Romance, Family Dynamics, & Disability Rep with Anna Sortino - On the Bright Side

Marissa chats with Anna Sortino about her latest YA romance, ON THE BRIGHT SIDE. Also discussed in this episode: who is the ‘real’ audience we write for, deciding on a single vs dual POV and where the points of view intersect, leaving space in outlines for exploration, layering in character traits and details during revision, writing family dynamics, including disability representation and how to provide context for able-bodied readers, how much personal experience to include, and so much more!

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Transcript

[00:10] Marissa: Hello, and welcome to the Happy writer. This is a podcast that aims to bring readers more books to enjoy and to help authors find more joy in their writing. I am your host, Marissa Meyer. Thank you for joining me today. All right, the thing that's making me the happiest this week is a secret. I can't actually tell you what it is, which I hate so much because it has me giddy and so excited and just totally over the moon, and it is so hard keeping secrets from you all. I can't. I can't tell you. It relates to one of my secret projects, one of my secret writing projects that I have been teasing for well over a year, um, for this one in particular. And I cannot wait until the news is out and I can officially talk about it. But since that is a total cheater thing for my happy thing this week, another thing making me happy. Not quite as happy, but still pretty happy. Is it? As of this, this morning, I have a beautiful bouquet of hydrangea flowers that the girls and I picked from our bushes this morning, and it's sitting here on my desk looking oh, so pretty. I love hydrangeas. They are one of my all time favorites. And the house that we moved into has a whole bunch of them, so it's a simple joy. Today, I am also so happy to be talking to today's guest. Born and raised in the Chicagoland area, she has since lived in different cities from coast to coast, spending her free time exploring nature with her dog or reading on the couch with her cat. She writes stories about disabled characters living their lives and falling in love, starting with her debut novel, give me a sign, and now her newest, on the bright side, which came out earlier this month, please welcome Anna Sortino.

[02:06] Anna: Thanks so much for having me.

[02:08] Marissa: Thank you for joining me. Your book is out. It is in the world. How have things been going?

[02:16] Anna: Always such, I guess I'll say a relief to have readers so excited about stories that center disabled characters. So it's always a little bit of a, oh, no. I wrote something that might be a little tricky for people to read, but the response has been overwhelming.

[02:33] Marissa: I am so happy to hear that. Did you do any big events for your launch? Have you been on book tour? Any fun promos going on?

[02:42] Anna: This one's been a little bit chill. We did a lot last year for give me a sign and then for this one with it being kind of a 4 July release. It was one of those like, okay, we'll let it go into the world. And I've got a couple things coming up later this month.

[02:55] Marissa: Okay. Did you take time to celebrate just, like, personally?

[03:00] Anna: Yeah. Yeah. With my family. My sister and I have been hanging out with our grandparents, and they love to go around to the different stores and find the different copies. So it's a very personal celebration.

[03:11] Marissa: I love that parents and grandparents are some of the biggest cheerleaders. I bet they're so excited for you.

[03:20] Anna: Yeah, they love it, especially sharing it with all their friends. They're like, I know I'm slightly older than the target demographics, but I love your stories. I love that, too.

[03:31] Marissa: I get that all the time. And people can be weirdly apologetic about it. I know you didn't write this for 80 year old men, but I happen to enjoy it. I'm like, that's the best. That's such a big compliment.

[03:46] Anna: Yeah. I'm glad for anyone who loves these books.

[03:49] Marissa: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I don't know. I mean, I guess technically we're writing young adult, so, like, technically, of course, it's gonna be marketed to a younger audience, a teen audience. But for me, I don't really think of it too much like I'm writing for teenagers. I just think I'm trying to write a book that has a good story and that, like, I don't know. A lot of times I think about Marissa, like, what do I want to read? What do I think would be fun?

[04:16] Anna: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Like, I'm writing for my teenage self but also my current self because I don't want to write something that I would find boring, you know, 100% both.

[04:26] Marissa: It is a mix. It's a mix of trying to please my current self and also my teen self. Yeah, that's funny. What would teen Anna feel about this book, do you think?

[04:37] Anna: I don't know. I think, to be completely honest, a lot of what I'm writing about is stuff that teen Anna didn't really have on her radar yet, so I think she would find it fascinating. But also, like, oh, things like this are going to impact our lives more than it does now. That's interesting.

