Episode 69: [BOOK CLUB] Reading Amanda Gorman's Poetry to Improve Your Craft

There's so much to learn from poetry for improving your writing.

This episode digs into the playfulness of language, but also the possibilities of repurposing writing to create new meaning.

Have you thought about the last time you picked up a book of poetry?

We know some of you write poetry.

Whether you write poetry, or not, there's a lot to learn from exploring another genre.

One of the interesting poetry styles used by Amanda Gorman is erasure, or blackout, poetry from her research of historical documents.

Are you ready to learn more?

Get ready for an opportunity to strengthen your writing when you watch today!
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We hope you've found guidance and inspiration for your own writing.

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Get your list of 4 Essential Reads for Memoir Writers

Get your Character Coffee Chat Guide for Character Development

Transcript

Elizabeth: 0:01

Welcome back listeners to the Inspired Writer Collective podcast. This week is another one of our book Club weeks, and this month we chose Amanda Gorman's call Us What We Carry. This is her book of poems, and the last poem in the book is the famous one that she read at the inauguration in 2021. But before we jump into this wonderful book of poetry and how poetry relates. To even our narrative writing and prose. Um, first we wanna just check in with one another and update everyone on where we're at as far as our writing and our projects, and just writing life in general. So, Stephanie, fill us in. What have you been up to? What's working? What's been hard? Where are you at?

Stephanie: 0:46

Um, so I am working on my young adult novel it's going really well. It's moving forward now that I have a rhythm to what I'm writing and I had, I know my character so much better now.

Elizabeth: 1:05

Mm-hmm.

Stephanie: 1:06

so that's really helpful because there is really that experience of sitting at the keyboard and. Thinking about my character and getting in their head and just writing, and I've been able to write maybe 800 to a thousand words at a time in one sitting, which is amazing because I was not doing that before. And it was, it's just really coming along and it's just exciting. Like I get excited now. I am excited to get up and work on it, and I'm always thinking about it. And so that's really fun. And then Im also working on building out my coaching and. been really fun. So I'm working on a series about Scrivener I'm recording some short videos to help you get started with that because that has truly changed how I write because I can have everything in one place. don't have to go searching through multiple documents or digging through my Google Drive. And so I'm really excited to share that with listeners and. Make it a part of my coaching as well, helping fiction writers get their books out into the world.

Elizabeth: 2:22

That's awesome. Stephanie, I'm curious though, like what, what made the turning point with like your characters? Did you just have to like get far enough into the story that you knew the characters or was there something that you like backed up and did that like really made, made them come to life for you? Was it, I know you had talked about, at least to me offline, about how you were starting to like really increase the amount of dialogue you were writing for the characters. Like what was it that really like. Solidified your understanding of your characters.

Stephanie: 2:53

Well, I think it was a combination of really digging into my practice of the character Coffee chats

Elizabeth: 3:01

Mm-hmm.

Stephanie: 3:01

getting deeper into knowing about who they were and Charact really, I mean, characterizing the characters,

Elizabeth: 3:09

Mm-hmm.

Stephanie: 3:10

um, and really understanding, you know, what drives them. fears they have, you know, what's gonna be the biggest disaster for them in the book potentially. Or know, what are they most worried about? What are they most excited about? What do they love? And I really feel like getting into that depth has helped tremendously. And just since I'm writing ya and I'm surrounded by teenagers just also observing and listening. the teenagers around me was also really helpful to get some of that dialogue and the voice to come through in the writing.

Elizabeth: 3:53

Oh, I love that. What a way to like turn a page and like just ride on that momentum. And that's, I mean, you're, the word counts. You're talking about, you know, 800 to a thousand words. I feel like. At least for me, you know, that's kind of the ideal, that like, like when I sit down to draft that I'm able to do a big chunk like that.'cause that's usually like a half to a third of a chapter. Right? So that's great.

Stephanie: 4:20

Well, and I know you've had a lot of progress with your work, so where are you in your process?

