Hayley Chewins Talks Writing Upper Middle Grade And How to Handle A Revise & Resubmit

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: I'm here with Hayley Chewins, and we're gonna be talking about writing upper middle grade, which can be a really tricky audience age to settle on voice wise. And a little later on, we're also going to be talking about the process of an R and R that's revising and resubmitting, which can be extremely frustrating and high stress. So we're going to cover all those things. But first, Haley, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? 

Hayley: My name is Hayley Chewins. I am an author. I write middle grade fantasy books and my books, like you said, they skew upper middle grade. They're a little bit on the older side of middle grade. On um, they skew a little bit darker, too. So they’re fantasy books, but especially my latest book, is kind of borderline fantasy horror, dark fantasy. And I also coach writers, help writers to write more intuitively and to get in touch with their unique voice to come up with their most original ideas ever. And I just also launched a new online writing course called 100 Ideas in 10 Days, which helps you to come up with original ideas that are fascinating and interesting to you as a writer. So I do a couple of different things. Yeah, I'm really excited to be here so thanks for having me. I’m excited to chat everything middle grade and revising. I've done a lot of revising and resubmitting. 

Mindy: It's a frustrating place to be. It's like almost there. So why don't you tell us first a little bit about specifically writing upper middle grade? Because you're right. That is very much an area where you can kind of edge into some darker thematics and even push the envelope a little bit with your content. So why don't you talk about writing for upper middle grade and cross over potential for YA and where you see that age range falling? 

Hayley: So it's really interesting because I didn't set out to do it consciously. But my first book, The Turn Away Girls, when it got published, it was kind of like, You know, they put the age on the back of the book, so it was categorized 10 to 14 which is obviously on the older side. Usually, middle grade is like 9 to 12. I guess it depends on the reader.  I don't ever like to Generalize and say, like all 12 year olds are like this. So all 14 year olds are like this. Yeah, so it depends on the reader. So, like a 10 year old reader who has a more mature, maybe reading level or just more emotional maturity might get Just as much out of it as a 14 year old reader. 

It wasn't a conscious thing I didn't set out to go like I want to write up the middle grade, but I think just the themes that I covered in my books just tend to be a little bit heavier. Like the Turn Away Girls is about an island where music is kind of magical. And boys are allowed to make music, and girls are not. And there's a certain group of girls called the Turn Away girls who are forced to turn music into gold so obviously has, like, feminist themes, But on top of that, it also the main character has anxiety. I didn't intentionally do this, but my books tend to have mental health themes, even though they’re fantasy books. So I think it's because of that that they were kind of categorized on more of the upper end. Um, you know, they're not gory. I don't write about like crushes or first love or anything like that, that's usually, that's more YA. I think it's just kind of the heaviness of the themes, sometimes more so then, like the actual content of the book. 

The other thing is that my writing style does tend towards the more lyrical. It's not necessarily the most accessible language for a 10 year old. For a nine year old, it's actually very mysterious to me because I think as a writer we just create the book. And then, in a way, it's like the publisher's job to kind of categorize and market the book. So I didn't query my books as upper middle grade. I just queried them as middle grade, but it ended up being categorized that way.

Mindy: You’re right at that point, you know, marketing is making some decisions. Publishers and book stores are making those decisions, and sometimes even librarians and parents are making those decisions. I like what you said about not forming a hard line for age ranges yourself. You're not necessarily saying I'm writing for 13 year olds. I was a YA librarian for about 14 years. I can tell you, as I'm sure you're aware, too. There's such a broad range. What one 13 year old can handle, the other one simply can't. And so you're right. You would never, You would never say This book is for 13 to 15 or this book is for 10 to 12 because the exposure levels are different, even vocabulary, but also thematics. It could be very different from one child to the next. And I like what you're saying, too, about how you write lyrically. Lyrical writing can't work for every middle grader. Sometimes they need that cemented, rather than being asked to think about larger concepts. I don't know again like you're saying, I really do believe that it all depends on the middle grader themselves and where they're at. And I know a lot of middle graders do rely on those gatekeepers like teachers, librarians and parents to make sure that they're getting what they need. If they need something a little more stimulating than the upper middle grade can sometimes be a great fit.

Hayley: I do think there's a sweet spot that gets kind of missed because of that, and not to generalize about. Like all 13 year olds like this little 12 year olds are like that, but it is kind of like middle grade. And then there's, like, this younger YA that doesn't always get tapped into. And then, Like a lot of YA is like you just plunge straight into, like, really dark stuff, which, of course, teens need, um but yeah, there is, like, this unexplored kind of middle grade area, and it's interesting that we call it upper middle grade. We don't call it lower YA. I don't know if that's just cause lower YA sounds weird. I don't know, but what about younger YA? I totally agree that, you know, Children, just like adults, are individuals. They can't really be categorized in terms of age. And anyone who's ever interacted with you know, a group of Children knows that not every 14 year old is the same. And, like you said, the emotional maturity, the intellectual stuff, what that child has also gone through in their life because I remember being 12 and sometimes feeling like reading some books just felt too, too young for me because they just didn't resonate with me, even though they were technically written for 12 year olds.

I think the other thing with writing middle grade or writing YA, that can be quite tricky is that when you're writing, you kind of write for yourself and you write for the 12 year old or the 14 year old or a 16 year old that you were. I don't write my books from a didactic point of view. I don't write them from the perspective of being a teacher or a parent. I really write them as a writer and as an artist. And of course, I tapped into how I felt when I was 12 or 10. But yeah, I'm not kind of looking to pass on any kind of message, and I'm not really thinking too hard about, you Know, how the book is going to be marketed or categorized, even though, obviously, if you're querying, you have to know that. You have to know I'm writing a middle grade book or I'm writing a YA book. But I think it's something that Children's writers maybe have to navigate that maybe people who write for adults don't really have to navigate that thing. Like you just write the book. You don't have to say who is it for necessarily. It’s that dance between like the artistry of it, Which is like you're writing a book that you would want to read. But then also, of course, keeping in mind the age of your reader at the same time, and sometimes that's a really difficult line to walk, and I don't have any clear answers on it. To be honest.

Mindy: I was actually signing some stock this weekend, and the bookstore owner asked me, Do you have any plans for writing middle grade? And I said No, because, honestly, I think it's too hard, and I mean that. I don't think I could write it. I don't know that I can walk that balance that you're talking about because I write for teens. I write Dark and I write gritty and I'm not making any choices that are self censoring. I write for teens. I don't have any published books for adults, but I have written books that would be marketed to adults that are as of yet unpublished, and it was the same process for me because my reputation, my brand is that I'm always going to push the envelope. I'm gonna be gritty, and I'm gonna maybe cross some lines so I don't have to worry about that when I'm writing. It is part of what my reputation has been built into. So I don't know that I would ever be able to ask myself those questions. I think I would be so cautious that I couldn't be honest in my writing. So I think it takes a very special skill set to write in middle grade. 

