From Tea, Shawls, And Scrolls To Modern Drafts: How Writers Build A Process

We swap myths for methods and share the rituals, tools, and edits that actually move pages from first draft to final. From Hardy’s shawl to Hugo’s naked deadline, we strip the romance down to reliable habits, smart structure, and brave cuts.

• Thomas Hardy’s routine and why rituals prime focus
• Kerouac’s scroll and the limits of superstition
• Victor Hugo’s nude deadline hack and modern equivalents
• Personal cues that trigger flow without lyrics
• Placeholders to bypass roadblocks and keep momentum
• Outlines, character bios, and scene objectives
• Working with editors, beta readers, and writing groups
• Cutting 20k words, merging characters, and pacing fixes
• Dialogue that starts late and ends on change
• Meditation as an idea gateway and habit anchor

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

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening Banter On Coincidences
• 1:00 Thomas Hardy’s Rigid Routine
• 3:41 Quotes On Drafts And Grit
• 5:05 Writers Who Claimed To Have Never Edited Their Work
• 5:47 Kerouac’s Scroll
• 6:45 Victor Hugo’s Nude Deadline Hack
• 9:11 Etty's Writing Process For Her First "Real" Novel (That Took a Year To Write)
• 11:16 What Happens When You Read a Lot
• 12:24 Edit Out Your Crutch Phrases
• 13:41 Using Soundtracks, Binaural Beats, and Songs
• 19:49 Meditation, Ideas, and Big Magic
• 23:08 How Etty Edits
• 28:55 Heidi Loves Placeholders
• 30:24 Jane's Process For Editing Love in Shakespeare's Shadow
• 34:23 Word Count Surgery And Stakes
• 36:06 Audience - What Is Your Creative Process?
• 36:44 Writing Before Computers

Transcript

[00:00:00] Etienne: I love that about the editor for the Apocalypse book. When she first read my book, she was like, Hmm, there's too many coincidences in here. And you know what? Now after she said that, I started getting really, like when I start watching movies or TV show, mostly movies 'cause they try to get places really quickly. So, it's a so easy when you're in movie form because it's a short format to have coincidences instead of like, well wait, how? No, like that, that's too easy. You've done too many things. Where like they just happen to like, that's ridiculous. You know? Like if you really think about it, if you slow down and start to pull, yeah. You start to pull it apart and I'm like, see? See? She said I could only have one. These people have used like three or four. This is not fair.

[00:00:41] 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.

[00:00:56] Etienne: On today's episode, we're gonna be talking about our writing processes. 

[00:01:00] Etienne: And, my fun fact for this episode talks about Thomas Hardy and his writing process. Each morning he would have a cup of tea. Breakfast was bacon with brown sugar sprinkled over it for some reason. Sorry, that's just really odd to me. And then he would read the newspaper and he'd go on a walk, and then by 10 in the morning, he would then go to his study, which was at the back of the house, and he would not let anybody clean it. He had a special ink well that he had on his desk that he always used to write with. And he also had a calendar on his desk that just showed one date, specifically Monday, the 7th of March. And it was the date that he met his first wife, Emma, who had died in 1912. Yeah.

[00:01:45] Jane: Oh.

[00:01:46] Etienne: So he would work all day and he said that his best work was done before he had his dinner. He also had special trousers that he wore an old pair of that eventually became so worn that he had to repair them with string. And in the cold weather, he wore old shaw over his shoulders. I mean, this is just very specific. I don't know, like he must have done an interview at some point and told somebody all about his little writing routines. And he also had a coal fire in there if it was too cold. And, he didn't have gas or electricity or a telephone to distract him in the cottage. So he just had his little fire. And that's really it. But I guess he also worked with an editor. Yeah, of course he did, 'cause he was a published writer. But he would send sections of his writing as he completed it to his editor, Leslie, Steven, who I'm assuming was a man named Leslie. ' Cause this is England. And, the editor encouraged Hardy to spend less time describing Dorsett life and encouraged him to get to the action more quickly.

[00:02:46] Jane: Oh my God.

[00:02:47] Etienne: Which is funny because I feel like when I think about The Return Of the Native is one of my favorite books written by Thomas Hardy and all I can think about is how I imagine the countryside to look. I think sometimes about the actual action or the story, but in general it's always the setting that I think about. I think it's just he spent so much time describing how everything looked and felt that it really made me feel like I was there. Yeah.

[00:03:11] Jane: did. I loved him.

[00:03:13] Etienne: And Jane, I think you're gonna share your fun and or interesting fact for today.

[00:03:17] Jane: Yes. But I will just interject very quickly that I have very fond memories of making my AP English teacher blush. Shout out to Ms. Westaway. And we can leave that in because I love her and she is amazing. But I made her blush because I was very focused on the phallic symbols in Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Anyway, um, so my, and I was like, not afraid to bring it up. I'm like, this is very phallic. 