Elizabeth: 4:26

So I'm definitely in the editing phase. So I finished the drafting goal, which we talked about on the, our last episode, um, with Amanda. And so now I'm in editing, so I have a printed out copy of my manuscript, which is, has been so pivotal. I think in acknowledging the progress that I've made is being able to like physically hold that binder. Um, and so I, I use the printed version to do my initial like edits and I make all of those in there. Um, right now I'm doing like the bigger picture edits, so I'm focused on anything where I needed to add some more detail. I'm noticing anywhere where I wanted to put like a takeaway or some more emotion, meaning like what's happening in my body versus how I'm interpreting that feeling. Um, and then also places to add metaphor. So those were like three things that I read in Jennifer Selig's Deep Memoir book, which. I don't know if I talked about on the podcast, but I know I've talked about it within our emails that go out on our, to our email list. Um, this is a book that you guys are gonna be hearing more about because it's been really helpful for me for this memoir writing, especially in the editing phase. And, and those were sort of the things from it that I wanted to incorporate in this next round of edits. And metaphor as a whole has just taken on a whole new importance. We'll be talking about that today in the poetry. But also we're gonna be having, um, an email series with videos on metaphor in May. So if you're on our email list, you will already get those emails. Um, talking about the importance of metaphor, the ways to craft metaphor, because. Frankly, I felt like a bit shy about it, but there's some really great structure within that book, and you, Stephanie took a course recently that focused on metaphor, especially in regards to nature and metaphor. Um, so we're gonna create that email series for our listeners. So if you're not already on our email list, check the show notes, join our email list so you don't miss out on that. Um, but yeah, it's, it's been interesting the way that I've been able to keep up with my, like writing or editing practice. Um, despite the recent illnesses going through my house, I know I sound a bit congested still today. Um, been able to stay pretty on top of it. I don't think I'll get through all the editing that I wanted to do in two months, frankly. I just, I don't think that's a realistic timeline, but I talked about that on the episode with Amanda that I wasn't sure that. That I could do it in that timeframe, but I was just gonna show up when I said I was gonna show up and I would get through whatever I got through and then reassess when summer gets here. And the schedule totally changes and shifts. So I'm still really happy with the progress I'm making. Um, still feel very strongly about the book as a whole and the direction that it's going and the things that I've added. Um, even the things I've taken out. So, um, it's been a really, really smooth process so far with the editing and I'm finding, I actually, I think I like the editing process a little bit more than the drafting, to be honest, which surprised me.'cause I, I actually, I enjoyed the drafting too, but the, the, the finessing of things and though, like, being able to take the time to sit and pick the right word versus when you're drafting, you're just trying to get the general idea out there. But the depth I get to add and the editing phase really seems to just add more dimension to the story and I'm, I'm really liking seeing that transition for it.

Stephanie: 8:07

Well, and I have a quick question for you'cause I know when you're editing you're doing it. More by hand

Elizabeth: 8:13

Mm-hmm.

Stephanie: 8:13

printed out copy. And is that an approach that you would recommend for others as opposed to sitting down at the computer and trying to cut and paste and fill in spaces?

Elizabeth: 8:27

Yeah, I, for me, that's just how my brain works. I maybe part of it is just like the generation in which I grew up, where I was used to editing on paper first. Um, I.

Stephanie: 8:38

I totally get

Elizabeth: 8:39

And I definitely, I definitely have a comfort with just writing, you know, that's why I journal. I do a lot of handwriting. We've had, you know, chats about the impact of handwriting and how when you're handwriting something, your brain is making deeper connections and, and noticing patterns more. Um, I also, I don't wanna get too distracted, like even when I'm doing my quote unquote editing on my physical manuscript. Sometimes I'm just highlighting an area where I wanna add a metaphor and I don't try to come up with a metaphor. If one immediately comes to mind, I'll scribble it down in just a premise, and then once I get through like a section of chapters, so I'm kind of doing like five or so chapters at a time. So once I get through those chapters in my physical manuscript. Then I go to Scribner and that's when I sit down and really fi figure out the nitty gritty. I might write the gist of what I wanna add or, um, you know, add example of, or highlight this area where I want to talk about what's going on in my body, what sensations I'm feeling. But I don't actually write those words until I get into Scrivener. So it's a little bit of, um. A, a, a two step process simply so I don't just go straight to Scribner and just get lost in what is it I'm trying to do, trying to do, I don't know, changing words everywhere. Like I, I like to have a focus, which is what the physical edits give me. It gives me a focus when I go to Scrivener to do the actual changes.

Stephanie: 10:11

I love that. I can absolutely relate to that process too. I preferred handwriting and especially when it comes to editing and making changes and all of those pieces.