Hayley: Well, I don't know if it's a skill set or if it's more just that you really connect with that age group. I think that people who write middle grade most of the writers I know, right middle grade. They just have this feeling of like, I want to write about how I felt when I was 10 when I was 12. Like they feel very connected to that version of themselves, and they can remember it vividly, and they have a sense of deep respect for how it felt to be 10 11 12. And it is. It's such a different feeling, too. When you're 14 15 16 or 16 17 18 on, But it's really interesting that you said about about middle grade because I kind of feel like that about - Not that I wouldn't be able to push the envelope like not the same problem - but I often feel like I just don't know how I would do it like I don't know how I would write about being a teenager, and I don't know if that's just me, like I'm not as connected to my teen self or if I don't get book ideas that are, like, suited to YA or what it is. But yeah, I think it's really interesting how some people just gravitate more towards the one or the other. And then other people can do everything, and it seems like they could just shape shift. I'm very jealous of those people. 

Mindy: Me too. Me, too. I want to circle back a little bit. You mentioned there's no category such as lower YA. Um, there's not. We do use the term clean YA, sometimes. YA that is a little more sweet, naive, and I don't mean that in a negative way, but sweet and naive where they’re characters or teenagers, But there's no sex that there's no drugs. There's no, you know, usually no language, clean YA. It is something that really kind of started to surface, that distinction has come up like I would say, maybe in the past, like three years or so. YA can be very dark and like maybe 10,15 years ago, that was really celebrated like Look, we're really pushing the envelope here and we can go there for teens now and I think that's wonderful because that's where I live. But then we kinda, and the market in general really leaned that way for a while. And there were a lot of librarians I know and also teens that were like, Hey, where's you know? Where's my sweet romcom? Where's my book that doesn't have someone dying in it. Clean YA has kind of had a resurgence, especially now, during the pandemic. People need an uplifting read. People need to maybe not necessarily read about something depressing when we're all living it. That's my answer for when you ask as far as age range. We do have that distinction of clean YA, which is for any age, but it's more of a content descriptor rather than an age range. 

Hayley: How do you feel about the term clean? Which kind of suggests that the other kind of YA is dirty.

Mindy: I don't mind it so much just because as when I was a librarian, I mean, that was part of what I did, because I did all the cataloging. So while I didn't read every single book, obviously in the collection, I would flip through. My eyes were very trained to pick up cursing. I can scan a lot of pages and pick up, you know, drugs, sex, whatever. Ii did that specifically. Just so I knew. And, you know, I had, like, a mental running What kids are going to want this book? What kids are not ready for this book, things like that. Also, to keep myself in good standing with parents and administrators. I don't necessarily have a problem with the word clean because my books are usually called, and I do like the term - gritty, which doesn't necessarily carry dirty with it. But I think the clean distinction is, um, more of an indicator of we're not going there and you know I respect that. And I certainly don't think that clean YA, that the term is denigrating to like what I write. Also most of the people I know write Gritty the way I do. If somebody wanted to call it Dirty we’d be like, Hey, that's fine. That markets very well. 

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Hayley: I guess I'm more thinking about the teams who might encounter that term because I'm just thinking about the idea that, like certain kinds of behavior, are dirty or wrong? 

Mindy: No, I get it and that's, That's a good consideration. I agree. Like I would never - And I think it's more of something that's of reference for the gatekeepers. Like I would never hand a book to a kid and say, You'll like this. It's clean. You know, I would never hand a book and be like, you’ll like this. It's dirty, you know? It's like I would never make that distinction to them. It would just be something that I was privately holding. 

Hayley: I think that's why librarians are so important, especially youth librarians, because, you need to get to know the kids who are coming to your library and then on. You have conversations with them and figure out what books they're going to suit them. Such a specialized and important job.

Mindy: It is, and it's something an algorithm can't do. So there's a shout out from my librarians. 

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Mindy: So let's move on to talk about revising and resubmitting for listeners who don't know that's called an R and R. If you get an R and R, what that means is that an agent has read your query they requested pages, usually requested the full, read it and said, Oh, you're so close, but not quite. It isn't necessarily rejection. What it is is an agent telling you these are the weaknesses. I'd like to see you strengthen them and come back around. I want to read it again. So A and R and R can feel a little deflating, but at the same time, it should be encouraging. It's another step in the ladder, so why don't you talk a little bit about that R and R process. 

Hayley: So I was clearing The Turnaway Girls. My agent. Her name is Patricia Nelson. She requested pages and then requested the full manuscript. She got back to me and she said, I really loved the voice in this, like I love your writing and I love the concept of the idea. But there were some significant pacing and kind of plotting problems. I still struggle with plotting and painting. I am by no means an expert, but back then, especially, I was kind of still learning how to write, to write a book and to structure a book so well. First, she asked, like, would I be willing to do a revise and resubmit and I was like, Yes, of course I would love to do it. She sent me notes, and she sent me a bunch of books that she recommended. I read them. One of them was Save The Cat by Blake Snyder, which is a great story structure book if you struggle with story structure. 

So I read the books and I did the changes. Patricia is amazing and that she always gives notes that she kind of points out, points out what's not working, but she'll never tell me like you have to change it in this way. She kind of did that. She gave me broad structural feedback in terms of, you know, where the pacing was lagging and like how the structure of the story wasn't working. And I actually ended up changing quite a lot about the story, like about the world, too, because I find that when you're revising, oftentimes you change one thing and then you have to change another thing because it's all interlinked that it's all tied together and knotted together. 

So I had started during that revise and resubmit for her, and I was very happily doing it. I was really excited to get the notes because I've also heard that, you know, if agents do that - and this is absolutely true - if an agent offers you a revise and resubmit and send you notes and they're taking the time to to really look at your manuscript closely and send your feedback, that means that they really are interested in your book. So it really is, like, so close like you're almost there, but not quite. So I was happily working away on this revise and resubmit, and I ended up getting an offer from another agent on the original manuscript cause I had a couple of fulls out.

So I told Patricia that that had happened and she was like, Okay, just send me like, the first three chapters of what you've revised on. I did that and then she signed me based on those revised chapters. So I actually didn't finish the entire revise and we resubmit. Um, if that hadn't happened, obviously I would have finished it and then sent it to her and hopefully, you know, that sort of happened, Um, she sort of offered me representation. So, yeah, she's been my agent since 2015 and we actually work really collaboratively together to this day, and it was actually a really good thing, I think, that that happened because it gave me a sense of what it would be like to work with her. And I just knew that we clicked on an editorial level. But then I did another R and R later on when we went on sub and got an offer to revise and resubmit from my editor at Candlewick again, a very similar experience. 

My editor said she absolutely loved the book, Loved the voice, loved the world and there was some story problems. She wrote me a really in depth revising, resubmit edit letter. I think it was 12 pages long. It was actually really great because it gave me kind of an idea of what it would be like to work with her even before we work together. The reason why I did it also is because in the edit letter and in her email, it was really clear that she really understood the story and loved the heart of the story and just really wanted to help me to make it the best book that it could possibly be. I've had quite good experiences, with revising and resubmitting. 