[00:03:41] Jane: So I found funny quotes from some journalists and some famous writers or writers that I like, I've been kind of preoccupied with looking at journalist processes lately just because my daughter is currently majoring in journalism, and so these were quotes just about their process that I could relate to. So, the first one is, there's three quotes. First one's from Gene Fowler, who wrote some biographies of actors and some screenplays, Heidi, back in the Thirties and Forties. But his quote was, writing is easy. All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your

[00:04:15] Etienne: I have totally heard that quote.

[00:04:17] Heidi: I've heard that one

[00:04:18] Jane: And I feel like sometimes that's what it feels like. All right. Quote number two that I can relate to is from a feminist and journalist who covered labor movement strikes in the early 20th century when doing so, like literally put her in harm's way. There's photographs of her bleeding from the head and stuff. But she was a tremendous journalist, Mary Heaton Vorse. And this quote is: the art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair, which is kinda like the polite version of like, today people like ass in seat. Yeah. But I think she coined it. But like we just now, we just bastardize it by just making it a little bit more crass. And then the last quote I have is from Hemingway, which is just the first draft of anything is shit.

[00:05:00] Etienne: Oh, I can agree with that.

[00:05:03] Jane: I feel that's so true. 

[00:05:08] Jane: So I never understood how, oh my goodness, why am I spacing on the writer of Naked Lunch? Um, William Burroughs, used to be like, oh yeah, I never edit my stuff. And I'm like, really, dude? Really? Anyway

[00:05:16] Etienne: I was just gonna say, if anybody's brilliant on their first draft, they must be a genius. Like they must just straight out be a genius.

[00:05:22] Jane: Yeah, I, I

[00:05:24] Heidi: it all in their head? 

[00:05:25] Jane: Maybe before they write it down, like Burroughs had said that. And then also Kerouac would be like, yeah, I don't edit. I'm like, I don't know. Some of those beat guys. Like, I love them. Don't get me wrong. I love them, but I also think that they were a little bit high on their own supply that, so anyway, so

[00:05:42] Heidi: Speaking of Kerouac.

[00:05:44] Jane: Yes, Heidi. Yes.

[00:05:47] Heidi: I'm just gonna briefly talk about, so I found this great article, the craziest writing methods of famous authors from Sleeping with the Penguins, and they talk about Jack Kerouac and when he wrote On the Road, so he had spent years apparently scribbling down notes and he took one long scroll and just wrote it all in one fell swoop and like brought it to his editor and they were like, uh, no

[00:06:16] Jane: Like literally a scroll.

[00:06:17] Heidi: a scroll, like just a really

[00:06:19] Etienne: How do you even get

[00:06:20] Heidi: of paper. I don't know, but

[00:06:24] Jane: for our younger listeners, like she's not talking about like being online. She's talking about a piece of paper that rolls up like imagine paper towels.

[00:06:33] Etienne: One you could write on. Yeah.

[00:06:36] Heidi: Yeah. Yeah. So he had all kinds of supers sessions apparently. Like he would only write by candlelight or writing by a full moon, you

[00:06:44] Etienne: Oh, wow.

[00:06:45] Heidi: Yeah. So yeah, he had some strange ones. So there were several different authors, but the one I wanted to really talk about was Victor Hugo. He literally wrote The Hunchback of Notre Dame in the nude. So he was apparently working on a really tight deadline and I guess maybe had ADHD 'cause he was getting distracted and leaving the house all the time. So

[00:07:09] Etienne: just to keep him from leaving the

[00:07:10] Heidi: got him,

[00:07:11] Etienne: his clothes off?

[00:07:12] Heidi: he got himself a big bottle of ink and asked his valet to confiscate all his clothes. So he had no clothes and he fought off the cold by wrapping himself in a huge gray shawl. And that was it.

[00:07:25] Jane: A lot of

[00:07:26] Etienne: Yeah.

[00:07:26] Jane: today

[00:07:27] Heidi: Yeah. Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. And so, yeah, he wrote it completely and got it all done, but wrote in the nude.

[00:07:34] Etienne: Hmm.

[00:07:35] Heidi: And that was how he forced himself to get it done.

[00:07:38] Jane: It's like today's equivalent of like, take my phone away from

[00:07:41] Heidi: Yes.

[00:07:41] Jane: That is like, take all my

[00:07:43] Etienne: Or they're just gonna drop you off at a cabin somewhere

[00:07:45] Heidi: So I can't leave.

[00:07:47] Etienne: a no car, no phone, no

[00:07:50] Heidi: Yeah.

[00:07:51] Etienne: All you have is your computer, and it's not hooked up to the internet.

[00:07:54] Heidi: So distractions were a thing even then.

[00:07:58] Jane: Wow. Yeah, but then they were just like, I'm gonna write on the scroll, or I'm gonna, no or no clothes, just shawls and no clothing and candlelight. The retreat, the original retreats, right? You had to do however you could get your ass in the seat and just

[00:08:15] Etienne: I know the Victor Hugo retreat might be a little bit much for people. It'd have to be like only for men, or they have a only women retreat so they can all be naked.