Elizabeth: 10:23

And originally I, I think I took on this mindset that I needed to do like a single round of edits and in, in putting some questions out to the community on threads of writers that are there that follow along and that I follow. I, I was able to sort of glean from other people and just see what fit right with me and, and came to this idea of doing the broader stuff right now, which is like the metaphors, the takeaways, the emotions, any sort of missing scenes or examples. Um, converting some just paragraphs to dialogue where it was appropriate. Um, and then later I'll go through and then do the fine. Fine pick, you know, editing process, but that'll come as a second wave. And I do think my summertime will be a little bit more conducive to that fine tuning that's pretty far removed from the, the heavy focus of drafting, or even the early rounds of edit. So I'm hopeful that that won't slow down my progress too much, and I'm certainly got a lot of momentum going from just since the beginning of the year and seeing all the progress that I've made. Well, I'd like to jump into our book,

Stephanie: 11:36

Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth: 11:37

now, when we were originally planning our book club stuff over a year ago, we identified this book as one we wanted to read and simply because we wanted to pick poetry and, and at the, it was not too long after her, um, inauguration, recitation of her poem, and so. That was an, an easy one for us to go to, for us to pick Amanda Gorman's poetry. Uh, and we've heard over and over again about of other writers who either have a poetry background or are avid poetry readers, and you can really see that modeled and reflected in their own writing there. You know, use of verbs is really, you know, unique and interesting. Um, they just have a more diverse word choice. There's sort of a lyrical nature to things. There's a lot of metaphor. Um, and so. I was very hopeful that in reading poetry, which I don't do very often, honestly, that I would be able to glean something from it for my own writing. Stephanie, what was your experience with with reading this book?

Stephanie: 12:51

Well, the interesting thing about this book was that I learned that it was not the right book to read before going to bed because it is dense in terms of the language and some of the topics. So I learned that I needed to pick a different time of day to read it, but I noticed is that she's just so precise with her language, and that's what I love to pay attention to because it reminds me to think about being very purposeful and precise when I'm writing in my book. And sometimes I get kind of lazy and just keep repeating words and. Reading poetry reminds me, oh wait, maybe there's a different word that would be better there, and to go back and make a change. And what I found really interesting in her book of poetry is that she's covering a wide range of mostly related to the pandemic, but there's so many different ways evidenced by the thickness of the book that she brings this story to light. But there's a way that we can all relate to it.

Elizabeth: 14:11

Yeah, I, I also experienced that in the sense that this was not a book that I could sit down and read big chunks of. So I am only like two thirds of the way through the book because what I found myself doing was reading like two or three poems at a sitting. And then like, wanting to have that time to sort of digest it. And so while I know this is a book, I will continue to open and seek inspiration from and continue to finish and read the rest of the poems in. Um, it's not when I finished yet. And I actually prefer that sort of slower digesting of this type of, of poetry. Like you said, like this is not a, a lighthearted topic. There's a. At least the first half of the book is very pandemic focused. Towards the second half she brings in, you know, the Spanish influenza and cholera and bubonic plague and other massive, you know, pandemics and epidemics and things that have affected large portions of the population. Even, you know, tying in slavery practices and things to the story and how, you know. Marginalized groups and how that, uh, how we all felt like marginalized groups were the same sort of existence of it, um, through our isolation in the pandemic. But then she equates that to, you know, you experienced this for a year and you barely made it through, and this is how marginalized groups permanently live. Um, I think there were some really interesting connections, but in those, especially the earlier pandemic, um, focused poetry. It was really like, it really takes you back, like the concept. She's got a whole, um, poem that talks about the masks and the impact of the masks, and she talks about the sensations and the way it blocks us and the, just the itchy feeling and all of that. And it really just took me back to those, those really confusing early days of the pandemic. Um, so there was a lot that I was sort of processing along with reading it, but that's what's so cool about poetry and that's what indicates to me that I do need to bring that more into my writing practice of reading poetry, especially as a memoirist, because she's got a poem, it's called Good Grief. And in reading this poem, you know, she's talking about just the process of grief. And so it helps you like sit in that feeling and I found that my mind was instantly going to examples of when I had experienced that own that same feeling in my own life. So as far as someone who's writing memoir and wanting to potentially like brainstorm some additional content or. Or just find examples of when you felt certain feelings. I think poetry has a really great way of just putting you deep into an emotion and the way it slowly peels back the layers and picks apart a particular feeling that makes it, in my experience, easier to recall times that you may have felt that same feeling yourself.

