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Joyce Maynard has been publishing books for fifty-three years. In Wonderland is her fourteenth novel, and it came out eight days before we recorded this. She still does not outline. She sits down knowing exactly who her characters are, what they want, what they're afraid of, what they can't stop thinking about, and then she lets them take her somewhere she didn't plan on going.

We talked about the year she rented a little house on the shores of Lake Atitlán, and then bought a piece of land, which now serves as a retreat center where she's hosted well over a thousand women for memoir workshops. The question she gets there, every single time, from women only: How do I tell an honest story about my life without hurting the people in it? 

Other things we covered:

• Why she doesn't consider writing to be therapy, and what she thinks needs to happen before your story is ready for the page
• The difference between resilience and reinvention (she has a great analogy involving an inflatable clown)
• Going back to Yale at sixty-five, and the D- on a French exam that led to a diagnosis at an age when nobody in her generation got one
• Her approach to writing as making a movie that plays inside the reader's head, and why she refuses to over-explain
• Write what you know, and also the case for writing what you don't know

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Looking for hidden gems, date night spots, and staycations you didn't know you needed? Find your next adventure at TheBestoftheSouthwest.com and follow along on Instagram at @thebestofthesouthwest.

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Write the Damn Book Already is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with authors as well as updates and insights on writing craft and the publishing industry. 

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