[00:08:25] Jane: At first I thought you were gonna say he was just so distracted by his clothes, like he was just fucking around with his buttons or just, so that was

[00:08:30] Heidi: No, force him to stay inside so he couldn't leave.

[00:08:34] Etienne: My God.

[00:08:35] Jane: Be like, lock me in and don't let me out.

[00:08:38] Etienne: Wow.

[00:08:39] Jane: Oh my God.

[00:08:40] Heidi: Yeah, the whole article was pretty good. So talked about a couple other authors, but it, yeah, it made me laugh like, oh, we're all kooky. We all have our kooky, kooky methods. So what's some of your kooky methods, ladies?

[00:08:56] Jane: I am not really that kooky. I mean, I just, I used to be

[00:09:01] Etienne: I used to be as well. So I will tell you what I used to do, but I don't do this stuff anymore. Yeah.

[00:09:06] Jane: let me, oh, let's hear it. Let's hear it. Etienne.

[00:09:09] Heidi: Okay. Old method.

[00:09:11] Etienne: Okay, so I had a specific outfit that I would put on. It looks like a nine, uh, like a 1910. Like dress that I got from a very expensive catalog back in the day and it's almost full length and it's purple. It's like two different colors of purple. I still have it upstairs and I used to put this on every time. And I would make a cup of tea. I would sit in my favorite spot where I'm gonna write, like at the desk. I can't remember exactly where I was writing every time. I did it specifically for the first book that I took very seriously and took me a year to write. And I wrote every single day. I barely ever missed a day. But it was the same routine every single time. The outfit. A cup of tea and then I would pull out David Copperfield by Charles Dickens and I would read for at least half an hour. And then I would start writing.

[00:10:04] Etienne: And if you read this book of mine, you'd have to really butter me up to get a copy of this, because this is, this book is, uh, yeah, I, I actually haven't pulled it out for a long time, but you will see where the Dickens comes into play because I did not have my own writing style as of yet. So the Dickens was read specifically so that I would use that as a way to write. So it was, my tone was, it was kind of written in the style of Charles Dickens and yeah, that was my routine. 

[00:10:34] Heidi: I remember getting some kind of, I don't remember where it came from, somebody had recommended rewriting somebody else's work. Like just taking it and rewriting it word for word, just to get the feel of what it was like to write it out. Almost fake it till you make it. Like write as if you're writing like the other person.

[00:10:56] Etienne: Interesting.

[00:10:57] Heidi: I don't know. I never did it, but I just found it. Okay.

[00:11:00] Etienne: ever heard that, Jane? I mean, you've taken a lot of, you've taken writing

[00:11:03] Jane: I have no, I have heard that. I'm trying to remember where I heard that advice. 'cause I heard the exact same thing. Never took the advice,

[00:11:09] Etienne: Does

[00:11:09] Heidi: No.

[00:11:11] Jane: Um,

[00:11:11] Etienne: this advice? Somebody must have taken this

[00:11:13] Jane: when I, uh,

[00:11:14] Etienne: anymore.

[00:11:15] Heidi: Yeah.

[00:11:16] Jane: I definitely, I think that what's more prevalent, and at least for me and probably for a lot of people, is that because you're reading voraciously or you should, you end up when you're first starting, at least emulating the writers that you love because your head is just full of their cadence and their style. And, sometimes I'll catch myself in a metaphor where I'm like, oh, that's not mine. Or, when I was younger, I went on just an Anne Rice tear where I just read all of it, all of it, and I have read all of her books to date in recent years.

[00:11:49] Jane: Like she came out with like extensions of the Vampire Chronicles and stuff. So she has certain rhythmic phrases that she uses, like when she introduces her similes. And every once in a while I will still find myself doing it, and I'll be like, no. And I'll tell everybody what it is, she likes to use this phrase like so much blank.

[00:12:10] Etienne: Okay.

[00:12:11] Jane: You know, it was a, there

[00:12:12] Etienne: Oh, she described

[00:12:13] Jane: was a, a crack.

[00:12:15] Etienne: Okay. Yeah.

[00:12:16] Jane: Yes. Like so much broken glass, like so much blah, blah, blah again. And when you really get deep into an author's work, you'll see the things that they rely

[00:12:23] Heidi: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:24] Jane: And sometimes it actually is comforting to me because I will try to, when I'm editing, do searches for the crutches, I know that I use like the word just like, oh my gosh, I sometimes I just wanna bang my head against the wall when I see how many

[00:12:37] Etienne: We actually all use it

[00:12:38] Jane: when I'm first, 

[00:12:39] Etienne: too, because I take out so much of the word just from ours podcast actually

[00:12:44] Jane: Oh yes. I, I mean, it's just, it's 

[00:12:47] Etienne: just and like, just, and like they're removed a lot of the time. I try to remove almost every single one of 'em. Yeah,

[00:12:54] Jane: It's hard

[00:12:56] Etienne: know. It's part of her speech.