Stephanie: 17:25

Well, yeah, I absolutely agree. I think poetry really allows for introducing universal themes we've all, things we've all experienced and bringing it, bringing it to a common, I. Language and space. And it really, like you said, it holds space for those experiences and you can reread it and revisit it, and I absolutely agree. It's just something that I think connects all of us and allows for. That common communication and it brings a rhythm to our work that is just. I know. I, I loved when I would pick up this book because the way I started reading it was kind of flipping to where I hadn't been yet discovering what I was gonna read, which was another fun way to approach it because was like, Ooh, well what, you know, what am I gonna read today? As opposed to trying to read it through chronologically, which I found like. it for me chronologically was pretty heavy. Like you said, like a lot of the themes were taking us back to the pandemic and all of those experiences and all the things we were thinking and feeling and ex and everything. And so started like, oh, I haven't read this one yet. Oh, I haven't read this yet. it made it kind of fun, um, with seeing, you know, what I was gonna read. And I think that too, like you said, I love. I thought about you so much about with memoir because of in experiences and making it a common one for everybody. And of course

Elizabeth: 19:17

Hmm

Stephanie: 19:17

with the fiction writing, I definitely need to bring it in more and I learned that too in the workshop that I did on on Metaphor, and so it can definitely change the writing.

Elizabeth: 19:30

mm-hmm. Poetry in reading. This one in particular reminded me of the way that. Just like Amanda Gorman took these various small aspects of the pandemic, right. And wrote a poem for like each of these different facets. Like she's got one about the animals, like sort of reclaiming the cities. As you know, cars were no longer on the roads and stuff, and, and it's so cool the way that you give space to each of those individual pieces, and that reminded me. Of the structure of some memoirs where you just take a single topic and the one that in particular that comes to mind is Maggie Smith's. You could make this place beautiful because it's all about her divorce and it's not chronological, but you know, she picks a different like piece of it. Like maybe it's the. You know, permanent ring on the, you know, coffee table from where her now ex-husband used to put place his coffee every morning and she sees it now and it has a totally different, you know, way that it elicits emotions from her. And, and she was, is also a poet. So it makes sense that that was her approach to her memoir, where she was able to pick these, you know, individual pieces and pull it apart and make it so that we as the reader. Can relate to something in there. You know, even if we haven't been divorced and can't relate to the overall theme, maybe we can do relate to some particular facet of it that she's discussing, um, in her memoir. And so from just a structural standpoint, that was, um, a great reminder to me of the beauty of both poetry and memoir. And being able to take just those individual fragments of an experience and really expand them and make them relatable, hold space, make them big enough to fit more people's experience into, into them.

Stephanie: 21:39

Well, and I think poetry allows for some playfulness too with the language, which allows for some difference in your writing day. Because if you're really stuck sometimes, and I was thinking about this, that I need to turn to poetry more to say like. Oh, well, how can I like play around with this or make this different or change the structure of it, or, I mean, one of the things that's really playful in this book if you look at some of the poems she's created images in the way she's shaped the words on the page, and in and of itself gives you a different experience with what she's writing because not only are you reading it, but you're seeing it visually appear on the page. And it just makes it different in how you're interacting with what you're reading as a reader. And I think that that's one of the things too, that it reminds us as writers that we can do things differently. We can approach something or how we make our words appear on the page different. We have that freedom. And I think so often we feel like we need to be stuck in. Very rigid rules and very rigid ways of doing it. And yes, there is that space and there is an aspect of that to the craft that, you know, your readers expect when they're gonna read a particular genre of what you're gonna write. But sometimes I think what Amanda Gorman has done is she's taking some heavy topics, but she's also being playful with it. So your

Elizabeth: 23:12

Mm.

Stephanie: 23:12

it is like, okay, yes. This is heavy, but oh, like this is really neat the way she's presented it

Elizabeth: 23:19

Mm-hmm.

Stephanie: 23:20

both this sort of visual, you know, sensory experience with the words

Elizabeth: 23:27

Yeah, I flagged a particular poem, I think, I don't know how to pronounce it, I think it's called Alam, and she talks about, well, she has all these slashes and divisions. In the beginning of it is we're writing as the daughter of a dying world, as its new faced alert in math, the slash also called the solidus means division divided by we were divided from each other person. Person and then she has this beautiful metaphor. Um, some griefs like rivers are uncrossable. They are not to be weighted across, but walked beside. And, and throughout this poem, there are all of these slash marks. So you get the, like, the pausing as you're reading it, you know, visually you're seeing that. And you're feeling this division, you're feeling this separation, even in the word uncrossable. There's a a slash after cross, so it's uncross slash able. Um, and, and so you feel that division of, of the grief from the river and you from other people. Um, and when I read, you know, a lot of the memoir craft books, they talk about. Allowing the theme of your story to dictate its structure and how if there is a broader, um, theme or or metaphor that you're using to explain your story, that a lot of times that can become sort of the. Premise for your structure, and you can build your structure to mirror that same theme, which is what I immediately noticed in like when Amanda has a poem about a ship and, and then the page or a whale maybe, and the page is shaped like a whale, you know? So you're just, you get that. Different sensory experience with it because you've got that visual representation of it beyond just the vision that the words elicit in your mind. You actually have the physical vision on the page.