I did another revise and resubmit, actually on the manuscript that I queried before The Turnaway Girls that actually ended up in a rejection. But that also kind of taught me that I think what happened with that, is that I kind of over revised the book. Um, I don't know if you've ever done that, but I kind of revised, like the book out of the book. And it was kind of like, unrecognizable by the time I sent it. But I do believe like, everything happens for a reason. I'm one of those people. So I'm glad that I had that experience because just every experience that you have like that, when you're querying is just like a nugget of gold because you're learning how to query, you’re learning how to interact with agents. You're learning how to structure a story, you're learning how to write the books that you were born to write. And I do think that first book that I queried that I was getting too a sense of who I was as a writer and kind of what I wanted to say and the kind of book that I wanted to write, that I wasn't quite there yet. So I think that's also probably why it wasn't, it didn't end up being a successful revise and resubmit, but it taught me so much. 

Mindy: That really is one of the most healthy and positive, and best ways to look at a revise and resubmit is that you just have professional feedback on your work, and that's something you got for Free too. That is something that is invaluable. And even if a revise and resubmit, because the other thing and it can be a frustrating element of the R and R, is that every editor has their own style. So if you revise and resubmit heavily like you were, you were just saying, If you revise and resubmit to really kind of fit a particular editor or you revise so deeply that it doesn't have a lot of resemblance to your original concept or your original voice, sometimes that can be highly frustrating.

I actually had an experience and I won't say which one of my books but it's one of my published books, where it was acquired, and I had gone through an editorial process and had already done a pass, and it was dense -  like this was not a simple book. And the editor I had been working with really wanted things to be a little more spoon fed. I did a version that was more of a walk through. They had a little more spoon feeding for my readers. Did that edit, turned it in, and in the meantime, this editor left publishing and I was handed to a different editor. She was a senior editor. She read it. She got back to me. You're really illustrating some things that I don't necessarily need, think, need to be. And I said, Well, that was because I did a revision based on notes from this other editor. And so the senior editor said, Why don't you send me your original manuscript that we bought? And so I did, and she's like, This is the one I'm working with. I like this one better, And I was like, Okay, so I had put in a revision in on a book and it was essentially scrapped. But that was okay, because I preferred the choices that the senior editor was making as well. It was an interesting experience. It was a little bit frustrating, but at the same time, I learned, you know, not to necessarily write to, Please an individual and a specific vision. Yeah, it's very hard to dissect what is yours and what is being imposed upon your work. 

Hayley: Exactly. I think especially starting out like when you're first querying or when you know, your first kind of starting out, with a finished manuscript, and you might have critique partners, but at that time, also, you if you don't have a sense, you didn't have, like, a very strong sense of who I was and my voice. And I think this is just actually a general problem. Not necessarily a writing problem, but but, you know, like having a real sense of conviction about your work is quite hard when you're just starting out and you kind of just You just desperately want an agent. You want to get published, you want this dream of yours to come true. And sometimes it feels like Okay, so it. I'll do anything, you know. If you want me to change everything about this book, I'll do it. 

I get what you're saying that like even though I always think of like a good answer, is really trying To, see your vision and then try to bring that vision into fruition in the best possible way in that situation where you have someone who's just trying to foster your project and get it to be the best version of itself at the same time, they're also individual people, and they have their own individual taste and they have different ways of solving problems or different ways of approaching the work. So, yeah, it is really It's a really hard line to walk with each project. You kind of have to know what is the heart of this book. What is the one thing that I would not be able to take out because if I took out that thing, it would die basically. And that's a really cool idea. 

But then at the same time, it's like, Well, how do I know what that thing is? And I guess sometimes you have to just try and have, like trial and error and see like Is the core feeling still alive, If I take this out? Because some stuff is kind of ornamental, almost. I don't know something that isn't necessarily part of the nuts and bolts of the story at the same time, style can sometimes be. And that's nuts and bolts thing you might say you might feel like, No, this is the voice of the book, and it needs to sound like this. It can't be in very clean, straightforward pros. It has to be like strange, pretty prose, and that's what the book is. 

Um, but yeah, it's hard to do that as a young writer, I found it hard. Even now. I mean, I am still quite a young writer. To be honest, my second book is coming out in a week, Um, and it feels super surreal. But yeah, definitely. Like five years ago, it was much harder for me to know, like what is me and what is them and what is like the crystallized center of the book and what is like the stuff that I can change and remove and because I've always liked to think of myself as like happy to be flexible. I also think that ideas are so stretchy and so capacious. If you have an idea for a book and it's not working, you can always find a way to make it work. Sometimes that means changing it quite substantially, But you can make it work. It's really hard.

Mindy: It is. It's very hard to do, and especially when you are a younger writer or you're unsure of yourself and what your own voice might be. Yet it is difficult. Uh, that's the fine line. That's the fine line. And I think you got to go with your gut. I had an interesting experience when I was querying my first book. It's a post apocalyptic survival set in a world with very little water, and I had two agents offering to represent me. I'd been querying for 10 years, dying for some attention, and suddenly I had two agents offering to represent me. One of them had only sold one book, and one of them had sold like 30 that month like it was ridiculous. But the highly highly successful agent was also more of a romance agent. She represented A lot more of like happily ever afters. 

And one of the things that we talked about on the phone-  my character's love interest dies in the book - spoiler warning, but he dies and that's because that's how I write and I write gritty and I write hard and I write rough and this is a harsh world and you're not going to get a happily ever after. And she didn't want that to happen. She wanted him to live. I talked to the agent that's only sold one book, and she's like, No, I love that you killed him. That was awesome. And I'm like, Well, you're going to be the better fit for me, like that's all there is to it. You know, sometimes you just have to ask yourself like you said, like, What's the thing that you're not going to trade in? And I was not going to trade in a happily ever after like that was not happening for me. Really, it is gut. I think whenever you have feedback from an agent or an editor, even a critique partner, you do need to consider it and ask yourself, Does this go against my prime core for this book? Do I feel very strongly about this and then ask yourself why, it's like, Do I feel strongly about this just because I can't accept criticism? Or do I feel strongly about this? Because it's the essence of the book?

Hayley: Or is it just my ego, Like am I just feeling a bit bruised hearing this criticism. You have that wish for someone would just be like this is amazing. And when they come back and say, Well, actually, this is great, but this isn't quite working for me or that isn't quite working. You do have to be quite self aware and emotionally mature, I think, to be like, Well, is it just me feeling a little bit like Bruised about this? Is it just my ego rearing its head? And what I find often helps is that if you just read it first and then kind of step away, give it some time and then come back because often the first time you read something, it is difficult to read criticism, but if you have a little bit of distance, if you go away for a couple hours and come back, or for a day or two and then come back. You can usually read it a second or third time with a bit more distance, and then maybe you can make more level headed choices about what to accept and what not to accept. 

And I also think that it's important. Maybe, and maybe part of the thing of growing as a writer is understanding what your weaknesses are and what your strengths are. So I'm very aware that, like I have certain strengths, but I also have weaknesses. And so if I get feedback about those weak points, I'm like pretty much always like my agent is right or my critique partners are right, because I yeah, there's just some things that come really naturally and then other things that you have to work really hard on. I've never met a writer who doesn't have at least one area that they feel like This is like my problem area, like, I just have to work so hard on getting this right. 

Mindy: It is hard to be circumspect about your own writing, but you're completely correct that time and distance is what helps make that possible. Real quick, why don't you tell us a little bit about your class 100 Ideas in how many days? 

