have gone through similar things. And I'm always a big I always feel like whatever problem I've got in my life, if I when I realize and have to tell myself other people around the world have got this problem or are going through these things, I feel better. I I I feel less silly, less stupid, and you go, this is normal. This is this is this is what it's like to be human, I think. So, yeah, really good for you. I was gonna ask you as well. I know you've said about you you also do a I mean you write the journal, I think, every day. Is that right? Yeah. How does that help your writing? Okay.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Well, for a memoir, it's absolutely essential. That's I referred back to my old journals as I was writing this memoir. There are actually parts in here that are direct quotes from my journal that I've included in the memoir, which I debated about doing, but ultimately as I put them in, I saw that it just gave more context, it gave a deeper sense of introspection for the reader to know where I was mentally at that point, not just what I was doing and what, you know, action was happening around me, but really where I was at mentally, what my thought patterns were, what my view of myself was at various points. So, and to your your point about, you know, the tough times you step away from your writing or when life is happening and you you have to step away. I have paused every summer. So the first summer was because of the divorce, but then future summers were because I had my child at home with me all day. And to I also have that writing practice practice of you know sitting down for an hour, but it was too hard. For me to switch on and off when I was a hundred percent caretaker at that point. And so those were the times where I really just leaned into the journaling. So I wasn't necessarily adding to the manuscript or working on edits during the summer months while my kid was home from school, but I was always journaling. I would say I'm really consistent with my journaling, but it's not always a daily practice. For me, I like to make sure I journal when I feel any sort of mood shifts or thought shifts. And I like to make sure that those feelings are documented, that those thoughts are documented. But it's not something that I require myself to do every day if I'm not feeling something that I want to capture. But journaling is so helpful for anyone who wants to write memoir in just one, finding your voice, and two, just understanding the topography of your emotional landscape.

SPEAKER_00 22:55

Yeah, no, I can imagine. I just want to go back a bit. You mentioned about you've been to therapy as well. How does that help with the writing process as well?

SPEAKER_01 23:04

I think for a lot of memoirists, it may be essential. I mean, you're you're doing a really deep dive. One of the trigger warnings I have in my book is about sexual assault. And that's related to the inciting incident in this book. And as I was getting ready to write those sections of the book, that scene, the fallout from it, the leaving of the career, the moving across the country that was all a part of the fallout. I was very grateful to have, you know, a therapy relationship that was already established that I could reflect to her all the things that that that writing process was bringing up. And she made it very clear to me. She was like, you are basically giving yourself immersion therapy, you know, alongside what we do in our, you know, talk-based meetings and EEMDR sessions, because here I was like re-immersing myself in the story in order to write it. And that can be extremely triggering and confronting. And there's a great amount of research that shows that as people do that sort of immersive writing, that exploratory writing on those difficult moments, there is so much resulting healing that comes from it, but it is a very triggering process to go through. And I think there are a lot of memoirs that would benefit from having a therapeutic resource to help them during that time. In some ways, that's what I hope to provide on a lower level sense with the memoir course and just letting people know that they're not alone in that experience. But I am not a trained medical professional. So, you know, when someone is dealing with something like sexual assault, I highly recommend that as they go through that writing process, that they also just take care of themselves mentally.

SPEAKER_00 24:53

Sure. You mentioned trigger warnings. Like, how would you like how or how do you like get those across to the to the read or the would-be reader?

SPEAKER_01 25:02

Yeah, so I ended up putting mine in my author's note. So it's very common with memoir to have an author's note that gives a more generic, like, these are based off of my memories and recollections and maybe my old journals. Other people could have different versions of how this went down. I've done my best with the fickle nature of memory to capture this to the best of my ability. And then I have my trigger warning there at the end. And it says, this story includes discussions of abortion, sexual assault, pet death, and divorce. While I haven't explored any of these topics in an explicitly graphic nature, please take care of yourself if you find any of these conversation topics triggering or distressing. I've chosen to go to the depth I have because I know there are readers who have found themselves in similar places. My goal is for them to feel less alone in these struggles. So it's right there at the beginning of the book. It's also referenced in the last sentence of the book blurb at the back of the book. So hopefully no one is approaching this story fully unaware. I've feel like I've, as an author, I've done my due diligence in putting it in both places that this story is going to cover these topics. And to please, you know, take care of yourself as the reader if you find any of those particularly distressing.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

Have you received any feedback from readers about any of that? Like in any way, like whether it's support or it's helped them, anything like that?

