From https://writingexcuses.com/20-44-now-go-write-how-to-handle-relationships

Key Points: Kowal relationship axes: mind, money, morals, manners, monogamy/model, and mirth. Aspects of self: Ability, role, relationship, and status. tools of a healthy relationship. Communication, compromise, and commitment.

[Season 20, Episode  44]

[Erin] Hey, everybody. This is Erin, and I've got a question for you. What have you learned from Writing Excuses that you use for your own writing? Now, we talk a lot about tools, not rules. Which means there are things that we're going to say that you're going to be like, yes, that is for me. That's the tool I'm going to use in my next project. And there are others that you're going to be like, uh,  I'm going to leave that to the side. And what we want to know is which of the things that we're saying have really worked for you? What's the acronym you're always repeating? What's the plot structure you keep coming back to? What's a piece of advice that has carried you forward, when you've been stuck in your work? Or that you've been able to pass on to another writer who's needed advice or help? However you've used something that you've learned from us, we want to know about it, and we want to share it with the broader community. Every month, we're going to put one of your tips or tricks or tools in the newsletter, so that the rest of the community can hear how you have actually taken something that we've talked about and made it work for you. And I'm personally just really excited to learn about those, because a lot of times, y'all take the things that we say and use them in such ingenious and interesting ways to do such amazing writing that I'm just like chomping at the bit to get in these tools and tips and share them with everybody else. So if you're interested, please go to our show notes, and fill out the form there, and be part of this project and just share with us what you're doing, what you've learned, and how are you using it so that we can share with everybody else. Really excited, again, to get all this in because, honestly, what we say is made real and important and meaningful by what y'all do with it. With that, you're out of excuses. Now go tell us what works for you.

[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

[Season 20, Episode  44]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon]  Now go write - how to handle relationships.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] And I'm Erin.

[Mary Robinette] And we have an exciting announcement. Writing Excuses is going to be publishing a book. It's called Now Go Write. It's all of us talking about the things that we have been talking about on the podcast for the past 20 seasons, but in a handy paper formula... Formula? [garbled] format. Formulation...

[DongWon] A formula format.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] So that you don't have to listen to us doing things like that.

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Because the book will be copy edited, unlike the podcast.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] So, to give you a teaser of that, we are each going to be sharing with you one of the topics that we have written a chapter for the book. We're going to start with me. And I'm going to be talking about how to handle relationships. So. This is based on this whole conversation that I had with my mother-in-law, honestly. But one of the things that you see repeatedly in all sorts of media are relationships that are built around the characters, like, fighting with each other, the whole will they want this, where they have a good relationship, and then they have to break up for plot reasons. It's deeply annoying. But once you have characters, they have to interact with each other, whether it's a romantic relationship or friend relationship. So, this is some tools to look at how to make that believable and also a source of momentum. So, I mentioned my mother-in-law. She has this thing that I call the Kowal relationship axes...

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Which is dating advice she gave my husband. He modified it, and I modified it a little bit more. The theory is relationships exist on multiple axes, and the more closely aligned you are on these axes, the more you'll get along. So these axes are mind, money, morals, manners, monogamy, and mirth. Don't worry, those are going to go in the liner notes, and also, there's a handy chart that will be in the book. But. mind is both people have the same level of intelligence. Money, they have similar attitudes about money. Morals, the same kind of sense of right and wrong. Manners, the same idea of what is polite. This is also,  by the way, sometimes you know people who are assholes online, but you meet them in person and they seem charming, because their manners are aligned with yours, but their morals are deeply messed up. Monogamy is not actually... My husband just needed them to be all m's. The original one was hot, burning kisses, from my mother-in-law.

[awww... mmmm....]

[Mary Robinette] There you go.

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] But the idea is basically that you have the same idea of what the relationship is.

[DongWon] Right.

[Mary Robinette] Like, you've met someone, and they think you are BFF, and you are, like, we have met at the water cooler. And it's really uncomfortable.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And then mirth, you find the same things funny. So, now, any of those axes where you are out of alignment is going to be where your source of conflict is. So, for instance, my husband and I are closely aligned on all of those, but we're a little bit out of alignment on money. We both agree about what money is for, but in the Aesop's fable, I am the grasshopper, he is the ant. And then the other place we're a little bit out of alignment is manners, because he is from Hawaii and I am from Tennessee. Those are not the same.

[DongWon] Yeah. Just a little different.

[Mary Robinette] Just a tiny bit different. So if we have outside pressures pushing on us, those are the places where our conflicts will show. So when you're creating characters that you want to get along, you try to keep them as closely aligned as possible. And when you want them to disagree, like be in wild conflict, then you can move those things wildly out of alignment. So, those are the Kowal relationship axes. I have two other tools that I want to toss at people, but I thought we would talk about these before we move on to the others.

[DongWon] It's impossible to not start immediately mapping every person in my life onto those [garbled]

[Mary Robinette] Uhuh.

[DongWon] Of, like, all of my friends, my partner, my like relationship to other family members. I'm like, oh, where are we aligned? Where is the misalignment coming in?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing. I was like, and next, Writing Excuses will create a dating app...

[laughter]

[Erin] Where you could align yourself, and it'll be called, Now Go Date. No, just kidding.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] But, it did make me think, like, where you might pull out of alignment could also be an interesting, like, thematic thing with a story. Like, you could say, like, in this story, I really want everyone to have really different morals, but be aligned on manners...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] To talk about, like... That's an observation I want to make about society. Or I really want to have a money thing, because I want to explore how capitalism affects the way that our relationships are.

[DongWon] Right.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] And so that could be really fun.

[DongWon] Well, one thing that always strikes me is how much like Regency Era romances are much more about money than contemporary romances.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Where it could be almost like inappropriate to make it about that in a certain way. But, like, what someone's income is is so important in that era for, like, women trying to find their romantic match.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Yeah, and it was considered, like, kind of understandable if you prioritized money.

[Mary Robinette, DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Like, if she's like, oh, he didn't marry me because he found this woman worth 10,000  pounds a year, and everyone's like, well, I mean, you gotta do what you gotta do.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Like people...

[DongWon] And the scandal is taking the monogamy match.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Or the morals and mind match...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Over the money match.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Right. You can see that in, like, Jane Eyre and things like that. And it makes those so rich and responsive to the thematic elements of those books.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. And one of the other things that's interesting also is that these are all the starting states. And for the most part, people stay more or less aligned, but there are things that you can push out of alignment during... Over the course of the story. So, like, when someone comes into a big inheritance. Or if someone is in an accident and they have some brain damage. Sometimes people don't respond well to that. If someone has a moral awakening and they're like... If they become woke...

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] And they realize, oh, I am...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Now out of alignment with people that I thought were my friends, but I can't... I think some of us have had that reaction to some books. So these are things that you can push around also during the course of the book to introduce tension, even if you don't start there. And you can also bring them more closely in alignment where... And it's like, oh, oh, I was wrong about a thing.

[DongWon] Yeah. Or just change the lens. Like, where you're putting your attention. Where when you first meet somebody, maybe you're not thinking about morals...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] As much. You're focused on the chemistry there, you're focused on, oh, we like find the same things funny. And 3 months into the relationship, you're like, oh, no, we think about how we should treat other people very differently.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] And I think, like you were saying about how manners can cover up a difference in moral or mind in interesting ways...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. And, going back to Jane Austen with Darcy and Lizzie, they are actually really closely aligned. They are not as far off... She thinks they are significantly farther off on morals. Like morals, they're actually pretty aligned, family is the most important thing. They are out of alignment in terms of manners, because her family is...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] A lot. But that's also where the conflict is between them.

[Erin] That's interesting, because she also thinks that he has bad manners in the less, like, social class way and the more like you just rude kind of way.

[laughter]

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] So it's interesting because, in fact, her family is the, like, wow, did you invite them to the party...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Family. But, I mean, while she spends a lot of the book sort of judging his manners...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Within a mannered world.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Exactly. There's an interesting idea in the Regency that manners are an outward expression of our opinion of others. Which is different than etiquette, which is formally codified rules. And so there's a line somewhere in there about how he has manners that are not calculated to please.

