S5 Ep4 - The Art of Writing it Like No One Will Ever Read It: A Conversation with Melissa Duge Spiers

All about memoirs with author Melissa Duge Spiers (Holy Disobedience). How screenwriting helps tell a personal story, and the intensity of penning a story about [redacted].

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Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

You know what? This is all this is strangely apropos given the subject matter of this wonderful book. The Duality of Woman.

SPEAKER_03 0:10

Go with it. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 0:17

I'm gonna jump right into it since we're here and we've been waiting this long. Well, welcome to Holly Art School One. It's a wonderful episode today. Per usual, every episode's wonderful. Each episode more wonderful than the last, one would say. Right, Michelle?

SPEAKER_02 0:34

Yes, one would cautiously say.

SPEAKER_04 0:37

It's a very aggressive statement of mine. But we are here with uh author Melissa Duchpe, who will say hello now.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Hello. Thank you guys for having me. We had some scheduling issues, and it's so exciting. Here we are.

SPEAKER_04 0:51

It's the jankiest opening.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Here we are.

SPEAKER_04 0:54

Our fans love it. I will say our last episode was the most listened to episode. Actually, the third most listened to episode out of all the pipeline artists podcasts. Um, and our most listened to episode, number one, for How the Arts were one. Yeah. So we have to beat it.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

We're gonna we're gonna break that record. We're gonna do it. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:14

We are. Uh Melissa was a book pipeline unpublished uh winner of I won't say the year, it was several years ago. I won't date her in that way. Uh, but she won with the book, which is now called Holy Disobedience. It is a memoir. Melissa, give us a 10-second rundown of your background. I usually read a bio, but this is this transcends all bios because your story is so legitimately fascinating. And I'm gonna get into what I loved about the book in a sec, but oh good.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

Um, so I am uh what a fourth generation ex-Sevent-day Adventist, which is a very strict fundamentalist Christian religion cult. And um my father had been a pastor, and I discovered in midlife that he had been a child abuser as a pastor, and I ended up kind of tracking the um religious programming through my entire life, even though I had left the church early. And I ended up befriending my father's victim who helped me recover from all of that. And uh that's what the book's about. In a tiny nutshell.

SPEAKER_04 2:22

In a tiny nutshell, yes. Look, I am uh I'm in a tiny nutshell. I am almost done with it. I did not finish it in time for this podcast, nevertheless. I two things. One, it is remarkably well written. Like most memoirs that are published that are out there that I've kind of breezed through, um, a little dull, a little too journalistic in a way. This one is written with such detailed honesty. Well, my first question on that actually is how much do you how much of the blanks have you been filling in? Because this is such a uh uh a broad telling of your life from childhood to adulthood, right? How much did you kind of have to fill in, or how much did you actually remember in such vivid detail?

SPEAKER_01 3:07

It's amazing how uh uh sort of mirroring the structure of how it's written, I have really vivid recall of certain things, which I tried to really just give in a visceral way. Um that was part of trying to structure it was kind of arguing with my publisher about uh wanting to have things in present tense because I remember them that way, just like this is happening. Um, but then I also needed to have so originally I had structured it with a present tense chapter, a kind of fill-in expository chapter that like moved the story along, you know, and then a present tense chapter of just emotional download in the moment thing. And then again, some exposure, and that didn't work, at least for my publisher. So we kind of ended up just smoothing that down and mixing it in chapters equally. But um, most of that really uh present tense recall is um didn't have to be filled in, it was still there.

SPEAKER_04 4:04

That's when you're writing this though, is that bringing up I won't say trauma, but trauma, or is it kind of a release, or is it a little mix of both depending on the story that you are currently writing about?

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Yeah, it's definitely a mix of both. Um some of the chapters, like I still have a really hard time. Like when I had to read the audio book, I had some chapters where I just put it off and put it off and put it off because I just didn't want to go there. Like that material is still so fresh, the trauma just feels real, even if it was childhood chapters. Certainly, of course, there's healing with getting it out there. There's also a lot of healing with now hearing from readers that they identify with it. Um that really helps me kind of put the trauma aside in a way of like, okay, it it was helping not only me but others. Um, but there's still a lot of ouch. Still a lot of ouch.