Hayley: 10 days. I know it sounds a little outrageous. Um, it is actually a self paced tool, so you don't have to do it in 10 days. I just thought it sounded really cool to come up with 100 ideas in 10 days. It's about following your intuition and finding your voice and coming up with your most original ideas ever. And it's about how you can make a book idea, meaning not just a new story idea, but like a new idea for how to move the scene forward or an idea for a character or an idea for world building. You could make an idea pretty much out of anything. This is my belief in life and in writing. And I got to a point when I was studying law and suddenly didn't have time to write, didn't have time to read, and I was like, Oh, God, this is actually a really important thing to me. Like I can't actually live my life without this thing, without writing, And that was when I kind of admitted to myself like that I really wanted to write books, which meant I had to finish a book all the way from the beginning to the end, which meant that I had to somehow have a book idea. And so, even though I had, like, this intense desire to write a book, I didn't really have a sense of my own voice or what I wanted to say, and I didn't feel like I had any ideas. I didn't feel like my point of view was particularly interesting. 

At that time I was also reading mainly adult literary fiction, and that's what I thought I wanted to write. And so I wrote thousands and thousands of words, many manuscripts for adults. Before I started writing for Children, I was bored with myself. I had no idea what to write about, and I didn't know how to tap into that and how to like, think of something interesting to write about. So that's kind of why I created this course. 100 Ideas in 10 Days is basically four lectures and 10 lessons, so they're all audio. It's an online classroom. You can log in and do it all in one goal, or you could do it really slowly. You could do it over 10 months or 10 years, or however long, like however you want to pace it. There are reflections about idea, generation and idea development. So, just like general principles. And then there are 10 exercises, and each of the exercises helps you to generate 10 ideas. So by the end of it, you have 100 new story ideas. Even if you start out and you don't really have a vision for your writing by the end of it, you'll have a clear idea of what kind of a writer you wanna be. I just kind of wanted to make something out of love and put it out into the world. And, yeah, I hope that people get something out of it. 

Mindy: Let listeners know where they can find you online, where they can find your upcoming book and also how they can take that class. 

Hayley: So I'm at HayleyChewins.com. If you go to HayleyChewins.com/100-ideas, you'll find the 100 Ideas in 10 Days Course. And yeah, my book that's coming out in a week is called The Sisters of StrayGarden Place. It's out with Candlewick Press, 13th of October 2020. Kind of like a Gothic dark fantasy, middle grade about sisterhood and forgiveness and family secrets. Yeah, I really hope people like it. That's me. I'm also on Twitter at Hayley_Chewins.

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Matt Haig Talks Anxiety, Panic, Depression & Writing As Therapy

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.

Mindy: We're here with Matt Haig and we're talking about his new book, The Midnight Library. So why don't we just start off with you telling us a little bit about what it's about?

Matt: Well, the Midnight Library of the title is a library that exists between life and death. And, it's a very unusual library, it’s an infinite library, and the shelves in that library go on forever. Ah, woman, the central protagonist, Nora. She finds herself there. She has made an attempt on her own life, which is why she's between life and death, and she's drowning in regret. Within this library, she gets to try the other lives she could have lived with the help of the librarian within this library of books, this sort of godlike librarian, Mrs. Elm. She gets to be guided through different versions of how her life could have Been and to access those lives is as simple as taking a book off the shelf on opening the book. And then she's in those other versions of her own existence. So there's the Life where she carried on with her swimming career and became an Olympic swimmer. There's a life where she pursued music and became a rock star. There's the Life where she was good at science and is a glaciologist. There’s a life where she's a perfect wife, perfect mother, all of these different versions of how her life could have Been, which she's sort of been having wish fulfillment fantasies about in her real life. She now actually gets to see if the grass really is greener and works out how best to live her own life and whether her life is worth living. 

Mindy: You talk a lot about time in many of your books. It seems to be something that you think about a lot. 

Matt: It’s interesting, isn't it? Because I suppose when you've written a few books, sort of themes start to emerge. But they're not necessarily conscious themes. I suppose I do, I do always, um, think about time and mortality and all of that stuff. Um, but I sometimes wonder why we're all not doing that. I mean, I feel like, you know, we're here. It's so easy to get sort of lost in a sort of trivial sort of stresses or get lost in the Internet and get lost in politics or coronavirus or whatever it is, we lose sight, I think, of so much and so much of sort of existence, really. And we don't take into account enough of a sort of like the miracle of actually existing. 

We Look out at the world and we see some of this sort of hellscape sometimes and how horrendous it is. But essentially we are alive. We are on this planet. This is, there's only planet. The only planet we know of with life on it and we Get to witness that. We are like the universe witnessing itself, and we get so swamped by our sort of human concerns-  quite rightly. So there's a lot to get angry about. I'm not belittling any of that, but I think sometimes to look at the big picture to look at our place in time, look at our place in space. Um, yeah, I think novels are a perfect way to do that because obviously, you're telling a story. But within that story, you can have a lot of sort of philosophical asides and, uh, points about existence. And it's, you know, I I believe first and foremost a book should be entertaining. But I also think you can have your cake and eat it and put stuff in there, which makes people think and contemplate on, but can be part of the entertainment itself I suppose.

Mindy: Yes, absolutely. I agree as someone that has an English degree and has never really been able to use it in any useful way, moving through the world, trying to get a job or anything like that. Miss those discussions, I miss sitting in a classroom with people and saying, Well, you know, what is this book really about? What is the author saying or what is, you know, really having a discussion as opposed to Like I mean, I freely admit to like occasionally combing through reviews, looking for someone that maybe hopefully actually got it. 

Matt: Well, that's true, isn't it? Because people sort of say, You know, when you say what happens in a book? People are generally talking about plot, but I'm interested in what really happens. What is this book really about, what you know, because even... I don't know, even the most sort of potboiler thriller I think you know, is always about something. The author is kind of coming from a certain perspective or a certain place in time. You know, whether it's Agatha Christie or whatever. There's something going on you can't always mind read. You can’t always do a Jedi mind trick and work out what that author is precisely meaning by that, but I think it's a fun game, and it is a good form of communication or a way to interact with the book, too. Not just thinking in terms of plot and spoiler warnings. And you know, what you can say about plot? But what is that author actually, where are they coming from? Why does this story exist? Why they wanted to tell them. And I think that's an interesting way of reading and looking into it. 

Mindy: I agree completely. So I wanted to talk. You mentioned COVID. You mentioned the epidemic and all the things going on in the world right now, which it does seem to be like I'm in the US and, like, practically half of our country is on fire, and then what’s not literally on fire is metaphorically on fire. So you mentioned before your memoir, and a couple other books that you've written specifically, Notes On A Nervous Planet, I enjoyed very much in dealing with depression and anxiety. But if you could talk a little bit about being a creative, being a writer, specifically, in the current environment, how to handle or how you maybe handle or find ways to handle things like depression and anxiety as being a creative helpful in this arena. Do you use writing as therapy in a way, or is that a separate act for you? 

