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The Write It Scared Podcast
A podcast to help fiction writers work through self-doubt and learn the craft of writing a novel.
The Write It Scared Podcast
Embracing the Struggle: A Conversation with Author Charlene Wang
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There’s a persistent myth that if writing feels hard, you’re doing it wrong.
This conversation with debut novelist Charlene Wang gently dismantles that idea. We talk honestly about messy drafts, perfectionism, long revision timelines, and the quiet persistence it takes to keep going when doubt creeps in.
Charlene shares her path to publishing I'll Follow You, including years of revision, mindset shifts, and learning to trust the process even when progress felt slow. If you’ve ever wondered whether struggle means failure, this episode offers reassurance that struggle is often part of becoming the writer you’re meant to be.
Timestamps:
01:27 Welcome + meet Charlene Wang
02:47 Charlene’s path to becoming a writer
05:11 Talking about I’ll Follow You
08:22 The realities of drafting and revision
14:43 Research and character development
20:29 Plotting, pantsing, and everything in between
21:38 Navigating self-doubt
24:33 Tools for sticking with the work
26:12 Productivity, perspective, and patience
29:18 Becoming a writer over time
36:26 Advice for writers in the thick of it
38:03 What Charlene is working on now
Links mentioned
Leigh Bardugo’s Ted Talk: The Art of Discomfort
Charlene’s debut novel, I’ll Follow You, is out now.
You can learn more and connect with her at charlenewangauthor.com or on Instagram @charleneshiyi
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There's this misconception that the writing's good if the writing's easy or if it's flowing naturally. And throughout this whole process of me writing this, it was really hard. And I would say I had more bad days than good. But I think it is absolutely normal. And if anything, I think these feelings of self-doubt mean that you're engaging critically with your own work. So I think that struggle means that you're on the right path.
SPEAKER_00Welcome to the Write It Scared podcast. I'm your host, Stacey Fraser, a formerly repressed creative soul, turned fiction writer, story editor, and author accelerator certified fiction book coach. At Write It Scared, we tell the truth about why writing a novel is so hard by acknowledging that most writers grapple with two stories: the one they want to put on the page to the best of their ability, and the often subconscious internal story that prevents them from doing it. This show is designed to help you identify and rewrite the internal narrative holding you back while you discover and write the story you want to tell and learn all the tools to help you do that successfully. Join me each week for a new episode where we'll talk about writing to deepen our understanding of the craft and of ourselves as writers. Writing a novel is an inside job that we do not do alone. Welcome to Red It Scared. I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in. Hey writer, welcome back to the Ride It Scared podcast. I'm your host, Stacey Fraser. So if you've ever sat at your desk and stared at the page and wondered if the fact that you're struggling means there's something wrong with you or what you're writing, then I think this is a conversation that will resonate, and you'll feel a lot better after you hear it. In today's episode, I'm talking with debut novelist Charlene Wang, author of I'll Follow You, which is a dark academia read about toxic female friendships, ambition, and the powerful pull of social media. We talk about messy drafts, perfectionism, long revision timelines, and what it really looks like to stay in the work when the writing feels hard more days than it does easy. Charlene shares honestly about her years in revision, her doubts, and the mindset shifts that helped her keep going when the process felt overwhelmingly difficult. This is a conversation about persistence, about believing and trusting in yourself when the page seems to fight you. So if you're in the middle of a draft that feels stubborn or fragile or unfinished or broken, pull up a chair. You are not alone, and as I said, I think you're gonna feel a whole lot better and more reassured that you're actually doing work that is just challenging you and that that is a good thing. Here's Charlene's bio, and then we will jump into the interview. After immigrating to the U.S. when she was three, she lived in seven different cities. After graduating with a BA in English from Dartmouth College and a JD from the University of Virginia Law School, she worked as a litigator for six years. She now lives in Brooklyn, New York with her partner and their dog Winky. And I'll follow you is her debut novel. Charlene, thank you so much for coming on the Right It's Scared podcast. It's a delight to have you here. Congratulations on your debut novel, I'll Follow You, which just came out. We're recording this, what is it, mid-October, and it came out October 1st, and we're gonna dive into that. But first, how are you doing? I'm good. I'm so excited to be here. I'm excited to talk about your book. But before we get into that, would you please share a bit more about your journey to becoming a writer and a published author?