[DongWon] Interesting.

[Mary Robinette] And I'm like, yeah, no, he did not want to.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] So when we come back from the break, I'm going to introduce you to a couple of other things. I'm going to introduce you to aspects of self, and then how to apply these. Because this tells you how to create conflicts, but it doesn't tell you how to use them.

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[Mary Robinette] Besides recording writing excuses, I am kind of always trying to level up my game. So I went on Master Class, and I took this class by David Sedaris about storytelling and humor. It was really thought provoking. Like, Howard and I talk about humor all the time on the podcast, but the way David approaches it is so different and also has so many overlaps. He talks about finding your way into the story, how to end with a weight, which was a really interesting thing to think about. Anyway, at Master Class, they have thousands of bite-sized lessons across 13 categories that can fit into even the busiest of schedules. So if you're a Writing Excuses listener, and you like the 15 minutes long situation, Master Class has that. They have plans starting at $10 a month billed annually, and you get unlimited access to over 200 classes taught by the world's best business leaders, writers... hello, friends... chefs, and like a ton of other things. So with Master Class, you can learn from the best to become your best. That sounds hokey, but honestly, I really enjoy taking classes through there. It is one of those places where you get access, and it has this very intimate quality to it. With the David Sedaris class, in particular, I was trying to figure out  how to work some humor into a short story that was...  around some stuff with my mom, honestly. And listening to him talk about that through that class was just very helpful at getting some new angles to think about it. New ways to be a little more honest with my writing. Right now, our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com/excuses. That's 15% off at masterclass.com/excuses. I'm going to say it one more time. Masterclass.com/excuses.

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[Mary Robinette] Welcome back from the break. This is one of my favorite topics, honestly, so I'm really glad that I get to do a whole chapter for it. Okay. So. Aspects of self. One of the things that you can do when you are looking at a relationship in a book and how to handle it, is to treat the relationship like a character. So the relationship itself is a character. Which means that that relationship can go on a character arc. That's the kind of thing that you're going to do if you want the character of the relationship to change. Enemies to lovers, that kind of thing. It's also a thing that you can think about if you do not want the relationship to change, if you want it to be stable. So, if you've got... If we think of it as a character, I think that there are four things that, four aspects of self definition for people, not talking about, like, the outward things, but how we self-define. Ability, role, relationship, and status. So, ability is defined by areas of competence, things you can and cannot do. Role is defined by responsibilities, tasks. Relationship is defined by loyalty, and status is defined by power, basically. So the idea is that... Let's say that we have a heist scene. We're doing an ensemble. We've got an ensemble.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] They're stealing the ace [garbled]

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Yes. Yes, we have to have the  jewels of Rohisla and the extra exclamation points and apostrophes that go with...

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Mary Robinette] That. So. The team is fully committed to each other. They are absolutely, like, we are a team. But one of them identifies as ability. Like, we are a group of thieves because we steal things, I have the ability to crack safes, you have the ability to climb walls, you have the ability to impersonate anybody, we have these abilities. That's... This is how we work. We've got these abilities. And someone else is like, no, we are a team because we're thieves. That is what we do, We steal things. If we didn't have those abilities, then we would find other ways to steal things. And someone else is like, no, no, guys, it's not that, it's about our relationship, we're a family. If we couldn't steal things, we would like open a pizza joint. I love you so much.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] And the last one is like, no, we steal things because that gives us money, and money gives us power, and that's why we do this. And we are a team because we are all the best at that. So they're all fully committed to each other, but if there is friction about whether or not to go on with the heist, that is the place where one person might pop out a little bit from the team. And then you can go back and look at how those arguments manifest by looking at the relationship axes. So. Yeah.

[Erin] Yeah. I was going to say, like, I'm thinking about ways in which each of... Each person might, like, nope out. So, if you're like, it turns out the gem is actually worthless, it's really hard to steal. Like, it actually requires a lot of ability. But it will... We can't sell it for anything. It's just like we're doing it for the fun.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] The person who's into status is like, well, if it's not worth anything, like why would we go through all this, like, trouble to do it? Or if somebody's like, oh, I can't, it's a safe that I would have trouble cracking. The ability person might say no. Or somebody who believes in the role as thieves would say, we still gotta try. Like, we're thieves, we're gonna try to find another way around it. And so I think it's really cool to, like, look at how they might each drop out of the heist.

[DongWon] Well, you can use that to sort of highlight the thematics of the story you're telling. Right? Like, I'm thinking about the second arc of the first season of Andor. The Aldhani Heist, that entire squad, each of the members of that team have different reasons for being there.[garbled] Vela is there for relationship, Cinta is there for ability, Nemik is there for status, because it's all about the cause for him.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Right? And the entire arc of the first season of Andor is Andor moving from one role to another role in that breakdown. And so by highlighting the differences between them, you can use that contrast to really emphasize the thematic points you're trying to create.

[Mary Robinette] Exactly. I think that's a great example. And it also... I'm glad you said moves from one role to another, because...

[DongWon] Yep.

[Mary Robinette] That's also a stress point for an individual and for relationships.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] So if they have a sudden status drop or if someone has to shift roles... If they have to add someone to the team and then figure out how they fit in, like, all of these things can cause stress. And it's very grounded stress. It's not the, like, oh, I don't like the way you make coffee, I'm out of here. Sometimes people just, like, make up weird things. You don't pronounce Rohisla with enough emphasis.

[Chuckles]

[Erin][garbled]

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] I know.

[DongWon] Not to spoil it or over index on Andor, but like the final turn in that arc is a moment where one character says to him, "you're just like me," and he's right and he looks at what that means and can't bear it.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] That's what shifts his status, is him seeing that the relationship... Our moral is the same... And then him looking at that and being like, I don't want that to be true anymore. And then that is what kicks him off on his hero's journey from there, and it's just like this incredible moment...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Right at the end of that. So...

[Erin] Oh, God. How Javier of him. My favorite, like, person who in realizing they are the same as the hero is just like, nah...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] I can no longer... I can literally not live with myself...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Understanding that like...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] We actually are the same.

[DongWon] Yeah. Exactly.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. All right.

[DongWon] That's the kindest reading of Javier I've heard in a long time.

[laughter]

[Erin] Javier? He's just like us. No he's not.

[DongWon] No he's not. He's definitely not.

[Mary Robinette] I'm just kind of waiting for a chorus to break through.

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] So the other thing that you can play with is the tools of a healthy relationship. Communication, compromise, and commitment. And unhealthy relationship lacks those things. And this is why the plot line of... If they... That results in readers going, if they would just talk to each other, is so annoying because you know that this is an unhealthy relationship, and it's just continuing to be an unhealthy relationship. So I find that often I can get more tension out of letting my characters talk to each other and having it be an uncomfortable conversation then I can by them not talking to each other. Because just like in the real world, all you're doing is you're avoiding discomfort. And discomfort is where the tension is. The other is just like nah...

[DongWon] I mean, this is a case where you can see the ways in which modeling realism becomes more frustrating as a narrative experience. Right? Because in reality, we know all of our friends who aren't talking to their spouses about the things, that's a huge problem with their relationship, and won't do that for whatever reason. I'm not calling anyone out in particular, I swear to God. But...

[Erin] No, I'm thinking about like every Am I The Asshole post ever...

[laughter]

[Erin] Maybe just asking...

[DongWon] I think most advice columns just boil down to I don't know, why don't you talk about it?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] You know what I mean? And this is a pattern that we see in real life everyday, and yet whenever we encounter it in fiction, it's immediately infuriating. You want to just, like, just talk to them and figure it out. You know what I mean?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] In the same way that it's infuriating in my own life, when I'm like, please talk to them, I'm begging you. But fiction is heightened in that way. Right? We want to explore the discomfort. And so I think just letting it be the real thing...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] The realistic thing is a weird trap in this case.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. And I think it's also one of those things where you can split the difference. They don't have to immediately say I feel like we have a conflict and let's discuss it. But there comes a point where it is... You've pushed it so far. And I think the thing you said about how it's frustrating when your friends don't talk to each other, that's the thing, is that the reader kind of becomes a friend.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Who... To the characters in the book. Or at least a stalker.

