The Women Are Plotting

Our Writing Origin Stories

• Etienne Rose Olivier, Jane Gari, Heidi Willis • Season 1 • Episode 1

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What makes someone become a writer? For the three Gen X hosts of Women Are Plotting, their creative origins trace back to childhood—creating elaborate storylines for Barbies, convincing neighborhood kids a shark lurked in a backyard pond, and discovering the thrilling power of bringing imaginary worlds to life with nothing but words.

This debut episode reveals the fascinating, often winding paths that led Etienne, Jane, and Heidi to writing. From the four-year-old who realized she could transport others with her stories to the aspiring filmmaker who discovered screenwriting through a scheduling conflict, each journey demonstrates that creativity finds its expression against all odds. They share how writing became not just a hobby but a necessity—a balancing force that, when abandoned, leaves them feeling "unmoored" and slowly "going insane."

The conversation explores those magical moments of validation that kept them creating even without an audience: the high school teacher who predicted publication, a second place in a short story contest coming at the perfect moment, and the experience of having others truly connect with their words. They debunk the myth of writer's block (it's really just perfectionism in disguise) and reveal their techniques for pushing through creative obstacles.

With delightful asides about Stephen King sleeping with the lights on and Ray Bradbury being "knighted" by a carnival performer, this episode celebrates the quirky inspirations that fuel creativity. The hosts make a compelling case for why authentic human storytelling—born from lived experience—will always connect with readers in ways artificial intelligence never can.

Whether you're a writer yourself or simply curious about the creative process, this warm, honest conversation invites you into the world where ideas exist as living entities, searching for the right vessel to bring them to life. Subscribe to The Women Are Plotting for more insights into creativity, writing, and the stories we tell ourselves.

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Email us at info@thewomenareplotting.com, and find us on all the socials. Be safe and be excellent to each other.

Etienne:

Welcome listeners. This is The Women Are Plotting. I'm Etienne Rose Olivier, and I'm here with my friends and co-hosts Heidi Willis and Jane Gari. With this being our first episode, we'll introduce ourselves to you. My first name is Etienne, but my friends call me Etty. I'm a 53-year-old Gen X woman. I'm a writer. I don't have anything published yet, but hopefully soon. My latest writing that I've been working on for a while now is a memoir which covers the first two years after my then-husband asked for a divorce. I'm also a registered nurse, and I've been one since 2008. I've taken care of both children and adults, although right now, I work with children Thanks to being a writer and a nurse. I have a wide range of interests and specialties.

Jane:

I'm Jane Gari. I'm friends with Etty. I was an English teacher for about 20 years and also started writing books, also Gen X, 51 years old, go Gen X, and I also occasionally dabble in some stand-up comedy, but don't ask me to tell a joke because I suck at it. I'm just a storyteller and enjoy telling all kinds of stories. I do have a memoir out that's true story family drama, and right now I am shopping a novel called Love in Shakespeare's Shadow. So wish me luck on this writing journey. And also, joining us is our other writer friend.

Heidi:

Hi, I'm Heidi Willis and I'm a screenwriter working on an MFA right now. We also wrote a humor book together, Jane and I did a few years back, still looking for a publisher for that. Oh and yeah, 52, gen Xer. So yeah, we're all Gen X here, have some years under our belts.

Etienne:

Today's episode is Why W e Became Writers and we start out with our little fun fact related to our episode. And today mine is about Ray Bradbury. He did not go to college, he only graduated high school. But he said that he went into the library and never came back out again, like he literally just read. And that was his college education.

Etienne:

And when he was 12 years old he went to see Mr. Electro on Labor day weekend in 1932 50, 000 bolts of electricity was pulsed through this guy's body and he had a sword in his hand, a flaming sword, supposedly, and Ray Bradbury is in the front row. And he touched Ray Bradbury on both shoulders Sounds a little bit like he was being knighted by this guy and also on the tip of his nose. So if it was flaming, this is really scary to me. And he said live forever. And supposedly Ray Bradbury thought God, that's wonderful, how do you do that? And he said he left the carnival that day and he started writing and he never stopped. That's how he lives forever, forever and ever, because he's one of the best of all time.

Heidi:

Mine's about an author as well.

Etienne:

Oh nice.

Heidi:

My inspiration growing up was Stephen King. That was one of the things my mom would always get me. Was you know the latest hardcover of Stephen King. So I was looking for fun facts on Stephen King. So he said in a 1982 interview that he had had a lifelong fear of the dark and sleeps with the light on.

Etienne:

Oh my God, really?

Heidi:

Isn't that wild? I don't know if it's still. That's crazy, yeah.

Etienne:

Like that.

Heidi:

Yeah, I guess he gets inspiration from you know what he fears in the dark. But and he's also a huge Grateful Dead fan, yeah, so I thought that was kind of funny, you know, piggybacking off of our last episode.