SPEAKER_01Sure. So my journey was, I call it unconventional, though I think most writers actually tend to have an unconventional path to publication. I was a litigator. I was a litigator in New York City for seven years. And really, like people don't believe me when I tell them this, but I did not read a fiction book from ages 18 to 27. I was an avid reader when I was a child. And I don't know what happened, but after college and through law school, you know, I was reading law books, I was studying. That's all you do in law school is read. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I didn't read fiction, but I kind of found my way back into it after I had just done a really intense murder trial where we were defending it was a first-degree murder case. And afterwards, I was trying to process my feelings about it. And so I wanted to write a, you know, what turned out to be a lightly fictionalized story about this trial and the experiences I had. And I started taking workshops around the city. And that's kind of how it all got started was just trying to make sense of this. I like to think that it's my first book. You know, like I think a lot of writers have like shelved manuscripts. But really, I think actually it was just the roughest, rough, rough draft of what turned out to be my debut, I'll Follow You.
SPEAKER_00So please share what your novel is about. What do you want the readers to know?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So I'll follow you is about two best friends, Faith and Kayla, who are desperate to escape their small town in Mississippi. They have very different ideas about how to do that. Kayla is the beautiful, charismatic one. And she thinks that social media and becoming going viral is the way, is her ticket out. Faith, who is the more mousey, brainy one, thinks that, you know, having good grades and getting into a good college is her ticket out. In high school, they create this viral persona where Kayla is the face of this Instagram account called Hannah Primrose. And Faith is writing her captions as her ghostwriter. And they they amass a few thousand followers. But at the end of high school, Faith decides to not tell Kayla that she's applying to Harkness College, this elite college. And to her surprise, she gets in and she leaves Kayla behind in their small town and it completely fractures their friendship. One night, Kayla shows up outside of her dorm, needing a place to stay. And all of a sudden, Faith finds that, you know, despite this precious, fragile life that she's created on this campus, she feels herself getting pulled back into Kayla's Corvette. I call I'll Follow You a mashup between a campus novel, a dark academia novel, and a feminist revenge novel. And I'm not going to say how it gets there, but I had a lot of fun writing it. And I hope readers have fun reading it. And so this is the first fiction novel you ever attempted? Yes. You know, I think maybe when I was eight, I wrote a book that was like eight pages long. I stapled it together and I read it to my class. But yes, this is my first novel as an adult. And yeah, it's it was a very intense experience. You're meeting people, you know, on the worst days of their life. And, you know, really, I was looking for a way to kind of understand that experience. And I think fiction is one of the best ways to do that, to create space for that sort of processing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, an emotional exploration in a safe way. Absolutely. Wow. Well, you're I think you're absolutely right. Most of us writers do have a bunch of manuscripts in the trunk that we don't want to open. You know, you know, they'll go there. Those are right. But but not for you. I mean, I think that's that's incredible. That's your journey. And, you know, you might maybe be a little bit of a unicorn in that way, you know, that your first book hits and lands. And I shared with you before I hit record, your voice and your command of narrative drive is so impressive, which is really opening of your book. And definitely ordered it. So you went from litigation to fiction writing. Are you still litigating or are you are you completely over the no, no?
SPEAKER_01I so I had a, you know, it's a it's a funky little journey. But so one of the workshops that really transformed my craft was this one-year novel generator class at Catapult. And the whole goal was you finished a manuscript in a year. And it happened that this workshop like happened in the beginning of the pandemic. So we met January 2020. We were all writing together through the pandemic. And at the end, there's this, I don't know if it was actually supposed to be in person at first, but nevertheless, it was sort of like a year-end recital and it was a podcast, and we all read excerpts of our manuscript. And so I read mine and I didn't really think much of it. But afterwards, I got an agent who emailed me and was like, I really like this. You know, do you have more? And I had an editor reach out to me. And at the time, I had been just extremely burnt out by, you know, being a practicing lawyer during the pandemic. There was a lot of upheaval. My caseload was fluctuating a lot. And so once I started getting this positive feedback, I think I was just like, that's it, let's go. And so, you know, I did something what what my mom called extremely stupid, and it probably was. And I quit my very stressful, you know, big law job. And I started doing what's essentially kind of what I call like Uber for lawyers. It's an app you negotiate contracts on this app. And so you have a lot more like flexibility with your time, even though your caseload is somewhat ad hoc. And so I did that while I was revising. I had signed with my agent about a few weeks after I quit at my big law job. And there's a lot of, I think, resetting of expectations that comes with trying to publish a book. And one of them was I thought when I signed with my agent, we go on submission right away. And it turned out the book needed a lot of work. I ended up revising my agent for two years before we went on submission. And and yeah, so that, so I was doing Uber for Lawyers. I was revising my book. And it was uh it was a really interesting time in my life that was stressful, but also kind of magical looking back on it, because you know, I'm really happy I made that leap.