[Chuckles] 

[Mary Robinette] And they want the characters to do...

[DongWon] [garbled] Your friend too. So, yeah.

[Erin] Yeah. I really like the... What I call the forks and spoons conversations. Which is where, like, you're arguing over the dinner placement, but it's really about, like, your feeling about your mother-in-law.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Not yours. But anyone's. Because I think in that case, they are communicating, they're just not doing it... They're not able to live in the discomfort, and so they're doing it like sideways.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] We see this a lot really well done in theater. And it's like, okay, the audience can read what's going on, and eventually sometimes there's a breakthrough where it breaks from we're talking about the fork, like, wait, are we really talking about Jimmy and school, and that's such a great moment because you as an audience member also get to feel clever. You understood what they were talking about...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Before they did, and then when they finally realize it, you're like, oh...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] I knew that's what it was really about, and it gives you that feeling of, like, I am as smart as the people in the story that I think we often enjoy.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] There's an incredible moment in the film Hereditary, which I doubt either of you have seen, but it's to me the scariest moment in the film. It's the thing where nothing supernatural is happening, they're having polite conversation on the dinner table, and one character begins to complain about something and Tony Collette, who plays the mom, freaks out and starts screaming at them about like, I'm your mother. It's just an incredible moment, an incredible speech, and the catharsis is finally saying out loud all the subtle [garbled] things that have been happening throughout the movie.

[Mary Robinette] Oh, yeah.

[DongWon] Seeing those forks and spoons conversations for what it feels like an eternity at that point. And so the dam breaking is just an incredible moment of catharsis. But you're right, that has to reinforce my understanding of what's happening here. And because it does, it becomes this beautiful clarifying moment that's also deeply harrowing and traumatizing.

[Mary Robinette] Ah. I love that. I may see if I can work that into the essay.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Um. So the kind of last tool that I want to talk to you about is how to handle these in sort of an arc. So I've already talked about you can treat it like a character arc. So the relationship is undergoing change. This is what you have with the meet cute, where they're trying to decide sort of who they are and is this a... Also the sort of thing you see with breakups as well. You can also apply this in using the MICE Quotient, you can apply it in a couple of other ways. You can treat the relationship like a milieu. The story begins when the character enters the relationship and it ends when they exit it, and you are... the whole thing is then about exploring or navigating a relationship. You could treat it like an inquiry story, which means that there are questions about the relationship. This is one of those things where uneven power dynamics, why is this tall dark stranger so brooding? Like, those can be things. You can also think about it, an inquiry, like [divorce?] stories. If you think of the relationship like a dead body...

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] How did it die?

[Erin] Ooh!

[DongWon] The cold [open eyes?] of a divorce...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. And then event stories. Event stories can be things like... One of the examples that I think of is actually Inigo Montoya's relationship with the six fingered man. That's this big, powerful thing where he's trying to change the status quo. His father was killed, he wants revenge, he wants to change the status quo. So even though they are not... They aren't on screen most of the time together, his role... His performance in that film is very much defined by his relationship with this character and the fact that he wants to kill him. So, you can do all sorts of fun things like that. And then always kind of you have those other tools that you can play with to sort of create nuance to it.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] I'm also wondering, like, an event... Cause the event story is like where the thing has come... The meteor is landing on Earth, like, stories where it's like it'll all be fixed on my birthday.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Like, in a relationship that is, like, not going well, and everyone's like... It's like when the event happens, it will definitely be the thing that, like, changes everything in a good way. Or it's like when your mom arrives. And so it becomes just, like, this impending event that... In some ways, it's about the event, but in some ways it's just about all the things that will lead up to that event.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Like, reveals...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] About the characters and their relationships with each other.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Exactly.

[DongWon] What I really love about thinking about this way is usually when we talk about something that is not a character being a character, we mean like settings. Like, oh, New York City was like a character in this movie.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Or whatever it is. Right? I love this image of the relationship being a character, because then the stakes are does the relationship survive? Right? Does it live or die? And seeing it as this thing that operates and moves and shifts, and it's kind of its own thing throughout the story, I think is a really useful framework for thinking about pacing and stakes and all the different aspects of the story in a way that I think is really rich and wonderful.

[Mary Robinette] I am so glad that you both liked that.

[future Mary Robinette] Hey. This is time travel Robinette. I am cutting back into the episode to say that when we finished recording this, we decided that model was a better word than monogamy, but we aren't going to re-record the whole episode. It'll just be right when you get the book. So when you tell people about it, mind, money, morals, manners, model, and mirth. And now, past Mary Robinette is going to give you your homework.

[Mary Robinette] So, I'm going to move to our homework. And I'm again going to refer to my mother-in-law.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] So one of the things she said was, to my husband when he was trying to talk to her about like, how do you know, and she said, you know it's the right person when you love them because of their flaws. So what I want you to do is I want you to look at your story and see who your main character loves because of their flaws, and just write a little exploratory scene where the character is exhibiting those flaws and the other character is watching that fondly. And then write a different scene where they're mad at them and the flaws are pissing them off. So, now that you've got that homework, there's one other piece of homework that I have and you're going to get this homework again. If you want to find out when this book is coming out, you need to head over to the website and you need to sign up for the newsletter. Because that is where we're going to let people know when the book is coming out. And when you sign up, there is also a little bonus thing that you get. So, head to writing excuses.com, sign up for the newsletter, and now... You're out of excuses. Now go write.

Writing Excuses 20.42:  Erin Roberts' Personal Writing Process

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-42-erin-roberts-personal-writing-process

Key points: A grab bag of random processes? getting work, getting in, getting done, and getting right. Should I take on this project? Saying no, or at least, can we do it later? Spreadsheet of projects! Star ratings. On time, good work, pleasant to work with. Geese monsters. Having a personal life. If you're going to miss a deadline, tell them early. Getting in. Hook yourself, with voice or an idea. Go back and write a key moment in the character's life to find their voice. Talk to your cat, or rubber duck, to test ideas. Get it done. Deadlines can help. Have Microsoft Word read to you. Take a nap or other break!

[Season 20, Episode 42]

[DongWon] For more than a decade, we've hosted Writing Excuses at sea, an annual workshop and retreat in a cruise ship. You're invited to our final cruise in 2026. It's a chance to learn, connect, and grow, all while sailing along the stunning Alaskan and Canadian coast. Join us, the hosts of Writing Excuses, and spend dedicated time leveling up your writing craft. Attend classes, join small group breakout sessions, learn from instructors one on one at office hours, and meet with all the writers from around the world. During the week-long retreat, we'll also dock at 3 Alaskan ports, Juneau, Sitka, and Skagway, as well as Victoria, British Columbia. Use this time to write on the ship or choose excursions that allow you to get up close and personal with glaciers, go whale watching, and learn more about the rich history of the region and more. Next year will be our grand finale after over 10 years of successful retreats at sea. Whether you're a long time alumni or a newcomer, we would love to see you on board. Early bird pricing is currently available, and we also offer scholarships. You can learn more at writingexcuses.com/retreats.

[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

[Season 20, Episode 42]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Erin's personal writing process.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

[Erin] And I have been apprehensive about this episode since we decided to do it. Because I feel like my writing process is like a bunch of random practices thrown into a bag and shaken up, and then every so often, I reach in and see what's working for me or what's not. But you may also be like this, and not have a completely organized idea of your writing process. So hopefully, this is helpful. And I have organized it in my head into four categories, because I still like to be slightly organized.

[laughter]

[Erin] Which is... This is all part of my writing process...

[Dan] This is a very organized grab bag.