Jane:

That is fabulous and also it's actually somehow comforting that Stephen King is afraid of the dark and I'm still like I'm only afraid of the dark if I'm alone. If someone else is with me in the dark, I feel like I'm fine but if I'm alone...

Etienne:

Maybe somebody is always with you in the dark.

Jane:

Thanks for that.

Heidi:

You are never alone.

Etienne:

Oh, she's turning into something.

Heidi:

None of us are alone.

Jane:

That is true, but if there is not another human being or a dog in the room, in the dark then I don't like it If I have a dog in the room with me, I'm okay.

Jane:

But if I am the only, if I'm the only living thing that I can perceive.

Jane:

There you go alone in the dark. Not a fan of that feeling.

Heidi:

What ifs right? Yeah.

Jane:

Yes, and apparently Stephen King's did too, but he was like you know what? I'm gonna, I'm gonna make this lucrative as I sit here and look at, like novellas on my

Heidi:

Yes.

Jane:

His Four Past Midnight collection up on my shelf and also on my shelf I'm seeing out of the corner of my eye, is Something Wicked

Jane:

This Way Comes by Ray

Jane:

Bradbury and what you were telling us, Etty, about the fun fact about Ray Bradbury. I feel like that he must have made that true experience into that story. I don't know if either of you have ever read Something Wicked This Way Comes it's about this carnival that comes down and this guy who's running the carnival is trying to live forever and the carousel plays like the song that the carousel plays is actually the funeral march in reverse, and it's just creepy creepy stuff.

Etienne:

Ooh, you give me chills.

Jane:

and it's so

Etienne:

Yeah, I did read it, but it's been a while.

Jane:

It's been a while. taught that book when I was still teaching high school, back to back with Macbeth, because the title Something Wicked This Way Comes is from the witches and there are a lot of references to Macbeth in it. But I just I love Ray Bradbury also and it's super cool. But my fun fact about writing is about writer's block and that I was doing some research on writer's block and the consensus of the research is it's a myth.

Etienne:

It's a myth.

Jane:

Writer's block is a myth and what is really happening is you're either being paralyzed by your own perfectionism or you're just have a fear of failure and you're afraid okay, if I do write something, it's going to be shitty, so let me just not do it at all.

Etienne:

Oh.

Etienne:

I can see that.

Jane:

I find that the real cure to writer's block is just to be okay with writing something shitty and fix it later, or change my environment yeah, go for a walk and then come back and sit with it and be like it's fine, it's not going to be and to not try to edit placeholders.

Jane:

Just be like all right put something cool in here later. Yeah, great.

Etienne:

Awesome metaphor goes here.

Heidi:

She leaves.

Jane:

Oh my gosh.

Jane:

Awesome metaphor goes here. That's so great.

Heidi:

Because a lot of times, once you keep going, the solution reveals itself later on in the story and then you're able to go back and go oh, my God, this is so perfect. And now I realize why I had to skip this part, because so yeah, it's definitely perfectionism and your own head.

Etienne:

And one thing about Ray Bradbury. That's really cool. I actually have. I went to a signing, a book signing, so I have two books signed by him.

Heidi:

No way, oh my God.

Etienne:

Dandelion Wine.

Etienne:

It was the only Ray Bradbury hardcover that I owned, and Something Wicked This Way Comes paperback. I had him signed, so I have two things signed by him.

Etienne:

I know.

Jane:

That's so great.

Etienne:

I know.

Heidi:

When was this?

Etienne:

This was in the 90s. Yeah, this was definitely when I was still in community college. Yeah, I think that's when I found out about I mean, I knew of him but like found out about his story about how he was self-educated with the library. He literally was like you don't need to go to college, you just go to the library.

Etienne:

Literally.

Heidi:

Well, that's what they say. You know, if you want to be a writer, read. You just read everything you can and write as often as you can, and yeah you're a writer.

Etienne:

In the last five years, I really upped my reading game, so I'm reading at least a book a week now since then, and it really has changed how easily the words come, like the words just come, and I know when it's good it flows. It has its own rhythm, and every time you start to read something new you have to get into their rhythm. Everybody has their own rhythm of how it sounds in your brain when you're reading it, and, uh, it always is like bumpy, like the first five or ten pages, and I'm reading somebody else's work, and then it clicks and I'm good. Then I can start reading at a normal pace where I feel like they're just talking to me. Does anybody want to go first talking about why they became a writer, though? Was the impetus or the starting point?

Jane:

I feel like I started telling stories before I started writing them down.

Heidi:

Barbies.

Jane:

True to, I guess.

Heidi:

Yeah, I was creating stories with Barbies.

Jane:

They had backstories,

Etienne:

Oh backstories.

Jane:

Oh my gosh.

Heidi:

My sister was so annoyed with me because I was like I was in

Heidi:

control of the storyline

Etienne:

Oh no, did she try to add in?

Etienne:

And you're like

Heidi:

No, how I got it goes I was like that. That's tired. a tyrant. You know, like the head writer, it will be my way

Jane:

Oh my

Jane:

gosh, the barbie green room.