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Matt: It's interesting. Well, I mean, firstly I’ve got to massively checked my privilege here because I think being a writer and being a writer who earns enough money to just do writing who has a publisher wants to publish me. And All of that means that the transition in 2020 hasn't been that big for me compared to other people. So my life hasn't fundamentally changed. Obviously, the new situation, the global situation, situation in your country, the situation in my country isn't even great. We’re like handling everything the worst in Europe. Yeah, all of that stuff gets in, obviously, but I have to acknowledge that so many people have it worse. Even within this sort of arts and culture sector, I feel like books have been relatively - certainly the sphere I'm in has been relatively insulated, compared to say, if you're working in theater or something like that.

But, you know, I I feel anxiety for me, you know, Anxiety for me is one of the things that sort of continually dogged my health. And this year it has been full of anxiety, and what's been so strange has been realizing that ah, lot of the symptoms of  My anxiety and my breakdown when I was younger have been sort of almost enforced upon us. You know, like the compulsive washing of the hands, the distancing for social awkwardness that we've got on almost like compulsory agoraphobia. All of that stuff. And I feel like, you know, that's potentially so, triggering I mean, for my own mental health. Personally, it's not been great, but it hasn't been like a disaster. Had way worse times in the past. Actually, I've got a lot of writing done. And writing, and writing fiction has been, you know, such a therapy this year it's been so good to literally sort of take my mind somewhere else. And also, I think another therapeutic aspect of writing fiction is you, You're literally creating a world you can have control over. So in 2020 when all of us feel desperately out of control, I'm sure in the U. S. That's even more magnified. Um, it's so nice to have that world, you can have shape to your own will. 

Mindy: Absolutely true. I agree. 

Matt: Which makes me sound, which makes me sound like a megalomaniac, doesn't it bending the world to My will? Which I suppose. Yeah, that is basically what writers are doing.

Mindy: That is pretty much what we do. I decide what happens here. That's good. I agree with you. I also am fortunate enough to be able to write full time and so many of my friends and not just writers, but also, you know, just people out moving through the world, you know, lost their jobs there, had to stay home, and they would talk to me, and people would ask how was lock down going. And I'm like, you know, my life. Basically, didn’t change. I'm home every day. I'm alone.

Matt: I’ve been on lockdown since 1999. 

Mindy: That's kind of how I felt. I was like, Well, and it does make you question a little bit about how you're leading your personal life, but yeah, I mean, the world ended and it didn't really affect me. That's definitely leading an insulated life. But interestingly enough, some of my friends that are writers who, fortunately for them in their past, have never really had to deal with depression or anxiety, and suddenly they do. And the world has just become too much. And I have quite a few friends. They didn't have any coping mechanisms that they already honed for themselves, like throughout their lives. And I know quite a few people that just had almost mental breaks. There were like, I can't I can't do it, In some ways I was already like you said, You know, I was preconditioned for this. I'm doing fine. 

Matt: I think that's true. And actually, I was literally in an anxiety dip in December, January this year, pre COVID. And so I was recovering from that. Watching world news happening on my own anxiety, actually, sometimes in a strange way, is almost. It's almost better when I have something really to worry about something outside of my own brain. The worst type of anxiety for me is when I get into this sort of loop of self referential anxiety where you're anxious because of the anxiety or you're depressed because of the Depression, and then you can't get out of it. And sometimes, like when we used to live next to a river in York, in the north of England, And I remember nearly falling into a depression. Then the river flooded and the water came into our house and it destroyed our kitchen and it was a sort of everything. 

Everyone was suddenly so sympathetic towards me and saying, Oh this must be dreadful and it must be devastating and all of this. Actually, I felt better in a weird way for having that sort of like caveman brain kick in. And it's like I had a real situation to deal with. It certainly took me out of myself into an external reality. The trouble is, I suppose, this year our external reality has felt so beyond our immediate control that a sense of uncertainty adds to it and stuff. There's a great book, actually, When Things Fall Apart by an American Tibetan Buddhist Pema Chodron. I read that for the first time this year, and it is what's great about it. Even though I'm not Buddhist, is just a great book about uncertainty and about how we sort of frame, in the West, we frame uncertainty as this negative thing, but actually uncertainty is also the source of hope, and it's a source of good stuff and how we have to sort of accept despair and suffering as part of the same whole as joy and contentment and calm and all those things. And we've almost conditioned ourselves to believe that our life is a failure if it has any kind of suffering or pain within it. But this kind of Buddhist holistic approach, I think in 2020 has been very soothing for me. So, yeah, I have been getting a little bit spiritually. 

Mindy: That's wonderful. I will definitely check that out. That sounds like a good read for right now. Why don't you let listeners know where they can find The Midnight Library, which, It's going to be all over the place. It was recently picked for the Good Morning America, book club read for October. So congrats on that. 

Matt: It was published yesterday in hardback. I'm very lucky. Viking has given it gorgeous cover design and everything, and yeah, I mean, my My other regret about this year is that I'm not actually able to do a book tour in person, and I'm I'm stuck in in England doing Zoom, but it has meant I've been able to chat a lots of people and contact people, and I'm very active on Instagram on Twitter and all those things, so feel free to say hello there, too. 

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.

Lori M. Lee on Pivoting to Digital Marketing & Managing Depression During COVID

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.

Mindy: Today's guest is Lori M. Lee, author of the Fantasy YA title Forest of Souls. Lori joined me today to talk about launching a book during the pandemic, marketing and promo online, and how to handle depression and anxiety during COVID.

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Mindy: We're here with Lori M. Lee, who is a YA author. Her most recent release was Forest of Souls, which is a fantasy that came out this June. Now, unfortunately, I think, A lot of us have had To really kind of refocus and pivot and find new ways to promote anything that released in 2020. My book in 2020 came out on March 3rd, and I got a week of touring in, and then everything shut down and we were done. I was supposed to mostly be on the road pretty much the entire month of March and then the first half of April. And that, of course, all ended quite abruptly. So if you want to talk about promo in the time of covert, how are you reaching your readers? 

Lori: I can't even imagine actually having to begin my tour and then just like shutting it down. So I guess on the one hand, it's a good thing that I never was able to go out. Um, but I had, like, a year to plan all the promo for this book, you know, And I had so many things planned, I was gonna go on a book tour through the Midwest with, like, a lot of author friends. I was gonna be attending my first major conference as a guest, which I was so psyched about then, like you said, COVID happened and the tour was canceled, switched to being virtual. That actually didn't happen either. But that's for a different reason. The book conference, which was ALA in June, which was ALA, was literally the weekend that my book released. It just like lined up perfectly, but alas, it did not happen. 

Yeah, so, luckily, A  lot of the things I had planned, like aside from that, were virtual, though, because I always think about the international fans. It always makes me feel bad when I do like, you know, US only promotions. So, um, specifically my pre order campaign, I have to caveat this with like, Only do a pre order campaign if that's something that is fun for you because it is a lot of work, a lot of work and a lot of money too. So you have to really make that decision for yourself about whether you want to do that. 

So it was important to me to figure something out that would be flat enough. That would be a really cool gift, but also flat so I could mail it international with just like a stamp. So I just came up with an enamel bookmark and it's really pretty. I thought it was really cool. I was planning this really big cover photo challenge with Shveta Thakrar who is the author of Star Daughter. We were planning this really big cover photo challenge in June, like leading up to my book release and then I post about it. And then I had a weird mental break and I just completely lost focus. And I didn't do anything for, like, the three weeks leading up to release. In a way, the virtual events work better specifically just for me, because I can't really travel anyway. And I was like, going to focus all of my budget on that tour, but it didn't happen. So then I was able to distribute it elsewhere. 