SPEAKER_01 26:26

So far, I've had beta readers and I've sent the books out to ARC readers. I've only started to get some of the feedback back from my ARC readers, since the book doesn't technically release until the end of June. But of the reviews that I've gotten of the peop the four women I had do my beta reading for me, none of them expressed any issues with those types of conversations. And the ones who had gone through divorce themselves were very appreciative of how I tackled that subject. I don't know that any of my beta readers had experienced sexual assault themselves. Um, but no one reflected back to me that they found any of that conversation, you know, triggering or distress or distressing in in any way. And they, many of them highlighted their appreciation of just the raw vulnerability in which I write. I don't have a very poetic or flowery way of writing. It's very, very clear prose. And I think that lends itself to the speed in which so many of my beta readers read this book, most of them reading it within like two or three sittings, just devouring the whole thing and telling me that they've lost sleep over it because they stayed up way too late reading it. But no, no one's reflected anything really positive or negative as far as like, oh, I'm so glad you went to this level of depth in this story, or I didn't appreciate that that level. But I think that's gonna come, those reflections will come more once the book is truly out in the world and open to everyone.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

Yeah, it kind of makes me think about something you said earlier about not just yourself, but memoirs in general, where maybe they undervalue their experiences and it makes them less likely to write. I think one of the problems sometimes with, like, say, popular memoirs is that you feel like unless you've been, say, kidnapped by terrorists or unless you've broken both legs and crawled down the mountainside, you get the feeling sometimes that traditional publishers don't want to publish that. Now, occasionally they definitely do do, you know, other, shall I say, more normal experiences. But I can understand why people would have the the feelings of, well, I just I just lived my life, I just did this, I just did that. But it it's still val not just valuable, but it's still interesting, I think. It really, really, really, really is. Now, I must say again, I'm I'm really looking forward to reading your book when it's released. Really am. You mentioned as well you were.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

So about a year and a half into the writing process, I actually went to virtually attended a writer's conference, and and through that, I could pitch to an agent. And I pitched this book to a memoir agent. And and she basically reflected what you just said back to me. She said, Oh, well, this book is not marketable because this is everyone's story, and you know, there's not anything here that we can, you know, make distinctive. And for me, that was exactly the validation I needed to self-publish because her telling me that this was everyone's story and everyone would relate to it was exactly what I wanted to hear. I wanted to know my book was relatable because I think that's what's gonna help it sell. And I understand that the big publishers really need to look at like they're going for those extreme angles, like you said, both broken legs crawling down a mountain or whatever. But it was her telling me that was exactly the validation I needed to say, oh, well, I don't want to like hype up some element of my story to make it fit fit that criteria. I'm quite happy and pleased with the fact that you're telling me that my story actually has some universality to it. To me, that says I'm going to have no trouble finding readers who resonate with parts of of my experience and my story.

SPEAKER_00 30:26

Yeah, to be honest, I think that's terrible feedback. Like it's nonsensical. It says everybody would relate to it. Yeah, isn't that the point? If it was no one would relate to it, you're like, okay, I can kind of get that, but everyone would yeah, everyone would relate to it, everyone lives these lives, but not not everyone writes about it. I think it's just I think sometimes and uh it's not just this. I I've heard, you know, from different quarters. I think there is you know, around the world at the moment a growing uh unease about the traditional publishing industry. It's becoming very copycat. And I even think it's becoming risk averse. It's it's just looking for what sold well last year. It really is.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

And who has a following already? That's why, especially in the memoir space, uh, a vast majority of that space is taken up by celebrity memoir because they're assumed to already have a following that they can sell to. Like, they're not often going to take a chance on you know, first-time no-name author.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

Yeah, and most of the time celebrity memoirs are ghostwritten. It's something that always annoys me. Like we we it used to be, it used to be in the UK, it used to be that the sportsman's autobiography, everybody knew that they were ghostwritten. But these days, you it the lines are starting to blur, and people are like, no, no, I I wrote this book. And you're like, you really didn't. It it's really bad for children's fiction as well, in particular, where there's lots of celebrity children's authors, but a lot of them are ghostwritten, but they never admit it, and they always go, Oh, yeah, I'm I'm I'm doing this, I'm doing that. You're not getting someone to do it.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