Jane:

You're just like no, not. Or the writer's room,

Heidi:

Yes, yeah

Jane:

That's funny.

Etienne:

Oh my god.

Heidi:

Go ahead. Sorry.

Jane:

I'm just thinking about.

Jane:

Like I had different storylines. I would then pick up. I had a barbie who was in a band and they went on tour and there were just all kinds of things that happened with that. But my very first where I realized the power of storytelling, I was four years old. I was living in Connecticut and we had this pond in our backyard. Just was talking to my little friends that we were hanging out playing and I was just like there's a shark that lives in this pond and if you get too close it eats children. So we have to be very careful.

Jane:

And I knew I was making it up. I thought that they also knew I was making it up and that we were just having fun. But they did not. They believed me and they were like, oh my God. And then what happened? Because I was like and then you know, years ago, and I was making up that I gave the shark a backstory, the whole thing, like you know, barbies, but with sharks and they were enthralled. And then I realized they believed me. Now I'm not proud of this. I should have corrected them immediately and I'm just making this up. We're playing a game, but they believe me and I saw the power in that and I was like maybe I won't tell them right away.

Jane:

You know, I let it go on for a little bit, but I was stopped because some of the parents in the neighborhood told me to stop.

Etienne:

Oh, were you scaring them that bad?

Jane:

I was scaring them where, then they were thinking like any body of water could have a shark in it.

Etienne:

Gosh.

Jane:

But what I realized in that moment, though, is that you could, with your words, spin up a whole different world, and I loved. I also loved

Jane:

you know reading at a very young age and I always like you know.

Heidi:

It's a library.

Jane:

Yes, it is a library, right, and my mom always took us to the library and I loved how reading opened up worlds for me in my head and me telling that story about the shark was like me then making my own world for the first time, and I just loved how someone else built a world for me that I could explore in a book and I just wanted to do that for other people. And then, as I grew up and had things happen in my life that took my power away, I then held on to writing even more tightly, like I started writing stories pretty young and just and never stopped. And then if

Jane:

I do stop. I feel weird, you know. I feel like imbalanced, and sometimes it'll take me a while to figure out why I feel imbalanced. I'm like, oh, it's because I'm not having a regular writing practice. And as soon as I do that, then I feel balanced again.

Etienne:

Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about with that. I've tried to quit before a couple of times.

Jane:

It's a drug.

Etienne:

Yeah, no, no, it's just because, like you want to create art, thinking you know, maybe eventually down the road somebody else will see it. It's not just you. I've been writing since 1994, basically, I mean, 96 was when I wrote my first novel, but I started writing screenplays in 94. So I had two years of that. But you go that long, that's over 30 years of nobody else really seeing your work, except for your friends or people you paid and look at it and help you with it, and you start to think why am I doing this? Do I really? Why am I? Am I why? Why? So? Multiple times at least two separate occasions I've tried to quit and time has gone by and I start to feel more and more unmoored and just not balanced in my body and in my brain and I start to go slowly insane. And then, if I start to write again, that completely goes away and I'm normal again and it's like I need to be creating something all the time. Otherwise I just don't feel okay with myself.

Etienne:

For me my mother was a poet famous in her own mind. She never was out in the world with her writing. I was her sole audience and she raised me to be so positive and tell her how brilliant she was. So when I had to start writing papers for school in middle school she was a really heavy editor of my work. She had to see everything. She made me show her my work and she would edit and it would sound nothing like me anymore and I would turn it in because she made me.

Etienne:

I had no choice and at first I got good grades and then finally I hit on a teacher I think it was in ninth grade who gave me a C on a paper that technically I didn't write one word of it because my mother at that point had just taken over completely.

Etienne:

She's like what am I writing about? Didn't even let me even try. I was stunted on my own growth of like actually being a writer for myself. And that teacher gave me a C and I think it was to show me it wasn't like the paper was bad. She just knew, I think, that I didn't write it and she was trying to tell me. I told my mom, I think I have to be writing my own papers from now on, otherwise I'm going to like fail out of school. So it took me a little while to learn how to write at the same level as my peers, and so that took me about a couple of years probably, but by the time I was a senior in high school I was definitely on the same level as all my other cohorts in school and I still really wasn't into writing.

Heidi:

Yeah, I saw kids having the same thing, like the parents were doing their art projects for them.

Etienne:

Not surprising, I mean. So my mom, like that was her big claim to fame in her mind was that she was this amazing writer. So we wanted to live vicariously through my school work for some reason cause she wasn't turning in her own work into the real world of, like, the world. So when I was in college, I was a Radio, TV, Film major, first time around and I was a film production emphasis. So I was trying to be a film director. That's what I wanted to be. But there was the one final class that I needed. That was so impacted like it was so hard to get this class that I knew I'd have to stick around school and keep taking other classes that just to fill in the time so I could wait around to get this one class that it was going to take me a year and a half possibly to get this class and I was done with everything else.