[00:12:57] Jane: It's, yeah. It's just something I say like all the time, but when I first started

[00:13:05] Heidi: I will say though, talking with my friend Laura, the producer, she's a podcast producer. When I was getting with her and learning the editing techniques that she suggests, she suggested don't take out everything 'cause you want it to still 

[00:13:19] Etienne: I think it does. Well, you

[00:13:20] Heidi: don't know.

[00:13:21] Etienne: But I do think this still sounds natural. I just, I, uh, again, there we go. I mean, if we're using it in every sentence, there's a lot, or I mean, again, another phrase that we use so much, so I mean, just, and like are so used can't even tell you. So I do leave some of it. 

[00:13:41] Jane: Well, part of my process I will sometimes listen to, like really spend time eavesdropping when I'm trying to work on dialogue. Well first I'll backtrack to when I did have some kooky processes. So when I was a teenager and I was really ramping it up in earnest and writing a lot of poetry is what I mostly wrote.

[00:14:00] Jane: I would not, and Heidi, you made me think of this because you said the advice of writing somebody else's work end to end. I wouldn't do that. But what I would do is listen to songs with lyrics, which I cannot do when I'm writing now. And I would listen to songs with lyrics that meant something to me, or that I felt had something to say and I would just be sitting there just free writing while I'm listening to somebody else's lyrics. I wasn't writing their lyrics, although sometimes I would actually start doing that, and then I would veer off into then my own land, if you will. But it would be riffing off of something,

[00:14:35] Etienne: Hmm. 

[00:14:36] Jane: And I would just be, for example, like Strawberry Fields forever, right? And I would just be writing down the phrase, like I would start with the lyrics, just because intentionally or not, that's what I'm listening to. And I'm just writing about my day and then I'm just like, Strawberry fields, nothing is real. And I'm like, nothing is real. That's like a, that's a really dark idea. Nothing is real. Like what would happen if nothing is real? Are we dreaming? Would we know if our whole life was a dream? So it just, a springboard is something else. I did that for an entire year. I did that only with David Bowie

[00:15:05] Etienne: Oh wow.

[00:15:06] Jane: I listened to other things besides David Bowie, but I only wrote while listening to David Bowie for an entire year, my junior year in high school. 

[00:15:15] Jane: It was the year of Bowie, and then I didn't do anything kooky, I guess, as an adult when I was writing. Other people might think it's kooky, but when I was editing my memoir, Losing the Dollhouse after it was done, and I was trying to make it good, I only worked at it at Panera. Shout out Panera Bread. Because it was just a place that actually had something I could eat while I was there. 'Cause I needed to disappear for a couple of hours away from my small child 

[00:15:37] Heidi: Yes, 

[00:15:38] Jane: who was not going to let me

[00:15:40] Heidi: a lot of 

[00:15:40] Jane: You were there for a lot of, that. 

[00:15:42] Heidi: Lots of tea drinking.

[00:15:43] Jane: Had lots of tea drinking. And then I would go there and I would have, every time I went chai tea latte with almond milk and a bowl of black bean soup. And then I would just sit there, that was my table rent for however long I could tolerate it. And listening in my headphones. I was listening to white noise the whole time. 

[00:16:01] Jane: And then when I wrote my novel that I'm trying to shop around right now, which the working title is, Love In Shakespeare's Shadow. Who knows what the hell it's gonna really be called, 

[00:16:10] Etienne: Is that the subtitle? Who knows?

[00:16:11] Jane: When I have no idea. But when I was writing it, and sometimes now when I still go back and edit it, 'cause sometimes I'm still tooling it, I've listened to the same song. Okay. 

[00:16:24] Etienne: A same song, one song, 

[00:16:27] Jane: The same song over and over and over again on a loop. And it's this song called The Host of Seraphim by Dead Can Dance. And 

[00:16:36] Etienne: I gotta look 

[00:16:37] Jane: The reason I could listen to, it does not have any lyrics that are in English. Dead Can Dance is this kind of alternative world music, gothic sounding sometimes, 'cause they sound a lot like Gregorian chant sometimes with this very ambient, lots of minor chords in the background. They're odd, but I love them.

[00:16:58] Jane: And because they don't sing in English. And I used to think that they, when I was younger, when I first started listening to them in high school, that they were singing in Latin. No, it's just a made up language that the vocalist for that group, she just sings whatever comes into her mind and it's not English and she feels like she's channeling something, but because it's not English, I could listen to it.

[00:17:17] Jane: And also because it was the vibe that I was going for with when this spirit is haunting this woman. From the time she's falls in love as a teenager to when she's older. It's creepy, but also beautiful, just like this spirit who is haunting her. It is the soundtrack to this book. So I literally, but to listen to it for hours on end and I never got tired of 

[00:17:39] Etienne: that's one song

[00:17:40] Jane: It's not a particularly

[00:17:41] Etienne: wait to hear. I did look it up. I'm, I can't obviously push play right now, but, I will be. 

[00:17:45] Jane: And, I could not work on the book without listening to that

[00:17:49] Etienne: Oh, you guys, you know what though too? When I was writing that same book, the one that I was reading Dickens before, I would also play the soundtrack from The English Patient.