Mindy: It sounds like you were able to kind of redirect and pivot pretty well. I want to bring up something you mentioned that has not come up on the podcast before, interestingly enough, and it is something that I also think about often. International readers very often, like if I do a giveaway on the Blog, a book or whatever. People reach out to me like, Well, is it international? And unfortunately, the answer is no, because it is expensive to ship a book overseas. 

Callous Side of the answer is you know, I'm doing giveaways in order to promote myself, and usually the entries are to gain social media followers stuff like that. I don't get a monetary benefit from this. I get a benefit of likes and follows and things like that. And if I made every single giveaway international, I would be losing a significant amount of money. That's the business side of it. The emotional side of it is that my international readers matter to me just as much as my domestic readers. 

I also I think you have a wonderful idea there. I also have bookmarks made and I have basically used, like, a very precise scale and weighed my bookmarks so that I know exactly how much they weigh. And I can mail them internationally, just using an international stamp, which still, I mean, it's not that cheap. I'm actually gonna look it up. 

Lori: It's $1.25. 

Mindy: That's what I thought. I got a lot of international stamps. They’re very pretty. Do you have the one with the succulent? 

Lori: Yes. Yes. And they just came out with, like a really pretty, um, sunflower one as well. 

Mindy: Yes. I've seen that one. I like it a lot. I think those international stamps are $1.25 That's not cheap, but it is—

Lori: Sorry, they’re $1.15

Mindy: Okay, it's $1.15 and that's not cheap, but it's still a nod to your international readers. It's something that you can do for them, and they're spending money on your book. And I don't think it's going to break the bank for you to spend $1.15 to send them some bookmarks. So what I do is particular length, width and stock of the bookmarks that I use. I can ship seven bookmarks in a single envelope. The international stamp will cover it. You know, the hope is that $1.15  that I spent, they'll keep one bookmark for themselves and maybe, like give the six others to friends. And I could possibly generate sales by spending $1.15.. And that's not bad. So I love your point. I think it's interesting. I think, too, that we as authors have had to really rethink how we do our digital marketing and our digital appearances. Have you done many Skype phone calls or presentations or zoom talks? 

Lori: I've done so many zoom presentations, not Skype so far, But Zoom has been a big thing like with all the book festivals turning virtual. I've done several of those and it's again. It's been like long enough now that I can't even recall specifically, I don't know, at least a half dozen.

Mindy: And what did you find in terms of attendance? Were you able to get numbers then and data from the organizers? 

Lori: I did not get any numbers of data, but the nice thing was that a lot of them were available, like to stream on YouTube. So, like literally, I would just go to YouTube and, like, check out like the views and the comments and stuff and if they all seem to be really well attended. So I'm not too fussed about like the numbers and stuff because at the same time, I got to chat with, like, other authors and that’s cool.

Mindy: That's cool. But you also have a piece of static promo right there that you can use on your own social media, and you can use it. It's you talking about your book, and you can reference people to it. I found it useful myself. I've done a couple of instagram chats and on Instagram live, and I've never on instagram live. It's just not a thing that I do for the most part I'm comfortable with tech. But as I said, I had never done an Instagram live. I've never done an online presentation where I'm sharing my screen or like walking like teaching and walking people through slides. And I've had to like Open up and be like Yes, I will do that And I will. I will go learn some new things so that I can still be effective in promoting my book. 

Lori: Yes, I also had to learn Instagram live. It wasn't hard, fortunately because actually, I had no idea how to use it until I was watching someone else do Instagram live and they were sort of fumbling through it. And then they figured out how To invite another person into their instagram live like, Oh, so that's how you do it. 

And then for my release day event, I had to figure out how to stream a video like, panel between me and two other authors. So I had to figure all that out, like, literally the day before my release. Okay, To be fair, I had like, weeks to do it, but I was going through like, a really tough mental time then and I wasn't sure if I was even going to do it. And then, like, you know, release date was approaching. I was just like, I have to do this. Otherwise, you know, I'll probably regret it.

I Figured out the technology literally the day before and then the day of like, we had some technical difficulties again because, you know, it was new technology to all of us. And then fortunately, we worked through it. That was a lot of fun. And then, unfortunately, I did not know how to record. So like once it was done, it was done. I don't have it anymore. 

Mindy: Yeah, this is a fear now of mine that I just live in fear of accidentally turning on Facebook live or turning on instagram live or streaming when I'm sitting on the toilet or getting into the bathtub because I am just like, I'm constantly working. I'm constantly in conversation with different people about different things, usually with book related stuff. And so I'll have my phone with me even in the bathroom, because I'm working and I live in constant fear of like, instagramming my shit or something. I don't know. 

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Mindy: So you have mentioned a couple times already having some mental health struggles with the COVID epidemic, also like tied to publishing in some ways. So that is, right now, for many of the authors that I know - It's kind of a universal story, so if you'd like to talk about that, that would be great. 

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Lori: When quarantine happened when, like everything shut down, I didn't feel stressed out, but like my skin completely went crazy, right? Like I just started breaking out in a way that I haven't done since I was a teenager. So I knew something was up, but at the same time I didn’t feel any different. But I felt like I was probably now, like in hindsight, I was probably just doing a really good job like compartmentalizing. 

I was on the promo train and I was on social media like a ton. I was posting a ton and I was doing all like the virtual book festivals and the panels. And then I was, I had just posted all the stuff for our cover challenge, and then I just had, I don't know. I feel like maybe everything came to a head because at the same time there was a lot of stuff happening in terms of like, Black Lives Matter and a lot of the protests happening. And then with COVID and then with my book release coming up and I feel like I just collapsed, I just I couldn't do it anymore. And I had, like, this major bout of anxiety that just like, I've had episodes in the past that don't last for more like a day so I can handle it. Whereas this one, it just persisted and persisted and it grew. 

And then I became mildly depressed, and I got to the point where I couldn't imagine even writing another book anymore. Like and to the point where I just want it all to go away. Like I didn't even want my book release to happen. I didn't want anything to happen. I just wanted everything to just go away. 

So I went to go see my doctor. She prescribed me some antidepressants and anti anxiety medicine, which I didn't take, because - I wanna like caveat as well, like, you have to make the best choice for yourself. And if that's the best choice, please take medicine. But for me, it's just, I just read a lot of the side effects and stuff and, like, I wasn't sure if this was something that I would have to do for the rest of my life or if this was just an episode like in the past, so I sort of stuck it out for bit. I took herbal supplements and I don't know if it was the supplement or just my body self regulating, but gradually, day by day it started to lift. I feel like I'm 95% myself again, but it did take time. It was just the weirdest episode in my life, so far.

Mindy: Did you as well, in addition to the supplements, did you pull back from social media? 

Lori: Oh, yes, I just left. I left completely. I should have been posting. I will, I say should, but like you don't have To promote, you know, but me personally, I feel like I should have been posting, um, much more leading up to their release. But I didn't like, I had so many things planned that I would post which I didn't post. I just left a message saying, You know, I was having a tough time. 