Etienne:

It was just me wasting my time if I was waiting around for this class. And I went to my advisor and I was like this is ridiculous. I just need this one class. Why don't they just make another class? Like everybody's having this problem. And she's like, well, you can't do. You know it's a number of cameras, a number of editing bays. And I'm like, yes, I understand, but still. And she's like, well, you could change to screenwriting and you could graduate this semester. You just have to take this one other screenwriting class. And I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, I can do that that's fine and so I went and I took that I had to write a full-length screenplay for the class and I think I ended up having like 19 units that semester and this was three of those was me writing a full screenplay and having all these other classes.

Etienne:

But there was one night I sat down to write and it was 10 o'clock at night. I was just giving myself an hour to write and I looked up and it was two o'clock in the morning and I was like what? Oh my God, I just went to some place I've never been to before and it was amazing and I stepped into this bubble of artistry. Not that what I produced was all that great, I'm just saying I went to a place that I wanted to go to a lot. That's when I decided, oh, I like this, this is good. I didn't change from screenwritings until I realized I'm just not a schmoozer. I'm in LA but I'm not the right kind of person who's going to make the right connections and be out there schmoozing and doing Harvey Weinstein to like get myself out there.

Etienne:

So I'm just going to write books. So it was like in 96 when I wrote my first book and I wrote it in 30 days at my aunt's house in New Jersey and I found that book not too long ago and read it. It's so bad.

Etienne:

It's so bad, we all have to have something.

Etienne:

Yeah, we all have to start somewhere.

Heidi:

It's great to go back to your old stuff and see how far you've come, because you're like, oh wow, I used to think this was awesome and this is terrible.

Etienne:

Yeah, and they'll let other people read it. I actually got people to read that book. I'm like, oh, I'm so embarrassed. How do I just go back in time and you'd never talk about this book.

Heidi:

Give them their time back.

Etienne:

I was trying today for my fun fact, to try to find has there ever been a writer who sort of back-stepped into the profession like I feel like I did? I was really trying to not be a writer. And my mom was making it not fun for me in the beginning, obviously. I was kinda pushed into it, but found out I really liked it. But I couldn't really find anybody. I mean, I found some writers where they talked about they don't particularly enjoy writing sometimes. But it's not like they, you know, came upon it like I did. This, this is not what I meant to do with my life, but I like it lot, you. ? know,

Heidi:

You the magic of the storytelling part of it. Yeah, yeah.

Etienne:

I really love those times. I mean it happens to me all the time where I just sit down and you start and like hours are gone. You're like how did that happen? Like they just disappeared.

Heidi:

Oh, I've done that. I've had periods where I'm writing 12 hours straight. You know like.

Etienne:

Wow, 12 hours? Are you on something?

Heidi:

No, something. No, and and this is when I was with my ex and he would he would come up and be like have you eaten anything? Here! Drink something!

Etienne:

Have you peed?

Heidi:

yeah, yeah, like had to check on me so yeah, it's addictive.

Etienne:

Jeez.

Jane:

Heidi, you've done a lot of screenwriting too, is that

Jane:

where you wanted to start, or did you also come to that via a circuitous route?

Heidi:

I think I've always wanted to be, you know, make some kind of TV or movies. My earliest memory of movies was watching Star Wars at the drive-in with my parents and me and my sister are PJs in our sleeping bag and I am watching this movie and it is blowing my little mind and I just remember going. I want to do that Like I want. I want to create something like that and then had the Barbies and the play acting Anytime I played with my friends it was like we were in a Charlie's Angels episode.

Heidi:

We were all Charlie's

Heidi:

Angels and I'm creating these scenarios that we have to save somebody or get out of danger, and so I was writing from very young and I used to create little books. But what was crazy is I didn't get a whole lot of support. Nobody really fostered that or nurtured that in me. And then, spending 10 years in the Air Force, I feel like I almost got every creative instinct almost beaten out of me, you know. So it was perfect when I finally got out.

Heidi:

And I did ecstasy for the first time and it made me so creative. And when I went to college I took every film related because they didn't have a film school at my little college that I went to. But I took every film related class. I could take film criticism and any kind of creative writing. So my minor was in English and my major was in journalism. So I was never going to be a journalist. No, not for me.

Etienne:

You do that for the writing part?

Heidi:

Yeah, yeah, it was just it was to be able to take the photography classes and the communication classes, and yeah it was mainly just so I could take the classes I wanted to take and get all the writing in that I wanted to get in and I kind of self-taught, screenwriting self-taught, so I read every book I could and jane was there when I wrote my first screenplay, which I have revisited and

Jane:

it's awful

Heidi:

the story so

Heidi:

So the story is actually really good. It's based it's based on a dream I had and it's really good.