[00:17:57] Heidi: Yeah. I use soundtracks a lot when I'm writing too. Instrumental

[00:18:01] Etienne: I no longer pick things that have words. But that one I did for some reason I was able to do that. When I was doing a draft of my apocalypse book, I kept listening to Skyrim soundtrack, the game.

[00:18:13] Heidi: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

[00:18:14] Etienne: I love that. That was so good, right? Yes. But, writing my memoir, I was actually, I have the calm app now and they have soundscapes on there and I listen to French Countryside, so it just sounds like birds and crickets and insects crackling and sometimes you hear people talking, but not in English. And yeah, it's cool.

[00:18:36] Jane: See, I'm all about binaural beats that get you into a deep flow state when I have to work on something that is really cerebral. And if I'm writing something that's nonfiction, like those are the types of things that I tend to listen to. Or if I'm editing something that's not my novel. I will sometimes listen to deep flow binaural beats, or I will just put my headphones on and not listen to anything at all. I think that it's like a psychosomatic thing now. Like I just put the headphones on and my body knows, like, do it, do the thing that you do. Like, just like, and I, I go into the zone and then, but lately I have been writing some poems. And I have written poems in a long time, and those, there's no process for the, I'm not listening to any Bowie. It's just like something will happen spontaneously, like while I'm walking. And I think actually Etienne, it's because I've been meditating more. And then after the meditation I'll go for a walk and then something will come to me. And then when I get back from my walk, I have been like, just like bloom like it's opening something that I haven't written poetry in a long Yeah, like, it's really intermittent when like poetry for me, like as an adult, whereas as a teenager it was my life. I felt I would die if I didn't write my poems. And then I started writing more long forms stuff and now poetry is back in my life. It's kind of a surprise.

[00:19:49] Etienne: That's so cool. I actually got inspired during one of the final group healing sessions at my meditation retreat. One of the hurdles I was having over the book that I've been thinking about, but actually haven't started writing. I've been thinking about it for like a long time. But there was one hurdle that I knew that I hadn't figured out, and for some reason it came to me during that meditation and I was like, why is this happening right now? No, no, like, I'm supposed to be doing this. This is okay. I guess I'll let it happen. I gave in pretty quick. I gave in pretty quickly, like letting it tell me how my problem has been solved. Yeah. So I'm super excited. Yeah.

[00:20:30] Jane: I think it's just 'cause your mind then is now connected and if you're specifically talking about like some of the Dr. Joseph Dispenza methods, like if you're having a heart brain convergence situation, like maybe it's like, oh, now, now, and then we had talked in a previous episode about that maybe we believe in this idea that's posited by folks Elizabeth Gilbert and Big Magic that ideas are living things that are they're these entities that are just out there. And if we're all energy, there's like, we're just like, Hey, come speak for me. You know? And that's the muse. So maybe if you're meditating and you're just in that very blissed out state and your brainwaves are such that, it's like little gateways open up in your aura. And the idea is

[00:21:08] Heidi: You become a channel for it. Yeah. A container. 

[00:21:11] Jane: You tuned in. You tuned in, and it came to you. And Heidi, you and I have talked about this at length over the years is that sometimes, your dream, you get some crazy idea. But, then it's like, okay, now then what do you do with it?

[00:21:23] Jane: Right? So the process, I think. Like what we're all kind of saying, a part of our process at some point in time has been some kind of getting into a state of mind, and sometimes music can help induce that. Sometimes meditation can help induce that, but I feel like you could have this idea, like when I was looking up a fun fact for today, really boring shit was coming up about the writing process with this graphic that looked like a poster I used to have I'm sad to say as an eighth grade ELA teacher, my first year of teaching, there was a poster that I inherited from the teacher who quit before me. I found out from drinking because all of her little mini bottles of Jack Daniels were rolling around in my desk when I started that job. But she had this boring poster that was just like the writing process. Ideation, drafting, editing, polishing, publishing, and I'm like, that is not ever how it, I mean 

[00:22:12] Etienne: I am always missing that last step.

[00:22:13] Jane: But like, yeah. Well I, right. But I think that it doesn't ever really look the same every time. Sometimes I'll be like, all right, I'll listen to this music and I'll get into the zone. But then the way that it comes out, sometimes I'm furiously, literally scrolling on napkins in my car with a pen because I'm in a parking lot and something happened, you know? And like nowadays, I can use the notes app on my phone, which is nice. 'Cause then I can email it to myself later. And it's not a bunch of napkins like

[00:22:39] Etienne: I love my notes app.

[00:22:41] Jane: you 

[00:22:41] Heidi: Or post-it notes?

[00:22:42] Jane: But I, have done that lots of, because sometimes you're writing it just, that's the way that it's happening or the backs of receipts. Lots of backs of receipts for me. And 

[00:22:50] Heidi: Margins of books.

[00:22:52] Jane: Yes

[00:22:53] Heidi: Mm-hmm. 

[00:22:53] Jane: Margins of books that were not mine and I'd apologize for it later, but I was like, I was gonna lose it if I didn't write it down. I'll buy you another one. I'm sorry. Or a library book. And I'm be like, I gotta, this is a problem now.