SPEAKER_04 5:01

I would imagine so.

SPEAKER_02 5:03

Yeah, I'm I'm amazed. So you actually read the audiobook yourself? I did.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

I did. Um, I had been an actor a little bit when I was young. I was a terrible actor, absolutely horrible. But um, but I enjoy doing that kind of stuff. And um I was still on the fence about reading it, and my editor said, give it a try. If it's if it doesn't work, we can always get a reader to do it. And I ended up really loving it. And now I love the idea that just somewhere out there I'm reading my story in someone's ear. Like that's such a personal connection. Yeah, it's so such an intimate like relationship with a reader one-on-one that you don't even get with just a written book. So it's very cool. I'm glad I did it.

SPEAKER_02 5:51

Absolutely. Well, so I'm curious. We've never had a memoirist on the podcast. We've never had a memoirist, essayist, but you're also a screenwriter. So would you say, I mean, I'm sure I know the answer to this, but you know, how did how did your screenwriting skills and your, you know, understanding of story really play into your memoir? And I mean, as Matt said, it's it's better than a lot of the memoirs he's read.

SPEAKER_04 6:17

So well, it's for that exact reason. It feels so cinematic.

SPEAKER_02 6:21

Cinematic, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 6:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

I I really would love to see it on the screen. People have asked me, why don't you write a screenplay out of it? Why don't you I I'm not the person to write the screenplay. I'm too close to like I can't see myself as a character. You know, like writing the book, I was still in my head, and it was me on the page. Um, but it like a the screenplaying of it would need to be somebody else who could see myself as a character. But but screenplay writing did really help me. So I originally wrote before I won Book Pipeline, like 15 years before that, I had written a draft of the memoir. And um then I I set it aside. I I picked up screenwriting, and that's where I really learned structure, structure of stories, structure of characters arc, and all that stuff, you know, the three-act, all of that stuff. And um when I picked the memoir back up after I won um book pipeline, I realized that it had not had good structure. I had been writing it sort of still from the middle of the story, and it didn't have the high of the arc and then the you know, the climax and the end. And um I was like, oh my gosh. See, I still get goosebumps thinking about it. I thought, okay, I have lived the structure now, god damn it. As much as that stocks. Um, now I've got a story. But you know, it took me uh a lot of um really studying structure to kind of see what it was.

SPEAKER_02 7:56

For sure. So that was that's a long process for you then, because you said 15 years ago. So you've been so the that must have been just such a you know, I don't know if it was I it's kind of weird to say it's a dream come true to have your memoir about, you know, trauma like be published finally. But but I mean, how how did you feel like when you finally get signed that contract and and all that?

SPEAKER_01 8:20

You know, I was terrified. Of course, you're I I mean, I think any memoirist is just absolutely terrified. You're terrified people are gonna sue you, you're terrified you're gonna hurt people's feelings, you're terrified people are gonna make fun of you or or not connect, that you're just gonna be this weird freak and everybody's gonna be like, okay, this book is like ridiculous. Who who lives like that? Who is that person? Um, and so you're just so scared, but it was so vindicating, also, obviously. And, you know, I'd been a writer all my life, I'd been a I'd been an English major in college, etc. And I never thought I had any stories to tell, certainly not personally. Like I wrote magazine articles, I wrote profiles of other people, and I thought that was just kind of my role in life. And then when I started screenwriting, I was like, oh, okay, I I think I can make stories up now. I think that's good, but I wouldn't have told you there was anything interesting about my life, you know, until I'm which is so fascinating because it's the most interesting memoir.

SPEAKER_04 9:19

I mean, it legitimately is. There's so many people that submit memoirs um that I've read that are unpublished, and it's like, okay, you dealt with this and that. Other people have kind of done this. No one I know has gone through this specifically with the Seventh day Adventist Church as it is. Did you I meant I didn't mean to cut you off, but uh I've been waiting to get to this question.