Heidi:

I would like to eventually revisit it and rewrite it

Etienne:

yeah, it just sounds like maybe you need to rewrite it then, if it's just a good story, yeah

Heidi:

yeah, yeah, but it was pretty cool to finally get one done, and that was what 2006

Jane:

no, phoebe was born, so she was born in 2007, so this must have been 2008.

Jane:

I think is when we were both like hitting our stride with working on stuff together

Heidi:

no, that was because that was when we first started hanging out.

Heidi:

I was writing,

Jane:

so it so this is the second half of 2007

Heidi:

because we, we did shiterature after that.

Jane:

Yes

Etienne:

We have mentioned that on here, haven't we like?

Jane:

No

Etienne:

You don't think so?

Etienne:

okay.

Heidi:

I think I mentioned it really quick about me and you uh

Etienne:

maybe when we were introducing ourselves

Heidi:

humor book Shiterature, yes

Jane:

just writing fun poop stories.

Jane:

But I think that we're all very versatile in the kinds of things that we like to write about, and I think that that's important, because if we were all Stephen king, just writing scary stuff all the time, well, even he, even he,

Etienne:

yeah, he definitely doesn't just do that.

Etienne:

Yeah, like, one of my favorite books by him is oh gosh, and the title just escaped my mind.

Jane:

Is it The Stand?

Etienne:

No, well, The Stand is definitely one of them, but no, that's not. Oh, it's all right I've got the follow-up book. It's with him and peter straub wrote it together. Black house is the oh the talisman. The talisman is one of my favorite books by him and I would say that is not really a horror, but I mean, it was like supernatural you know, yeah, but the stand yeah yeah I mean when I read the stand as a kid in my horrible, horrible like growing up years my horrible family I wanted so much for the world to just go away.

Etienne:

I was like, if that means I go too, I'm fine with that. I just wanted to live the stand so badly. Yeah, I read that at 14 and

Jane:

You were really dark.

Etienne:

Oh, yes, well, it was a dark place yeah. I mean mentally it was a dark place. Yeah, it wasn't not like actually light dark, but yeah, sorry, but yeah, the Talisman is one of my favorite Stephen King books of all time. It's a great book.

Jane:

I just love, actually, his book on writing. I reread that periodically and actually I'm going to write it down right now.

Etienne:

Oh, it's time to read it again.

Jane:

Yeah, it is time to read it again. I think that it is such a great practical strategy approach and I love it and it's good reminders, even though I know what good storytelling is when I see it. When I sit down to do it, I'm very inspired by the idea that I have in my head and then sometimes it's not manifesting in the way that like it felt to me internally and that becomes really frustrating and you have to power through that. And so I love re-reading that book because it just reminds you ,what you already know, but sometimes you forget! This is why I think, we've all been to writer's conferences together and we actually all met at a writer's conference. We were all pitching. And I think it's important because writing is such an isolating practice and you're doing it alone. It's just you and the thing. You can brainstorm with other people and you can have editing and critique sessions with groups, but the actual, It's just your head, your ass in the seat and you're just trying to do it and make it happen. So, finding community to talk about this weird thing that we do when we're like I make stuff up, do you make stuff up? Like, how do you make stuff up?

Jane:

Like it's kind of like we're all still playing

Etienne:

yeah

Jane:

We all still make believe but trying to make come alive for other people, and I love that.

Jane:

When you go to a conference, you get the creative juices flowing again and I think that's hilarious. How we met and how we met was because of the Shiterature

Heidi:

yeah

Jane:

stuff. Because we were all at a conference and Etty was volunteering Etty overheard me talking to somebody else about this project that Heidi and I had about these true stories about bodily malfunctions, and she heard me pitch it and she was like I'm so interested, I have some stories to share with you. And then now we've all known each other and been friends ever since, which is pretty cool. And Heidi and I met because we were both working on different creative projects and had a mutual friend who introduced us and said oh, you guys should know each other because you're writing. And it was almost like people were like oh, these weird people who still play, make believe, need to be around each other, because people who don't do that sometimes they're like fascinated by it, but they're also like I don't know what to do.

Etienne:

Well, yeah, don't you hear a lot of the time it's like I can't write anything. That's usually when people say like I'm a terrible writer. That's what they say about themselves.

Heidi:

I don't say that about myself. How many times do you get that they say about themselves? Somebody's saying, oh, you should write this, I've got this great idea, and they try. I don't know how many people.

Heidi:

It's so bad

Etienne:

Oh, it's so bad.

Heidi:

I have my own ideas, you write your own stuff, yeah

Etienne:

and I'm not even published. Imagine like when we actually ever like actually I mean, you're published, Jane, and you guys have shiterature, so you are, technically, I am not published.

Etienne:

So if we ever got to the level of fame where normal people know what our books are. If we say the titles, it would be like busy, because people say that shit to me now and I don't, I don't have anything out in the world. Oh, I've got this great story. Like my neighbor who's 90, he wants me so bad to write some story from his growing up years and I'm like, hmm, oh yeah, I just ghost write your

Jane:

My dad wants me to write his memoirs. And I'm like, no, first of all you're retired and he's a very good writer.