[04:56] Marissa: That is interesting. No, that's a great point. And I'd be curious, have you heard from readers, too, who are like, this was not at all on my radar, but I think it's so interesting. Yeah.

[05:07] Anna: Well, especially with give me a sign. I like to write about disability, but, like, from a question standpoint, so forgive me, a sign. A lot of it was like, okay, what does deaf representation look like when it's a character who isn't quite sure if she feels deaf enough. So then the question that I had for, on the bright side was, okay, so what if you have a disability that you aren't exactly proud of? Like, where does disability pride come from? So that was really, I think I had to reach this point in my life to be able to have a coherent take on such a big question. But, yeah, it's been such a relief to see readers engaging with the material at that level where it's like, oh, wow, I understand the notion of disability pride now. Okay, that's a very big topic, and I'm glad I was able to kind of distill it down to a point that readers can enjoy learning about.

[06:02] Marissa: Yeah, no, sure. That's very powerful. That's very impactful. Okay, we're going to go take. We're going to. I want to come back to that, but first we're going to go a few steps backward, back in time, because the first thing that I love to hear from guests is your writer origin story. Did you always know you wanted to be a writer, or how did you get here?

[06:22] Anna: So I was always a reader, and that kind of translated to me taking on my own little projects. Like, as a kid, I would sit on my bedroom floor and try to write my own magic treehouse book. But it was one of those things, too, where it was like I knew I wanted to write. I tried to write screenplays in college. It was one of those things where I wasn't quite sure the feasibility of this as, like, a career. I wasn't quite sure I could take myself as a writer seriously. So it wasn't until I ended up, me and my film major ended up at some kind of dead end corporate job. But the bonus of that was they paid for grad school. So while all my coworkers were rushing out to get computer science degrees or MBA's, I was like, hold up, I'm going to go study creative writing some more.

[07:10] Marissa: Nice.

[07:11] Anna: Yeah. But the best part about that was there was a class there called novels, and the whole objective was to write 60,000 words in one quarter. And that was kind of the hurdle I was finally able to get over. Like, oh, wow. Like, those books that are so long and so daunting, I could write something that's that long, but, you know, even longer. 60,000 would be kind of short. So then, yeah. And after that, I ended up getting into pitch wars, which was incredible. With my mentor, Aiden Thomas. Also incredible.

[07:41] Marissa: Oh, I love Aidan.

[07:44] Anna: And then the sad part about pitch wars was that we were released into the query trenches. And I believe February of 2020 was a very dark time to be at, like, I would say, arguably the most stressful part of being a writer. The querying stage when the world was like, I don't know, are there books going to happen anymore? I don't know.

[08:09] Marissa: Right.

[08:09] Anna: But then, fortunately, looking back on it, it was such a short time period, but being in it, it felt like forever. I then ended up signing with my agent, Kari, and she has been a wonderful advocate. And we ended up then a year later, we did some revisions, and everything was slow on submission. So this wasn't actually our first round, but then our second round of submission. Right away, we ended up getting an offer for give me a sign. And so it's kind of been great from there with other projects lining up and readers loving the work so far. And I just kind of think it's been such a quick journey, but a long journey at the same time. Like, if I had to go back and tell myself February 2020, that a couple years later, things would be a lot better than they were now. I don't know if I would believe myself.

[09:00] Marissa: Right? Sometimes I want to do that. I so badly wish that I could just send a little telegram to past Marissa, like, it's going to be okay. You just need to get through this. Yeah, I want to. So you mentioned this novel writing class and how that was, like, the hurdle that you had to get through or get over. So had you tried writing a novel before then and hadn't managed to finish it, or what was it about that class in particular, that kind of, like, what did the teacher do, the instructor or the class, or how did that work to kind of help you down that path?

[09:35] Anna: Yeah. So a lot of my writing had been kind of journalism focused or screenplay focused. So just the idea of something with that many words was a mental hurdle I could not get over. And so I don't think I had ever set out to write a novel before. I had written a couple full length screenplays, so I understood kind of the plotting aspect and the character development and all that. But even with that very first book that will never see the light of day that I ended up writing. It was a lot of, like, I needed to really figure out descriptions. I really needed to figure out how to not be such an underwriter, which I think is something I still grapple with. All of my first drafts are so short. Like, the whole story is there, but they're so short.