[Erin] Outline. Which is, getting work, getting in, getting done, and getting right. So those are basically how do I manage my sort of business creative life, how do I start writing, how do I stop writing and turn something in, and how do I live a balanced life. And because I am a game writer, I'm going to let y'all pick which one you want to hear about first.

[DongWon] I just want to say a thing first, which is, this is not me calling you out. But I do think that there is a thing where... I think... I've had a similar conversation with a lot of writers. They'll be like, oh, I don't have a process. I don't know what I'm doing or whatever it is. And then as soon as you're talking to  them, it's like, no, there are these things. You are doing this thing. And I think, one thing that I was excited to sort of talk about this with Erin after she was like I don't have a process, I don't know what you're talking about in this episode, is I think that's how most people feel. I think we're only able to talk about this in a really cogent way right now because we're doing the work that Erin just described, of sitting down and being like, okay, what chaotic things do I do and how do I explain them? And then when you explain it, it looks more cogent and coherent. Right? But I think the process of looking at it is the thing that makes it sound like a thing. I think for a lot of us, it really is instinctual or habitual or whatever it is. So if you're listening to these episodes and being like, well, I don't have a thing like Mary Robinette does, then I think that's totally fine, and you just find it as you go.

[Erin] Absolutely, makes sense.

[Mary Robinette] So since you gave us four things and you said it's like a game, I am rolling a die and it says number one.

[Erin] Okay. Getting work. So that is... Thank you. I love that we gamified it.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] You can listen to this out of order and not miss anything.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] So, getting work. And it's funny, because I think we have an episode coming up that's about the business of writing. As someone who makes a living essentially writing, like, everything I do is writing, which I think is what makes it difficult to think about the writing process. Because I do freelance writing for games, I do my own prose writing, I do script writing, I do video game writing. It's all writing. Even though some of it is for direct cash, like you paid me to write this thing, and some of it is my own work. It all comes from the creative part of my brain. And so it's hard for me sometimes to separate one from the other. But I have to. Because otherwise, I will get lost. So I have a lot of things that I do in order to figure out should I take on a project. How do I manage the projects that I have in front of me? And, like, how do I know what I need to do on any given day? To figure out if I should take on a project, because it is a mistake you can make, I think, in... No matter what you're doing, is to overcommit yourself to things, because it's hard to say no when things seem really cool. But you are better off saying no, or saying even I can't right now, can I get back to you? Or could we do this another time? Or I can't at the moment. Then saying yes and then being like, I haven't slept in a year. And this is not great, I'm now hallucinating things, which is what happens when you don't sleep for too long. So I have...

[Mary Robinette] This is something that you have personal experience with?

[Erin] I don't... I never hallucinate anything. One time in college, I didn't sleep for several days, and thought everything that started with the letter p was very funny for reasons that I don't understand to this day. But... So I use an Airtable because I... Which I've talked about, I think, on the podcast before. Which is basically fancy Excel, and I actually keep, like, a running tab of every project I have, how many words it is, when it's due, including my own personal projects. Like, I think this story is going to be 6,000 words and I'd like to get it done by June 1st or whatever it is. And then I have them all, like, in different categories and with different tags on them. This is also how I track have I gotten paid, have I put this on my taxes, did I sign the contract, because I am my own assistant. And so I have, like, writing time where I'm writing and assistant time where I'm assisting myself to write. And so I keep it all on a big spreadsheet. And when somebody says, do you want to do this project, I look and I say, based on this deadline, do I have enough hours in the day to get this done?

[DongWon] I'm just going to keep roasting you for the fact that Mr. I don't have a project has a custom Airtable...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] To track word count, project deadlines and sequence, and whether you've paid your taxes on it.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] This is incredible. This is such a useful framework.

[Erin] It's so messy! If it makes you feel better. My spreadsheet could be better organized.

[Mary Robinette] Oh my God.

[DongWon] I promise you, this is 10,000 times more organized than 95% of writers.

[Mary Robinette] I literally wrote down ask Erin for Airtable.

[laughter]

[I love that... I don't have a process]

[laughter]

[DongWon] I love that you're starting with this, though, because it's such a useful thing to keep in mind. Right? Because I think so many writers when taking on projects aren't keeping an eye on the business side of it. Right? When I say business side of it, I don't even necessarily mean the, like, negotiations or whatever. Right? But in terms of can I get this deliverable to them on the schedule they're asking for? Can I do the word count that they're asking for? And have I been paid for this? Like, just being able to keep an eye on that, like, freelance mindset of how do I slot this into my schedule is really hard and really difficult, and it's really hard to say no to stuff. Right? Like, I go through this all the time with clients who are under contract for the book, but then, like, Star Wars comes knocking. How do you say no? You know what I mean? And the answer is, you say no because you're going to do a bad job on both projects if you say yes. Right? And so I think it's really, really difficult and really hard to learn to say no. But it's also very important. And the other kind of note of caution that I would love to throw in here is there's a thing that I see that, like, I consider the danger zone, which is when you get into that, like, well, what if you... What if we push the deadline by 2 weeks? Could you do it then? And it's like... It's easy to say yes, you're going to want to say yes at that point, but really... You need to be real about the fact that what you need is six more weeks, not two more weeks. Right? And so I think that like trying to fit stuff in too tightly and trying to slot stuff into your process in this really constrained way will lead to a danger zone as well as when considering can I take this project on.

[Howard] Question. Does your spreadsheet track, like, historically how long it took you to do a thing? So that you've got the whole can I take this job, I think it will take this long, and then you circle back and do a post-mortem and say, hey, you know what? I actually was spot on with that guess. It took me exactly 3 weeks. Or, oh, gosh, I underestimated it.

[Erin] So, yes and no. So, yes in the sense that I actually have fields for all of that.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] That includes things like a star rating...

[Mary Robinette] [garbled]

[Erin] For like how I felt about the project...

[Howard] What you're saying is...

[Erin] But I don't...

[Howard] What you're saying is...

[Erin][garbled] Fill them out. I don't fill them out, because I'm not...

[Howard] You've asked the same question I've asked, and the answer is not yet, but I have room for it.

[Erin] I do have room for it.

[Howard] Okay.

[Erin] I'm excited about the star ratings that are, like, how I felt about... Like, How did I feel about the project on three... So there's... Okay. There's a thing with freelancing...

[DongWon] You have multiple star rating categories, or is it just one rating?

[Erin] No, it's a multiple rating. Because there's a...

[laughter]

[Erin] Thing.

[DongWon] You're so disorganized, it's embarrassing.

[laughter]

[DongWon] This is the time you do four episodes, because we're only going to get through this one first step. All right. Continue.

[Mary Robinette][garbled] process.

[Erin] There's a thing in freelancing where they say, like, you can be... There are three things that you should be. On time...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Good with your work, and pleasant to work with. And I also think that's true...

[DongWon] The iron triangle.

[Erin] Of the people you work with. You can do two out of three. If you miss the third one, it probably shouldn't be nice to work with, because that's... If people don't like you, they don't like you.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] But at the end, so what I want to do with my star system is, one is, like, how were they to work with, one is how did I feel about my timelines, and how did I feel about the actual strength of my work. So if I felt like I was on time and they were great, but, like, I did a poor job with this because it turns out I'm not great at writing about 18 forms of geese monsters, then in the future, I'll be like, another goose monster project? Maybe not for me. And so that's how I learn, like, the type of work that I like to do, in addition to how much I can do and, like, is this somebody I don't want to return to because they pay slow, they're mean, they yelled at me that time, they sent a goose after me, a physical goose...

[DongWon] That would be a one-star rating for me.

[laughter]

[DongWon] [garbled] to my house, that would be no stars.

[Dan] That's amazing.

[Mary Robinette] On the kind of goose, though, I mean, there's a rare [garbled]

[DongWon] All geese are mean.

[Dan] Yeah.

[DongWon] I think there's also an important lesson embedded in here, though, which is you can have these systems, but also you're only going to use the stuff that is...

[Mary Robinette] Immediately useful.