And like all the things that I have to mail out, I had so many pre orders still to mail out and like gifts and stuff to mail out that I only actually Only just got to, like, a month ago because I finally had, like, the physical mental motivation to go to the post office and do it. But I still feel terrible about. But also I was waiting for stamps, so that's like my excuse, Well, because of the whole post office situation, I was waiting a very long time for stamps. 

But then, like my virtual tour I feel, I felt so bad about that because I had put a lot of planning, and my agent had put a lot of planning into, like what we would do, reaching out to like my friends, like author friends and other authors to like, Do it with me. And then this thing happened and I was just like, I don't think I could do it anymore. At the time we pushed it back, we were just like, we'll postpone it. But I mean, it's been like three months and it's it's just not gonna happen. So that was disappointing. So the only thing I really did on book release week Was my release day event. Everything else that I had planned was just out the door. 

Mindy: You're not alone in this. A fellow author that I did not necessarily know well and had only met once. But we had interacted on social media, a fellow YA Author, I saw posted some months ago, you know, I'm pulling away out entirely from social media. I did have this person's phone number and I sent them a text, and I was just like, Hey, I'm just reaching out and making sure you're okay. And she texted me back and she was like, Thank you. I will be. I just can't do a lot right now. I simply, I'm not functioning. I was like, Okay. I mean, that's fine. And don't feel bad about feeling bad. That's what I've been telling people - do not feel bad for feeling bad. This is a shit storm. This other YA author and I are now in the habit, even though we were not close before, we just check in on each other like, pretty much every week with a text like, how are you doing? You're not alone in this, And to have it hit with release. I'm so sorry. And I can't imagine. 

And I want to say this in support of your choice - Which I would support regardless - But I had an interesting experience as an author last in the summer beginning of fall. So about a year ago, I went through a break up. It was a relationship that had lasted for 12 years. I was done. Nothing matters. This is stupid. Laid in bed and cried for three days. Then my dog died. So it was not a good and I was like, Fuck you 2019. I had no idea. But anyway, I was just in such a bad place, and I just didn't care. I was like, I don't care about tweeting about my book. Like where I was emotionally right then. I was like, That's dumb. I'm not doing that. And in the past, I have been very active on social media, and I was just like, You know what? This doesn't matter to me right now. I basically cold turkey dropped, like, didn't even make an announcement that I was backing away for probably two or three months and I saw zero effect on my sales. 

I have always been a proponent of using the tools that we have to promote ourselves. I no longer believe that it is as effective as I used to. Um, you're in a slightly different situation because, like you were saying this was release week for you. I did not have anything to actively promo at the time. So, like, it is slightly different. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't do social media because I think it does bring awareness of a release or of you as an author, and I have found people and their art through a particularly interesting tweet that went out, or a Facebook post that was shared. I'm not saying it doesn't work. I'm just saying it is not worth throwing yourself against that brick wall over and over If your heart is not in it. 

Lori: And the thing is my heart was in it until, like anxiety and depression happened. I could say confidently that that wasn't me. What I mean, like, that's not how I normally am. I know that a lot of authors give advice to not tie so much of your identity into your writing. For most of my adult life, that's that's sort of been my identity, you know, like I wanted to write. I wanted to be a writer, and so when that happened and I just didn't care anymore, I had a bit of an existential crisis because this is the thing I've always loved. I've always wanted, like, desperately to do, and if I don't care anymore, then what do I do? Who am I? Like I said, I was having all these questions. What do I do if that passion for writing doesn't come back? I mean, fortunately, it did. And like the fog lifted, it was a weird time.

Mindy: It is. And the phrase you just used “the fog lifted” is so accurate. I mean, it truly is just like a mental fog and a funk, and nothing matters. I mean, that's the thing I have a difficult time expressing about depression. Um, I suffered from depression like my whole life. Anxiety was a new experience for me. Can't say I enjoyed it. Depression is that, I mean, that's what gets me every time. I think it's very difficult for people that don't suffer from it to understand this like - No, it doesn't matter, like nothing matters right now, all I feel is nothing. You can't motivate yourself when nothing matters. 

However, I'm 41 now. I've been managing it for a long time. I have discovered that you know I'll have a string, two, three, usually not too bad, But like one really bad day, right? I’m like, you feel like this today. Tomorrow you might not. And then I have days that are awesome, where it's like I'm awesome and the world's awesome and people are awesome and everything's gonna be okay. Like I have those days too. Not in a manic depressive style way like it's a pretty even fluctuation. But I have good days too. 

And so when I'm in a bad day, it's like, Okay, live this. You're in your bad day. And I'm lucky enough that I do write full time. So it's like, You know what? Go take a nap. It's cool. Like you don't, you don't have to do this. You don't have to feel like this right now. If you want to take a nap, you can. I highly realize and acknowledge that that is a luxury. There is that guilt then that is associated with it, too. I'm not doing anything. I'm not working hard enough. I didn't do my hair today. I look sloppy. I didn't put on makeup. It's okay. It's okay. It is okay to feel bad. You don't need to feel bad about the fact that you feel bad.,

Lori: The guilt of letting everybody down around you, not really being able to do anything about it, like wanting to do something about it, but also not wanting.

Mindy: The incapability. When I'm just in bed and I'm not gonna be able to get out like it's just that's not gonna happen right now. And if it's the middle of the day that makes you feel like shit, it's just the way it is. 

I'd like to talk on the flip side of that about anxiety. What was your experience of that? You said you had these existential questions. If I'm not writing and if I'm not a writer, I think it's really interesting, and I know we're kind of veering away from the topic of writing and publishing. But I think it's worth talking about because your experience was COVID and publishing related, and for me, when I was going through my break up, I kind of had the opposite experience where it was like the only thing I'm good at is writing. That's everything I am. That's the only thing I am, is a writer, and that felt very empty to me. My personal life on the romantic scale was, you know, it had been vacuumed, sucked out of my life, so I had the opposite where I was just like oh, the only thing I am and the only thing I'll ever be is a writer. 

Lori: That's a really interesting contrast. I'm married, and I have kids, so I have to get up. They take up a lot of time and emotional energy. 

Mindy: I Will say, having had that feeling, it was also followed by I'm so empty right now that I can't imagine writing. 

Lori: I do also want to say that even though I am, I have a husband and kids. I also felt very alone during that time, like, no matter who was around you, like even if you don't have a partner or even if you are having a house full of people. When you're going through that, you always feel very alone. 

Mindy: It's very true. You do. No one can quite reach you. My mom came, my mom, my mom is a wonderful woman and she came over and just sat on my bed and talked to me. And I'm 41 years old and I was just laying in my bed, crying and talking to my mom, you know? And it was just like I was 16 again and going through a break up with my mom just sat there and listened to me. It was like, You're gonna be okay. You're gonna be OK. And I am. I'm fine. I'm OK now. 