[10:19] Marissa: I have the opposite problem. I wish I could be an underwriter.

[10:24] Anna: I'll trade you.

[10:26] Marissa: I don't know. It's totally a grass is greener situation. My brain always wants to overcomplicate everything, and then I end up having to at the end of the draft, like, okay, well, now, how do I cut 30,000 words from this?

[10:40] Anna: Oh, my gosh. To cut 30,000 words, I would be in heaven.

[10:44] Marissa: You're like, I would have no book left.

[10:46] Anna: Yeah.

[10:48] Marissa: Okay, so now here you are. That first book written in that class is history, but you have had two books published. Would you please tell listeners a little bit about your newest novel? On the bright side?

[11:07] Anna: Yeah. So I like to quickly describe it as a senior year, neither of them expected, but one in which they find each other. So it's a girl who stepped boarding school shut down and she has to go to her local public school where she meets a boy who doesn't really understand disability but unknowingly is about to receive a diagnosis of his own.

[11:28] Marissa: Okay. So for me, this is a book that is so driven by the character arcs, and we've got two main characters who have very different character arcs. Talk a little bit about your process when it comes to developing the characters and figuring out their journey. Are you figuring it out as you go? Do you give it a lot of thought in advance? How do you tackle that?

[12:00] Anna: Yeah, it was a really fun experience writing a dual pov story this time because it was my first time attempting this. And it was nice, too, because to begin with, the story was focused on Ellie and her journey being mainstreamed into public school. And from the very initial pitch, Jackson wasn't even going to have a disability of his own. He was just kind of going to be a side character in Ellie's story. But as I was writing it, I was like, you know what? Personally, I have some things I want to talk about, so I might as well see if I can incorporate this into an arc for Jackson. And then I really enjoyed how it turned out with a dual pov of both having strong arcs of their own. But then the intersection of them was like their romance together, their friendship blossoming, and I, the way they're able to lean on each other in kind of this unexpected situation. But I did remember in revisions, too, I had to make sure, okay, this is a dual pov story for a reason. Like, these characters have to interact as much as they do. They have to influence each other's stories because there was a part in the beginning where I was a little bit worried that they would be two separate stories. But I think it came together well enough in the end.

[13:16] Marissa: So I'm curious about that. And the idea that in an early, I don't know if it was in the middle of a draft or, like, at what point did you realize that, okay, these stories, they really need to gel together. They really need to intertwine and affect each other. And what did you do? Did you brainstorm scenes that they could have together, or what did you do to kind of make that happen?

[13:41] Anna: Yeah. Yeah. That was just part of my editor's brilliant edit letter, was, you know, I think in the beginning, if we could just have more of them, more of them bonding, more of them getting to know each other, more of their relationship kind of developing from the ground up. And so then that really helped with a lot of the kind of early draft stumbles of, like, okay, it feels like they're two separate stories happening here was that all of a sudden, a lot of their beginning scenes are kind of interacting with each other.

[14:10] Marissa: Proof again, that editors are worth their weight in gold.

[14:13] Anna: Oh, yeah. My editor will find a, like, a strand of the story and say, hey, like this little part. What if we expanded on that? And I go, you solved it. You solved everything, right?

[14:24] Marissa: That's the best feeling. Why didn't I think of that?

[14:29] Anna: Yeah.

[14:31] Marissa: Well, I think that's so interesting, because even though the book is very character driven and specifically, like, you are very focused on these two different arcs and the different things that they are going through and the way that they are each growing and changing. But it's like you've got these characters on these two very different journeys, but the glue holding them together is, of course, this beautiful romance storyline. How much do you love writing romance? Or are you a writer who, like, I know I need this to be romantic, but I'm going to shy away for it until I can come. Like, where are you on that spectrum?

[15:11] Anna: I lean more and more into loving romance with every. I think it's just one of the easiest pieces of dialogue for me to write is, you know, characters, like, bantering with each other and, like, kind of coming together. And even the argument. I love writing an argument like that. I'll all of a sudden just have multiple pages of dialogue that I didn't see coming. But, yeah.

[15:38] Marissa: And I think it's.

[15:39] Anna: I've noticed, too, like, in everything I try to write is one of those words, like, as a reader, I love a romance in a story, whether it's kind of a smaller subplot or the main story. But I think there's just something about that connection that can really really carry a story along.