SPEAKER_00Uh, I think that's awesome. And I've been in that place of also having to make the leap away from a career that that no longer served me. It is scary. It is definitely scary. So, when did you get the idea for this book?
SPEAKER_01So, when I wrote this lightly fictionalized version of what I went through as a litigator, litigating this first-ray murder trial, one of the feedback that I was getting in these workshops was that it was too factual, that my narrative was being bogged down by, you know, all these details. And I think what was really holding me back is that as a lawyer, you're very tuned to the facts. Like facts are very important and you're used to like marshalling them in a brief. But when you're trying to be a storyteller, like, you know, you kind of have to harness all of those details. And I think because my protagonist was a young lawyer like myself, it was hard to take off the lawyer hat and put on the storyteller hat. And basically I said, okay, I'm gonna write a different manuscript. And this is where it kind of, I think every book kind of surprises you because you think you have ideas of what you're doing, and then it kind of the book has its own ideas. But I said, I'm gonna write a book that's the opposite of me. And so I wrote about two best friends who want to become influencers because in my mind, you know, I am the opposite of an influencer. I had no idea what that world entailed. And yeah, and it began as that seed. And I thought that this book would be this lighthearted romp through social media. And I knew that I wanted it to be about two best friends. But by the time I finished writing this book, which, you know, took years, I realized that I circled back in the end to all of these themes about like power and gender and class that really were the themes that animated my desire to write a book about my legal experience to begin with. Um that's why I say that really it is the same book, you know, especially the way it changed over the years. It all was tangled up together. I just didn't have really the vision at the time to really see the the forest.
SPEAKER_00Got it. So let's just talk time frame from the original manuscript that featured a young lawyer to what the book is now. What's that time period?
SPEAKER_01So I started writing it, I think, in 2018. Okay, and worked on it for about a year and a half, two years. And then when I started my novel generator class in the beginning of 2020, that's when I was like, let me try to write a different book. And finished a manuscript of that and then rewrote that a million more times. And then I signed with my agent in 2021, and we went on submission in 2023.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_01No, 2024. Thanks for breaking that down.