That like music artists do it, right? Like, we don't expect music artists to write every one of their songs. Why can we not treat it like, well, here's the songwriter on it? And yes, here's the artist who maybe add their own inflections, changed a couple of things, but like the song was written by this other person who you may or may not have ever heard of. I wish that that's how we were doing, you know, the ghostwriting or writing the story for other for the benefit of other people. You know, like yes, there was a collaborative, you know, aspect to this. Yes, you took, you know, this framework and you know, I used interviews with you or or you edited it behind me. And but like, yeah, we should be giving those writers credit. It's such a shame that they don't get to take any sort of credit for for that work.

SPEAKER_00 33:04

Yeah, I'm just hoping at some point that the publishing industry will kind of reset itself. I know a lot of it, the reason is it it's governed by like the sales team, and the sales team want to know how we can sell the book and the used data. So if the author and the agent say, well, it's similar to this book that sold 100,000 copies last year, the sales team understand that and go, Oh, okay, it's like this, therefore, we can expect to sell X amount. But of course, that's that's that's not gonna work all the time. It's it might not sell, or it might sell double that, who knows? But I think well, what if it's what if the book's not like any book that was sold the year before? That doesn't mean the reading public are not gonna read it. They they still want to read things, they still want to watch movies that are that are different. This idea that we have to just uh make or produce what went before, to me, I mean creatively, it's just it's nonsensical, it's just it's dead. You know, no one knew they wanted to see Star Wars until Star Wars came out. No one was like, hey, I want to see more sci-fi because at the time 1970s cinema was a lot darker. You know, no one knew they wanted to see Jaws until it came out. It's there's a little bit of, you know, I think thought I think needs to go into the process a bit more, I would say. I was gonna say as well, like you again, something you touched on before about like outlining. I think so you use an outline, is that that correct?

SPEAKER_01 34:44

I have for certain parts. I started with an initial outline. I've used outlining throughout the writing process, but there was a period of time where I was simply just writing the story to see how it took shape. And then I did a reverse outline, which is something that I think was so fundamental in helping me see where there were gaps in the story, where there were, you know, excessive scenes that didn't actually belong. And reverse outline, if people haven't heard of that, it's where once you've written the story, you go back and you basically do the outline of what you have written. I really like using Lisa Kron's scene cards. She wrote a book called Story Genius, and it's written in regards to fiction, and it really focuses and puts like the character development as sort of the front and center for your plotting. And this the scene cards have a grid, and it's cause and effect for the story or the action that's happening, the plot, and then there's cause and effect with what's happening for the character, like what like mental shifts they're going through, or or how something is pushing against their beliefs and influencing them in some way. And so that's what I used when I did my reverse outline. And through that, I could see clearly where scenes flowed and connected. It helped me with reorganizing my story when I cut that big chunk from the beginning and figuring out where the flashbacks, you know, needed to go or made sense in the framework of the story as a whole. So I was not so much someone who like outlined 100% before I started writing. It was a little bit of outlining as a general framework and then going back and either using those scene cards or also looking back at those Blake Snyder Save the Cat beats to figure out where my scenes plugged in in order to mitigate against any sort of pacing errors or just discontinuity between scenes.

SPEAKER_00 36:56

Yeah, I think it's always one of the hardest parts. I I outline, but I it's very general, very quite basic. I like to know my ending, I like to know where I'm starting, I like to know my main character, mostly, and that's kind of it. And I just kind of make it up as I go along, but yeah, and then there's a big editing process after that, you know, for sure. I was gonna ask you as well, Elizabeth. I know you're also like myself a podcaster. And I think I was checking out your podcast just the other day on YouTube, and you've got over a hundred episodes. Wow, that that's fantastic. I've only got like what like 31? This is the 32nd, I think. 32nd, and I feel like I've been doing it for forever already. So, like, what made you want to start doing podcasting? And maybe more importantly, how have you managed to keep going for so long?