[15:56] Marissa: What tips might you have for writers who are working on a romance? Maybe it's the focus of the story, maybe not so much anything that you've learned or that you've taken away from writing romance that you're like, okay, I try to do this every time, or I'm constantly thinking about this or whatever it is.

[16:16] Anna: Oh, gosh, that feels a little daunting to tackle. I mean, I would say letting the characters just kind of do their own thing. Like, even though I outline pretty rigidly almost, I will say the part that I leave open the most to exploration is just interactions. So, like, maybe I'll say, like, okay, we need a scene that happens here with the outcome is this. But the whole how to get from point a to point b is something that I don't outline for, and that's something that I just kind of leave up to. Like, all right, let's see how these characters want to interact now and just kind of, like, let it all fold out, like, on the page and, like, see what happens. And, like, is there going to be a point in the middle where it's like, oh, no, this is actually a fight scene? When I thought it was, like, a more romantic scene, like, let's go from there, like, the opposite to, it's those parts that feel more like an exploration in writing.

[17:12] Marissa: That's such a great way to describe that because I am very similar. I also am a really rigid outliner, but it seems like in every outline I'll have scenes where it's like, I know this has to be an interaction. I know this needs to be developing the romance arc or these two characters. Something needs to happen here. I don't know what it is being such an intense outliner, but those moments always elude me until I am, like, knee deep in the writing. And so I always just, like, leave little placeholders, like, something romantic and then just trust that it will come. Right.

[17:51] Anna: And that's always fun, too. Yeah. If it's like one of those that you cycle back on because you still get to point b, but you're like, wow, something might happen in between here that I had no idea was going to happen.

[18:00] Marissa: Yeah.

[18:01] Anna: Yeah.

[18:01] Marissa: And I think part of it is because, and I don't know. Okay, first, let me ask you, so your rigid outliner, how much do you plan your characters? How much character development do you do before you start writing the characters?

[18:19] Anna: I really try to hold the full story in my head, which can be complicated sometimes, but so I think that does mean that in the early outlining, the characters aren't as fleshed out because I do notice when I'm finally, like, going through the second time and, like, expanding my word count to something way higher that's when I really start to figure out the characters of, like, oh, like, she likes to knit. Like, that's gonna be something that happens in the story now and that's gonna tie in well with, like, a gift she'll give to Jackson. And, like, all that stuff was definitely not in the original outline.

[18:55] Marissa: Yeah, no, same. That's, like, really similar to me as well. And I think that this is part of the reason why it's so hard to know. Advance, you know, what the romantic moment should be because, of course, romance and falling in love looks so different for different people. So I've. I've come to just, even though I hate it, I hate not knowing what those scenes are going to be in advance, I've kind of come to live with it because I know that I can't know in advance what these characters are going to fall for, what they're going to swoon for until I'm in it and I can really start to know who they are.

[19:31] Anna: Exactly. Yeah. That's why I love revising. Drafting can be like pulling teeth sometimes, but I love revising. Which the most amazing part of elevate is that, like, I will somehow write more words in revising than I did during drafting without even noticing it. Like, I'll open up a document and boom, there's 5000 words that somehow appeared on the page because I'm technically revising now instead of drafting a.

[19:59] Marissa: That's so funny. I love that. What is it about revising that gets you so excited?

[20:06] Anna: Well, I think it's what we've been talking about. Like, I finally know the characters now. You know, it's like the. The bones of it are all there but I can fill in all the little details much more confidently.

[20:17] Marissa: Yeah, yeah, no, that's fair. I also. I mean, I like both parts of the process, but I always feel like revising is where the real magic happens.

[20:26] Anna: Yeah, yeah.

[20:27] Marissa: It's kind of like drafting. I'm just, like, going through the motions, trying to get the story down. But revisions is when it starts to take shape and become the story that I wanted it to be.

[20:38] Anna: Yeah. Where it all starts to kind of sparkle. Like it's all. This could be a real book now.

[20:43] Marissa: Exactly, exactly. And that's a good feeling because up until that moment, we're just nothing but fear and doubt.

[20:50] Anna: Yeah. Every time.