[00:23:02] Heidi: Look at Sudoku books. For me. I have so many Sudoku books just filled

[00:23:08] Etienne: Well, we haven't really, I mean, you brought it up, Jane, about editing, but I am not the greatest when it comes to editing my own work. So, getting into a part of my life where I have the funds, I found an editor years ago on Upwork, and I've been working with her on my memoir. So she helped me. I can't even, I mean, if I go back and look at the first draft of my memoir versus where it is today, it's a completely different piece of writing. It's unbelievable. And she did recognize, even though I was paying her, she did recognize that there was something there and I was just hinting at things and she was like, no, no.

[00:23:46] Etienne: I have a feeling that there's more that you could be telling me about this. So for me, I would highly recommend, 'cause we did already mention that first drafts are not good. I know some people think first drafts are great. That's awesome if that's true for you. But I've never written a first draft that I would ever feel comfortable having anybody see and except somebody I'm paying who's a professional at this point, because I'm embarrassed that I know that I cannot write well the first time around. But this editor now, she is my saving grace and I hope she will always be my editor. So you find somebody that you trust.

[00:24:25] Etienne: On Upwork you can find people, if you can afford to pay somebody, they put examples of their stuff or you can ask them to send something if they actually were interested in working with you.

[00:24:33] Etienne: If you can't afford to pay somebody, then you can try to find a writing group. An online writing group or one in person. But then you have to trust that the people who are actually decent writers themselves. That's tough.

[00:24:47] Jane: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:47] Etienne: It's hard to take advice from somebody that you've read their work and you're like, Hmm.

[00:24:53] Jane: Yeah, you gotta be selective. Well, so how did you know this question for either of you? How did you know that you were at a certain point in going through the process yourself of like, okay idea, it's on paper of some kind. I've beaten it into some kind of shape where it tells a coherent, there's an arc there and now I'm ready for somebody else to look at it.

[00:25:12] Jane: To help you with editing further 'cause you're too close to it now. At what point in your process are you, are there flags going up to you saying This is ready for some kind of beta reader, paid or otherwise. 

[00:25:22] Etienne: After writing the first draft, I think I only go through it one more time myself to see if there's anything glaringly obvious that I know I can change. Because I always start out with an outline. I am not one of the people that can, yeah, I cannot, I mean, I can write a short story without an outline, but I have an idea of where it's going and it doesn't really do that, you know, it's not going too many places, you know?

[00:25:43] Etienne: But a book or the memoir, yeah, no, I had an entire outline done ahead of time. Otherwise, there's just, I feel like that then frees me to be more creative in each chapter. Instead of having to worry about where I'm going. I've even, when I was working with another editor on my apocalypse book, a different editor, and she had me write, I had to go back.

[00:26:07] Etienne: I'd had an outline for that one, but she also made me do a character biographies for every single character. And I had not actually fleshed out their entire backstory before writing my draft that she saw. So that really opened things up for me and I was actually able to use some of the stuff that I came up with from a biography into the book.

[00:26:27] Etienne: And it just made it that much more real because the Apocalypse book, I think I have eight drafts of that book. But I do think that it is done. I I just, every couple years I've been like re-editing it 'cause I love it so much. Yeah, so I think really it's just a first draft and then I go through it one more time and then I think I have to go pay somebody 'cause I don't wanna spend too much time. I'm too close to it. Again, I can't tell if it's good or not, or you know, please tell me what I need to work on.

[00:26:56] Heidi: I have to put my stuff away for a

[00:26:58] Etienne: That also helps. Yeah. Literally like six months. Like I'm not even kidding. I have to actually forget like a lot of it to be able to read it myself and be more objective. Yeah.

[00:27:09] Jane: Well, then you could find the holes. You'd be like, wait, why are we in this room now? What just happened? Because you. Forgotten. It's like editing somebody else's

[00:27:15] Etienne: I love that about the editor for the Apocalypse book. When she first read my book, she was like, Hmm, there's too many coincidences in here. And you know what? Now after she said that, I started getting really, like when I start watching movies or TV show, mostly movies 'cause they try to get places really quickly. So, it's a so easy when you're in movie form because it's a short format to have coincidences instead of like, well wait, how? No, like that, that's too easy. You've done too many things. Where like they just happen to like, that's ridiculous. You know? Like if you really think about it, if you slow down and start to pull, yeah. You start to pull it apart and I'm like, see? See? She said I could only have one. These people have used like three or four. This is not fair.

[00:27:57] Jane: He was like, I need an allowance.

[00:27:59] Etienne: She just like one. I'm oh one, which one am I keeping? Yeah. So it just makes your work better when you have somebody who's a professional, this is their job, And Jane, you're an awesome editor, but I would have to pay you if I ever asked you to read something of mine in the future, I would be like, Jane.

[00:28:16] Jane: Oh,

[00:28:17] Etienne: Uh, yeah, if you, can you like, if you, I would love to have you as a beta reader and then just be like, let me give you some money, please, for your time.

