Nova McBee On Getting A Film Deal First & Having An Editorial Agent

Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see a a guest.

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Mindy: We're here with Nova McBee author of the YA trilogy that begins with Calculated, which is pitched as Count of Monte Cristo meets Mission Impossible. Calculated is available now, Simulated is the sequel, and then there is Activated, which is the third book, which will be upcoming. So Nova has a very, very interesting story in that her publishing journey is very much backwards. So if you would like to talk a little bit about what that means. 

Nova: When I say that – my agent was like, who are you? This doesn't happen. And it's not normal. You're not normal. I mean, it's true. Everyone has a completely different path when it comes to anything really, but especially publishing. Some people can get deals within a week and others take seven years. The backwards journey is I got a film deal first, right after I got my agent. And then I got an audio book deal. And then lastly, I got a publishing deal. That is completely backwards. 

We have to talk about our journey. And I remember when I first started writing books, how hesitant I was to say, I'm a writer or I'm an author. You feel like you have to get it somewhere for that to be spoken out. It was a challenge in me and I, I needed to start speaking it out to all my friends and family that didn't know I was doing it–and even strangers–before I had my agent before I had my publishing deal. And because of that, I ended up meeting a girl who was living in China at the same time as me. And she happened to be an up and coming producer. Her father was a producer. So we got to talking about my book that I was still pitching to agents at the time.

And she's like, wow, that sounds like right up my alley. She's like, I'm actually working with these producers right now that are looking for something almost exactly like that. I would like to read it, to see if it's worth passing on to them. You know, how do you say no to that? You're like, okay. And, you don't know where it's going. I was rejected for two and a half years at this point with agents. Let's just try at this point. I gave it to her. Didn't hear back for a while. And then I got an agent and we signed. Maybe three weeks after we signed – on a different book, by the way – and then I get this call from the other two male producers in California. And they're like, this book has gone through our entire team and we need to sign you before anyone else does.

We need the rights to this. And my agent was like, who are you? And what book are they talking about? So she's like, well, I better read this book, you know, which was Calculated. And so she read it in a day and that started this very unique journey of just negotiations and learning about the industry and what that means. And then she's like, well, then we have to put down the other book and we need to focus on Calculated, getting Calculated  a publishing deal. She kind of threw it out to all of her contacts and it was taking again a long time, but she had put it out to some of her audio book contacts and the audio just responded first. And they're like, Hey, we're super interested. We really like it. We wanna sign you. That’s my backward publishing journey. I think it took almost a year.

This new imprint contacted us. They'd heard about the book and they contacted us and said, Hey, we're starting a brand new YA imprint. And we would like to have the chance to read Calculated to consider it as the lead title. And we were not sure because it was a brand new imprint, a very unique style of publisher. They're sort of a mix between independent and traditional. They do both. They're very fascinating and very innovative and very cool to work with because they are so flexible and willing to try everything. I've just had the best experience with how awesome they are, like truly team players. And so they read it, they loved it. We signed that deal. It went backwards very much. 

Mindy: So I think it's really interesting that you had this relationship that got you a film deal. It can feel like it is almost a barrier in some ways, because people are like, I don't have connections. I don't have the things that I need in order to make that happen. I understand that feeling because I had heard for so long that networking is so important. Networking in this industry is a big deal. I am a farmer's daughter from Ohio. I was not going to have contacts in publishing. And I got into the industry by cold querying, my agent picking me up and that was in 2010. And so I've just been building since then. It's been real work, but, but because of the networking that I do, like I did have an in, in the sense that I was a librarian at a public school. So I had connections in the library world that could help me then promote the book, but all of that, networking with other authors and agents and editors, knowing who you are that does take time to build.

Nova: Exactly. And one thing that I didn't mention was while I was cold querying, which is how I got my agent, I actually was accepted into PitchWars. And before Calculated, actually. Pintip Dunn  was my mentor and I didn't know anybody in publishing. I had nobody. I started out as like, you know, zero contacts, like you, in the industry. I was actually living in China at the time with zero contacts. Rachel Griffin, who's the author of The Nature of Witches, we had met on one of my visits back to Seattle. And she's a friend of mine. She was like, yeah, I'm gonna try, try this thing called Pitch Wars. And I'm like, oh, I am so not into contests. But, then I felt like I was supposed to do it. In the midst of that, there was an agent who was really interested in working with me, but I just felt like it was wrong.

And I was like, well, I'm gonna try to do Pitch Wars first. And then I got in and then the networking, like you're talking about it, sort of exploded because you meet everyone in Pitch Wars. My year was just incredible. Everybody was so encouraging. So supportive, all wanted to be friends, all wanted to boost, all wanted to read each other's work. I was like, what is this goodness? Because everyone was just pouring into each other and boosting each other. And it was like the most fruitful year ever, where I just got to meet all these people, it was just sort of placed upon me. And yet I didn't get my agent through that either. You know, my agent was cold querying. All the Pitch Wars agent requests didn't pan out. Nobody wanted Calculated,. And so I, in the midst of that, I wrote another book called The Never House. And I started querying that book and that's the book my agent read and signed me on. And she had no clue about Calculated.

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Mindy: I think it's really interesting too, that we talk about publishing and the different paths of publishing, but I also wanna point out, you did get your agent through cold querying. I know people hate it. I know people hate the process. I know that it is soul sucking. I know that it is hard, but I was querying for 10 years. You gotta get punched in the face, if you wanna be able to move forward in this business. I was rejected for 10 years. 

Nova: That is intense. Mine was two and a half. I watched people give up after like 10 rejections and I'm like, yeah, what? But what? No. And, people do give up. And, but in the midst of that, I was actually growing stronger. It sucks, like rejection does not feel good, but in the midst of that, this article popped up and it was like this actress. I don't even remember who it was, but she was like, if you can't handle rejection, you will never be able to handle success. And I was just like, dang, that's so good. Because in the midst of that, like, if you're not really sure you're supposed to be somewhere, it's so easy to get bullied back out of it. You know, you learn to stand your ground and who you are and what you want and what you think you're supposed to be doing. You know? And it just, for me, it was a good season where I was like, no, it doesn't matter what they say. I'm supposed to do this. I'm gonna write books and I'm gonna get that publishing deal. And it's gonna happen. I don't know when, but it's gonna happen. 

Mindy: You have to build that thick skin. There's no doubt about it. And one of the reasons why I was getting rejected, yes, for 10 years, I wrote four different novels. The fifth one was the one that finally got picked up. I deserved to be rejected for 10 years. I didn't want to process feedback. I didn't wanna share my work with anybody. I didn't wanna have critique partners. Like I didn't wanna do the actual work. I wanted to write a book and have everyone love it. And tell me it was a genius. That is not how this shit works. I had to basically grow the fuck up. So I deserved all the rejections I got and it did make me obviously a better writer. It pushed me out into sharing my work with other people, processing feedback, learning the industry, discovering trends, all of the different things. Yes, it did build that thick skin. 

And you will be rejected. Once you get an agent, your rejection is not over. You're gonna be rejected by publishers. And then you will be rejected by your readers. Like that's just all there is to it. I used to read my reviews. I don't anymore. I simply don't see the point. Good reviews make you rest on your laurels. Bad reviews make you feel like shit. There's nothing you can do about them. You can't respond to bad reviews. That's poor author behavior. So there's literally nothing you can do. I didn't write this book for you. 

Nova: Yeah, no, I think that's so good to talk about, actually. You had to step into like letting people see your work and getting feedback. That happened to me too. And the first time I shared my work with somebody outside of my family and they were like, yeah, I'm not really feeling it. I'm like, oh… But then, but then I'm like, well, why? And they were like, well, because of this and this, and I was like, oh yeah, I can see that. Once you receive feedback and have awesome critique partners, it's like gold. The minute I show them, they're gonna see something that I'm missing. And then I'll be able to go back and make it even better. It's such a powerful stage in the process. It is. 

Mindy: And it preps you for that larger, it may not be a rejection, but it feels like we're when you get your letter from your editor. You get an edit letter. You open it up, you read it. And it's one of two things. You either cry or you get pissed. I get pissed. Like, that's just who I am. I'll read the edit letter. And it's like, you don't understand me. You don't get what I'm trying to do. I usually don't return to it for as long as a week, sometimes two. And then you open it up and you read it again. And you're like, yeah. Okay, fine. 

Because the truth is every time I turn in a book, I know exactly what's wrong with it. When I get that feedback returned that says - Yeah, you were right. You didn't do this good. It's just like, oh yeah? You're just defensive. You know where your weaknesses are. And having them pointed out does not make you a kinder, gentler, more lovely person.

Nova: That rejection keeps coming. And, and then, you know, you'll get reviews on that same book, an author, Shannon Dittemore, we were talking right before Calculated came out. She told me the same thing. She's like, I don't read any reviews. And she's like, I just advise you not to do it. Well, that's really hard to do for the first time author. Right? I did. So of course I read my reviews. Thankfully, the ones that came in right away were good. Like really good. And I was encouraged. 