SPEAKER_01 37:50

Oh, great question. So, the podcasting started as the marketing arm for the writing business, which is called Inspired Writer Collective, and the podcast has the same name. The business concept was uh building a virtual community space for writers, offering courses like the memoir course, having you know structured writing times where we could all hop together on a Zoom call virtually, but each work on our own projects, but just having that accountability and that sense of community around our writing and people at you know, various parts of the writing process to ask questions to or bounce ideas off of. And so the podcast started as just the marketing piece for that community aspect. But and I really had no aspirations of like being on camera and you know, doing any of the podcast aspects prior to that, but I very quickly enjoyed just having a space to have those kinds of conversations, and especially as I was writing the book, I was at that point a year into writing the book. So this was post-divorce. I've started to, you know, get back into the writing and now it's for the people, it's for the reader. And to have a space to have those kinds of conversations was extremely helpful for me throughout my writing process. So initially, when I we started the business, it was me and another writing friend, Stephanie. And for the first six months, our episodes were all just the two of us talking to each other, which were really great. We had a lot of things to talk about with, you know, she was writing romance fiction, I was writing memoir, and we could talk about all the ways in which personal life influences our writing, whether it's fictionalized or not. And then around six months into the podcasting, putting out an episode, you know, every week, we wanted to start bringing in guests. And that was something I'm so glad we did because I, I'm sure you can reflect on this too, Hayes. I've learned so much and I've just built such this robust community around me from meeting guests, talking to guests, understanding how other people write and work. It's how I vetted my cover designer and formatter, my line and copy editor, my author coach, like all these people that I've used in the publication of my book. I got to sit down and have an hour-long conversation with them first. And I got a real sense of who they were, what their values were, how they like to support authors in their process. And I've just really created some strong friendships. Like these are people that I still reach out to, that I still, you know, work with. We did, we hosted a memoir summit back in March. We've recorded that. So it is available if anyone is interested in that. But we did a full day, it was five different 45-minute sessions. And we started with just like the idea phase. The first session was like, I think I have a story I want to share. And then session two was drafting that story. Then we moved to editing and then put you know, pre-publication and then marketing. And I called back a bunch of of those previous guests to come and be speakers at that summit and just put all those beautiful minds into one space. And it was, it was so magical. Like those, those are relationships that I continue to foster and build upon and call on when I when I need help as well. So it's been a really rewarding experience. Recently, as in yesterday, Stephanie is choosing to step away from the business. And I don't know exactly what that's going to look like for the business as a whole moving forward as I take that on. But I absolutely love the podcasting element. So I know that'll be a part of it moving forward because it's just it's one of the pieces that I've fallen most in love with and has helped me so much in my writing and in just stepping into my identity as an author.

SPEAKER_00 41:56

Yeah, I totally agree. When you said about like meeting people and the community, I think that's a key word for me, community. I I've met people I just would never have met. I would never have read memoirs before doing this. And I've I've I've been lucky enough to read some books by traditional authors and indie authors that are really good. And that I just wouldn't have read before. Or people have bought my book. There's no way they would have bought that book if they didn't know me. It was it's just the way it is, you know. So yeah, it's a fantastic thing. And I I would say to anyone out there that, you know, is thinking about, you know, joining a podcast, do it. You know, you you meet some fantastic people, and you know, you mentioned earlier about support. I think we do need to support each other. Sometimes as riders, you know, we can feel quite low, especially if it's it's raining. You know, you um you mentioned earlier about you know talking to the agent. Uh you know, I I've had similar, you know, conversations or rejections, and it is gutting. It is really how are you supposed to take that? But it does kind of help when you you treat other people and they go, Oh yeah, I've had the same thing, but let's all support each other. And you mentioned about you know being an indie author, and I think it's it's the way forward, you know, for me. So yeah, I'm I'm really enjoying, you know, listening to your podcast, and I'm gonna listen to more episodes next week. I've got to say best of luck as well, about obviously the business with you. You said Stephanie stepping away. I suppose you could say it's it's a new challenge, and you know, these things happen for a reason. I was gonna ask you as well do you have any like favorite authors or you know, memoirists that have had like a big impact on you?