Stephanie: 25:29

Yeah, I love that'cause it was such a good reminder about that playfulness and giving the reader something to hold onto as they're reading as well.

Elizabeth: 25:42

As far as playfulness. The other section I really enjoyed was the section on erasure where she basically explains that she's, you know, taken some previous documents and she's picked out pieces of them to create and formulate these poems. So the original documents are not her own. Um, the ones she chooses are very interesting and a lot of them, this is where a lot of the like. Spanish influenza comes in and other documents and things. Historical relevance that also relates back to our human experience during the pandemic and. She says, the key to constructive and not destructive erasure is to create an extension instead of an extract. It's not erasure, but expansion whereby we seek the underwriting, the undercurrent beneath the watered surface of the words. And I, seeing this, it made me want to like practice this because I, I don't know that I feel super confident like crafting a poem, but to be able to take the words that already exist somewhere else. And I thought even it'd be cool to like take them from my own journals, even if they're, they're my own words, right? But then to do this process of pulling out these particular phrases to create something that is, you know, poetic in nature. I thought that was just such a cool concept and would be so fun to play around with.

Stephanie: 27:06

Well, and it's really cool too from just the perspective of done her, having done research and taking these historical documents and perspectives and bringing them to the present day, and just the relevance of these voices that were essentially. in their time or not heard from as often that she's saying like, wow, these, these people had something to say. In the same way that we as writers, we all have something to say and sometimes we discount own words, our own thoughts, our own abilities, because we think, well, somebody else has already written this before, or somebody else has already done this before us, I think it's a really good reminder that. You have something unique to say and even if you're building on history or research, there's still something to be said because there's still a curiosity in our culture around what came before or what was in the past. And you know, I was just having a conversation the other day with my 17-year-old who's. the things we carried by Tim O'Brien about the Vietnam War,

Elizabeth: 28:15

Mm-hmm.

Stephanie: 28:16

he had all these questions and curiosities about it, and it was just really cool to see that because he's not really my biggest reader, just finding that connection in a book about something that brought curiosity and then being able to go deep into the research historically. Brought out a whole new side, and I just think that that's what's so cool about books and language and possibilities that can hook somebody in who's maybe not a reader. And there are plenty of adults in our world who are not really readers and. I read so many stories, especially with doing the romance genre of people who stumble upon a romance author and all of a sudden they're back in books.

Elizabeth: 29:02

Hmm.

Stephanie: 29:03

way with memoir too, that you're doing, that somebody's gonna find their story in what you're sharing. And I think that that's just so beautiful.

Elizabeth: 29:12

Yeah, and I just love some of the like reference materials she chose, like the Donahue Family Ledgers, which was a family that ran a funeral home when the 1918 Influenza Pandemic epidemic struck. And so they just have like. This like family ledger book, but she then did this erasure process creating and this erasure poem from it and like gives something that wouldn't have been considered literary, like this whole different, like she says, expanded meaning, you know, she's not just taking from it. She's like, by minimizing what is is portrayed, it actually expands. The meaning of it. And yeah, it was just such a cool thing to see. Um, and, and I would, I would love to play around with that, that process for something like, I think it would be a cool way to experiment.

Stephanie: 30:08

Yeah, I think that could be a really cool workshop. Maybe that

Elizabeth: 30:13

Yeah.

Stephanie: 30:13

thing to play around with this summer when we're taking a little break from things and. Try, try out different strategies for our own writing.