[DongWon] You're always going to want to put, like, more options in there, but the stuff that's actually useful is the stuff you're going to use. Right?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] If that makes sense. Like, I think it would be really cool to have that data, but clearly, it's also like, oh, I don't have time to think about that. I'll do that later. Right?

[Erin] Exactly. It's like at the end of the year I'll do it, but I don't.

[Dan] I want to circle back to something you said earlier when you were talking about saying no to work. Sometimes you can delay, you can ask to delay and say I'm very interested in this, but I don't have time, can we come back a few months later? Because I've been in this situation, and I know that very often, the should I take this decision is not made on how much time I have, but it's made on how much money I need.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Dan] And if I'm really hard up for money, my dumb kids keep wanting to eat all the time...

[squeak]

[Dan] I am a lot more likely to say yes to stuff, and knowing that you have the freedom to push back a little and say I'm very excited about this, I would love to do it, but can I do it in 6 months is a really smart and important thing to be able to say.

[Erin] Yeah, and I was shocked the first time I asked somebody and they were like, yeah, sure, I don't care, and I'm like, wait, what?

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Like, it feels like they're like the powerful great and magnificent Oz, and then it turns out there's just, like, a person back there who's also dealing with their own deadlines and their own life, and they understand. I think this is something that being a teacher helped with, because when my students want extensions, I'm like, yeah, sure, whatever. Just get it to me in a reasonable time, so that I can do what I need to do. But I just made up this deadline because, like, it made sense for me at the time I made it up. So it's nice to be flexible. And with that, now that we've done three of the four... Just kidding.

[laughter]

[Erin] Go to the break.

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[Erin] Okay. So, I think we covered getting work before the break.

[Mary Robinette] And I've rolled the die again, so now we're on number four.

[Erin] Getting right. Yeah. This is about, like, having a personal life. So the downside of getting work... This is like the underside of that sandwich... Is that it can sometimes be hard to leave your work behind if you are me and leave the house. I think this is... I'm sure there are people who are saying, like, How can you leave your responsibilities behind? I have kids, I have troublesome work, I have a spouse, I have all these things. [I'm] a single old cat lady that they warn you about on the internet. And the good side of that is that I have a lot of time to write, and the bad side of that is that I can only write. And I could, like, never go out. And so I think it's just important to, for myself, think about my gravestone. That's going to sound bad. But...

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Like, I like to think on my gravestone will they say she worked a lot...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Like, she's a really hard worker? And so sometimes I will prioritize a personal experience that I cannot have again.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Especially if it's like a friend who I could see in 3 days, I might say, hey, I really have this deadline. But if someone's coming into town, if I'm at a convention having a really great conversation with someone I will never ever see again, I think it's better to have the life experience than to have the work experience. And sometimes you pay the price for that, or you're up late the next night. But I found that, like, I am a better writer when I interact with humanity.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] When I don't become, like, someone who, like, has no knowledge of the world. Ah, one thing that I was thinking about when we were talking about All the Birds in the Sky, is the idea at the end of the book that the people who are running the magic side to become really good at magic, you have to become really divorced from humanity. Which is why the solution that they come up with to save the world is basically to make all humans hate each other. And it's like I don't want to become that kind of magician.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Like...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] It's not worth... Like, the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] At that point. And so I think sometimes deadlines can feel so imminent, they can... Everything can feel like it's weighing on you. I often like to say, from a friend of mine who worked in public relations, it's PR, not the ER.

[laughter]

[Erin] Which is like... We're not...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] We're saving lives, but we're not saving lives.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And so I think that, like, trying to keep that perspective is something that is really important to me, and that I want other people to do as well.

[DongWon] There will be a lot of things in the book business that will want to make you... Or the writing business generally that wants to make you feel like it is a crisis and it is immediate and urgent. But at the end of the day, there's very little that is actually a thing that needs to be solved this instant.

[Mary Robinette] I will say that one of the things that I've been struck by when listening to you talk about I go out and I do these things is the number of times that I have gone out with you and you have brought work with you to the bar.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Which is also like roasting you a little bit, but also it's... It is a... Sometimes it's both. I know that when I've been on a deadline, sometimes the thing that I've done is either arranged for... When I was building puppets, I'm like, hey, do you want to come over and do crafting while I'm building this thing? And so we can still socialize while that's happening. Or coffee shop dates. We get the socializing done, we both get work done. So sometimes you can actually blend them and do both of them.

[Howard] Douglas Adams said I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] And... for 20 years, Schlock Mercenary was never late. Online, every day, new comic strip, for 20 years. That did not mean that I did not miss some deadlines. There were lots of things that I missed deadlines for. And I feel like the knowing that there's a deadline and knowing you have to have a life... It might not be a bad idea for an early career writer to just experience pushing back on a deadline or missing a deadline and discovering, hey, it made a whooshing sound and I lived. But don't pick one that you're going to get fired for.

[Mary Robinette] And warn people that you're going to miss it.

[DongWon] This is the thing. Here's the important thing. If you're going to miss a deadline, tell them early.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Things... If you tell me early that your book is going to be late, I can go and solve all those problems. If you wait until the day the thing is due, and then you tell me it's late, everything else is locked. We've locked the season, the cover's in, blah blah blah in. You know what I mean? And then things get very hard and expensive to move.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] And then people are pissed.

[Mary Robinette] And also it messes with the lives of other freelancers...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Because copy editors who have held space in their schedule to copy edit for you now aren't getting paid because your work is late.

[DongWon] Yep.

[Mary Robinette] And then when it comes in, their schedule is... So, it's... But if you let people know, everyone can adjust.

[Erin] And I will say that I think people always say this, and it is true. But I think from the internal side, it never happens that way.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] No one thinks I will wait till the last minute to tell people I will be late.

[DongWon] Yep.

[Erin] What happens is you get into a cycle of, like, optimism and shame.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Erin] Where you are... You wake up optimistic that today you will suddenly write 10,000 million words. Like, cause you're like if I just get in the zone, if I just do everything perfectly, it's going to be fine. It's going to be fine, fine, fine. And then as the day goes on, you're like, oh, my God, it was not fine. Things happened. I needed to eat lunch at one point, why did I do it? And then you think, oh, my gosh, I'm so ashamed, I don't want to say I'm failing. Maybe tomorrow I'll fix it, and I'll be the person... I'll be the best million person version of myself. And I think you can get into that cycle until the point that you actually hit the deadline. At which point, then you're sending like really sad emails, being like I don't know, I thought I was going to do it. And it is really hard to give yourself...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Permission to tell people how you are doing along the way, and say, like, hey, I think there might be a problem here. I'm going to try to catch up, but it's possible that there may be a delay. Even if you need to couch it that way so that they understand what's going on and you're not like a black box where you're like I just think... We all want to be the best versions of ourselves. But the idea that, like, you will hit perfection every day just because you have to... It may not happen. And if it does happen, you may not like the way it feels.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I have a spreadsheet that I use when I'm writing to deadline, which is... I know. But the thing that it tells me is whether or not I'm on target to hit the deadline. Because I know for myself that I lose track of time. That I am not a good judge. And so I have created a tool that allows me to externalize that instead of relying on my own impulses. So I can see, oh, you're dropping off. And that helps me do a little bit more early warning.

[Erin] I think there's a great online tool for that as well, I just wanted to say, called Pacer.

[Mary Robinette] Oh, cool.

[Erin] That actually allows you to set like what your goal is and then you can set several ways. You can be like, I like to start strong and then finish, whatever. On this weekend, I actually can't work at all, and it will actually give you how much word count you should do each day.

[Mary Robinette] Oh, my goodness.

[Erin] Based on that system. So I just wanted to throw that out there, just for the fun.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] We've talked about finding work, and we've talked about finding yourself after work, and you beautifully dodged the question of how do you actually work.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So, number two?

[Erin] Yes. Getting in.

[Dan] Can we lightning round these last two?