I had a really cool experience with Pitch Wars when it comes to edit letters, because Pintip Dunn, she was incredible. She marked out all the places that she loved, which I think is the best kind of critique. Here's all the places that you are so strong. And this is why I love the book. This is why I chose you as a mentee. And here's where we can make it really stronger. Calculated, has a dual timeline. And it was already pretty tight, but she pressed me in that. She's like, you can make this better. She's like, you need to pull information that I need in the present from the past and vice versa. The more you pull these two together and you stretch that information. Just those nuggets of truth that she really passed on to me, just like really built me as an author as well. 

And my agent, her name is Amy Jameson. She's absolutely incredible as well. She launched Shannon Hale's career, and Jessica Day George. And she's an editor too. So before my work goes to the publisher, she reads it for me. She doesn't give me a huge edit letter, but oh, I will have comments all the way down. She tells me, I'm your toughest critic, but I'm also your greatest supporter. She goes through the whole book with me. And I don't know if that's part of her job description, but she just believes in her clients.

Mindy: I have a very, very good relationship with my editor. For one thing we've been working together since 2015 at this point.

Nova: Is that at Harper Teen, are you with Harper?

Mindy: I’m at Katherine Tegen, which is a branch of Harper. So I'm with Ben Rosenthal and he's been with me since 2015. We've actually worked together a lot and that's kind of rare and we have a wonderful relationship. So my agent is pretty hands off in the editorial area because she knows that I have a great relationship with my editor and that he and I are gonna hash that out. And we work really well together now. I've also been with my agent for 12 years. So in the beginning she was a little more hands on, but now that I'm a little more established and I have my own relationships within the publishing industry, everyone knows that I am not going to turn in junk and that I am going to fix whatever you say needs to be fixed. Like I am going to work my ass off. People know that about me. So I already have that reputation, so she doesn't have to guide me editorially like she did in the beginning. 

Nova: That's so true. And every publishing house will be different, you know? Are all of your books with Katherine Tegen? 

Mindy: With the exception of my two fantasy novels that are with Putnam? Yes. 

Nova: That's amazing. Wow. I'm impressed. 

Mindy: I love, I love the imprint. Also of interest - I've had the same cover designer for all of my books. 

Nova: Wow. Are you kidding me? 

Mindy: No, I'm not. The ones that are with Putnam aren’t her, but yes. 

Nova: You know, just having a team that you know, and that you trust. That's so powerful as well. It's just so cool. Cause then you guys know how to work together. You know, each other's systems and you can speak freely with each other. I'm assuming. 

Mindy: Oh yeah. Very. I would like to talk about using the classics and in your particular case, the Count of Monte Cristo, as a launching point for your story. So is it a story that you've always loved? Like what led you there? 

Nova: I didn't know anything about the industry when I started Calculated. So I was living in China and then also, I've lived abroad for a long time. I've also lived in Europe, in the MiddleEast. And I actually read the count of Monte Cristo when I was living in France. It's intense. 

Mindy: I've read it.

Nova: But you're so steeped in the story that it stays with you for so long. It just like completely captivated my mind. And I went through a whole period of time when I knew I wanted to be a writer where I went through a classic period. I'm from Seattle. And there's quite a large community of people who are anti-trafficking, you know, Seattle's a hub for that. So I had come back to the states for a little trip and I had gone to this trafficking meeting and I was just sitting in my living room afterwards thinking like, what if this story happened today? Where would it be? It would have to be a super powerful country. 

And at the time I was living in China, I was like, oh, what if it happened in China? Who would be taken? Would it be a guy or a girl? I was like, oh, it'd definitely be a girl. And like, the story just started evolving in my head. What if I could do a spinoff? How would she transform into all of these identities? Cause like in the count of Monte Cristo, he has more than one identity. He's not just the count of Monte Cristo, he has multiple identities. In one morning. I had the whole story in my head, but it took two and a half, three years to write that. And it was my first novel. 

Mindy: It's pretty fascinating how you can take these disparate things in your life. Like you were saying, it was a book that you had read and then living abroad and then being involved in this, this trafficking concept and those things all coalesce. Last thing, why don't you let people know where, where they can find all of your books and where they can find you online. 

Nova: Of course you can buy them on Amazon, but they're also through any bookstore. You can order them through any bookstore online. And my local bookstores, the Edmund's Bookshop and Third Place Books, you can order them there. There's signed copies in those bookstores. I'm on Instagram and, and Facebook. You can find me there and Twitter, I pop in on sometimes, but not, not usually. And yeah, my third book comes out in April and there's exciting film news about to come in the next few weeks. So I'm looking forward to announcing all of that and hope people like my books!

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Mindy: Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.

Fading Fame: Pam Munter on Women, Aging in Hollywood, & the Casting Couch

Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see a a guest.

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Mindy: We're here with Pam Munter, author of Fading Fame: Women of a Certain Age in Hollywood, which tells the fictionalized stories of old Hollywood actresses and addresses some of the issues that we talk about today, such as the MeToo movement. it obviously is in the news and constantly being updated, of course, as people continue to come forward with their stories. But the casting couch in particular is hardly a new reality in the world of Hollywood. So if you could tell us a little bit about the book Fading Fame and how you came to write it.

Pam: I have always been in love with Hollywood. That's no secret. Since my first movie at age five, it never quite left me. I'm really a writer of nonfiction. And mostly what I have written up to this point has been nonfiction. I wrote a whole bunch of stories about old, mostly dead Hollywood actors and actresses for classic images and films of the golden age. And so I've always written to some extent about Hollywood. When I got into the Master of Fine Arts program, though, I was told that writing nonfiction was not enough. And I had to have a second genre, which kind of freaked me out, because nonfiction is all I've ever written and really all I ever read. I thought, OK, well, I'll try my hand at fiction. So I got into my seminar and the instruction was to write a short story. Well, I barely knew what that was because I read them in high school and college, but it had been a long time. So I thought, you know, I'll have all this information about Hollywood. What if I take that bulk of data and mess with them a little bit, fictionalize it and produce a short story? And out came the first, actually it's also the first one in the book called “Frances.” It's about Mary Pickford and her best friend, Frances Marion, who was a screenwriter. 

And some of the story, of course, is true. They were friends. Francis Marion was an extremely successful screenwriter. She was the first woman, in fact, to win two Oscars for screenwriting. Mary was, in fact, a pioneer in Hollywood. She was the first woman to form her own studio. Believe it or not, before the 1920s. And then she and Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin founded United Artists, which was a major studio that was still in operation today. So it was irresistible. I mean, these are such rich characters to write about. After I wrote that story, it turned out to be quite successful, almost immediately published, much to my shock. I thought, you know, maybe there are more women whose stories have yet to be told. And so each of the stories in Fading Fame, which is a collection of 10 short stories about women of a certain age, each of them have a grain of truth to them. But of course, they're fiction. And I just love putting it together, it was so much fun to give these women space and to hopefully engender some empathy in the reader for these women and what they went through.

Mindy: You say that you yourself have always been interested in films and a golden age of Hollywood. What is it about this that draws you so deeply?

Pam: Well, as a kid, the only mass media we had, the only information we had about Hollywood were movie magazines, and they were fake. They were pretty much written by the studio publicists. You know, there were five major movie studios that controlled the information flow. But I believed all of it. I just thought it was wonderful. It was a fairytale that you could walk around Hollywood and be discovered. And God knows I tried. And I believed the fairytale lives of these people. And before I knew what I was hooked. I mean, I later, of course, learned that hardly any of it was true, that there were gay people and people who were divorced many times and child abusers. And I mean, things we weren't supposed to know. I later found out, but it didn't dim my love for that era at all. And of course, they produced some pretty fine films

 Mindy: Talking about that golden age and the arena of women, because women have a shorter shelf life in Hollywood. If you could talk about that?

Pam: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And a lot of the women in these stories just ran out of time. They were hired because they were sexy and willing to engage in casting couch activities. But then, you know, after a couple of years, that they were bankable was not as important as the fact that they were no longer casting couchable, to put it politely. And so movie studios moved on. They were disposable commodities. 

Mindy: I feel like today things are changing somewhat. I can, of course, speak to how casting works. But I know that in media and in advertising, you are seeing more of a representation of people of color, people with all body shapes. It's not all the the white, fragile beauty that was always pushed upon the public for the longest time. Speaking then about the similarities and the differences now, do you think that progress has been made?