SPEAKER_00So what a journey from starting about a young lawyer to now it's about these two friends who are wanting to escape what sounds like, you know, not a great place to live in the first place. And they have very different ideas about doing that, and then it causes a rift between the two of them that may or may not be deadly and toxic. You'll have to read it. You mentioned in your email to me that you've had what you consider several failed drafts, and that you took a trip to be able to research what you needed to put this book together. So tell us how all of that worked. How did you know that the book wasn't working? And how did you know that you needed to take this trip to be able to incorporate the elements into the book that you wanted?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's a really good question. It was a lot of questions. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, they're all questions that, you know, I think about all the time. I think that the process of writing a book is very intuitive. And part of for me, the struggle is being okay with relying on that intuition and and being okay with not always knowing the answers right away. I think that when I signed with my agent, she had given me some feedback that this character is a little passive, it feels a little cerebral. A lot of dark academia novels are pretty cerebral. It, you know, it follows a protagonist who, you know, gets into an elite college and they soon get really wrapped up in some sort of esoteric study. You know, in Secret History, it's the classics, in I'll follow you, it's art conservation. And so the trick is you have to figure out a way to honor all of that intellectual interest and balance it with the fact that the character still needs to be someone who has a goal and is making active decisions to reach that goal. And so, and that's something that I think like is that's very solid craft advice right there. When you're getting to know a character from draft zero to, you know, final draft, it's you know, it takes a while for you to understand what that means, right? And so I am someone who's very cerebral, I'm very abstract. You know, I even wrote a whole essay on writer's digest about how as a kid, I never liked playing with my hands. I always liked reading books, I never made like built like, you know, forts and sandboxes. And I think I needed to do something to break myself out of that scrolling, looking at textbooks mode, because that's you know, basically that's 99% of how I get information. And so, so, you know, I I was just like, well, well, like what can I do? And, you know, I started talking to people. So even in New York City, which, you know, I'm very fortunate to live in a city with so many interesting people. I had a friend who knew a friend who like was studying art conservation. And so I spoke with her and she had mentioned the way American conservators look at conservation and the way Italian conservators view conservation, they have different attitudes, they have different approaches. And so I was just like, you know what? What the heck? Like, let's just, let me just take the plunge, let me just spend a week in in Florence and see like what it feels like to actually be in a studio like that. And so I I just did it. And I was very fortunate to be able to have that time to do that. And I think it's really like you're trying to embody your character. And if they're different from you in any way, trying to at least like, you know, what are they touching on a daily basis? What are they smelling? How do they feel in their skin? You know, what are like the mundane practical realities that's weighing them down? Um, and I think that was kind of the detail, the level of specificity that I was chasing. And so that's a long answer. And I think I kind of, you know, went off course, but I'm a big proponent in whatever, whatever way you can, just trying to inhabit your character's life. You know, it could be even as simple as going to the grocery store and trying to shop as your character, or like even just doing exercises in your brain. Like if my character got into a car accident, what would they do? Would they pull over? Would they try to talk them their way out of a ticket? You know, would they panic? And so, you know, there's all sorts of ways to get at it, but I think the the key is to try to like, you know, make your character as 3D as possible. You're trying to go from 2D to 3D. And and that's the challenge.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yes, it absolutely is. And I feel you when you say cerebral, I'm very much like that too, as far as when I'm and and and it sometimes feels really hard to pull these people together out of the ether, and I can go round and round and round about it. So I love those are fantastic tips is to find a way to like ground yourself in some experience that maybe your character might experience and try to imagine what it would be like for them. For me, I write tends to be very, I get I like settings for you know, I I'm terrible at writing them, but I really like them. Like I like vibe. Like I like vibe, so I'll try to go find the vibe, right? And for whatever reason, like I like the gothic, like coastal, you know, creepy, foggy places, right? I'm gonna try to go for that. Definitely go for walks in the fog. That's that's one of my favorite things to do. Help inspire me. But that those are great tips. So that trip really helped you honor the experience that your protagonist was having studying art conservation in this academic setting, and helped you make the book more real. So process-wise, once you kind of decided that you were gonna switch the novel up completely and write about this friendship, did you plot? Did you pants? Did you how did you bake all that together?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, that is the million-dollar question. I think I began as an outliner and I was very rigid about sticking to the outline. And I think that that was mostly the vibe for book one. I will say I'm working on a second book and I'm trying to do different things. Because I do think that you know, the the right balance is like you you you do outline and you have that structure, but you also leave space for experimentation and for letting characters surprise you. And so, yeah, but it's a balance, and I think it's tricky.
SPEAKER_00It is. I have this idea that somewhere somebody out there has figured it out. I know, and I'm just gonna go find them. But probably the truth is that you know, you just figure it out for yourself and you incorporate all kinds of different pieces and it becomes its own amalgam that's specific to you. Yeah, yeah, but I still don't want to accept that just yet.
SPEAKER_01I know, me neither.
SPEAKER_00I want the answer.
SPEAKER_01So if anyone has it, let us know. Yes. Please dial, please, please, please dial in.