[20:52] Marissa: Every time, you'd think that would go away. It doesn't 

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Marissa: Okay, I want to talk about family dynamics and writing family dynamics because we have these two characters. They're both experiencing these very different disabilities and these very different arcs to do with their disabilities. But one similarity is that they have families and parents who are kind of disconnected from what it is that they're going through and not always aware of Orlando. Super respectful of their needs. So tell me a little bit about that and digging into those family dynamics and why you kind of decided to have that parallel each other.

[22:26] Anna: Yeah, that was one of the things that in revisions was a focus to build up, was each of their respective parent relationships, because I think at the core, even though some readers might not pick up on it as much, they have parents who love them, who want what's best for them through the lens, which they think is best, which is just at odds with what the kids need at the moment. So I think it was interesting, too, with Ellie's parents. They were more than happy for her to go to the deaf institute, but when she's home back in their world, they want her to kind of play by their rules. And I know a lot of people are going to read it and be like, oh, these are kind of the worst parents ever. And I was like, I don't think that as the writer, I think they are fine parents. I think there's just a disconnect, like you said, and the way that the parents want to raise their child and what support the child actually needs. And so the same with, like, Jackson's parents is like, he's going through something that none of them have experienced before, so they don't know how to handle it. They don't know if, like, you know, what if it is all in his head? What if he needs to go get out and stop moping around? But, like, in Jackson's body, his experience, he knows what's going on. He can tell them better than they can see from the outside what's going on. So I think it was really interesting to write because, like I said, these aren't the worst parents ever. And as the writer, I don't think that. I think it's just the situation of disability is something that not everyone kind of has an understanding of. So if it's your child and that's one of the first disabled people you've ever really interacted with, you don't know how to raise them from the lens that maybe you were raised. So I think it was interesting because it's not typical in ya that you get a note that's like, maybe we should have more of the parents. That's usually like, no, we need lots of the parents. But I thought it was really interesting to explore with these characters because they are kind of growing up, they're both 18, and they're both kind of experiencing the world. But I, you know, they're still at the point where they're living at home and have such parental influence. Well, Ellie, at the beginning, but. So, yeah, I thought it was really interesting to explore because there's a lot of just differing opinion with, you know, I don't know how to raise your children, how to experience disability, all of that. So kind of seeing it come together and seeing the different aspects of it. But, yeah, it's interesting to see, because I have seen a couple of reader comments, like, all these parents, and I was like, they're trying their best, too. Like, I don't know.

[25:01] Marissa: It's always easy being on the outside looking in to be like, you're wrong. No, I agree. I thought it was really interesting. I particularly loved what you did with Jackson's mom, who has this very holistic health thing. She believes in dietary changes and exercise and this idea that this can fix everything. And to see how that plays off of Jackson as he's getting his diagnosis and all of this, and she's just like, but what about diet? What else can I feed him? And I think that that was so realistic to so many people who, in their past, this has always worked for me. You just fix the diet. You fixed whatever the. The environment or whatever it is, and that solves the problem. Um, and for then her to be faced with something where that doesn't solve the problem. Yeah, it was just kind of an interesting dynamic there.

[26:02] Anna: Yeah. And in the, like, circumstances of a diagnosis, you're just hit with so much information. So, like, for Jackson, he needed to, like, take top tier, most important, and, like, diet and exercise at that point are, you know, supplemental. Um, but, like, when you're the parent, you're like, oh, man. Well, this always works. Yeah. Like, let's try this and, and then also this. But when time is of the essence, you kind of got to go with the strongest options.

[26:29] Marissa: Yeah, yeah. I want to go back to something you said really early on in our conversation, is that this book is dealing with things that might be a little tricky for some readers to read and to explore and experience. And when you said that, I kind of had this thought, like, you know, so disability rep in, I know, certainly in ya fiction, I can't speak for the fiction market as a whole, but I mean, it seems like such an open market. There's just not a lot of disability rep. Do we think, is this why? Is it because it's so difficult for readers or is it just because publishers haven't gotten on that train yet? Like how, what are your thoughts on that?