Pam: Well, changes have been made. Certainly we have mass media and everywhere you turn around, there's the 24/7 news cycle. There's very little we don't know now. To put it romantically, some of the magic has gone out of Hollywood. In a way, we know too much. We know who's suing whom and who's doing what to whom all of the time. Has it changed? Well, you know, one of the reasons it has changed has been the dispersal of power in Hollywood. As I said, there used to be five major studios with five nasty, old, white men in charge of it who could do what they wanted. That's no longer the case, Harvey Weinstein aside. There are so many companies now and independent producers, women have options. So it's not quite as restrictive. Is there sexism? You bet. I mean, every time you open the paper or go on Google you see #MeToo. It's there.

Mindy: Speaking about women in particular. I know, of course, that women feel pressure to keep up their looks, keep up the image of youth, even if it's fading, even if it's leaving them. And hopefully we are moving away from it. But we're used to seeing Botoxed faces and faces that change and women that change their looks like Renee Zellweger, you can’t even recognize anymore. And they go under the knife to sometimes an extreme extent. Were those options available to women during the golden age? How did they go about attempting to preserve their youth. 

Pam: Well, some were, but of course, the joys of plastic surgery that most of the technological innovations have happened in the last, what, 20, 30 years? They could fix your nose pretty easily. Facelifts were riskier. With Rita Hayworth, who, of course, was a bombshell in the 40s, they changed her hair line, which they thought was important, but mostly they did it with makeup. They didn't do a lot of surgery back then, so there weren’t options. If you got old, well, that was just too bad. Look at women who tried to keep looking young, and it's sort of sad to see that they feel they have to.

Mindy: Speaking of makeup, I know I don't know much about Marilyn Monroe, I'm not a fan girl, but I read Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates, and she talked about how Marilyn's personal makeup artist would work on her as she aged for hours and hours, getting her just right even to walk out of the trailer.

Pam: And, you know, she was only thirty six when she died. So you talk about aging and it's pretty cruel.

Mindy: Yeah, absolutely. Thinking about that makeup and of course, the irony being that the more of the makeup and the chemicals that you're piling under your skin, the more you're actually aging your skin.

Pam: Yes. And of course, we didn't know about tanning and the costs of that kind of thing on skin cancer in those days. And so you'd see movie stars sitting out by the pool, you know, getting tan for the next role.

Mindy: When we talk about women and the various things that we will do and you don't even have to be in Hollywood to do these things. You certainly don't have to rely on your looks as income. We all participate in it. The attempt to not age is certainly not restricted to Hollywood. These women that have aged out and like you said, Marilyn Monroe was only thirty six when she died. What was considered aging out? Like at what point were they bringing in the fresh crop and it was harder for women to attain any type of role or interest?

Pam: Boy, I don't know. There wasn’t a cutoff point. I think it had to do with box office to some extent, the whims of those five white men who decided that there were better, more exciting women lining their office waiting for their next break. 

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 Mindy: You mentioned that you yourself have a history as a performer. Why don't you tell us about that?

Pam: Well, as part of falling in love with Hollywood, I think, you know, I was convinced that anybody could do it. I don't believe that anymore, but certainly I did then. One of my undergraduate degrees is in theater. So I started doing some of that. And as I got older, I realized that you really couldn't have a career in that, that was stable. There was a lot of common sense in my life. So I know better than that. I grew up to have a lot of college training and other things besides theater. But when I finished my career as a clinical psychologist, I decided to jump into show business full time, which I could do. And I had the luxury of doing that. 

I went to an actor's conservatory. I took singing lessons. And I started appearing in independent productions in Portland, Oregon, which is where I was living at the time. Got an agent, got some film parts, and started traveling the country with a jazz cabaret show, played all the major cities in the country. I needed to play that out. I needed to find out what I was capable of doing and to experience really from the inside what some of my heroes had gone through. And I'm so glad I did it. My last gasp was I decided to learn to play the cornet. When I was a young girl, girls didn't play that instrument. They didn't play trumpets and cornets, they played flutes and violins. And so I thought, screw that. I'm going to learn to play the coronet. And I formed a Dixieland band. We were traveling around the area I live in now near Palm Desert, doing shows. I was singing and playing the cornet. And that was the last really showbizzy thing I did. Now I'm just writing about it, which is a lot more fun in some ways.

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 Mindy: And when you talk about writing about Hollywood, this particular book, Fading Fame, is fiction. But you said you've done quite a bit of nonfiction writing as well. It was a topic close to your heart. So who are some of your favorite Golden Age of Hollywood actresses, and what are some of your favorite stories from that time?

Pam: Well, I fell in love with Doris Day, very young. My first movie, in fact, was hers. It was called Romance on the High Seas. And she had a really blockbuster part; it was her first starring role. One of those magical things, you know, she's discovered at a party and she's hired and boom, she is a star almost overnight. I love that story, of course, because that's the myth of Hollywood. But as I followed her career, I realized that all was not wonderful with Doris Day. One of those stories, of course, would have to be about Doris in Fading Fame, because I felt I knew so much about her already and her travails later on. The more I read, the more I realize how victimized she was and how oppressed. You wouldn't know that because Warner Brothers created this Sunny Girl next door image for all of us that she maintained all of her life, really. But it wasn't quite true. When she was discovered, quote unquote, at this party, she was signed to a contract by Michael Curtis, who was a very well-known director. People know him really for having directed movies like Casablanca, for instance, but he was a predator.

A recent biography came out about him that suggested that he was a compulsive womanizer on the set. Doris had to pay her dues to be involved with that. She was signed to a contract by Jack Warner, who was another famous predator. You know, we didn't know all of that. So you have to wonder, what did she go through to get where she got? And where she got was fame. You know, she was famous. She was obviously very talented. I mean, a wonderful actress and even better singer. And had a wonderful career, and really she was one of the few people I think of, the women I have written about in Fading Fame who had a satisfactory ending to her life. You know, she left the career when her husband, who bilked her out of millions of dollars, died. She went on to found animal foundations, moved to Carmel, and had this huge operation. But she loved what she did then, and most of the women in the book didn't as well. So her story is sort of a tale of Hollywood. What you had to do and how to escape successfully.

Mindy: And a lot of women didn't escape successfully.

Pam: That's right. They didn't. One of the people I discuss in the book is Joan Davis, who your listeners may not know or remember, but she was a vaudeville performer for years. She had a very popular radio show, top rated, and is probably best known for her starring role in a TV sitcom about the same time as I Love Lucy premiered. It was called I Married Joan, and it was very popular. And she did it for three or four years, I think. My story deals with her short term affair with Eddie Cantor, who was also well known at the time. And her ending was sad because of her alcoholism. She pretty much drank herself to death. And again, the time was up for her. She couldn't get a deal. Her television show was canceled. She was too old by that time. She was in her 50s. Way too old to be hired by anybody. And that's a more typical ending, not necessarily the alcoholism, but the kind of petering out of a life.

Mindy: Yeah. Without having something else, another interest, something else to live for. Well, and I think that's true of anything. If a person is completely sold into and dedicated to one thing, if that one thing is no longer available to you, that's devastating.

Pam: Oh, you're right. And certainly Hollywood stardom required a 24/7 dedication. I mean, that was the only way to be. And they had no hobbies or interests outside, really, of themselves, to put it bluntly. Everything was around being successful, being famous, being known, getting fans. You know, all of that was what was most important to them. So when that went away, there was nothing. They didn't even develop close relationships, many of them, Doris, for instance, her closest friends were her schleps, you know, people who worked for her. And that's a very different kind of friendship than you or I might develop.

 Mindy: When you talk about yourself and making that transition from being a performer to being a writer. What kind of skills were useful in both?

Pam: Well, I'd always been a writer of some sort. You know, I started a typewritten newspaper when I was nine, and I got so much reinforcement from teachers. And in high school, I was editor of the paper and I wrote movie reviews every week. When I was a psychologist, I wrote a newsletter for my clients. And of course, I wrote academic articles which were required for being a professor at the university. And when I did showbiz after that, I wrote my own shows. Cabaret, you do a lot of talking you sing, but you also have patter, as they call it. So it wasn't difficult to make the transition to writing. 

I started by writing about, again, old dead movie actors that I was curious about from my childhood. I was watching TV once, and I saw a movie featuring five actors who pretended to be teenagers. Actually, they weren't teenagers, but the series was starring “the teenagers.” And I sort of wondered about the lead actor whose name was Freddy Stewart. As much as I studied film, nobody I knew had ever heard of this guy. And he made, you know, maybe a dozen movies in Hollywood in the 40s. So the first article I ever wrote was a research piece about Freddy Stewart, because I was curious. And I went on to write, as I say, a couple dozen more about people I wanted to know more about. So really, it was an intellectual, emotional curiosity that got me started writing about Hollywood more aggressively than I have been in the past.

Mindy: And what led you to become a psychiatrist? Because that is so divergent from these creative urges of writing and acting.