SPEAKER_01 43:49

Yes, I really loved Maggie Smith's You Can Make This Place Beautiful memoir. She is a poet, so her books prior to that memoir are poetic. Poetry, but she and she wrote that memoir in vignettes. So there aren't really true chapters. Like some stories are a paragraph, other ones maybe a few pages, but they're very short. And she does not use a chronological storytelling narrative in her book. But one thing that she really, one area she really shines, and one thing that really helped me as I was writing my memoir that I learned from her is this concept that the specific is universal. The more specific you get about something in your life, the more true the emotions that you're able to put on the page. And it's the emotions that your reader is relating to. So in her divorce, her book is all about her divorce and how she's wrestling with that on top of, you know, her two children and what that looks like. And her ex-husband moves away with and marries the like mistress from work and like starts his life over and has minimal involvement with the kids. But I remember this one distinctive story in the book where she talks about this coffee ring that's on the table next to the couch and how it's just a constant reminder of his absence because it was, you know, something that was formed through years of his coffee cup sitting there, years of building their life together. I think they were married like 10 or 15 years, and and just the representation of that, and she so beautifully leans into the specific. And it's because of that that then I resonate so strongly with the emotions that she's conveying in that moment. So, as far as memoir, I really love that one. One of the memoirs that I equate my book to is Wild by Cheryl Strade because of the hiking, the outdoorsy nature vibe, and that self-reflection that happens just kind of naturally in those elements. And then Glenn and Doyle's Untamed was another one that was significant in my writing because I felt more latitude to be emotionally vulnerable in reading how far she's willing to go and being emotionally vulnerable in her stories.

SPEAKER_00 46:24

Okay, yeah, it sounds interesting, especially the Maggie Smith one. When you you said about the the the not the coffee cup, like the coffee, like stain or coffee ring. Yeah, I can really visualize that. And yeah, you make a really good point, or she makes a really good point. It's not something that happened overnight. It took 10 to 15 years to occur. And the guy's left and it's still there, and it's like that kind of visual reminder, but it's the idea that he might have left, you know, on one level, but on another level, he's still there. But you've got to move forward. It it's it it's tough, you know. Uh yeah, it's and it sounds a very interesting way of doing it as well. Actually, I'll have to make a note and check it out on Kindle or Amazon and see to see what I think. What I was gonna ask as well is what do you think at the moment about AI or AI and in you know the writing and publishing world? Any thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01 47:23

I've gotta be honest, I am really uncomfortable with AI in our spaces. I I can see the value. I mean, I'm always grateful when I Google something, especially now that I've moved. Like what events are going on in town this summer? What kind of festivals are there? Where it's, you know, it's using AI along with the search engine to filter in this list of the different events where it's it's just providing me with objective information and compiling it for me. But as far as AI involvement in anything subjective in any of the arts, I am pretty strongly against, you know, not allowing it to come in and taint our spaces. I know it's something so many indie authors are struggling against, especially any accusations that they've used AI, or there's a lot too with AI, even if you've written the book yourself, but using an AI cover design, which yes, indie authors have a lot of expenses, and cover design is not cheap. And sometimes you don't even know that the hired designer that you've you've chosen is is using AI to generate things, and that can be difficult. But unfortunately, there is this big pushback against AI to where readers don't want to read your book if the cover is AI, even if you can, you know, show that the writing is not. I made sure that everyone that I worked with was not using AI. And I even chose to include a statement on my copyright page that that says as much that AI was not used in the production of this book, and AI was not used in the design and the editing and in any aspect. Because I think, I think there's such a value. I mean, maybe that's the blessing of AI, is now we're valuing actual art a little bit differently and not taking it for granted so much. But there's especially with memoir, there's just that humanness that has to be at the core of what you're creating. And I don't think AI has any place in that. Even from a like more administrative podcast perspective, the way that we record our podcasts, it creates a transcript. And for a period of time when we were, you know, really busy in the business, we would use that transcript and put it in AI to generate just the simple show notes description, right? That we would post along with the video. I hated them. It was like so, it was not us. It was not the tone. Like, sure, we would like edit it and tweak whatever it gave us, but like it was so hard to get it to capture how we wanted our episodes portrayed. And so it really didn't last long before we were like, you know what? No, we'll just take on the extra work, we'll write the show description ourselves. And it and so we've even booted it from, you know, some of the more like menial type tasks like that, because it just it just doesn't reach in the same way. And especially when, you know, we're trying to cultivate this sense of community around our podcasts and around our books. I just don't think it has a place.