Etienne:

Really I didn't.

Jane:

I didn't know that my dad was a good writer. He never talked about that. He was a good writer. My grandfather, his father, told me when I was in high school I started winning a lot of awards for my writing, and I sound like so... But, I wrote competitively. I had English teachers who believed in me, shout to Mrs. Huey, Mrs. Patsy Huey, Mrs Westaway and Mrs Ward. They would submit my stuff to these writing contests without telling me and then when I would win it they'd be like guess what? And I will never forget. In my AP English writing, literature and composition course, mrs Westaway gave us all awards at the end of the year that were tailored to us, most likely to. They were funny some of them, but mine was most likely to be published, and when I published my first book I sent it to her with a picture of that certificate that she had made for me to show her. I was just like, just so you know.

Etienne:

She had to cry when she got that.

Etienne:

Oh my God.

Jane:

Oh totally. She wrote me back and she was just like I got that and it meant a lot to me and it just really choked me up. But she needed to know.

Jane:

That was really inspirational to me and actually the first teacher who encouraged me to enter a writing contest actually shout out to Mr Baxter, samuel Cornelius Baxter,

Etienne:

wow that's a name

Jane:

Totally a name. And he made me read my story in front of the class, which is like kind of terrifying at the time, but it was the first time I had written something like not making up stories about sharks, but written something that was just completely it was a fantasy, and that everybody in the class was like enthralled and I was like, oh, I might actually be good at this, maybe I should do this, and so I would just, you know, I just kept at it, but anyway, I just appreciated them so much for encouraging me.

Jane:

I don't know there was a reason why I was bringing up my english teachers and now I don't even know,

Etienne:

That's the 50 year old brains for you. Go down the tangent forget why you went there.

Jane:

Usually I'm pretty good about coming back to like why I was talking about them, but I think that's important to have people encourage you

Etienne:

well, yeah, because that was that conference, when I met you guys, was when I was asking people to tell me these professionals who have read some of my work you know, I signed up for one of the critiques. I wanted them to tell me if I should just stop writing, like, tell me to stop and I will. I will try to stop because I think I'm wasting my time. And that's when I, at that conference, I got that second place for my short story. Yes, that was encouragement. So I'm like, well, this must be a sign that I'm not supposed to stop. Okay, fine, I'll keep trying.

Heidi:

isn't that funny?

Heidi:

it does come in at the time, because when I finally wrote something I was really proud of, it was all on my own. All my previous stuff had kind of been workshopped, written by a committee. It felt like Kind of the magic had seeped out of the stories. I finally wrote something good that I was proud of and I thought I'll send this off to a few contests and see if I you know make second round. I just wanted validation, you're on the right track and I ended up winning a bunch of stuff or placing really high, and so that was kind of overwhelming because I just wanted to know is this any good? You know, I think it's good it was. Yeah, getting that kind of encouragement always feels really good and I think it comes in at the right time to give you encouragement keep going.

Etienne:

and I think, the fact that I've tried to stop before and slowly go insane and have to go back to it like you know what.

Etienne:

It doesn't matter if other people are ever gonna read what I write. It's fine, like I just have to keep writing it because I have to stay sane in some fashion

Heidi:

I am at the point, I'm just writing self.

Heidi:

You know, I'm just trying to entertain myself, create the stories I want to see or read.

Heidi:

Yeah, yeah

Jane:

But then it's authentic and I think if you do that, then that authenticity comes through the page and somebody else will be receptive to it. At this point I know the market is just so saturated because the barriers to entry are down with self-publishing and that whole phenomenon, and so there's so much stuff in the market that you could put out there yourself if you want. And now you're thinking OK, it gets a little bit overwhelming. But I think if you write the story that you enjoy.

Etienne:

That you've worked on a lot, that you've made it the best you can make it.

Heidi:

I think it's eventually going to happen Because I mean there's so much AI stuff out there now Like people using AI

Etienne:

Somebody put out

Etienne:

I think it might have been the Atlantic or the New York Times or somebody. They had a story written by a person and then they gave AI parameters and said write a story about this and you have to include this, this and this. And so it was basically a similar story and they put both of those out and said pick which one the AI wrote. And I totally picked. I was so bored, within like a paragraph of reading the AI one, I was like this is the.

Etienne:

AI one.

Etienne:

This cannot be a real person. This is is horrible.

Heidi:

Oh yeah, it's garbage. There's got to be some humanity in the writing.

Jane:

Well, it's missing the human element.

Heidi:

They can replace writers with AI.

Etienne:

Maybe, eventually, maybe eventually but, I think it would have to be at a time when the AI actually has its own intelligence, like if it has its own humanity.