Pam: I think people work in mental health because of their own personal experiences. You know, I was raised in a loving but dysfunctional family and wondered how I turned out the way I did because I'm nothing like them. And again, a curiosity about my own life, I think, led me to read books about human development and personality development. I wanted to know more. And so I went back to school. I got a master's degree in psychology, admitted into a Ph.D. program in clinical psychology. I knew I wanted to be in private practice because I'm a very independent person. I'm happier not working for somebody else. And did that for 25 years, really, and loved every minute of it. The only reason I left was managed care, a movement which kind of removed my independence in big ways.

Mindy: That in-depth knowledge that you have about the functioning of the id and the ego and everything that comes into play and is fed very much by Hollywood and everything about the scene there. Does that help you when you're writing about these women? Does it give you some insight into who they were and why they made the decisions they made?

Pam: Oh, absolutely. I think a strength in my writing is my ability to get inside their head. There's a lot of internal dialogue, in these stories, really more than action, because I have a sense of what they were probably thinking and experiencing internally. And I enjoyed writing about that. I actually met some of these women over the course of my life, but I didn't know them very well. So I was guessing. But one can predict, really, if you have a certain set of characteristics in your life, some experiences you have to undergo to get to where you want to be, the things that happen inside your head. You know, the way you characterize your own self is very different than how you may present yourself to the outside world. And that divergence, I think, is fascinating.

 Mindy: Definitely. And I think it becomes even more fractured when you have people that are not only having to convey a certain manner to keep up a public performance at all times, but also then having to put on a new hat every time they walk out of a trailer, come onto the set.

Pam: It's all artifice. It's all image. More so back in that golden age, perhaps, than it is now. I think people, as you suggested earlier, I think that things have changed enough that women can be themselves more now and they know who that is than they might have in the golden age. That's good.

Mindy: I feel like it would be mentally exhausting to have to keep up performance 24/7. 

Pam: It becomes so much who you are and you lose track of who you are, you know, and a lot of these women, because they were in the business so young, missed important developmental stages and developing a personality. You know, again, the friendship and the trial and error of education. A lot of these women didn't have much education. If anything, I don't think Mary Pickford went to school at all

Mindy: When you were working on Fading Fame, you mentioned in your email to me that it had a unique writing process. Can you illuminate that?

Pam: Well, it was done in chunks. You know, I had done this story, as I mentioned earlier, for my class, and I thought that would be it. I just wanted the degree to get out. And what I didn't think about writing anymore. Again, I'm not a fiction writer, but I got encouragement from not only the quick publication, but my classmates who were telling me it's good and I should be writing more. And so it came in spurts. The next one was, of course, about Doris, because it was so easy for me to write. I just sat down and out it flowed. I knew the crux I wanted to talk about the violation done by her husband in stealing all our money and how she might react to that. 

And so one followed another one of the stories called “The Curtain Never Falls,” is about an older woman who is in a wheelchair in a nursing home. And probably there are the rest of her life. And I got the idea for that story, because I was watching a documentary about Rosemary, who was a cabaret performer, and she's best known for being Sally Rogers on the Dick Van Dyke Show. The documentary was in her last years of her life. And she said to the interviewer, “you know, some nights I lie in bed and go over my act.” And I thought, wow, I mean, there is a story there. This woman who's about to die is still fantasizing, performing.

Mindy: I can speak to how I, as a writer, then go out and, of course, you know, have to do public speaking and panels and interactions. And that, too, is a performance in many ways. And it's something you do kind of analyze. Think about how you could have done it better. It can. It can make you crazy.

Pam: Yes. Yes. We are our own worst critics. No, no doubt about that.

Mindy: Absolutely. And that applies to both those public performances and our writing in private.

 Pam: Yes. I try not to reread anything that I have published. I did two CDs when I was singing and I never, ever listened to them because I know I'd be frustrated and want to go back and do it all again.

Mindy: I tell everyone that once it's in print and once it's out there and published there, I don't think there's any point in reading it or really interacting with it any further, because you can't change it. And you will, of course, improve as you continue to write. And if I read my first book, which was published in 2013, but I wrote it in 2010, 11 years, a better writer now I have 11 years more experience if I were to read it. I'm sure I would want things differently.

Pam: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I agree. And just move on, you know, see what's next. As you say, there is a learning curve to writing. And I found that the more I wrote, I think the better writer I became. I've never been a lyrical writer. I'm very meat and potatoes. I want to tell you the story and move on. I don't think I'm ever going to be any different, but I'm learning to describe things better and to immerse myself better and to throw in more dialogue and some of the things I've learned over the years.

Mindy: You end up populating that toolbox.

Pam: You're right. Yes. That's a good way to put it.

Mindy: Last thing. Why don't you let listeners know where they can find the book, Fading Fame and where they can find you online?

Pam: Absolutely. Amazon, which of course sells everything, also sells Fading Fame. And you can find my memoir there, too, which is called As Alone As I Want to Be, which is a little bit about the saga of my Hollywood adventures up and down. I can be found at Pam Munter dot com

Mindy:            Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.

From Film to Book: A Screenwriter Talks Novel Adaptation

Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com

Mindy:             This summer I'm adding a co-host, fellow author Kate Karyus Quinn. We'll be doing a series that focuses on hybrid and indie authors. If you're thinking of going the Self Pub route we've got authors who found success with six figure sales, as well as authors who are just starting out on the road to indie publishing. Learn from them. Learn with us.

Today's guest is William Schreiber, William’s novel, Someone to Watch Over, won the 2019 Rising Star award from the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. The novel is based on his original screenplay, which has won or been nominated for many awards, including the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Nicholls Fellowship in screenwriting.

Mindy:             We are recording this on July 2nd, and it has been 90 degrees here in Ohio for about a week. It's hot and miserable, and when I turn on the computer, everything, everyone everywhere, seems to be miserable. 

Kate:                 Do they sell fireworks in Ohio?

Mindy:             Only certain things are illegal. So I don't know how hard it is enforced. With my little puppy, dude, my little puppy dude friend I have to be careful with fireworks this year, so I'm probably... My family doesn't really do anything for the fourth. 

Kate:                You don’t have a big self fireworks show?

Mindy:             My cousin used to have and I'm sure it was illegal. He used to have a huge, huge firework show, but they have a baby now, so they're not really doing that. And I've got a puppy go anyway.. 

Kate:                We in New York used to be illegal for all kinds, like nothing was sold here. And so we would get these flyers in the mail or this fireworks place that's just over the border in Pennsylvania and people would go down Pennsylvania, load up on fireworks. So even though it was illegal to buy them, people would have tons of fireworks in their front yards. And like people were not hiding it. I think two years ago here in New York, not like, I guess, not the big, big ones, but like the basic ones and sparklers and stuff.  so and it's also expensive, like when people are like setting off fireworks for an hour like, I can’t believe how much money people were literally setting on fire. 

Mindy:             For a long time we couldn't get certain fireworks, and I never really had any. And my ex his family was from West Virginia and you can do anything in West Virginia. 

Kate:                I think that's what their state motto it is.

Mindy:             It's actually wild and wonderful, but it means the same thing. 

Kate:                That’s crazy, that you know that.

Mindy:             Yeah, His family brought a bunch of, um, fireworks to me one time, and, you know, I never used it because, like I said, I don't want to set myself on fire. I have set myself one for multiple times. I don't need to keep doing it.

Kate:                You would totally be the person who would get like, a faulty firework and be like, Hey, guys, I'm typing this with one hand. I'm still learning to type with my other hand when I only have three fingers laughed and we'd be like all, Mindy set herself on fire again.

Mindy:             Well, and I need all my fingers as you're saying, I type for a living. My sister asked me the other day. How's the typing going? And then she just kind of stopped. I'm sorry. I mean, how's the writing going? And I'm like, No, you're right. It's like that's what I do for a living. I type I type for a living, but yeah. I had these fireworks from West Virginia that I was just like, I don't know what to do with these. And then So, like my niece’s friend, who is also a cousin of mine, high school girl, was over. And I know her parents, and I was just like, Hey, you want these fireworks? And she was like, yeah sure. So her Mom texted me like an hour later and she's like, Hey, uh, are these legal? And I was like, I don't know are from West Virginia and she takes me back. She's like, I googled him. They're totally illegal. And I'm like, Hey, send your kid over again next time we'll send her home something else illegal! You'll never know! 

Kate:                So did they end up using them or not? 

Mindy:             Oh, they used them. I mean, it's it doesn't matter where we live out in the middle of nowhere. So yeah, and then she sent me video of them. She's like we set off the fireworks, and I’m like that’s cool, thanks. A little bit of joy in my life.