SPEAKER_03 9:40

Yes, go for it, go for it.

SPEAKER_04 9:42

Um, did you get any pushback from the church itself, from friends that you've had or are still in the church and so forth?

SPEAKER_01 9:48

You know, uh the church is known to be extremely litigious. In fact, that's I I pitched the book for about a year and I had a lot of refusals from big publishers who were just like, we're not gonna take this on because that was my question.

SPEAKER_04 10:02

So they shut it down because they didn't want to deal with the following.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Yeah, and they were a lot of them were really upfront. There was always it always it got to be a joke between my agent and I about like they all started with love the writing, beautiful writing, but you know, then they'd go into like scared of the church, or you know, don't think that religious memo uh trauma memoirs will sell very well, or you know, whatever it was. And um, but but having said that and being really terrified, the church has not given me any official pushback. I've certainly heard from people that I grew up with who are still in the church or whatever who are angry as hell. Um, I get a lot of pushback on social media from Adventist defenders that are just violently angry. Um, but I expected that, you know. I mean, it's a high control cult religion. I mean, they they're in it to win it. If they admit that there's anything wrong with their church, their whole world crumbles. So, you know.

SPEAKER_04 11:00

Are they saying that you're lying about it or are they saying like, well, that was just your experience and isn't representative of the whole church?

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Both. Both. They say a lot of them say that I'm um I wasn't a real Adventist and I didn't experience real Adventism and I was never, you know, religious and blah, blah, blah. But they also say, that's just in your family, you know, which is not true. My whole social media presence talking about abuse in the Adventist church in general, uh, you know, thousands and thousands of examples, but but they can't handle that truth. They just can't. So it's easy to focus on me because I'm the only visible public ex-adventist and say you're the problem.

SPEAKER_04 11:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

So, you know, that's to be expected. And to an extent, all publicity is good publicity, right?

SPEAKER_04 11:47

So well, yes, the more backlash you get, the the bigger your profile. We're seeing it completely separate topic. But if you're listening to this in the in the present day, the the whole art director on uh the movie Obsession is getting anyway. I won't even open up that conversation. That's a whole other podcast, Michelle. We should dig into it. Um about she's a very weak okay. She's like, I don't want to talk about this.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

I'm like, sure, whatever you want, Matt.

SPEAKER_04 12:15

But no, sometimes the controversy works in your favor as long as you can, as long as they're not getting uh violently rude about it.

SPEAKER_03 12:22

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:23

Going back to like the publishers that were rejecting it, what made you kind of strike off and uh just go with a smaller press?

SPEAKER_01 12:32

Um we ended up having my agent and I a really bad experience with a big five publisher who um said he wanted it, he said he was gonna sign it, said he loved it, blah, blah, blah, all the things. And then he sat on it for months and months and months. Literally, seven months he sat on it. And she and I would both ping him all the time. And I slowly realized that he hadn't even read it. Like I would try to talk to him about things and he hadn't read it. And so the whole thing was so weird. And at the end of the seven months, he ended up saying that he uh was gonna that he was rejecting it, he wasn't going to sign it after all. Um, he, by the way, had ties to the Seventh-day Adventist Church. So I do really, really wonder about that. But I asked my agent afterward, I said, you know, this is my first rodeo, really. Like, is this usual? And she said, absolutely not. That is the first time I've ever seen this, ever heard of this. It's so weird, I can't explain it. And we were about at the end of the people that we wanted to uh to pitch to anyway, in the in the big five. So I went with Lake Drive Books, a small uh press, who I know had published Krista Brown's uh Baptist Land, which had taken on the Southern Baptist Convention. And so I knew they weren't afraid. I knew David Um Morris was not afraid of big churches and scary stuff, and I knew that he appreciated that there was a market. Um I was open to talking to him, and we just clicked. You know, he didn't. I mean, you guys have read the book. It's it's pretty raw and it's pretty there's a lot of stuff in it, you know, that um a lot of there certainly is. There's a lot that people, even when I was talking to a couple of the big five publishers and we were really getting into like maybe we'll sign or not, a lot of them wanted me to tone it down and you know, kind of smooth it over. And maybe you don't want to quite go there. But yes, I did, you know, and I knew that. And um, and he never once put the brakes on me. Um, so it was a it was a great publishing uh and he's such a mild, wonderful guy that I really hand it to him because I do wonder how much that made him lose sleep at night. But he decided to make that artistic choice anyway, and bless him, you know.