SPEAKER_00Please dial in. And then and then we'll phone our friends. Yes. All right. Well, a big part of this podcast is dedicated to telling the truth about why writing can be so hard and exposing unhelpful internal narratives that a lot of us writers face when we craft our stories. And the reason that I do this is because I I think that we all have those experiences where, you know, we get in our own way. And if we identify them, if we talk About them, if we normalize them, then those doubts hold us back so much. Instead, we'll be like, Oh, it's you know, everybody has this, it's kind of part of the process, and I'm I'm not the worst. And and so my hope is that that will keep the game more people in the thing that they like to do, and because of that, we'll get more stories in the world and maybe from voices that we wouldn't have heard from. So that is my hope. So, in that vein, would you share a time or times when the writing has gotten hard for you when you struggled with that kind of negative self-talk? What fears or limiting beliefs did you did you have to face and and how did you get by them?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that is such a great question. And I just really love that we're making space for this sort of discussion, because I think that you're right, that there's this misconception that the writing's good if the writing's easy or if it's flowing naturally. And throughout this whole process of me writing this, I'll follow you, it was really hard. And I would say I had more bad days than good. Just, you know, being at my laptop trying to hit my word count. And I absolutely struggled with that because I was like, is this meant to be if it's always so hard, if it always feels like it's not easy, if I'm not in flow. But I think it is absolutely normal. And if anything, I think these feelings of self-doubt mean that, you know, you're engaging critically with your own work and you know what a good novel is, and you're and you're trying to close that gap. And so I think that struggle means that you're on the right path. But, you know, I would say I struggle a lot with perfectionism. Um, especially in the first draft, or when you're still trying to figure out what the story is, I really get myself in my own way because I feel like every sentence has to be perfect. I have to understand the story right away. And so there's a lot of moments where I'm just throwing my hands up in the air and, you know, like I have to go take a walk or touch some grass because I just feel like so frustrated. And I don't think that goes away, sadly. I I just I just don't. I just think that being aware of it, you know, that's half the battle. And just being and persisting despite it is the other half.
SPEAKER_00Do you have any particular tools or that you lean on to help you persist through it when you were in a particularly bad period or stuck? It sounds like touching grass is important, which is I laugh because I have a picture of me laying in the dirt. Like I literally never even laid down and I was out for a walk and I just decided to lay down on the dirt. Yeah, I thought I was still overwhelmed and I was done. Yeah, I just yeah, I need this was literally grounding myself. But anyway, do you have any particular tools that you lean on?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So, you know, I have a bunch go-tos. First step is to put a timer on it. So I do a 15-minute timer, and I just just go, like type as much as you can. And just, you know, at the end of the 15 minutes, you'd be surprised at actually how, you know, there's there's probably a sentence or two you do really like, and you know, you get somewhere. Sometimes I'll do long form. So if it's really not like coming that day, I'll just like take a notepad and just start writing sentences down. And usually that jogs something. And sometimes, you know, some days you're just really not feeling it, and that's okay. And in which case I just say it's okay. And I tell myself that, you know, headtime is all is important. Thinking about your book and thinking about the story and the characters is just as important as getting words on the page. And so if it's a day where that's the only thing I'm I feel capable of doing, just giving myself that grace and knowing that that is valuable time too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I love that. I think a lot of us tend to be productivity focused. And it feels like sometimes those actions are not producing anything. And someone, I think it was Becca Syme, who she's uh she's an author and she has the quick cast, and she's a great advocate for writers, but she said, you know, there's a lot of different ways to view productivity. And if you change your lens a little bit, then the the non-writing days, the days you're not tapping away on the keys, actually, maybe they are writing days. Maybe writing is thinking, maybe it is, you know, pondering, maybe it is journaling, you know, maybe maybe you're being a little too hard on yourself. Yeah, and I like that. And I stuck with that. And I agree. Like what you said earlier, the idea of maybe I shouldn't be doing this because it's just not easy. It's just not coming. It's just not, you know, it's it's harder most days than it is uh easy. I love that you said that. Uh one, because that's really how I feel right now. Yeah. But the idea of stopping or doing something else just is so distasteful to me. I don't want to do that either. But I don't know if you heard it, but Libra Dugo's TED Talk about the art of discomfort. It came out go watch it. It's so good. It's only like 15 minutes. And I've talked about it on the podcast before, but it's the same idea. It's like just because uh it's hard doesn't mean you're on the wrong track. Yeah, and so it's part of the process of being creative is learning to sit with discomfort when it's not easy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, that's that's a great way of putting it. Um she I didn't do it, she did it.