Speaking of joy and trying to find something positive, there's a podcast that I came across called The Melanin Project. It had an episode that I thought was particularly poignant for me in the moment because she was talking about imposter syndrome. So the whole podcast is about positivity and self love and just feeling better about yourself, period, which we all freakin need right now. And she did an episode about imposter syndrome, and I thought it was really interesting because I know so many authors, some of them extraordinarily famous and extremely talented. They really do attribute their success to a fluke, right time, right place, kind of thing. And that is an element. But you know, you don't get to be where you are simply by luck alone and and so many people, authors, especially that I know, do suffer from impostor syndrome and it made me... the episode made me think about that because I do it too, all the time when I'm talking to people, I'm talking about writing, I'll be like, yeah, imposter syndrome. You know, I got lucky with my debut, and I got lucky with my editor and my house, and all of those things are true. But I also got them through talent, perseverance and hard work.

So it made me think, it made me think just about imposter syndrome and and taking a little more credit in my life for the things that I have accomplished. But then also, I had to laugh. I don't know if I've ever told you this story, Kate, but I was on a panel with a very famous white, older white male actor. The question of imposter syndrome came up from the audience that people ask. You know, does anyone here, does anyone on the panel, suffer from imposture syndrome? And someone had to explain to him what imposter syndrome was. 

Kate:                Oh, to be a white male.

Mindy:             Yeah, he was just like, he, was very sweet. I'm not going to say who it was because he was very sweet. Very kind. 

Kate:    But still, that's a level of privilege.

Mindy:             Absolutely. It was super funny because he genuinely like looked up and down on the panel was like, I'm sorry. What? What is Imposter syndrome? I've never heard of this.

Kate:                Oh, my God. Wow.

Mindy: I was like, Well, I guess when you're born that good looking …

Kate                 Yeah, it must be so nice. 

Mindy:             Anyway, it was just funny and listening to that episode made me think of that. 

Kate:                So you actually mentioned this podcast to me a couple weeks ago because I've been painting my house. We're getting ready to put on the market. We actually just did it today. It's on the market, it’s on Zillow. 

Mindy:             So you did all the positivity you can find, selling a house. 

Kate:                Like, I've been doing lots of painting, and so I you know, it just gets very, very tedious, painting. You know, One coat, two coat. Does it need a third coat?  You're looking at it. And so, um yeah, So I listened to an episode, and it was right around the time when the protest, were really going strong. A couple weeks ago, the episode was about Black Lives Matter, and it was a great podcast to listen to that, because so many voices that I think, that I hear are more media savvy individuals. And this felt more like a person on the street reacting and giving you their feelings about it.

And the episode actually started. Well, it starts first with the theme song, which is amazing. It immediately went into a clip of President Obama, and I believe it was from a commencement speech that he had just given And hearing His voice was like such a soothing feeling like it was like a feeling of being safe. Like when you're like, a kid and you're driving home somewhere late at night. And your parents are talking softly and you're in the back seat of the car and you just feel like safe and you fall asleep. Like that was how it felt like I was like, I want to be that kid again year, You know, I want to believe that everything was going to be okay.

Mindy:             Yeah, you need a bumper sticker. Obama's my co pilot.

Kate:                I want him to be the pilot, though! I want him to be the pilot again. 

Mindy:             True.

Kate:                All right. God. And then the host of the show, she you know, she talked a little bit about it. And what Black Lives Matter means to her and then she had this really great guest that talked about raising Children, specifically raising black Children and how to, you know, raise them to be proud of who they are. And so it's just really interesting to hear from that point of view, because I, um a very white white lady. I live in a very white suburb and, you know, I don't want to be trapped in this this white bubble. You know, I need more windows in my life, and I need more access to other people and, you know, outside of just my own experiences, because I think that's, you know, that's a big part that's missing for a lot of people.

Mindy:             That's the truth. My cousin, a different cousin. I have many, many, many cousins. So my cousin and his wife are an interracial couple. And so their child, of course, is mixed race, and they live in an area that is, you know, super diverse. And they have that ability for their child to have a diverse experience in being raised. However, he's young. I think he's like five. He's a sweetheart. And unfortunately, the news and everything you know, little, little guy he didn't he didn't know racism was a thing. Like he didn't know about it. And of course, that's everything that we're talking about and dealing with right now. And so my cousin and his wife had to talk to their little boy about why some white people hate black people. And they were like, Yeah, that, you know, it sucked. It was really hard. And that particular episode, I can see that being really useful. 

Kate:                I know it's such a hard thing to have these discussions, and, you know, we've been talking to my kids and explaining what's going on. And, you know, my kids are just like, That's stupid. Why are people acting like that? And I'm like, Well, guys, there's a lot of history, So we're reading a lot and we're reading All American Boys together as a family is like sort of having a discussion about it. Yeah, it's so good. So far. So we’ll, we pass the book around, and we all read a chapter and then we discuss it, and so.

Mindy:             For those of you that don't know, um, All American Boys is an amazing YA novel by Jason Reynolds and his co author Brendan Kylie. They're both wonderful men, lovely people to know and talk to. So definitely if you're looking for something to talk with your Children about about what is going on here today, All American boys is wonderful.

Kate:                And it’s a YA book just to be clear. It is a YA book. Um, my daughter is only 10. My son just turned 13 and there is talk about drinking and stuff. But, you know, I just, I just feel like it's all an opportunity for a conversation with your kids, you know, because I was just like, you know, some kids in high school do drink. But a lot of kids also don't. We just try and talk to our kids so much that they're like, Please stop. 

Mindy:             All American Boys. That's a good one. Definitely. And also, if you're looking for something for yourself, check out The Melanin Project. It is for adults. There is language. Just FYI for anybody that might want to share it with their kids. You go for it if you want to. Just FYI there's language. I mean, I have language here, so I assume if you're listening, you don't mind, but so I wanted to throw that out there. 

Also, I have created a Facebook page for the blog and podcast. Yes, Kate had a great idea. Kate has been pushing me to do this for a while. I haven't done it because I have way too much on my plate. And this particularly week when I've had the most that I've ever had on my plate, I decided I should do it. So, I have created a Facebook page for Writer Writer Pants on Fire. So just search Writer Writer Pants on Fire and give us feedback. Let me know what you think of the blog. Let me know what you think of the podcast. Let me know if there's someone you would like To have as a guest, and I will try to get them. Let me know if there's a certain topic that you would like to see addressed and more importantly, if you have a specific question if you have something you would like to ask about writing about publishing something that you've tried to look for information on and then when you look at it your like, but that's not quite exactly my situation. Go ahead and ask me. Ask me on the Facebook page and I will try to get to everyone here in the pre-chat before we roll into our guests.

Kate:                People used to comment on blogs a lot, but do you get a lot of comments on your blog any more?

Mindy:             No. Never. People. People don't interact on blogs anymore, which is fine. I mean, they used To. I do feel a little lonely sometimes over there on the blog. Um, but I started doing more. I do my interviews, as always. And, of course, which just to remind everybody - Saturday Slash – I do free query critiques on the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog.

Kate:                Awesome! Awesome Amazing author offer! 

Mindy:             It’s an author offer! So yeah, free query critiques on the blog. Go to blog. Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire dot com, you can find the blog  and the podcast. Visit the Facebook page

Kate:                And transcripts of the podcast on the blog! 

Mindy:             Yes, absolutely. There are transcripts of every episode. And let me tell you guys, that is a pain in my ass. So if you're not, you know...

Kate:                I also convinced you about that.

Mindy:             That was also Kate's idea So if you're not using them, tell me and I will stop putting 3 to 4 hours into every single one of those posts.

Kate:                Yeah, I told you because I like to sometimes read podcasts instead of listening, and because it's faster. 

Mindy:             It’s mostly really good for my SEO. But I'm just like, ah, and I agree with all of those statements. And then while I'm doing it, I'm like, God damn it, Kate. So everybody let me know, Go to the Facebook page and tell us, Tell us people you want to hear about, things you want to talk about, questions that you have That's about it. Today's guest. We’ve got something a little bit different for you. William Schreiber. We have an award winning screenwriter today. We try to bring you something that's maybe a little bit different. Couple weeks ago, we had the creator of Pictionary. So today we're having on William Schreiber, who is a successful screenwriter. 

William:          My name is William Schreiber. I am a screenwriter and novelist that lives in Seattle. I also freelance. I have a journalism background. I graduated from University of Florida College of Journalism. 

Mindy:             The freelance life. We'll talk about that for a second, because I do freelancing as well. I do some work for hire and I do writing gigs and, uh, gig work stuff like that. I love it like, personally, I enjoy it, but it's always funny. I always tell people when I go to like, let's say, get a loan from the bank or something like that And they're like So you know, we need your tax returns for the last two years. And how much money do you think you'll make next year? And I'm like, I have no idea. 

William:          Right?

Mindy:             And they're just like What? What do you mean that I'm like, I have no idea, Guys, It's like I could make $100,000. I could make $5000. I could make nothing. Like I just I don't know. Can you talk about that freelance, freelance gig economy lifestyle? That would be, that would be great.