SPEAKER_04 14:57

Yeah, and I think the hurdle with a lot of casual readers in memoirs is that the topic, not to like commercialize the like you know, the perception of memoirs, but like it has to be interesting, it has to appeal to a reader who doesn't really know that particular world, right? Yeah, it has to be something that peels back the curtain in such a way that feels both, again, I hate to say entertaining, but entertaining, but also informative. I think this balances it perfectly. I'm biased because you won book pipeline, but also like if it wasn't a good book, I wouldn't have you on the podcast. So it's I'm not that biased.

SPEAKER_02 15:30

He's got great taste.

SPEAKER_04 15:31

Um all of our winners are great though.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Um well, and you know, a lot of my friends who were my beta readers said that I went, I still smoothed too much out, that I went too easy on certain people, certain characters, etc. But you know, those are choices that you make sometimes to protect uh, you know, like I wanted to protect my children, so I didn't go, you know, I didn't reveal a lot of, you know, so there was even more shit that isn't in there.

SPEAKER_04 15:58

Well, I and I I was at the book event um briefly, you know, a few a month or so month or so ago. Um and I met your your two children.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 16:06

Who were like, we're not reading this book. Yep. And that is their choice, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_02 16:10

Twice, probably.

SPEAKER_04 16:13

Uh was that um was that surprising to you, by the way, or was were you like you know, it really wasn't.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

I think it's a I think it's a great move. I did say to them, like I said, you you may just want to consider if any of your friends read it and they come to you with details and you don't know that detail, you know, maybe that will be something you might want to consider. And they were like, Mom, do we really not know too many of the details? And I was like, No, not really. You know, I mean they they lived a lot of so much of it that they were just like, we don't need to go through it again. And I was like, good choice, you know, good choice. My sister also has still not read it. Um, and she's a huge part of the book, but she that was her choice also. Well, just like she didn't want to go there.

SPEAKER_02 16:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:56

Um, I wanted I have I have two two things, but I guess the first one is probably pretty easy. Did in in the process of you know going to publishers and things like that, and especially uh US-based publishers, did you guys ever consider going to any publishers outside uh of the US?

SPEAKER_01 17:14

Was there ever a possibility of going to like UK publishers or you know, you know, we really never did, which um which I did try to present in my proposal as this could easily go international because the the Adventist Church is actually bigger outside the United States at this point, all over the world. So we could have done that, but um for some reason we we didn't. So interesting.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

Okay, and then my other question is you know, I and I don't know anything about writing memoirs at all, you know, especially when it's a memoir that's such a personal story and it is so rich and and detailed and and all of that. Like what's your follow-up to that? Is there a follow-up to that?

SPEAKER_01 18:00

I have a memoir number two ready to go. Do you? So yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:06

She rejoined the church. No, she didn't rejoin the church.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

What a twist. For investigation purposes.

SPEAKER_04 18:13

Holy obedience.

SPEAKER_02 18:14

I don't holy obedience. Right, there you go.

SPEAKER_04 18:17

There you go, we're just we're giving you bad ideas.