Elizabeth: 30:22

Yeah. Um, there were so many great uses of metaphor in here. I wanna read one that I tagged. This is in her poem, captive Flipped Unpolluted Memories Over in our mind, like a penny rubbed, faceless for good luck. I was like, oh, that's such a good one. Um, I read the one about the grief and the rivers and then this other one that I had to highlight because I, the thing with metaphor is in poetry you can, you don't have to explain your metaphors. Like that's kind of the beauty of poetry is you can have, it's totally can be open to reader interpretation, whereas in. Memoir especially, you're encouraged to explain the metaphor and even maybe discuss the ways in which the metaphor doesn't work. Um, and that just adds the dimension of it. But in Lucent, she uses this phrase, knuckling our eyelids, and it was just such a cool, like, like word choice. Um. Because she's talking about like the bright light. And so I'm just imagining someone like heavily squinting their eyelids and then like that creates all the wrinkles like you would see on like the knuckle. Like it was such an interesting association. Um, and again, that's what I love about exposing myself to poetry. It just helps me practice that non-linear connection. Being sort of scientifically minded and having that background, I feel like I just go for like the more linear next obvious choice, whereas poetry helps me step outside of that a little bit and, and see what else there might be that, you know is similar, but that is outside of like what you would normally go for or what you would normally think of out beyond the cliches and axioms and, and sort of things we normally. The ways we normally phrase things.

Stephanie: 32:24

Well, and I think poetry also challenges us to think differently things. And I know that that's true for me because I have a little bit of that very linear and I. sometimes challenges that a little bit to be like, oh, let's stretch this a little bit. Let's stretch this idea. What is this? How can we describe it? Even when I took that workshop, there was some challenge there, but then once I found myself letting the barriers down around creativity and exploring language, all of a sudden. There is so much that opens up and yeah, it's just so interesting. And like you said, after reading this and exploring Amanda Gorman's work, it makes me want to go back to some of my writing and think, well, how can I this? Especially when I think about like romance, there's a certain element of poetry that

Elizabeth: 33:26

Mm-hmm.

Stephanie: 33:27

to have as part of a romantic experience, a romantic exchange. And that in in some way.

Elizabeth: 33:38

Yeah, it was. It was definitely good to read some poetry, and I also found that while I have to shy away from other types of books when I'm in the middle of like a heavy drafting or editing phase, because I don't want it to impact my writing, I don't want someone else's voice to get muddied in with my own. Poetry is enough of a different structure that that doesn't seem to like infiltrate my own, you know, thinking or uh, writing process, but still gives me inspiration. So that was helpful for me to learn that that poetry is something that I can turn to when I'm in the middle of drafting or in the middle of something else, and it does not have the same impact of potentially tainting my own voice or, or any of that.

Stephanie: 34:25

Yeah. I love that suggestion about reading outside your genre when you're really deep in your own work, because often we can get into comparisons with, oh, okay, I, my book doesn't sound like this, or like this person. Whereas escaping to a or a book of poetry. Just allows you to relax and enjoy the reading experience and then get back to your own work.

Elizabeth: 34:52

Mm-hmm. Listener, I hope that you enjoyed reading this book. If you read along with us, and if not, feel free to pick up a copy. Um, we certainly got a lot out of this. You can read along, um, with your read like a writer workbook, which you can get by. Using the link in the show notes that helps you kind of dissect the book piece by piece. Um, whether it's the cover art, whether it's the opening chapter, which is not super relevant for this poetry book, but there are pieces to this as you have seen through our discussion today, that you can glean and apply to your own writing and that workbook just helps you, um, document that process so that you have that as a reference to go back to. Um, we're getting ready to wrap up our spring season of the podcast. I can't believe we're already here at the end of April. We have a couple more guest episodes that go through the end of May, and then we will be taking. Our month off, quote unquote, in June, meaning we won't be putting out new podcast episodes during that time. That's a great time for you to go back and listen to ones that you may have missed, especially if you didn't join us in the very beginning. There's, oh gosh, almost 70 episodes out there now, so, um, feel free to check those out. We also have appeared on guest episodes, and those are on our website if you're interested in any of those. Um, and while you may have to seek out other sources for that time period, what we are gonna be doing behind the scenes is getting ready for the fall season. So we will be doing our, our guest interviews and start recording the episodes for the, the fall season. So if you've been listening because you're interested in being a guest on the podcast. Then the email will be going out in probably mid-May, asking you to book your conversation with either Stephanie or I in order to see if that's a great fit, and then to get your episode recorded. So I, I know I've been talking to a lot of potential guests for the fall. I'm super excited with the things we're gonna be bringing to you guys as listeners. There's gonna be some, hopefully audio book narration, some nonfiction publishing, some. Book revamps a lot of things like systems for writers, as well as some of the marketing and nitty gritty of the writing business. And so all of that is coming your way for the fall season, and we're so thankful to have you guys listening and happy writing.