SPEAKER_00Well, that but I paraphrase a little bit, love it. But yeah, I I will link to that that TED talk in in the show notes. And then the other idea, you know, what you were speaking about of the gap, like you know what a good novel is. When you read it, you know it, you can feel it, and you can also feel what your the state of your draft and how not good it is in comparison, right? And that's the gap. And you know, they the I like to say that the gap will close itself if we just continue to do the work. And it reminded me, have you ever seen or heard Iraglass's? Yeah, that's exactly who I was thinking about.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I love that.
SPEAKER_00I can't remember what that is called, what that little segment is called that he does. Maybe it is the gap. No, I don't know either. Yeah, but it's it's genius. So thank you, IraGlass. Thank you, Ira Glass, absolutely. And I'll link to that. It's on YouTube in the show notes too, because it's inspiring. And it basically just says just because it's hard doesn't mean it's you're not supposed to be a writer. It just means that you know, that's what everybody experiences, this gap. And and the reason that you're a writer is because you got good taste, you know what's good, and now you're working on making what you're creating good too, and it just takes time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Another thing I really like to look at when I'm feeling so uncertain is I think of my favorite writers and I look at their body of work. And, you know, some writers, like this is something I I love doing, is I find a writer I love and I'll read their whole backlist. You can really see their evolution. And you know, it's like it's not that, you know, Hemingway is producing a perfect novel every time, right? There's some really good novels, there's some great novels, maybe they have a perfect novel even, but there is it, there's a variability to their output and there's an evolution, and they're everyone's starting somewhere. And I find that very comforting because I'll read, you know, someone's debut, someone I admire whose career, I'm like, I wish I could have a career like theirs. And I read their debut and I see it like, oh, like, you know, I see some of this, you know, like a lot of debuts, they have certain attributes. And you see that, and you're like, okay, like even somebody as amazing as this person, you know, started somewhere. And so I find that to be, at least for me, like, you know, misery loves company. And, you know, knowing that, you know, everyone has that growth. Um, I think that is also very reassuring.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And it's inspiring too. And the thing that's cool about writing is that I don't think we'll ever master it. Like you'll never be there's no pinnacle here. Right. Not really. I mean, you can keep growing and changing and trying new stuff. And it's it's I don't know who said it, but somebody said that writing is a is a pursuit that I can't remember it, so I'm not gonna say it. But anyway. But I think that's part of what's cool about it is that it keeps you it can challenge you as much as you want it to challenge you.
SPEAKER_01You know, uh, and I think if it could be perfected or mastered, it wouldn't be as satisfying in a way. It wouldn't be as magical. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. And it is magic. There is so much magic to it. Creating something that didn't exist before, pulling two random ideas together, seeing something spark from that. That's magic to me. Well, thank you for sharing about the times when when it has been hard and how you worked through it. So, and and just looking back, I mean, this is a yes, this is your debut novel. This is the first novel that you've worked on, but it was six, seven years in the making, if not more. Oh yeah. So it's not like I just woke up and wrote a book and they published no, no, no, right. This is this there is sweat equity here. Oh yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, I'm not even including all of the years I was wanting to be a writer and just couldn't write, you know. So I think it is it is a journey.