SPEAKER_02 18:20

Yeah, don't listen to us.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Um, I don't know, Matt, if you've gotten to the point uh where Jesse comes in uh uh toward the end, but I have a memoir number two tentatively titled Lies Wide Shut. And um it's focused more on that relationship and the narcissistic um and uh uh relationship abuse that I went through, that the church kind of groomed me for, primed me for, that just like set me up to be the perfect victim of um that kind of relationship abuse. And um so it's I've got a private investigator on board, I've got a psychologist on board. It's it's gonna be um, I'm excited about that one.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

That's so cool.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

I I ended up having way too many chapters there toward the end in holy disobedience because they were fresh. They had just happened a few years previous. And so I had just written and written and written and written. And David, very wisely, my uh publisher editor, said, you know what? This is starting to become a book about that. And we're not, we know we want to come back to our you know, our wonderful arc here. Uh, you need to take a bunch of chapters out there at the end, and I and I it was it was the right thing to do, and it was total wisdom. But I was like, but I love those chapters, they need to see the light of day. So I just I just put them all in a document, and they are now gonna be memoir number two eventually. That I love it.

SPEAKER_02 19:54

It's really exciting. Are you gonna narrate that one too?

SPEAKER_01 19:58

I will.

SPEAKER_02 19:59

Yes. Very cool.

SPEAKER_04 20:01

I still can't really wrap my head around the fact that you still have a relationship with your parents.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 20:08

So how? Touch upon that one.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

Yeah. Yeah. And that is, I have gotten some some uh backlash for that, of course. People say I went too easy on them, uh, both in my life.

SPEAKER_04 20:22

Which is what not what I'm saying, by the way. I'm just very curious. I think it's it's uh uh it's such a mental hurdle to get yourself through that and to be like the the bigger person here.

SPEAKER_02 20:33

And I just they know that you wrote this memoir, right?

SPEAKER_03 20:36

Or they don't know that you wrote the memoir?

SPEAKER_01 20:41

They are they are both like my mom has Alzheimer's now, and so she I I never actually presented it to her because first of all, she's such a victim of a lot of it in her own right that um I thought, you know, in that mental loop state that Alzheimer's is in, she's just gonna be re-traumatized by it over and over and she'll never understand it, you know. So I did not actually present it to my mom. And um when I presented it to my dad, which was only a couple of months before the book was published, I told him, you know, it was his responsibility to protect her from it, since um he hadn't protected her from it multiple times over in our lives. And it's interesting, I hadn't ever told him up until that point that I had found and befriended his first victim. And as soon as he heard me say her name, I could see it change in him. And he immediately just wanted to justify himself and talk about that situation. And I still to this day don't know if he really absorbed what I was saying was I wrote a book about this and it's coming out because it just threw him into that loop. So interesting, we have not we don't have a close.

SPEAKER_04 22:00

relationship clear clearly yeah um it's more of my sister and I say it's more kind of like a just an acquaintance ship so it's a very it's always been a don't ask don't tell situation in our family on all sides with even the greater family so we exist with without talking about it but you know what I I condone the uh don't ask don't tell because sometimes that's just the it's the easier way I guess but it's sometimes it's just the better way you don't have to not everything has to be acknowledged and hashed out because it's not going to go how you want it to end anyway, right?

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Right that's it. It's really not and if I think particularly if I if all of this had come up much much earlier in my life it might have been different. But it's so I can't emphasize how bizarre it is to go all your life you know until I was almost 40 practically thinking that my mom was the bad guy and my dad was the good guy. And then to have that flipped so dramatically and so bizarrely and my mom did really torture us there's no question but I see now why she did it and she did it because she was so terrified that there that every man in the world was going to turn out being my father right if my dad could be preying on young teenagers every man could. And so you know she controlled us so tightly that we could not live but she succeeded you know we were not molested by random men you know um so my poor mom she she did the best that she could to guard us against the biggest threat she knew um and it made our lives total hell but I have a lot of compassion for her now and um and then my dad you know we just thought he was amazing he was so great all of our lives everybody loved him and then to find out wow wow are are they are they still part of the the church?