I ended up with a group of people because I was forcing myself to go out, forcing myself to be with friends, forcing myself to find those things. And I was out with a group of people and I was in a canoe. We were canoeing. It was a beautiful, like fall day, and everybody was having fun and splashing. And I was just canoeing and everything was... nature was beautiful and the people around me were wonderful. And I was just like, I don't care. Don't care about any of this right now. And I was just canoeing, like, very mechanically. I remember thinking like I'm marking this day like mentally. I'm marking this day in my head and a year from now, I don't want to feel like this anymore. A year later, I'm, you know, seeing a new person, and I got a puppy. Dude, a year ago you were floating in a canoe and hating everything, and that now seems so far removed from who I am now.

Lori: I like the hopeful tone of that. 

Mindy: I wanna talk a little bit about looking back on the real down, those deep lows. Did you gain from that? What did you learn about yourself for this experience?  

Lori: I feel like that time in June was like the lowest I've ever been, which was, like, weird for me. Just because I was, I thought I had a pretty good handle on my mental health. For the longest time, I was just like I feel like I'm pretty, pretty mentally stable person. And The universe is just like -  joke’s on you. It was always very publishing related, as well like I'd be on submission or like, way back when I was querying. And, you know, all the rejections were coming in, and I had another moment, just like is this what I want to do, because it's just a lot of rejection and a lot of pain. And I'm like, whatever. But again, I had to ask myself, if I'm not writing then, what am I? What am I doing? Like obviously I'm into, like, TV series and I have hobbies and all that stuff, you know? But like career wise, there's nothing I'm really passionate about. Aside from writing, I don't wanna do anything else with my life except for write. So I guess I'm gonna have to stick with it. But what happened in June was just like the new bar, set the bar for how low I could be. And I came up from it. It's hopeful, I guess it gives me hope that if it happens again, you know that it's not forever. 

Mindy: When you were in that place, when you were in the super low, were you able Because this was your first experience being that low. Were you able to look forward and be like this will get better, I know it. Or was it because it was your first experience where you're just, like, completely gobsmacked? 

Lori: I feel like I was Gobsmacked at first. I will say, though, that like it was really, really bad in the mornings. I have no idea why it was. I would wake up, and it would just feel awful. I would just have that, like twisty turny feeling in my gut, and I would just like a whole sense of dread. And I knew that I just had to make it through the day because by the time I went to bed and I almost felt normal again, it's so weird. t

Mindy: So like, it's bizarre that you say that because I have similar experiences when I wake up in the morning and I have a lot to do, like I have a lot of work, I can feel overwhelmed like I can't do this. I can't get to all this today. Then I also have the experience of if I wake up and I have nothing to do, like I have no chores or jobs or writing like if I don't have anything to Do, I actually find it very difficult to get out of bed. I could lay in bed until three PM and no one would know. And that in itself is a little depressing. 

So that's the kind of thing that I kind of deal with. But I agree with you completely, and I actually freely share that. I find it odd and I have some guilt over it that it's like when the evening rolls around and I've always been a night owl, and I've always enjoyed nighttime and evening, so maybe that's part of it. But it's like when the evening rolls around, I almost start looking forward to the day. Like what I mean by that is I start looking forward to the evening and to the night is like, What am I going to do tonight? But daytime kind of depresses me, which is the opposite of how you're supposed to feel.

Lori: I have my son and he's seven, so I had to get out of bed regardless. But I would get up and I would do stuff with him. I don't know if it's the same for you, but I just had absolutely zero appetite. I didn't want to eat anything. I was hungry, but I didn't want to eat. So, like I would just eat for the sake of eating. And then, you know, I would wait and I would go outside and just lay out in the sun, because that I don't know, just being outside seemed to help marginally at least to distract me. Yeah, then, like you said, I would just wait until, like, it got darker, because throughout the day it would slowly ease, um, to the point where I could function. 

Mindy: I had a similar experience, and I think that maybe other people have to. I don't know why. I don't know. Um, I would love to know if anybody listening has an idea about that. Or if that's an example of some kind of particular symptom. I want to know about it because I do. I am very similar. 

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Mindy: Let's let's talk about something a little cheerier. Why don't you tell? I mean it's super important, super important, and I'm really glad we talked about it, but I definitely rather end on a higher note for the episode. So why don't you tell us a little bit about your new book Forest of Souls

Lori: Forest of Souls is a YA fantasy about a girl who is in spy training, and she discovers that she has this rare ability to shepherd souls. So she gets tasked with controlling what's called the Deadwood, which is an ancient forest that's possessed by eventual spirits because it is slowly devouring the kingdoms. 

Mindy: That sounds awesome. So any particular inspiration for this?

Lori: The Deadwood itself was inspired by the Deadmarsh in the Lord of the Rings. But thematically, it's about her and her best friend. And it was just really important to me to portray a friendship between girls that was unconditional, and that was all about trust and choosing each other and sticking with each other no matter what, Like plot obstacles get thrown in their way because I've just read so many books where the relationships fall apart or there's there's petty reasons that they stopped talking to each other or for whatever reason, you know. So I'm just like, I really just want a friendship portrayed between girls, specifically, where that's not even an issue, you know, like no matter what happens and like their friendship is definitely tested, you know, in the book. But the important thing is that they still choose each other. 

Mindy: I think it is important that young readers and females, especially get to see those relationships portrayed in a way that isn't catty or that just has true trust and love baked in. Because I mean one of the things that society and our culture in general has done, I think the most heinous thing that has been done… well, it's not the most heinous. But one of the less obvious things is that we've been trained to look at each other as competition for the prize of man. That's something that I have just become more and more aware of and enacted in my own life. Like when I was younger and not realizing that this was, that we’re all in this together, the female experience of moving through the world instead of looking at each other, as you know, competition. We're all having similar, if not the same experiences and bonding over them instead of tear each other down.

Lori: I definitely, um, perpetuated that sort of mindset as a teenager, as a kid, where I would be like I'm not like those girls like we're actually probably are all quite alike and That's not a bad thing. 

Mindy: I was a teenager in the nineties and it was definitely, you're right. It was perpetuated. I certainly participated in it and was in situations where I was on the flip side of it, where I was the villain, and that's fine. We're all a villain at some point, even in our own narrative, even if we don't want to admit it, Um and I do, because I substitute in schools and I'm in the schools fairly often when... I'm in a school right now, I have hope, because I don't see it as prevalent as it used to be. 

Lori: Oh, yeah, my daughter is just turned 18 And she is. She's so much smarter than I was at her age. She's so much more open minded and more the way that she thinks and the way that she views the world and how, how fair and how open minded she is. It kind of gives me hope, I guess.

Mindy: Last thing, why don't you let our listeners know where they can find you online? 

Lori: I’m mostly on Twitter, which is at Lori M. Lee and on Instagram, which is Lori M. Lee 82

Mindy: Awesome, and the book is called Forest of Souls. It is available now, and also I should mention you have another book coming out in 2021 called Broken Web. Is that a sequel? 

Lori: Yes, that is the sequel, and I'm super duper excited to share it and like it was, I was working on it actually through, like, the whole fog in June. So hopefully, um, it'll be OK. It's not too terrible. 

Mindy: I really understand. I have a very good friend that is also an Ohio author. And she has a book that she wrote right in the wake of dealing with her father's death. And she has said so many times I don't know what's in that book. I have no idea. I hope it doesn't suck. 

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.