[00:28:26] Jane: I do love editing. It's kind of my day gig now, but, we won't talk about my day job.

[00:28:32] Etienne: Yeah. But writing is rewriting, isn't that what they say? 

[00:28:35] Heidi: Mm-hmm. Oh Yeah. That's kind of where the magic

[00:28:38] Etienne: Yeah, that's when you can get like all of the, I think I made Jane laugh before about insert awesome metaphor here. Like, when you can let your imagination go free. People are not going to specifically see what you're talking about if you don't find something just extraordinary to put in places every once in a while.

[00:28:55] Heidi: Yeah, placeholders were a game changer for me. Once I figured that out, I was like, this one part is a roadblock for me right now, but I can jump over it if I just put, he says something funny here, or they figure it out. Alright, next, next scene, I'll figure this out later on.

[00:29:13] Heidi: And then typically, you get several scenes down and you're like, oh yeah, so this happens and this scene to make this makes sense. It's like putting a puzzle together and creating the puzzle pieces after the fact.

[00:29:28] Etienne: Yeah.

[00:29:28] Heidi: I'm in awe sometimes of the whole process when it does

[00:29:31] Etienne: And I know when I, because I started out writing screenplays way back when, and I felt like when you write a screenplay, I feel like I always would start the conversation way ahead of time, the dialogue would start way before it needed to start. So I wouldn't know that till I went back and I was like, oh, this is no, I don't know. We don't need any of 

[00:29:48] Heidi: of this. Yeah. 

[00:29:49] Etienne: Let's just cut the out, you know

[00:29:52] Heidi: Yeah. 

[00:29:54] Etienne: How long did you think your first draft of your screenplays are? I'm sure it's much longer on the first draft than on the subsequent drafts. I know mine were way too long in the beginning. I think my first draft of my first full length that I did was, I mean, it's supposed to be like a page per minute, so it should be no more than 120 pages, if it's a regular length movie and pretty sure mine was like 160 or something and I had to go and just cut, cut, cut, cut. Like everywhere that I could. Yeah. Or entire scenes might have to be chucked 

[00:30:23] Heidi: Mm-hmm. 

[00:30:24] Jane: I recently had to do an overhaul of my novel after getting some really great advice about how to make it more commercially viable. 'Cause it was too long. And so I'm like, oh, who am I going to kill? Like some characters had to just go, and then the subplot connected to them and so. That was hard.

[00:30:40] Jane: It was like a game of Jenga. What can I pull out? And then the whole thing doesn't fall apart. And I did find two characters that I'm like, okay, if they're not here, everything else can still happen. Like normal, you know? And there were some people that I was writing just because they were speaking to me that day and I was kind of like, on a roll.

[00:30:55] Jane: Like, I was like, oh, I wanna see what I'll do. You know? And I was, I didn't have, well, that's not true. I did have an outline for Love in Shakespeare's Shadow, and then it just kind of went to crap a couple chapters in where I was just like, oh, wait a second. Like once one of the characters is like, but I read her mind just now. I'm like, you did what? I'm like, okay, that changes everything. And then now it's all, now I'm like, now I don't know where I'm going. Now it's gonna be them telling me where they're going. Which is cool to have that experience, 'cause it doesn't, you know, it hadn't happened to me like that before. Like that deep. I think it's because of the Dead Can Dance song. It was putting me into a trance state where I was just like, Ooh, what are they gonna say? But editing it was a bitch though, 'cause, I had to pull that out. And so that process was hard. And then the process of, because I have two different timelines in my book. And, at the first draft, I wrote it chronologically and I was like, this doesn't work chronologically. Like as powerfully as I think that it could if things were revealed at different points. And then I'm like, but how do I do this and not have it be confusing? And so the process for that was like literally then writing a little mini synopsis of each chapter, if you will, like a one sentence synopsis of each chapter. Even the ones I hadn't gotten to yet. 'Cause I realized what was happening like halfway through it. And I knew at that point where I was going, so I guess I did then start to make like a different outline because I was like, I gotta figure out how I'm jumping back and forth in time and then again, make sure that the whole thing all the way through made sense.

[00:32:23] Heidi: Mm-hmm. 

[00:32:23] Jane: So I kind of did it in a weird way where I was writing it in chronological order halfway through, realized it was gonna be better with the dual timeline, jumping back and forth and then had an outline for the rest of it, and then cut them up into pieces, like literally cut them up into pieces so I had these little strips of paper and then I just hung out in my house. I had it like stretched across two rooms of trying to make it make sense,

[00:32:45] Etienne: Oh my gosh. Sounds like you need to scroll.

[00:32:46] Jane: could I go back and forth? It is like the scroll and, but it was like confetti, like I turned my fans off so it wouldn't blow the 

[00:32:55] Etienne: What about your dog? Or did you have a dog then? Is this okay? So you had to like put your dog outside. like where'd you put? Okay. 