Kate:                Can I just say something, I just talking about getting a loan. We just yesterday we were in the beginning stages of trying to sell our house and buy a new house. So we talked yesterday to the mortgage guy who we used When we bought this house, he was like, Now, Kate, what do you do again? And I said, I'm a writer and he goes, Oh, yeah, that's right. Oh, that's so cool. And then he's like, You know what your yearly income about? And I was like, I never know. Yeah, And he was like, so less cool from this vantage point of getting us a loan. So, um, yeah, it's everyone thinks that cool when you're writer and then like, they hear the money side of it. And it's like, Uh yeah, that's right. 

William:          Yeah, well, when I was in journalism college, you know, Journalism 101 If you're pursuing a journalism degree in order to make a lot of money, you are in the wrong field. That's the first thing. So it's true, you know? I mean, freelancing is tough because it's a constant churn of finding work, doing the work, and, you know, it's it's kind of like film development, where you have projects at different places in the development process, and you have to go out and get another one to put in the pipe while you're in the middle of the pipe on one project and ending the pipe on another project.

So it's it's a lot of work. The pipe has gotten bigger because of all of the online freelance marketplaces. People who need writers and writers who need work cand find each other. Um, like I'm on a site called Up Work, and I like the freelancing that I like to do. I really like to have a a connection to it, you know, so I can put my heart into it. And ah, a lot of the writing I'm doing are for clients who have a social conscience and are involved in social equity and in clean energy and in using technology to help people who wouldn't necessarily be able to afford that technology with without some intervention of some kind. I really enjoy it. If you're going to be a writer, you have to love it too, right? No matter what, and that's that's kind of where I am. I just love helping tell stories that I, that I believe in, you know, particularly when it's kind of work for hire situation.

Kate:                I know, actually, a lot of people who have come to write fiction through starting in journalism where they worked for a newspaper or something. And I always think like that's actually a great background for writing. And when I was, you know, I've always wanted to be a writer, but when I I was ah, youngster, you know, I thought, Oh, you know and I was looking at majors. I thought, I don't want to do journalism because I don't want to write nonfiction like I don't you know, I don't want to write truth. The stuff I just want to write fiction and tell stories. But now, with age and wisdom and I'm a huge newspaper reader - journalist tell stories they're just telling with facts. And when you're reading, you know, a really great writer, the bigger newspapers and the way they shape a story and the way they tell it. And you know, when they find that perfect last line at the end a story. It's It's a craft as much as fiction, and I think it's it makes you a stronger writer overall, right?

William:                      Yes, I agree. The return to close ending, Um, I was kind of the same way going into journalism school, I thought, I really want to write about people, you know, I want to write about human interest. And so the University of Florida had, you know, you could decide on, a newspaper track or a magazine track. And I took the magazine track. Um, because it allowed me to kind of follow that interest in writing more about people and about events and about life. And, um, you know, human interest, rather than covering um, you know, mosquito Control board meetings in Florida. What's really great about a journalism background, I think in terms of translating into, you know, writing fiction or screenplays is the ability to learn how to research. Research is so important, I think, in injecting verisimilitude or believability, plausibility into stories. You know why somebody would do something or why a situation is the way it is. So I think journalism is, It is a really strong background for this type of writing. 

Mindy:             I agree. And I want to go back to what you were saying about the Internet, opening up a whole new venue for freelancers and for gig economy workers. My cousin, she actually lives in Portland she does video editing, her husband is a cameraman. And now, of course, with Covid 19 The film and TV industry has just like ground to a halt. Hopefully, they're able to pick up again soon, but they just went cold turkey. Nothing's being produced on, and my cousin, because she's a video editor, got plenty of jobs. And they're kind of, not high on the hog, but they're able to scrape by editing little videos for the Internet. 

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So I was asking her like, What are you doing? And she's, like, Do you know those videos where it's like put in a cup of almonds and then a cup of sugar? Stir it counterclockwise? And you just see the hands moving. She's like, Yeah, I'm doing those and she’s like - its work So she's like it is the most boring work, and I hate it, but I'm getting paid. I just think it's super interesting. Um, how the Internet has changed and I want to come back to to what you were saying about your having the choice as a journalism major, newspaper or magazine route. Does that option still exist? Because print in the journalism world, my ex, my ex was a photographer and it was just everything collapsed. It just didn't exist anymore. I’m curious about that journalism major that you the program that you went through versus what a program would look like today? Do you have any thoughts on that?

William:          Yes, I know the University of Florida. They they have pivoted, you know, along with traditional journalism into digital media and social media in a big way and actually have agencies there that are student run and students staffed. Do actually do projects, you know, as part of their work. And it's very much, of course, you know, going online and social media. But we need to not lose sight of the fact that facts matter and good reporting matters. And no matter the the platform, no matter the the outlet, that content needs to be as solid as it ever has been.

Kate:                I was thinking about that when you said, you know, they tell you it's your first thing they told you at school was don't do journalism if you want to make a ton of money, and I feel like, you know, we're in a time when the media is so villainized. And I I'm always saying like the media is not like this conglomerate. It's like people who went to school because they they want to tell the truth like they want to, like, find out what's going on. And want people know like the true story of what's happening. Like That's their passion in life.

William:          You know, journalism is called the fourth estate of this country and without somebody to keep those in power accountable. I'm sorry. But unchecked power and human nature, left to its own devices is not a pretty thing.

Mindy:             I think that the long and bloody and horrible history of the Roman emperors is a great example, especially the Julio Claudians. I am kind of a geek when it comes to just this certain, about 100 years of Roman history and...

William:          The Julio Claudians. Yes, of course. 

Mindy:             Yes, of course. You would know who they are if I use, if I use their names So like Nero, Nero, Caligula, Claudius, all of them, those those dudes, you know, they were just batshit crazy like by the - Claudius being the exception, more than likely - but they were just batshit crazy. And there's all these different theories about, you know, the family had epilepsy, and they have probably had repeated seizures and had brain injuries because of it. And that's totally possible. But a lot of behavioralists are just like, no, they had unchecked power. They could have anything they wanted to any time and mentally, that's just, that's not going to produce a functioning human being, right? 

William:          There is a reason that absolute power corrupts is a truism. 

Kate:                Let’s talk about screenwriting! 

Mindy:             Let's not talk about Roman Emperors anymore. 

Kate:                You were a finalist for Nichols?

William:          I Was a Quarterfinalist, which was the top 5% of the Nicholls Fellowship competition. I've actually had three top 3/4 finalist one drama, which was this as a film, is considered a drama. The book, um, a comedy, which I learned was kind of unusual for the academy to the rate of comedy in their world and an action thriller. So, yeah, I played in that sandbox for a while.

Kate:                For listeners who don't know, the Nichols is an extremely, I would say, the most prestigious screenwriting award that there is. Basically, Would you agree with that assessment? 

William:          I would agree with that assessment. I think it's the most competitive screenwriting competition in the world, and I've been involved in a number of them and have, you know, like in the, in the book world, you you learn which ones are paid attention to and which ones aren't. Um, I think Austin is another one that's gets a lot of attention. The Austin Film Festival.

Kate:                So can you talk about how you, What was your journey into screenwriting? What made you decide To go in that direction and decide to tell stories in that way.

William:          After college, I worked in at a magazine in South Florida, and then I became the editor of the University of Florida magazine, and I was there for five years. And then, ah, I met my wife there. We got married and we moved to Georgia, where I started freelancing for the first time after kind of being on a staff. And a producer friend of mine in Florida had a director who needed a screenplay for a film idea he had, and it was essentially, a coming of age, family adventure comedy about a big city kid from New York who comes down to a small Florida beach town and learns how to follow his dreams from a band of, ah, kind of comical retirees on the beach. They were lead by Ernest Borgnine, which was a lot of fun. 

Mindy:             Um wow. 

William:          Yeah. And I wrote the screenplay, never having written a screenplay before and just kind of followed my instincts. Um, kind of for music theory, actually. And storytelling. You know, I think we all have a sense of of rhythm and stories, and we know. Okay, well, something needs to happen here. Otherwise, you know, it's boring. Um, so I wrote the screenplay, you know, based upon kind of a song writing approach where there are movements, you know, whether you're talking about an orchestra or or even a pop song, you know, verse, chorus, bridge. You set up expectations, um, with certain chord progressions. And if you don't meet those expectations that creates tension. Um, so I had the good fortune of writing that screenplay was my first screenplay was produced. Which was a blessing and a curse.

Kate:                Wow, that's pretty rare. Did you read any screen writing books cause screenwriting is, I Don't Want to say technical. I mean, there's a lot of formatting, but also there's, you know, just the interior, the exterior, the slug lines... 

William:          I read about how to format it, and it looked extremely tedious to me. So I bought a piece of software Movie Magic screenwriter. 

Kate:                I have that too. 