[Erin] Yes. So now we are going to go so fast. I'm sorry.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] No, I was like [garbled] extra long episode, because this is great.

[Dan] Awesome, let's do it.

[Erin] All right. Getting in, and getting done. So these are kind of two... Two of the same coin. But getting in, for me, something I've learned is I need to hook myself into something in order to be able to write it. Like hooking a fish. I've never gone fishing in my life, but I hear hooks are involved, so I'm going to use that.

[laughter]

[Erin] So, also like save the fish at the end, I guess. But... So, like, if it is a piece of prose, it is usually the hook of voice. If I don't understand the character's voice, it is really difficult for me to write a story. A lot of... I actually don't have that thing that Dan talked about on another episode, about like were the characters running away with you. But I do feel like if I can't feel like I'm listening to the character tell the story or I'm helping them tell the story, then it's just like words and it doesn't have any meaning to it. And so I spend a lot of time just trying to find the hook. Rewriting the first page, rewriting the first page again, trying this other way. So I do a lot of work on the, like, early side of things, trying to get myself hooked in. And at points, I was like this is not... Why am I wasting so much time on this? But it turns out that if I try to push myself past it, then I end up coming back to the beginning, but just like 16 Pages later and being like I hate this whole story.

[DongWon] What I love about this is we talk a lot about trying to hook the reader, and you're talking about how you need to hook yourself first. Right? If you're not excited about it, how can you ask anybody else to be excited about it? So I love that that's a great place to start in terms of, like, how do you find the thing that's exciting to you and get you engaged with it? And then that will tell you what you need to know for down the line, when you are like, okay, now how do I get readers excited?

[Dan] So do you have tricks or writing exercises or something like that to help you find that voice, or find that hook that you love about the story?

[Erin] I think there are two things that I do. One is that I will often go back and write an earlier part, like a big moment in one character's life that doesn't appear on the page of the story. Because it will help me understand them. Your voice is strongest, I think, when you're like at a time of emotional crisis. But in a story, I usually don't start [with] an emotional crisis, because it's like why? There's nowhere to go from there. And so I will write the story where the person is like... If I'm like this person is a kleptomaniac, well, I'm like, well, when did they steal the very first time? And why? This person gets... Has an anger management problem. What's a time they were really, really angry, and like what were they angry about? And a lot of times, that will get me the voice, and then I can take the voice, once I have it, and translate it. I also talk to my cat a lot. This I...

[Mary Robinette] Same.

[Erin] This helps me hook, I think, a little bit more when it comes to game writing and nonfiction, where I'm trying to think of an idea. So when I'm doing game writing, and they're like, okay, write a city. And I'll write up the type of city that I'm writing. I will like bounce ideas off by just saying them out loud. I mean, like, what if it was a city where everyone was inside out? No, that might be confusing. What if it was a city filled with geese? Like, just talk to my cat and, like, try to explain it to her. Because sometimes when you say things out loud, they just don't sound as good as they did in your head. And as opposed to inflicting them on my friends, I will usually first inflict them on my cat. And then maybe a friend. Like, I'll say I'm thinking about doing this idea, if it's not something under NDA, like, and just say it to them. And in the process of saying it, I can tell if it's wrong or it's right.

[Howard] There's this whole debugging method for coders called the rubber duck method.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] Which is explain the problem to something inanimate, and you'll probably find the solution.

[DongWon] Honestly, the thing that I do, when I need to rubber duck it, is... Because I'm on the west coast, I'm often up after my friends are. So I will just pick a friend and text them a stream of ideas.

[Howard] You are a bad friend.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] That's... They have to read that.

[DongWon] Then at the end, I'll say ignore all this.

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] But they've already read through it. But I also... I do a similar thing. But I will interrogate it on the page. Because if I start talking to Elsie, she will start talking back, and that's not useful.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] That's why I didn't teach my cat to talk.

[Mary Robinette] I know [garbled]

[Erin] I thought about it, but...

[Mary Robinette] So once you've got the hook, do you have to continue to rehook yourself every day that you're working on a project? Or is it really that once you get into it, you're kind of in and going?

[Erin] Once I'm in it, I'm in, because I will read what I have written previously. And that will get me, like, in... Like, I'm like, okay, oh, yes, this is exactly the way this person talks like. It's like talking... It's kind of like when you talk to a friend, and you're like,, this is the way that their speech goes.

[DongWon] Right.

[Erin] And you're like, oh, yes, I'm in it again. And then I can usually hurdle myself forward, headlight writer style for a while until I run into like there is no plot or like something needs to happen. And, like, at that point, a lot of it is just like trying to think of like eight different things that could happen, or... I actually have a lot of table top solo role-playing games that are about creating interesting ideas or like what could possibly happen in the world, and sometimes I use those just as a prompt. And even though I don't keep what I came up with, like... Sometimes even reacting, I mean, like it couldn't be that that, will help me to figure it out. A lot of things I also do to keep myself engaged is whatever the premise was of the story that I found was really interesting, like, this is a world filled with geese, like, I'm like, oh, yes, it is a world filled with geese. What else do geese do? Like, let me go read up on geese. Oh, they honk a lot and chase you. Oh, I don't have a chase scene in this. I should have my character chased by a goose. This is great, like, this will give it something to do. So if I go back to the origin story of my story, like, a lot of times, that's a way to kind of keep me going. And then to kind of get into the third one, the final one, which is get it done. It can be, if you're somebody like me, I like to revise as I go. It's easy to get stuck with, like, the perfect story in the front, like, this is in the front, not party in the back.

[laughter]

[Erin] It's bad. It sounds like[garbled]

[Mary Robinette] Zoom here.

[Erin] Yeah, exactly. It's like a zoom out thing, like, it's great from the waist up [garbled]

[laughter]

[Erin] [garbled] pants. And so, figuring out like how to keep going, and that is where deadlines are helpful.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Because sometimes the perfectionism of wanting to get the exact right cadence of one sentence is holding me back from finishing. So having some sort of deadline. This is why I like applying to fellowships. Because fellowships are an artificial deadline that want your work. And it usually has to be recent works. So I'll be like, oh, I would love to go to McDowell, let me see what their deadline is. And I actually put that on my spreadsheet with everything else so that I know what that deadline is and treat it the way I would treat an employer, so that that way I'm finishing my story, like, at a good time. I think the last thing that's a random writing process of mine is having Microsoft Word read my stories to me, because a downside of being a voice-y cadence person is I can talk myself into liking a story more than it should be liked, by, like, doing that spoken word thing where you just make everything sound really deep, but it's not.

[laughter]

[Erin] Not that all spoken word is that way, but we've all been there.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Haven't we?

[Dan] You know that thing about words where they're stupid?

[Mary Robinette] No, it's true. As a narrator, like, one of my jobs is making bad things sound good. And not... Sometimes it's unfortunately true, but I have learned that I can.

[DongWon] Yep

[Howard] There are books that you have not told us about.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[Howard] Yeah.

[Erin] Exactly. The Microsoft lady won't do that. She's horrible.

[laughter]

[Erin] And so I think... But she still sounds friendly. She's like friendly, but badly reading your stories.

[laughter]

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And so like I love to put her on it as I go, like... If I finish a section, I'll go get a snack while I have her read the whole story to me in the background, and hear, like, is there something that I feel like I'm bouncing off of. It could just be that she didn't do a great job, but a lot of times, it's that there's something there...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] That isn't quite working. And then I can identify it, and when I get back to my desk, fix it, and then have her read it to me again. If I could get my cat to read my stories to me, that would be ideal, but that has not happened yet.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Teaching cats to read, I think, would be a mistake...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] I think.

[Erin] And now, this episode's gone on forever. So...

[DongWon] I hope we've all enjoyed this stealth announcement for Untitled Goose game 2...

[laughter]

[Erin] Homework, put geese in it. No.

[laughter]

[Erin] That's not the actual homework.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] So feel free.

[Mary Robinette] Thank you for letting us know about how you don't have any process at all.

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] I feel very reassured about that. Do you have homework?