Heidi:

But it's never going to have that first love. It's never going to go. Gonna have that first love. It's never gonna go through that first heartbreak. You know it's never gonna be the target of bullies like seriously, it's never going to have the experience and so how can it write with any kind of authenticity that's going to resonate with other human beings right like it can never have the depth and the creativity that a human has

Jane:

because we are actually going to do a whole episode on ai writing.

Jane:

I think we should dive into it

Heidi:

fear of death.

Jane:

There's no I think that it also doesn't have the capacity to die in the same way that we do, and like I think that. I think that if you don't have that existential stuff going on, it isn't going to ring true, but it'll. It'll be able to have experiences,

Heidi:

I think it's a great tool, like I think.

Heidi:

If writers are using it as like a tool, yay, but it's never going to be able to crank out a novel that's compelling or interesting

Etienne:

or that's original.

Heidi:

It's not possible.

Jane:

It can only do derivative stuff, and I think that we get our ideas from the ether. There's a book called Big Magic that I know, heidi, you and I both read. Okay, so Big Magic is by Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote Eat Pray, love and the Signature of All Things, and she's like a phenomenal writer, but her theory is that and I've heard other people actually articulate this theory too, but that ideas are living entities, right, and they're just kind of.

Jane:

They exist in the ether somewhere and we don't. Science maybe one day will be explaining it to us, but they're looking for the vessel through which they could tell the story, and that's maybe like where this idea of the muse comes from, right. So if you're waiting, you, ok, come on you know like they're looking for like which vehicle is the most open and ready to tell the story? For whatever lived experience they've had, that's going to make them

Etienne:

oh wow Really

Jane:

Time to bring this to life.

Heidi:

Mmhh

Jane:

.

Jane:

Because sometimes you feel like, ok, this just came from somewhere, I don't know, and maybe that's what it is. And if you don't latch onto it and run with it, that's kind of like why you have that experience of you know, six months later somebody else wrote the thing that you were thinking about, but you didn't act on it. Well, that idea probably said well, I knocked on your door, you didn't respond. I got to get into the world some way. So they go to the next person who maybe will have the discipline to bring it all the way there. And I do think that there's something to that, because there are some times where the idea is based on something autobiographical, and then I think that it's mostly you, and then maybe a muse is like okay, but what if it? But what if it reads minds?

Jane:

And you're like Ooh, thank you.

Jane:

Weird idea that came from nowhere, you know, and then you just make that happen and it's like a true fusion. And then there are other things that hit you that you're like I have no idea what that is, but I'm going to run with it and I think that there's maybe something to there being like some kind of weird spiritual symbiosis. That goes on and you hear songwriters talk like I'm obsessed with the Beatles and Paul McCartney talked about that with like a couple of songs. Like he just woke up and yesterday was just a tune that he had in his head and he has no idea where it came from

Heidi:

having wonder and awe of the world and being yeah, being open to getting those downloads from the ether from the universe.

Jane:

So I think being open is kind of like the first rule

Etienne:

and every body of water

Etienne:

There could be a shark in a puddle.

Jane:

Yeah, next thing you know there's a shark that lives in your backyard

Etienne:

oh, I mean I knew I was afraid of the deep, that there was a diving section at the pool that I went to when I was a kid and I saw jaws probably too young and I thought the jaws could be in any deep body of water. So I really did not like going in that diving area. I would try to stay very shallow in it. I wouldn't try to dive deep. I'd be like I'm just going to go feet first, I'm not going to get swallowed by the shark in the pool. So, jane, yeah, I'm right, along with all those kids, I would have totally believed your story of the shark in the pond. It was a pond, right?

Jane:

It was a pond. My friend Greg, who is actually has an irrational fear that there could be a shark anywhere, at any time, in any body of water

Etienne:

Like anywhere any time in the bathtub.

Jane:

He would probably be like well, listen, one of those suckers could have gone on the river because the pond was connected to a river and ended up in your pond. But sometimes he would be in a pool and be like looking around, like I don't know, maybe I was like that's too many psychedelics for you. You're done now.

Heidi:

I've had a dream of a shark in the swimming pool and then, right after that happened, that shark came out of its tank in the Bahamas and went down the water slide,

Etienne:

went down the water slide.

Heidi:

Yes, yes, and it went into the pool.

Etienne:

Oh, come on.

Heidi:

Everything was closed Like it was in the middle of the night, so nobody was going to get hurt. But it got out of its tank, went down the water slide and was in the swimming pool.

Heidi:

So I was right after I had that shark in the pool dream and I thought, oh my God, it actually happened.

Etienne:

Maybe he had just been really, really wanting to use that water slide.

Etienne:

so he found a way

Heidi:

he wanted to get out of there.

Jane:

I don't blame him, poor. Thing. I don't think he was living out his water slide dream.

Jane:

He was just trying to escape by whatever means necessary,

Etienne:

get the hell out of here.

Heidi:

Can you imagine if that had happened during the day, though

Etienne:

In the daytime? Oh my God, Kid goes down the slide shark following.