SPEAKER_00Tell us a little bit about that. What were those years like where you wanted to be a writer but you couldn't write?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so you know, growing up, I just I didn't know any writers. I loved reading, but it just was not something that was that seemed possible. It was not in the lexicon for someone like me. And, you know, I did some creative writing classes in college, but it's not like anyone was like wowed by my talent, you know, like it was just, it was just a college class. And I think I always, you know, there were certainly novels that moved me. Like I read The Secret History, I think the summer before I went to college. I mean, I went to a college in New England, so you know, it was really hitting me right in the sweet spot. And I guess I just, you know, just didn't think that I could make something like that aesthetically. And it took a long time for me to even just say out loud, like, I want to be a writer, you know, years. And it's not something, it's just something that it's not in your active consciousness, but it's kind of percolating in that in-between place where you're not even cognizant of what you want because you don't even, you don't even have the language to to put it in words. And so there was a long time, and like I said, I didn't read fiction much after the age of 18 and and and through law school. And so I don't know what it was about the first screen murder trial, but I think it was the first time actively my mind, I I thought I had I lived through something and I have something to say about it. Um, and but again, it wasn't I want to be a writer either. It was just like I have something to say. And then after doing these workshops and, you know, kind of doing the practice of it, it became over time, I want to be a writer. Yeah. When did you decide you were one? Man, I mean, honestly, I remembered being afraid of putting writer in my Instagram bio until after I signed with my agent. And I don't recommend that, you know. Like I was so, I was so scared. And I was so, you know, people, you know, I I talked about this a lot, but people, it's it's scary when you're trying to become something of showing that to the world. Yeah, it's like failing in public. Yeah, yeah, in a way. People think it's cringe or like, you know, like I feel like that is a word that gets bandied around a lot of like being afraid of being afraid of being seen as cringe. And yeah, I I think, you know, honestly, like probably when I put it in my Instagram bio, that was like the most public expression of it. But maybe like I did say when I was in my novel generator class, I was like, Charlene, you're not gonna do this in secret and not tell anyone. So I started telling my friends, and I was like, I'm doing this workshop, I'm trying to be a writer, and luckily I have very supportive friends, and so it was great. But yeah, probably Ben. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, I can identify with the struggle to say I'm a writer, you know, because in my mind, a writer is somebody who writes beautiful things, right? And and I don't yet, or or I didn't, you know what I'm not you know what I mean? I just wasn't there yet. So yeah, but over time I have come to believe that just i if I write, I am a writer, and I also believe I have something to say, and both of those things was an evolution for me to get there. I just didn't wake up one day and and be like, oh, I got I gotta figure it. Well, it didn't happen like that. And I don't think that that's a unusual experience. So I think it's just a very common struggle to embrace that identity, to be comfortable with it. So if anybody out there is like struggling with that, you're not alone, you're not cringe, no, in any way, shape, or form. And I'm gonna argue that you are a writer if you are writing. Yeah. Okay, so I have a couple more questions to ask you before we wrap up. The first is what is the best piece of writing advice you think you've ever received?
SPEAKER_01I was reading the Andre Agassi biography, and something his tennis coach tells him is like you don't have to hit every every ball winner. And that really helped me in my perfectionism because I felt like every sentence had to be perfect, and it was really strangling the life out of whatever it was on the page. So I think that is the best writing advice. Just you don't have to hit a winner, you don't even have to have any good sentences in your first draft. Like you just have to keep on doing it and just get to the end.
SPEAKER_00Solid. Solid. And what wish would you like to impart to your fellow writers out there who are working on their first novel or maybe their fifth and just haven't gotten anywhere with it? Yeah, what wish would you like to impart to your fellow writers?
SPEAKER_01It's simple, but just just believe in yourself and keep believing yourself. It's so simple, but I think that's what I think is the most important is that you're, especially in the beginning, you're gonna have no one believing in you. You know, maybe you're close friends, maybe your family, but you're gonna get a lot of rejection. I certainly did. I think every writer I know did. And that does not mean that you don't have the talent. In fact, I think writing talent is the least of it. I think a lot of it is perseverance. And so, yeah, just keep going. And it's going to happen. Maybe not on the timeline you think, but it will.
SPEAKER_00Well, would you like to share anything that you're currently working on? And then please let listeners know where they can find you and your book, I'll follow you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So I'm right now working on an upmarket thriller. It is about a multicultural girl group and their final tragic concert. And that's all I really know about it right now. So yeah. And you can find me on Instagram at Charlene Shuyi, and my author website is www.sharlenewangauthor.com.
SPEAKER_00Right on. And I'll follow you is available wherever books are sold. Yeah. At this point, because it's was released October 1st. Very cool. Well, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. You are a delightful guest. I appreciate your just your vulnerability and your honesty. And so will everyone else who listens to this. So thank you. Thank you so much for having me. This was so fun. Thank you for listening to the Write It Scared podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please make sure to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode. And please leave a review. Reviews help other writers like you find the voices and messages they need to hear to continue to write their stories. Let's lift each other up. Remember, you can be scared and still be unstoppable. I'll see you next week.