[Erin] I do have homework. Which is, I think what really helps me in sounding like I have more process than I feel like I have is writing down all the tips and tricks that are things that I do. Oh, the one last one I didn't mention is sometimes you just need to go to sleep.

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[Erin] It's going to sound weird, but if you're up late... Sometimes it's better to nap for two hours...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And come back to it then attempt to push through, because your brain just shuts down.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Your brain needs a break.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] It's like your brain's like, nah, give me a rest. But I think write down things that you do, things that you are... Like, that have worked for you, any tip or trick that has ever resonated with you. Put them all on a page, and then see, like, is there anything cool about that page? And if nothing else, at least now you have got it all written down somewhere.

[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go organize your writing process. Maybe.

[Howard] With a spreadsheet.

[Dan] And a goose.

From writingexcuses.com/20-40-mary-robinette-kowals-personal-writing-process

Key points:  What is your writing process? Random schedule. Fitting writing in the gaps. Retrain yourself to work with your brain. Chaotic and gremlins. Write every day? Reshape habits. A thing you do or what you are? Habit or practice? Hyperfocus. Novel, interesting, challenging, urgent. Microsessions. Rice or eggs? Deadlines. Interruptions. White noise, and travel spaces. Defend your writing time. Today's three tasks and timeline. Reward yourself with the next bit of writing fun. Keep learning, it is never a solved problem.

[Season 20, Episode 40]

[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

[Season 20, Episode 40]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Mary Robinette Kowal's Personal Writing Process.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

[Mary Robinette]  So, we had this thought. I hear a lot of people say, "But what is your writing process?" and as successful writers, people who are published, what is your writing process? As if it is a key to being able to write. The idea here is that you're going to hear from each of the hosts. We're going to tell you what our personal writing process is. The other people are probably going to look at us like that's what you do? And the idea is that the only important process is the one that works for you. And that that's going to change over the course of your career, over the course of the project that you're working on. So...

[Howard] And by way of clarification, when we say you're going to hear from each of the hosts about this, on this episode we're talking about Mary Robinette's writing process.

[Mary Robinette] Right.

[Howard] And each of us are going to point fingers and say but how can that even work? Because I do not know how that can even work.

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So my writing process is based on having a completely random schedule, but also having started with a random schedule, where I was putting writing in the gaps of everything else I was doing. I started writing novels sitting in a white cargo van in a passenger seat writing long hand while I was on puppetry tours. Because that was the thing that I could do. And then I had this ancient se... I mean, at the time, it was new... This sewing machine of a portable computer. And so then my process was I would transcribe things. The idea of doing that now seems like how did I even. But the kind of lingering effects of that is that I tend to write best in transit still. I love writing on an airplane, a train is amazing. And then at home, my writing process used to work best when I went to coffee shops. And then pandemic completely interrupted that. So, for me, I... I've gone through phases where I'm like I will write every day and I will have this word count. And now it's much more of a... I am having a reasonably good brain day, there are... This is a day of fewer distractions, some of the things that have shifted in my life is that I've had to do a bunch of Elder Care. So I went through a phase where I felt like every time I sat down to write that I would in some way punish the writing. Not by someone in specific, but that if I sat down to write, my mom was going to fall. And so I started to develop this real avoidance of wanting to get into the mode, because something traumatic kept happening. So where I am now with my writing process is that I am trying to retrain my brain and retrain my... I should say I'm trying to retrain myself to work with my brain, because I have an understanding of the fact that I have ADHD, I have depression. I didn't know those things when I started writing. And so, like, I'm trying to learn how to trigger hyper-focus on demand, and how to turn it off, or how to be okay with having hyper-focus broken. So a lot of my writing process now is using binaural sound to say, oh, this is writing time. Or making sure that I have lined up dates with other people. So there's a lot of hacking of my brain that goes on. But people ask me, what is my writing process?

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] I'm like it is completely chaotic and gremlins.

[Dan] Right out of the gate, I love this. Because one lesson that gets taught all the time, and I hate it, is that you have to write every single day if you want to be a real writer. And that's not how you work. That's not how I work, either. And being able to recognize, well, this is a good day, this is a good time, and other days and other times, you might have something more important to do. And that's okay. it doesn't make you a bad writer, it doesn't make you an inherently unprofessional writer. It's just how life is sometimes..

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] I want to rewind to an earlier thing, though, because the thought that I had as you're describing it is cargo vans don't have very good suspension.

[laughter]

[DongWon] So writing by hand in the passenger seat of a moving cargo van seems like your penmanship is quite remarkable, and I begin to understand why.

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I didn't actually think about that. Something that you said, Dan, about the writing every day, reminds me of a thing that I learned for myself, which is that there is value in saying I write every day for me, because one of the things that I struggle with is executive function. And the I write every day reduces the level of executive function, because it means that's a decision I didn't have to make. So I've definitely... and I've preached this on the podcast, I try to write three sentences every day. That's actually not true for where I am right now. I don't actually do that. but that does make it much easier to... For my habit to be I have some free time, I'm going to go on Instagram rather than I'm going to sit down to write. And so that's a lot of what I'm trying to balance is learning how to reshape habits so that I lean towards oh, I have free time, I'm going to write, which is what I used to do. Like, my second novel, I literally wrote, like, probably half of it using a Palm Pilot and graffiti on the New York subways. I was just fitting it into the cracks on everything else I had to do. And now, like, I can arrange my schedule so that I can write anytime I want to, but, like, I have cat videos to edit.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Two things. One, I really love this idea that, like, you fit it into the cracks of your life, and I'm curious about that. But first, I actually read this book on habits, and one of the things that they said is that what habits do is move something that you're doing from a thing you do to a thing you are. And so, for example, people say I am a writer who writes every day versus, like, I need to write every day. And that if you do a habit long enough, that's why people would be, like, I'm a runner versus I am someone who runs daily. And that then shifts so that it just feels like such a baseline of who you are that you go ahead and, like, do it because it feels like it's part of your identity. That can be good or bad. It can become, like, a prison of identity. But that's something that, like... I think that's why sometimes people like that feeling of, like, I am a daily writer. 

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] The way I think about it is the difference between a habit and a practice. Right? A habit is something that you feel you need to do every day, it's on your calendar, or whatever it is, and if you fall off of that, then it feels like a failure. And I think that failure state often prevents people from returning. Versus a practice is something that you're always working at. Right? You're not expected to be perfect at it. You try to do it every day. And then tomorrow's always another opportunity to be the person that you see yourself as. Right? So, I am a writer, I practice writing. That means that you are making time and space in an intentional way, but not holding yourself to an unrealizable standard. Because I think very few people who say they write every day actually write every day. Right? Stuff happens. Right? There are emergencies, vacations, there's travel, there's all these other things, and quite frankly, I think you should be making time for those things, other interests in your life, other people in your life. And so it's okay if... Even if you are a daily writer, that you are not literally writing every day. Right? And so I think a lot of us can get really hung up on this like completionist perfection, and I think the idea of a practice can make that space for you to still see yourself as that thing and doing the thing without beating yourself up.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. And I have some other ideas about, like, some of the ways that I have found to go in and out of a daily writing practice. And I will talk about those more after the break.