[27:14] Anna: Yeah, I don't think the door has necessarily always been open, so that's kind of the first step. But I think too, disability is a varied experience. You know, when I was writing give me a sign, that was something that kind of was always worrying me. I was like, well, my experience being deaf is not the same as, you know, my neighbor's experience being deaf. So it's one of those where it's like you can't really speak for everyone when you're writing these stories. So when we've had so few stories, it's kind of hard for them to like, you know, hit such a wide audience because, you know, you have to go specific in order for them to go universal, which is something that I did learn from. Give me a sign, though, was like, I thought, you know, maybe it was very unique to me. Be like, okay, I'm deaf, but am I deaf enough? But when give me a sign came out, I had people of all ages saying like, you know, I've always been deaf. Maybe I knew sign language a lot or a little, but like, I can relate to this story because I always felt like I was somewhere in between. So then I took that kind of guidance. I was like, oh, on the bright side, we're going to get very specific here and see what kind of universal story I can tell with that.

[28:23] Marissa: Yeah. When you're writing, are you thinking a lot about how to balance this very specific experience and of course putting a lot of your own experiences into these stories, but also wanting it to be approachable for a wider audience?

[28:41] Anna: Yeah. So I always try to think of the disabled readers as my primary audience, but the thing I know is that a lot of, you know, able bodied readers are going to pick up this book, and they're going to want to try to learn things from it. So I try not to think of it as like, oh, I got to be super educational here. But I do try to make sure that, like, there's at least context. Like, if I'm not going to, like, with Ellie's character, she is the opposite of Lila. Like she tells Jackson very early on, like, I'm not in the mood to educate you. So with this book, was taking less of an approach where it's like, okay, the information is not going to all be here, but hopefully through the context, hopefully through their experiences and what they're dealing with, you can pick up on some of the things that might need to be outright said in other texts.

[29:29] Marissa: Right. And, of course, this is one of the things that we love about books and fiction in general is that it does give you the opportunity to be in someone else's head and to experience the things that they experience and to kind of live life through someone else's eyes. And it certainly can be, I mean, quote unquote educational. But it's also, it just is one of those ways that it can satisfy curiosity, it can build empathy. I mean, there's so many great things about it, and not even just, of course, with disability characters, but so many things. So many things that we learn from reading about other people.

[30:09] Anna: Yeah, yeah. And definitely, like I was saying earlier, too, with, like, getting specific to get universal, with, like, with give me a sign. I had so many people say, like, okay, I'm not deaf, but in my own, like, cultural background, I understand what it feels like to be caught in the middle. And I was like, okay, yeah, if we can find, like, commonalities on different things, you can start to, you know, understand something that you might not have thought was as easily understandable.

[30:31] Marissa: Right. No, that's a really great point. Yeah. I mean, we're all human, right? We all have the same emotions, even if we're experiencing the world in really different ways. Would you talk a little bit more? And you've, of course, touched on this a little bit already, but writing about characters who have similarities with you, not you, these are not autobiographies, but that you're putting a little bit of your own experiences into. Do you find that easier when it comes to character development or harder? Does it provide an interesting challenge or where is that?

[31:07] Anna: Yeah, I think a little bit of both, because I remember with the first book, I kept asking my family, like, you know, it's not me. Right? And they're like, oh, we know it's not you. And I was like, well, there's readers who aren't going to know that. But with this second book, I felt a lot more of the ability to like, okay, it's not going to be an automatic assumption that I'm just writing about myself here. And that did give me more room to kind of play around with, you know, the experience of it, because, I don't know, I had to. In signing my book for my parents, I was like, I promise I'll write good parents in the next one. I was like, don't worry. Like, I know this wasn't like my personal experience, but even from there, like, I was drawing on things from my home life in the sense that, like, if in any given room, you're the only one who can't hear everything that's going on, you know, I can use that to kind of color Ellie's experiences, even if they're not exact situations I've been in myself. So I think it was interesting because. Yeah, a lot of, like I was saying, too, Jackson wasn't originally meant to be a disabled character. But at the same time, I was just like, I need an outlet to process various things when talking about Ms. So it was one of those, like, all right, let's see what happens here. It was fascinating because this story came out so fully formed. Like, it was just one of those things where I feel like I blinked and this story just came into existence. But a lot of that was because it was kind of my outlet at a time where I needed to process a lot of things. So it was interesting, too, that it all came together and that I somehow feel like I avoided a second novel struggle. I was so caught up in my own world that the fictional world was just kind of like. And escape, even though I was writing about the same kind of hard things.

[32:55] Marissa: Oh, my God. That is so magical. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that about their second book.

[33:00] Anna: Yeah, you. I keep joking. I was like, hopefully the next one's fine. I don't know.