SPEAKER_02 24:02

Oh yes oh yes very interesting yep wow uh it's it's just it's such a uh layered story to it could be a black box theater play like you know it's so many other forms it could take a musical not a musical yeah that's the one form I cannot take this is so interesting to me and very resonant as well because my my parents are super religious but it's not Seventh-day Adventist but evangelical and in this day and age evangelical you just might as well lots of similarities so anyway they don't know I'm publishing any books whatsoever and I did actually tell my dad and it just kind of like went in one ear and out the other and he's not he's not old or senile or anything like that. I mean he's he's he's older but yeah but yeah just didn't uh didn't process and frankly I don't want to tell I my mom for sure my sister knows so again this is very similar she knows she understands but even though she and I don't get along that well she she also hasn't told my mom because we both know what's gonna happen. She's going to tell me that I've um I'm I'm writing sinful things or something of that nature. And um yeah so this is great soul is lost me right now.

SPEAKER_04 25:28

You know what it's it this those are very specific examples but on a broader note it's like people who aren't in the arts and they don't understand it. No matter how many times you explain it to them, they will not understand it. I've tried to explain to my family who are not in the arts I'm like oh yeah we have a publishing company and we just our our first book is coming out and they're like oh so you wrote it no in a publishing company and the book is coming out it's like well how much money are you making from it?

SPEAKER_02 25:56

I'm like I know it's always the money. It's always the money.

SPEAKER_04 26:01

Everyone turns into like their Italian or Jewish mother somehow. Yep. I don't know what it is. Something weird and evolutionary. Anyway that's a side note but it's it's America same the world over so when you said your dad didn't really process it I'm like I I don't think it's just because of like the traumatic experience. I think it's just parents being parents true it's true.

SPEAKER_02 26:25

It's very I don't know I'm I'm a mom and my son my 16 year old son he just published his first video game that he created and everything and I was like that's yeah because I'm very very proud of him extremely proud so where is it available?

SPEAKER_04 26:43

This is a total tangent it's on Steam and stuff yeah it is yeah he did like a horror game so is it sinful and against uh the evangelical search stage and I'm like right on right on son right on that's another format holy disobedience can't be a video game well look uh the book is wonderful um I am going to uh I feel so stupid that I didn't finish it in full but um I'm nearing the it's look it look it's I recommend it to everybody truly it's a lot to take in so you gotta kind of read it in chunks and the way you wrote it I think was also brilliant I kind of touched upon this before but I wanted to expand upon it it's so digestible these little chapter chunks right these little vignettes and I'm sure that was intentional right because you can't take you know pages and pages of like detail and detail you gotta kind of like break it up and flash back and flash forward you know what I mean? So I thought that was really well done. Was that an editor uh choice or was that you had writ written the original draft like that that was pretty much the original draft.

SPEAKER_01 27:46

I definitely wrote it in chunks because I couldn't write long chunks either you know so it just kind of organically developed that way and then I loved it. I was so committed to it that way yeah that's awesome holy disobedience it is from Lake Drive Press Lake Drive Press Lake Drive Book Lake Drive Lake Drive books yeah oh yeah there's only one lake drive like hold it up there it came out it just came out at the card yeah the cover's awesome pick it up now also listen listen to the audiobook excuse me narrated by yours truly the author yes most of the yours truly as a not you Matt hers truly by me as you I knew it when it came out imagine me narrating this this memoir with my lingering cough in the background yeah oh my gosh oh poor Matt poor Matt Leslie Mosa any closing c closing advice to the memoirists out there oh my gosh yes write it as if no one's ever going to read it and I that's probably really trite advice but like don't censor yourself don't like start guessing who's gonna read this and and think it's horrible or whatever write it write it all put it all down but not only is that good advice but it's gonna be the title of this episode The Art of Writing It like no one will ever read it.

SPEAKER_04 29:07

There you go I love it a title beautiful before we closed out uh thank you Melissa thank you so much thank you guys for having me yes write the sequel I'll have you back oh delightful yes yes can't wait to hit me saintly Michelle's been around she's seen more things than I have um still a feel Melissa for that matter but look well she's seen way more things than I have but yes all of it's bad