Etienne:

I'm like what the hell?

Heidi:

It would be something out of a horror movie.

Etienne:

She was like the mom's, like I thought it was bad when I found the lady would tickle in the aura of the cactus so now there's a freaking shark behind my kid

Jane:

like a hundred percent but I think

Heidi:

, and if you haven't listened to episode two about the tickling of the cactus, yes, and go, go back Be safe

Jane:

with your psychedelics, but they can also inspire stories and I think that sometimes people like you look at a news story and then that's where you get inspiration, right. So somebody saw that and said, okay, let's make a story where a shark is escaping an aquarium or like something like that. I know that Edgar Allan Poe did that with the Cask of a Montalado, like he read a newspaper story about they found evidence of somebody having been buried alive in a wall you know, somewhere and he was like, ooh, like, what would make somebody do that?

Jane:

And the real life corpse that was found chained to a wall happened in Virginia. But then he sets it in Italy and adds all of these other elements of someone being just feeling so insulted at the core of them that the only revenge is like I'm going to lure this person into a catacomb and wall them up there alive and just leave them there and you're just thinking, oh my God, the kicker in that story is that you never find out what the insult was.

Etienne:

And like what actually the inciting incident of why this happened?

Jane:

No, I used to have wonderful discussions with my students of like, okay, what, what could it have been,

Etienne:

what would be so awful that would.

Etienne:

Or it's just a psychotic person who needs hardly any inciting incident. They're like, yeah, he called me an asshole.

Jane:

Yeah, and therefore he must die, yeah,

Heidi:

and the most horrible way

Jane:

But, I think that that's one of the awesome things about writing is that it's a safe place to explore all kinds of things. Nobody actually gets hurt, just on the page. Although, one of the fun facts I was gonna bring today--as you're writing, your brain actually is going to those places where it may actually go, if you're experiencing it for real, and so it makes me sometimes a little bit wary of what am I going to write about and what places am I willing to go, and it can be a safe place to experiment with things. And also you need to be like, okay, what kind of headspace do I want to be in and for how long? But I've put that idea out into the universe, so I haven't had any ideas come to me yet that I wasn't willing to take on, and actually that's not true. My next book is one that I have been holding on to for a very long time, but it is going to be the next thing.

Heidi:

It's going to be awesome.

Jane:

I'm going to do it and it's different than what I thought it was going to be, because I have started outlining it and I've written like the first chapter. But it's definitely it's going to be weird and yeah, I'm just going to definitely not be alone when I write about it. I'm going to have to have. I'm going to have to get another dog. I need to have two dogs in the dark with me now.

Etienne:

You need two dogs.

Jane:

I need two dogs.

Etienne:

This is a two dog book, so I need two dogs.

Jane:

It's a two dog story and, like Stephen King, this actually came the seed for

Jane:

It was from a dream, so you know,

Heidi:

I've been anticipating this for how long now? 20 years.

Jane:

Oh my God

Heidi:

Almost 20 years. I remember you telling me

Etienne:

what the story is and you can't talk about it.

Etienne:

No, no, no, get off, yeah, and so I remember you telling me I might not know what the story is and you can't talk about it on here, so we're going to have to get off so you can tell me.

Heidi:

I've been anticipating this one.

Heidi:

It's going to be good.

Etienne:

Everybody's like

Etienne:

that's not fair

Heidi:

and what's great is nobody else has written it, so this story is being so patient with her waiting all this time

Etienne:

you're so lucky it didn't move on.

Etienne:

It's the whole muse thing Like it's going to move on to the next person. You're lucky if it's been 20 years.

Heidi:

No, this she's born. To write this she's born to write this.

Jane:

I think that it didn't move on because it's grounded in multiple things personal dreams, family history, other stuff. So I think that's why I didn't move on. So don't move on, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it

Heidi:

it's way to this long.

Heidi:

It's yours,

Etienne:

I mean you're in chapter one

Heidi:

I can't wait.

Etienne:

Holy cow.

Heidi:

yeah

Jane:

yeah. Thank you for hanging and listen to us talk about what inspired us to become writers. And if you're out there looking to do that, if you've been telling yourself stories or you were playing with your Barbies and you want to explore that space again and be playful, then just do it. It's therapeutic, it's exhilarating, frustrating, exhausting, but always worth it.

Etienne:

Yes, definitely

Heidi:

Tell your story. Go for it.

Etienne:

Leave the world a better place than how you found it. And hopefully that means giving your stories out in the world, getting your art out there, whatever that art may be.

Heidi:

And that's our show. You've been listening to the Women Are Plotting. If you have a story you'd like to share or have any comments, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at info@ thewomenareplottingcom, and, of course, you can find us on all the socials. Thanks and until next time. Be safe and be excellent to each other. Thank you.

People on this episode

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Etienne Rose Olivier

Co-host
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Heidi Willis

Co-host
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Jane Gari

Co-host