[33:05] Marissa: Right. Wait, what other deep emotions can I tap into for this one? Yeah, no, that's such a valid point, though, because I think for me, too, like, for the books, that I am really deeply connected to the characters, or I think. How did you phrase it earlier? Like, I had something to say with this book. Like, those books, they do. They have a different. I don't know, not a different process so much, but there's just a different vibe to writing them. And I know exactly what you're talking about, and I wish that we could capture it with every book, but I. I don't know. For me, not every book can be that vulnerable. Like, sometimes I need to also write about, like, explosions in space.

[33:52] Anna: Yeah. That's what I found, too, is, like, I don't know, like, in my personal life, like, I am not someone who, like, shares a lot of personal things, like, on the Internet or even, like, with family and friends, but, like, I will go into a novel and talk about some real personal things for those characters because, like, I. They are not me. They are not having my experiences, but they can talk about whatever they need to.

[34:17] Marissa: Yeah, no, that's so, so funny. And I totally get that. And I love that you had to, like, clarify for your parents. Like, all right, better parents next time. It gave me this memory of when my first book came out and my mom was like, is the wicked stepmother based on me? It's based on Cinderella.

[34:40] Anna: Yeah. It's like, I don't know what you're reading into, but it's not.

[34:44] Marissa: We can totally psychoanalyze this. All right, so my last question before we move on to our bonus round is, you know, you yourself, coming from a place of having a disability, how would you say that has impacted you, uh, as a writer, either on the creative side or on the publishing side? Like, what does that. Has that opened up interesting avenues and doors, or has it been just created more challenges? What would you say to that?

[35:17] Anna: I don't know. I feel like. Like I was saying earlier, with querying. Querying was my biggest hurdle. You know, before I had the supportive team around me, it was hard to know what publishing would want to make a book. Like, give me a sign. You know, like, it was full of disabled characters, and a lot of the responses I got from various agents were wanting to turn it into totally different things than what I had in mind. So, yeah, it was one of those ideas of, like, okay, like, if I want to write across genres, if I want to explore different things that aren't so centered on disability but still have disabled character, is publishing going to let me? But then it was a relief, you know, like, I found the right team who, you know, could support the book and, you know, still stay in line with, like, my vision for the story. But, you know, I know it's not easy. Like, I will say I do feel fortunate in, like, how my journey has gone so far, but I hear from friends who have had, you know, some pretty high roadblocks when it comes to, you know, telling disabled stories and having, you know, the right support behind them. But I think, like we were saying earlier, there really hasn't been much representation in publishing, especially from, you know, authors who share the same disabilities as they are writing. So I just am relieved to see that, you know, publishing is moving in a better direction, more stories. So it's not like I didn't feel the pressure of like, oh no, this is going to be the only book because fortunately there are, you know, a multitude of other authors, you know, writing similar topics from their own lens.

[36:55] Marissa: Well, it's been a joy to have you. Okay, are you ready for our bonus round?

[36:59] Anna: Yeah, sure.

[37:00] Marissa: What book makes you happy?

[37:02] Anna: Yeah, I'm thinking long and hard about this one, but I would love to say the collection of essays edited by Alice Wong, both disability visibility and disability intimacy, which just came out recently for a multitude of disabled voices.

[37:17] Marissa: I will put it on my list next. Let's see, what are you working on next?

[37:23] Anna: Oh, I would love to shout from the rooftops, but such they are all unannounced. But I have something for slightly younger audience that will be more visual and more ya as well.

[37:37] Marissa: Nice. Lastly, where can people find you?

[37:42] Anna: Yeah, my socials are at Annaksortino and then my website is just annasortino.com dot.

[37:48] Marissa: Excellent. Anna, thank you so much for joining me.

[37:51] Anna: Yeah, thank you for having me.

[37:53] Marissa: Readers, be sure to check out. On the bright side, of course we encourage you to support your local indie bookstore, but if you don't have a local indie, you can check out our affiliate store@bookshop.org, shop. Marissa Meyer next week I will be chatting with prolific romance author Lydia Michaels about her writing guide. Write ten k a day. Avoid burnout. Can it be done? We shall find out. Please don't forget to leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. Check out our merchandise on Etsy, Instagram and teepublic. And please follow us on Instagram Happy Writer podcast. Until next time, stay inspired, keep writing, and whatever life throws at you today. I hope that now you're feeling a little bit happier.