SPEAKER_00 50:31

Yeah, it's a really good point about the the podcast. I uh on my on my podcast, I tried, I tried what was one episode, and um, I use it's a platform called BuzzPrint, and they have an option called Co-host AI, and I was like, what is that? I don't know what that is. And I I just thought, oh, I'll I'll click on the button, see what happens. And it was like the the show notes, and it was just terrible. It was just like, what? This is it it was almost like not connected to the audio. It was and I've never used it since it I think it's interesting where AI is developing. Like if if I use AI, for example, for the podcast, when I use it on like Riverside, it's for like taking out the the pauses, for example. It's fantastic at that, absolutely amazing. But when it gets to things like transcripts or even episode titles, it's horrible. And so that kind of it's interesting how like it knows to delete a pause. A pause is it's death, you know. But then to come up with just four or five words in different or in a different order seems to really, really struggle, to be honest. I think it's just one of those things that one of the reasons why I asked this question is I think it's just going to be one of those issues. So it's just gonna keep coming back like a boomerang, to be honest. Uh I mean, if there's one one thing I was gonna say as well about like cover art, I get the temptation, but in America, for sure, a book cannot be copyrighted to the to the author. Yeah, and and this is one of the problems, is but if if it's used AI. Now, to what extent? No one knows because it's not gone to court. But like I'd say to any authors out there that that use like AI for cover art, you've got to be careful. Because just before we finish, I was gonna say as well, Elizabeth, do you have any tips for like new writers that are thinking about doing, you know, writing a memoir?

SPEAKER_01 52:36

Ooh, certainly. If they're writing memoirs specifically, then I think journaling is a a great place to start. But I would also encourage those who are just starting to also start building those support systems. And I'm not talking about family and friends. Those are not gonna be your support systems, especially when you're writing memoir, because they're all gonna know it, want to know if you're writing about them, and it's just not a good place to start. Like those people can read your book once it's once it's out there, once it's published, or once you've got like a close to a final version if you really feel like you need their buy-in. But whether that's, you know, looking at local resources that your library may offer as far as, you know, writing communities or critique groups, I know there are different groups within my state in Colorado that I've been a part of, like for different regions where they get together and they they offer workshops or they offer, you know, just kind of like meet and greets where you get to meet with other writers. I also think trying to go to a writer's conference within like the first year is really helpful, just so you have an idea of what the path looks like ahead. I think all of those things can be really helpful in just building some of those resources around you early on to so that you have places to ask your questions, you have, you know, supports and feedback as you hit these different, you know, blocks that we all approach as writers and we all eventually face and have to wrestle with. Those have been some of the things that have been most helpful for me.

SPEAKER_00 54:10

Yeah, I love your tip about like moving on from friends and family. It's it's great if people say they love your writing, but emotionally they're more likely to say that rightly or wrongly. And I think that I think it's the hardest thing for writers, you have to try to get beyond that and get to maybe the next circle or the circle after that, where you'll get honest feedback. And guess what? Sometimes people still give you five stars. Yeah, I loved it, it made me think of this, it made me think of that. And that's that's worth a lot more than someone in your family saying to like it, to be honest, you know, rightly or wrongly. But again, it can go the other way. You might get when I say criticism, I mean I should mean constructive criticism. If someone says they hated it, it's rubbish, that kind of thing, I'd just ignore that, to be honest. But yeah, I think that's the hardest thing for writers to kind of do is take a step beyond. I love your point about a conference as well, by the way. That's really good. I've not I've not been to a conference, but I have done like a you know creative writing course that took about three or four years. And even to this day, it still resonates with me, to be honest. It's quite, quite amazing for that. Right, Elizabeth.

SPEAKER_01 55:30

I think we sorry, I think there's something to be said too with like not trying to rush the process. It was something I learned like with doing that 30-day course of like this guy saying, Oh, you can write it and sell it and whatever within 30 days or soon thereafter. There's so much that happens to you as an individual in the becoming an author that gets you ready to be the kind of person who can come on a podcast like this and talk about your book and talk about your process. So, my last bit of advice is just don't rush the process because there's so much that happens internally and in your own world that forms a support around the book that you will eventually share with the world and get you to a place where you're ready to be that person to represent that book.

SPEAKER_00 56:19

Sure. Completely agree with you. Okay, Elizabeth, I think we can um end the podcast there. It's been an absolute blast. Love it. Um please let me know when your book is out because I really want to get done. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 56:31

Absolutely. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 56:32

Yeah, you're welcome. Okay, so until next time. Okay, bye bye.