William:          I worked in that program for years, and, ah, with a couple of key presses, you can move between all of those various elements of sluglines and screen description and character and dialogue. And yes, 

Kate:                It's so much easier. 

William:          Gets all that technical stuff out of the way, you know, so you can just kind of get a flow going. So that's what I did. I found that program, and that's what I, that's what I use. And it took care of all of that. 

Mindy:             As a non screenwriter person over here. Can you explain what a slug Line is? 

William:          It’s whether it's an exterior or an interior shot and then what the shot is. And then typically the time of day, for example, Interior Craftsman House Day. Okay, then you just you know, you have a few lines of description as to what the camera sees what's happening and then, you know, you bring your characters in.

Kate:                The hardest thing with the screenplay is that there's no, you know, with the novel you have, it's a lot of interiority, You know, you have all the characters thoughts, and you can explain things. You know why they make this leap to fall in love with someone or their thoughts and how they get from one thing to the next. And on a screenplay. It all has to be visual, and you have To use visuals and, you know, make it visually interesting, the story and also communicate everything through visuals unless you kind of cheat a little bit and use voice over. 

William:          That was part of the transition that I had to go through in terms of transitioning from telling that story as a screenwriter to telling it as a novelist, because I've come to realize that screenwriting is writing from the outside in and novel writing is writing from the inside out. You should stick with one P O V. You know, unless you, you build in a transition and you can't jump POV's, whereas a camera is all over the place, you know, it’s all POV changes. 

Kate:                It's funny, I I'm a big romance reader and I will sometimes go back and read old school romances that I read when I was younger. The old school romance authors used to do a lot of head hopping. I don't know if that's a newer rule.

Mindy:             That's a really good question, because I have noticed that as well. I do editorial work on the side, and every now and then it's like, I'll flag someone, you’re head hopping. You can't do that. And then and then I'm like, Well, I mean, who says? Who says you can’t? Only we've been, We've been taught that that you can't head hop. But I do think that is somewhat a new phenomenon. 

Kate:                With third person. I'm always like trying to tell people, like usually with third person unless you that omniscient Narrator It's usually close third person.

William:          I think that Someone To Watch Over was probably a good story to start with as a novelist. It's my first book and there are two main characters, a brother and a sister, so it wasn't like there was a whole ensemble that you have go between. 

Kate:                So how long did you spend with screenwriting? And then what made you decide to switch to writing a novel? And why was it this story that you wanted to tell as a novel, as opposed to as a screenplay? Do you think some stories are better told in one format or another?

William:          I do think some stories air better for the screen than they are for the Page. My journey with this was, you know, it was a screenplay that was getting some traction, you know, up until 2008, when the economy collapsed and financing went away. And independent shingles, you know, if the studios shuttered and have never come back and there was consolidation among, you know, the studios and on top of everything else, you know, Hollywood was, ah, polarized by a writer strike right about the same time.

The headwinds were just immense. I set it aside for a while and worked on some other things I continued to screenwrite. Got an agent in L. A. This is a small, character driven, intimate, you know, family saga drama, and that's not really a studio type of of story unless you can get, you know, a Laura Dern and a Jason Bateman in a package, you know, people are going to be confident in. And so she shops some of my larger stuff, which got great response. You know, we love the writing, it’s just not what we're looking for. I know that we all deal with rejection, and there, there was, you know, there is a lot of rejection, but you just to have to push through it. And you have to do it for the love of the writing, which I do. Nobody likes rejection.

Kate:                And It's so hard to get those. We love the writing, but this just isn’t right for us rejection. And I have gotten those before and oh... 

William:          You can die of encouragement in Hollywood.

Mindy:             I can't, I can't even imagine. Some of my family is involved in the film industry, as I said earlier, and - die of encouragement, that, that's about right. I mean, they oh, pulled their hair out. And I can't, I mean, I can't even imagine. I'm very pleased to be on the end of entertainment that I am on, even though it has some pitfalls and definitely is stressful. It is not film, and I am so glad. 

I have talked To so many people cause I've sold rights to film rights to a few of my books. And I have stopped announcing that. I have stopped telling fans when I sell rights, because then all they want to know is  - when’s the movie being made? And it's like, Is your movie out yet? And the answer is, Well, the answer is no and probably never. Like this is just how it works, right? I don't know what the percentage is, but the amount of books that are, the rights that are purchased that are actually turned into film is probably less than 1%. Like it's tiny. And, um, part of me very much resents the idea that having a movie made out of your book is like a step up. It's like graduating or an improvement. It's just like, No, the book itself is an end product. I'm a writer. This is what I'm proud of. 

William:          Therein is why I wrote the book. It's an end product. That screenplay is a mile short of how it is supposed to be experienced by an audience, and I got to the point where this the screenplay, got such great response. You know in film festival competitions where it won this, that and the other thing. And so, I knew I had a story that resonated with people, and I wanted to get it out to more people, and it wasn't gonna happen at that time. So I said, You know what? The book world, Mindy, I have to tell you, you are exactly right. The book world is so much more inviting and welcoming of stories because there's so much, so many more pipelines in so many more audiences that you know are looking for stories. And that's why I wanted to see this story in its final format and to be experienced in the way that it should be experienced in that format. 

Kate:                I've heard a screenplay explained as, It's a blueprint. It's like a blueprint for a house. I, um, actually just had a middle grade graphic novel come out that I co-wrote with a friend. It was released with DC In April. Actually, knowing screenwriting was really helpful for writing a graphic novel, and it's a very similar process because my co-author and I were, we wrote it. But we had an artist, you know who did the art. We, you know, saying what the visual should be, and we're having the dialogue. But she really her art really made it come alive. And, you know, you know, brought it to life, right? 

William:          Yes. I mean, again, you know, a screenplay is Ah, it's just the start of a long journey. And there are so many potholes along the way in terms of, you know, it's a fickle business, and anything can change until it's actually, you're rolling. Principal photography. All bets are off. 

Kate:                Did you ever consider, um, trying to direct it yourself, putting on that indie producer director hat? 

William:          At the time, I, uh I didn't think that I had the ability because I didn't. I had never done that before. I didn't have the ability to make it into the best film, it could be because, you know, it takes a team, um, of people who are skilled in in a lot of different areas. So I mean, I toyed with that a little bit in the, you know, the voice in the back your head says when you're going after financing - Well, what have you done? Nothing but trust me, you know? Yeah, nothing to sell. I wanted the material to be, to be done, and in the best way it could possibly be done. And I didn't think I was the person for that. 

Kate:                I think that was probably a good choice on your part. If you don't have a passion to direct and you don't see it, then I think a lot of times with creative fields, people look and they think I could do that. You know, everyone thinks they can write a novel. Everyone thinks they could do it. And it's like, Well, try, you know, if you feel strongly, you know, it’s definitely harder than it looks. 

Mindy:             I have so many people say to me, I've always wanted to write a book. I'm like, OK, go do it. 

William:          As a screenwriter. You know, you've, you've seen the movie a 1,000,000 times in your head and it will never be as perfect as it is in your head. And I think if you, unless you approach it as a director, it could be really difficult because you want to get the perfect shot that you see in your head and the clock is ticking and you have a schedule and we're getting behind schedule. We've got three more set ups to do today.

Kate:                You also hear the characters in your head of how they say something. And I have that problem with a short that I directed at film school. I received, like, an award so that they gave me money to direct a film. I would have fights with one of my not fights, but, like arguments within my actresses, she would, you know, say, Oh, I don't think it should be delivered this way. And I'd be like, Well, it should. 

Mindy:             Similarly, I don't listen to my own audio books because I know what characters sound like. I know how that line is delivered and my audiobooks are excellent. Everyone has told me their awesome, one of them, even won an award. And I'm like, That's cool. Plus, It's like I know what happens. I'm not gonna waste my time listening to the story.

So let's talk about the movement of bringing your story from the, you talked about why you chose to transpose it from a screenplay into a novel. What is the actual process like? What is what does that work look like? 

William:          Kate referenced it before. You know, screenplays are all about structure. So a screenplay, you know, typically, unless you're Quentin Tarantino, are it's a three act structure. And so I had a three act structure screenplay from which to work so well it provided, you know, a pretty detailed outline. And I was relieved to learn that, you know, a lot of novels are written in three act structure. So I took the screenplay and I actually had the screenplay here in front of me, and I started writing from one page onto the other inward and just I knew that I had to create the film that I saw in my head when I wrote the screenplay, and I've always been described as a very visual writer. You know, people who have read my screenplay say, Oh, I can see that. I saw the movie. And so that was very helpful in the novel world, because that's what you have to do. So I just literally went from, you know, page to page and ended up with a very crappy first draft. 

Kate:                That's what a first draft is supposed to be. 

William:          Well, good. I did it right then. 

Kate:                Yes. Yeah, that's a perfect first draft. It's bad, actually.