[00:33:03] Jane: She didn't bother me. She's an angel most of the time. But, so I did that and then I was like, okay, this will make sense. And then I numbered them and put them in order. And then I was like, all right, now let me write it through chronologically first to make sure it makes sense to me writing it this way. And then now take those chapters and then take the order that I want them to be in narratively that I had done with those strips of paper and then put them that way so that when I started cutting characters, then it got even more complicated because of the dual timeline. So a couple of my chapters have been reordered. So I think that your process is really project specific sometimes, and I think that that's okay and you just have to do what works. Listen to whatever works. Cut out pieces of paper, have a scroll

[00:33:48] Heidi: Yeah. And don't get too fixated on one process. 'Cause my process has changed many times over the years too. I'll just have a loose outline and then write it all in a couple days, or I'll write it all in my head and have full scenes in my head before I even start on anything. Put maybe just like a log line down on paper, but most of it's in my head and I'm working it out as I'm experiencing whatever I'm experiencing.

[00:34:17] Jane: I think no matter what you do though, like rule number one of all processes that you can't avoid ass in seat.

[00:34:22] Heidi: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:34:23] Etienne: Definitely. Yeah, dude, I had such a hard time on this last draft that I did for the editor. Before she was doing the polish for me because I needed to cut like, I think it was 20 or 25,000 words. It was so much. So I was, I did it, I got under a hundred thousand words, but it was so hard. It was over a two day period where I had to crunch, where I literally worked eight hours each day for two days. Just cutting. As much as I could 'cause I'd already edited everything, as far as I thought for what she had said. And then I just had to go through then and just cut every little thing I could and it was so hard. So proud of myself.

[00:35:09] Jane: And you should be.

[00:35:11] Heidi: Yeah. That's amazing. Two days, 20,000 words. Wow. 

[00:35:15] Etienne: it was a lot.

[00:35:15] Jane: I had to do the same thing. It took me two months. So good for you. I, I did not. I could not, I was like, who? 'cause I was like, who am I? I gotta kill somebody to make 

[00:35:22] Heidi: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:35:22] Etienne: I didn't, yeah, I didn't have to kill anybody, but since it was fiction, I mean, mine's nonfic the memoir, so I, yeah. I mean, I could have removed people, I could have removed people out of, which I did. She did point out, like does this person need to be in here? No, they could come out, so cut. You know, anybody who didn't really need to be there. And then I would back up like, no, I think this person needs to be there. Not everybody can be cut out. It can't just be about me and rando dates that I have. There has to be some friends in there too. I do have friends, so, oh man.

[00:36:00] Jane: Etty's love but also 

[00:36:02] Etienne: That was uh, interesting. So weird. 

[00:36:06] Jane: I would love to know what some of our listeners process is. If any of you are creative out there and if it involves being naked or

[00:36:12] Etienne: Yes. Oh 

[00:36:13] Jane: that'd be entertaining to learn about. But

[00:36:16] Etienne: Victor Hugo

[00:36:17] Jane: yeah, whatever it is. 

[00:36:19] Etienne: Scrolls.

[00:36:20] Heidi: Do you use a big scroll in your 

[00:36:22] Etienne: Do you use a big scroll? Does anybody use their actual typewriter? That would be really cool.

[00:36:28] Jane: I know some people who still do that for the tactile nature of it, and then they will transpose it, which sounds like a bitch

[00:36:34] Etienne: So they start on the typewriter and then they put it in a computer after. Wow. Wow. Okay. Interesting. 

[00:36:40] Jane: That's not me. 

[00:36:41] Heidi: That's a different way of rewriting. Hmm.

[00:36:44] Etienne: really loved it. Like when we finally could actually do writing on computers instead of by hand. When I actually graduated to computers being a thing that I could write on. And you didn't have to like rewrite from the start every single time. 'Cause I did do that in school, growing up, it wasn't until college that I had access to a computer that I, that's where I could start writing on there. Yeah. So, yeah, I did have typewriters for that or 

[00:37:08] Jane: my early drafts of stuff. Yeah, a lot of cross throughs and then like big circles saying, okay, one, this will go first two. And then having to go back and decipher what you said on Monday was a good idea. Now it's Friday and you're kind of half remember like what the star meant. You're like, oh, that was important on Monday.

[00:37:24] Heidi: Yeah. 

[00:37:25] Jane: Man, where does it go? Oh, the whiteout. So, but I still write longhand, when it's poetry.

[00:37:32] Etienne: see that. I could see that. I don't think I could write poetry on a computer. That would be weird. Not that I write poetry, but it seems like something that needs to be on paper with a pen or a pencil or whatever it is. 

[00:37:42] Jane: For me, it still is unless I don't have a pen available. And then I do type it in my notes app if I have my phone with me. And if I have nothing with me, then I'm just like talking to myself like a crazy person until I can get to something I can write it down on. But whatever your process is out there, folks, good luck, happy writing. We're gonna keep trying our best to bang it out ourselves.

[00:38:05] Heidi: 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@thewomenareplotting.com and of course you can find us on all the socials. Thanks, and until next time, be safe and be excellent to each other.