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[Mary Robinette]  So, before we took our break, I said that I was interested in exploring how I go in and out of a daily writing practice. Because one of the things that I realized, as someone who has ADHD, and, like, in hindsight so many of my career choices make sense because... One of the things that fuels an ADHD brain, or that we respond well to, is new things. But we also really enjoy, like, hyperfocus is a pleasurable thing for us. And so in hindsight, it's... I was choosing careers where I was in theater, so I had a new project every couple of months. Novel, interesting, challenging, and urgent. Those are the triggers. And I love doing those things. And so a new novel, very exciting. So I've realized that when I started, I was still participating in the late lamented Nano. And that is binge writing. That is hyperfocus for a month on a thing. And so now I recognize that,, actually, it's okay for me to say I'm going to focus on this for this period of time. But if I'm in a situation where I have to switch tracks, that I have to be able to learn how to take myself in and back out again for that. And so one of the things that I've been working on is micro sessions. Because I think one of the things that happens to someone who enjoys hyperfocus is that you think,, I'm going to get into that and I'm either going to be punished because I will miss... I'll be late to do something else or someone's going to interrupt me and that'll be frustrating. And so I've been doing... Setting timers and saying, okay, 5 minutes. And that will just... Like, look, I got a lot of words done. I can do this in 5 minute bursts. And then kind of building up. So that if I've been in a phase where I haven't been writing for a while, I can ramp myself up into it. Instead of having, like, a day where i'm like, okay, it's time for me to write, I'm going to write 2,000 words. Because that's what I write when I'm writing at pace, and then I'm exhausted because I haven't been writing daily, and then I don't write. So, like, learning to use these micro sessions to ramp up has been helpful.

[Howard] There's a famous object lesson involving a mason jar and eggs and rice, in which you want to  get everything into the jar. And if you pour the rice in first, there isn't room for the eggs. If you put the eggs in first, then the rice will fill the gaps. And the object lesson is find out what's important to you, put the important things in your life first, and then let everything else fill the gaps. And what you've described with some of the catch as catch can writing process, is learning to... And I'm going to extend and then break the metaphor because I'm me... Learning to be the monk who can write on a grain of rice. Turn your writing process into something that can fill the cracks. That can be on the grains of rice. Sometimes you want it to be an egg. Sometimes you want to block out 4 hours and just write. But you have to have the ability... I say you... For your process, you have to have the ability to write on a grain of rice on some days.

[Mary Robinette] Right. And so that is actually part of the thing is that when I have a deadline, which is, again, triggers the urgency thing, it's so much easier for me to do time blocking and stick to it. Otherwise, I'm very likely to block things out on my calendar and then be like, oh, well, we can move that.

[Erin] Thinking a lot again about the cracks and you writing on the modes of transit, which I think is fascinating, as somebody who has occasionally, like, written on the subway. What I wonder about this is, like, there's so many interruptions. Like, so, being on any form of transit, like, at any moment, like, things could be happening, a road sign, a thing. But it's like things that you anticipate happening. So it's like an interruption that you... Sometimes it's like an interruption that you have internalized is going to happen versus an unexpected interruption. Do you know what I mean?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Like... And I'm wondering, like, if that's something that you've played around with or thought about?

[Mary Robinette] So I think that the interruptions that happen in modes of transit are either things that you're expecting, so you can plan for them, because I know my stop is coming up. Or they're things that you don't actually have to engage with. The interruptions that I was dealing with were things that I had to engage with. Like I am... My mom passed in 2023. We live in a basement apartment. There are three dogs. I hear something hit the ground. And I still have this trauma response of I need to go deal with that. I'm like 100% don't. The dogs are fine. So I think some of that is the difference between interruptions you have to engage with and the ones you don't. But I think the other thing that, again, in hindsight, was happening for me was that there was just enough white noise, just enough stimulus happening either in the train or the coffee shop, that I had to focus harder, and that made it easier to ignore all of the other chat... Like, in the process of I have to ignore all of this other stuff, it made me also ignore all of the other random chatter in my brain, because I had to focus to block everything else out.

[DongWon] Well, one thing that's interesting, and I was thinking about this as we are talking about fitting the writing in the cracks, but also, your life is very demanding. Right? There's a lot of travel, there's a lot of interruptions. And so the question I had was how do you defend your time? And as you were talking about this last bit, I realized, oh, travel, because it's this liminal space...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Where you're sort of... You know how you walk into an airport and suddenly all societal rules are off?

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] Like you're like, oh, I can eat lunch at 9:00 in the morning...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] And you see people drinking like three martinis and you're like, what is happening right now?

[Chuckles]

[Howard] It's breakfast.

[DongWon] It's breakfast. Right? But there is this thing about, like, airports and planes and trains and subways where because it's like dead time in between other things...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] No one can actually really interrupt you in that time because you're traveling.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] You're free in that space. Right? You're protected. So you're... I could see with how much you travel, like, let you have this sort of defended space. But when you're at home, do you have strategies for protecting your time? How are you keeping all the daily demands of your life a little bit at bay for, like, these 20 minutes, this 2 hours, whatever it is?

[Mary Robinette] No one can schedule a meeting with me before noon. Except in very rare occasions, where it's like a time sensitive thing, and that's... And even then, I have let my assistant do that. I don't get to make that call, because I will give my time away. And no one can make a meeting with me after 6:00 p.m.. So I have these windows in which meetings can happen. No one can make a meeting with me on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. And so those are some things that I've done to try to carve out a little bit more time. I also... This is ridiculous, but I've... But it has worked. I have trained Elsie and Guppy that when I am at my desk, and I say, Mary Robinette working now, that they will both mostly curl up and go to sleep. Because they know that they will get treats and that I will play with them when I'm done. And that has made a huge difference. Because as much as I love the fact that I have taught my cat to talk, she is a toddler and needs a lot of attention.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] But those are the things that give me the ability to have space to write. The person I have to defend my writing space from the most is actually myself. So...

[Howard] Say that again for the people sitting in the back.

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] The person I have to defend my writing time from the most is myself. Because I will give it away. I will think, oh, I can do it later. I will prioritize other things. So I've found that the best practice for me is that I get up in the morning, and when I've managed to do this, I have a really good day. Or I'm already in a good brain space. So I'm able to do it. Cause-correlation. Who knows? But I write down these are the things... The time-sensitive things that I have to do today. Here's the places I need to be. Here are three tasks that I'm going to try to accomplish. And if I don't write down writing as one of those three tasks, I will... I have effectively given my time away. But then I do a timeline for myself of what I'm going to be doing. So what I'm basically doing is I'm clumping my executive function at the beginning of the day when it... When I have the most of it. So that when I finish a task, I can look at my notebook, and go, oh, now I'm supposed to move to this... Move on to this... Now I'm supposed to write. And reframing it as... I just said supposed to. I've been trying to reframe it as now I get to write. Because supposed to comes with a certain amount of shame and guilt if you don't do it. So, now I get to write. And then I have a couple of things that I only get... Like, I have this candle that I love and I only get to light the candle when I am writing. I have a playlist of music that I really like, but I only turn that playlist on when I'm writing. So I have a couple of things. And then there's usually... the other thing that I've found that works very well for my brain is to have another piece of writing that is my reward for finishing this piece of writing. It's like once I finish this, then I get to do that. And once I finished that, then I get to do, like... Then I get to write the scene where they make out, and then I get to do the scene where the dragons are flying. And then I get to that... seeing the next bit of writing as the reward for this bit of writing helps me... It's like linked excitement.

[Dan] The thing that I really love about this, and I suspect that we will find it is true for all of us, is that your writing process is continually evolving.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[Dan] It's not one thing that works for you. It's things that are changing. And some of that is your circumstances have changed, who you are living with, what job you have, but a lot of it is just you are learning more about yourself. You just said that you... Something you have found...

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[Dan] About yourself. Giving yourself a reward. You are an incredibly accomplished and experienced writer, and you are still discovering things about yourself and your process. And that is, I hope, really beneficial for aspiring writers to hear. That on the one hand, maybe the downside, is that you never hit the point where you've perfected everything. It's never a solved problem. But the upside is that you are continually learning, you are continually growing, you're continually figuring out new things that work well for you.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So, that's our hope for you, our listeners, as you are listening to us talk about our writing processes. Because all of us are going to have... All of us have different brains and all of us have different strategies and challenges and goals.

[Mary Robinette] For you, I have some homework. What helps you want to do the things that you aren't writing? The other things in your life, the other tasks, the other joys that you have. What helps you with those? Because the tools that you use for those also work with writing. So is there anything that you use, like, is it lists, is it spreadsheets, is it by doubling? What is it that helps you want to do something? And can you use those same things to guide your writing process?

[Howard] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.