William:          I realized that there were things that I didn't know about. You know how to do this.

Kate:                How long was your first draft? Can I ask that? Was it super short? 

William:          How long, Like word count. It was about 85,000 words. 

Kate:                So it turned out long. And how long was, how many pages was the screenplay? 

William:          Screenplay was about 110 pages. 

Kate:                So, you obviously you found ways to fill in those blanks spaces and really add a lot. So did you add more Plot? Did you, or did you just...  Is that all the - I'm gonna go for it again – interiority?

William:          I discovered more things about Lenny and about John and about their back story. When you're given, you know, more range to work, the story can become broader and deeper. And character has always been the main focus for me in an approach to a story and what is character but the sum of their past? That is, they are. And so I was able to explore much more of her past, and I discovered that Lenny's mother died giving birth to her, which set her on a path from the beginning that was going to be a rocky one. And in the movie we know that her mother died, but we don't know how, we know the mother absent. And so I discovered that piece and it became a new thread in the story that I still hope to get the film made that I need to go back and weave into the screenplay.

But it was that kind of discoverability and the characters leading the places that allowed me to explore more of their interiority. The main problem I had when I found an editor and and ah, you know, it was kismet, that I found an editor in Montreal who just connected with this story, and I think that's so important to find an editor. Whatever it is an editor, an agent who gets your writing and kind of connects with, and she helped me to transition from approaching it as a screenwriter to a novelist, and it was a lot of POV issues. It's kind of a master class of learning how to maneuver that element of of novel writing. Yeah, so a godsend. 

Kate:                Just for listeners, I think it would be interesting. Could you, like, tell us how the very first scene or the opening of the screenplay translates into the opening of the novel?

William:          I could actually read the opening scene of the screenplay a little bit and then read the opening pages of the book. Is that? 

Mindy:             Oh, yeah, that would be great. 

William:          I’ll just read the first page of the screenplay. Is that good, or how long do you think—

Mindy:             That's great. 

William:          Exterior. Great Smoky Mountains Vista. Dawn. A peal of a distant church bell echoes through densely peaks framed by an awakening sky. Exterior, fog shrouded brick historic district, Dawn. The sound of the tolling bell closer now plays off antebellum brick buildings in the flinty foothills, home to tourist shops in the charming town square of Tennessee. Discover the bell and a steeple adorned with a host of heavenly angels and lovely stained glass windows. A glow in the soupy fog below a low 1980s Chrysler Cordoba sags in front of a former Civil War church, now a quaint bookstore called A Likely Story. It's angelic bell tower rising over the car. Interior. Chrysler Cordoba. Dawn. Slender legs raw with carpet burns, a blood flecked white magnolia crushed in the chaos of a woman's dark shoulder length hair. This is Eleanor Lenny Fields, 40. She's curled on the age tracked back seat and a tasseled sundress, her lavender polished toes clenched into little fists.

A cop suddenly at the window, hand on his gun. He wiped away dew shines his powerful mag lite. Inside, he tries the door. locked, watch his mag lite on the window, and Lenny sits bolt upright, a sweat soaked storm on her face. She sucks for air tries to get her manic bearings. She's probably pretty, if not for the red hot abrasion that weeps on her cheek and her left eye plum, purple swollen. She cracks the window an inch and says, “I'm good. I'm good.” Her soft Southern accent is all she'd recognize of herself at this moment. 

“I need you to unlock the door, ma'am.” She takes an uncertain moment to process that. Finally, she lifts the handle, pushes it open looks at the bookstore, she says. “I work here right there.” The cops says, “A likely story?” “Yes, sir, I read to the kids in the summer program.” She turns away and shame as his flashlight beam flashes her battered face and we match cut to the next scene.

William:          So that's how it read on the screenplay page. It takes a little longer to unfold, of course. In the book. 

A noise grated inside Lenny Riley's head when she flexed her jaw inside the station wagon. Grains crunched between her teeth, sand. Her mouth was bitter, dry as a bloody desert. As her thirst welled up, something gurgled, her lungs rising and falling. A bell tolled low and slow somewhere. She willed her eyes open, and the dimness would appear to be a swath of skin hanging overhead came into focus, but the ripped roof liner. She was curled in the cargo area bruised from her sweaty skin, toast clenched into stubby fists. Rolling onto her side, she stretched her legs. She couldn't remember falling, as a sharp clack clack clack on the glass next to her head instinctively sent her skittering into the opposite corner like a spooked deer.

From the outside. The car we hear. “Yeah, dispatch. She's moving.” She recorded the sound of a man's muffled voice outside as she glanced at the window to which she had scrambled. She was startled by something in a peripheral vision. What was that? Her brain registered a glimpse of something or someone there and gone. The disorienting instant was avalanche by a rapid succession of sensory assaults. Her cheek burned, heavy air, weight on her lungs, scraped legs. Swept a glance around the cage space found her turquoise died cowboy boots tossed on the other side. They instantly anchored her in the moment that she clung to the sight of them.

“I need you to open the door.” She squinted into a glaring flashlight outside as her sense of self preservation kicked into high gear. Police. Fractured thoughts converged as she unlocked the tailgate. “I'm okay,” she said in the strongest tone she could muster. The lilted Southern voice was the only thing she recognized about herself. She pushed the heavy swing door open with a bare foot and ran her hand through tangled hair, a finger catching in the white magnolia she clipped in last night. She unsnarled the tattered blood speckled flower and winced when she attempted to take a deep, calming breath.

And so that's how it gets into interaction with the cop.

Kate:                That was really interesting, because your first page of the screenplay has so much description. Like, I feel like you could have almost have just taken all of that description and just plopped it into a novel. But you totally change it. You know, you don't start with that, that wide, wide angle view of the mountains and then the town and then the car. 

William:          That’s an omniscient narrator, which is kind of frowned upon these days. So I started in Lenny's POV inside the car instead of outside the car. And that's what I mean by screenwriting is outside in and novel writing is inside out. 

Kate:                That's amazing. How that's, that, just reading those two really just shows that in, like, such stark contrast. That was really cool to just hear that. And you can just so see that. Yeah, thanks. Thank you. Definitely

Mindy:             That was a great illustration of how to transpose.

William:          It was interesting to, you know, just go page by page and work it in and then massage it wider and deeper. You know, that's kind of what the process was. 

Mindy:             How long did it take to move it from a screenplay to a novel? 

William:          All right. I didn't work on it, You know, constantly as I was doing my other day gig stuff, but two years, really, to get in into what I felt was... I always write toward whether it's a screenplay or a manuscript, something that is show-shape. Like, I wouldn't mind somebody reading this as opposed to being Oh, this is not ready. Right? So it was about a two year process. All told from the screenplay to the book. 

Kate:                Most listeners are aspiring writers. What would you say to someone who's listening and thinking? Ah, I always wanted to write a screenplay. You know, or Maybe I'll try that. I've tried writing novels. Maybe I'll try screenplays. Do you have any words of wisdom or our thoughts about that?

William:          Yes. Having you know, Been on the, on the mountain in both worlds. I would say that especially today with traditional filmmaking, the opportunity is a lot less because there's a lot less outlets. And, um, there's a lot more opportunity writing a book than there is a screenplay. And I would also say, Just generally, if you want to write, you know fiction and put your work out there, be prepared to deal with rejection. It's 99% rejection, but you only need the one. Yes, I've heard it said, And you know, some screenwriting podcast that what we do as writers, you know, whether it's in the book world or a screenwriting world is kind of insane. Really constantly Putting your heart out there and put your voice and put yourself out there, and you're constantly getting rejected, you know, for me, I have to write. Unless you have to write. Unless you have a story that is so powerful you're gonna have to believe and and stay with it for a long time. I would say Just go in it, you know, with your eyes open and be prepared for, You know, unless there's a lightning strike, it's it's gonna be It's gonna be a lot of work. 

Mindy:             It is a long haul. I don't know about Kate, but I have said to my listeners many, many times, even to get an agent. I was querying for 10 years, and I wrote my first novel... to get published was the fifth novel had ever written. I mean, it's a slog. It's really work. You gotta have, we call it rhinoceros skin, in the writing industry, you gotta have that rhinoceros skin and arrows have to bounce off of you.

Kate:                Yeah, For me, it was my third book that I found an agent and that was published and ah, it's totally difficulty and you have to slog through it. And you, definitely you become a better writer, The more you write. 

Mindy:             The book is called Someone to Watch Over by William Schreiber. It's compared to Where the Crawdads Sing and Sue Monk Kidd’s Secret Life of Bees, which, of course, are very well known, and it is available now. It released May 26 from Not A Pipe Publishing. Let the listeners know where they can find you online or on social media.

William:          My website is William Schreiber dot com, and I'm also on Goodreads at William Schreiber on Twitter is at Bill. Underscore Schreiber. 

Mindy: Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.