Writing Excuses Transcripts

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-19-cooking-as-a-writing-metaphor

 

Key Points: Swapping ingredients is creative! Chefs learn from recipes, you can too! Mac & cheese and fanfic. Cooking at home does not mean you are a failed professional chef. Sustenance writing? Meal prepping and writing prep. Creme Brulé. Understand the technique behind the recipe. Things will go wrong. Joyful mistakes! Know what biscuits should be before you make one. Good cooks gotta eat, good writers gotta read.

 

[Season 20, Episode 19]

 

[Mary Robinette] Hey, guess what? The 2025 Writing Excuses Cruise is over 50% sold out. During this week-long masterclass, I'm going to be leading writers like yourself through a series of workshops designed to give you the tools to take your writing to the next level. Space is limited, but there is still time to secure your spot. We're going to be sailing out of Los Angeles from September 18th through 26. Regardless of where you are in your writing journey, this event is your opportunity to learn new skills while exploring the beautiful Mexican Riviera. Whether you're revising a story, reworking a character arc, or revitalizing your plot, you'll leave more confident in your current story and bolstered by a new set of friends. Join us on board 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 19]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[Howard] Cooking as a Writing Metaphor.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Dan] And I'm Dan.

 

[Howard] Hey, you know what I love? I really love to make food for other people. Almost as much as I love eating. But I think all of us kind of love eating. I remember years and years and years ago, we were talking about creativity and how occasionally you'll talk to somone and they're like, "Oh, I'm not creative. I'm just... I can't create to save my life." "Do you cook?" "Well, yeah, of course I cook." "So, if you're cooking a thing and you don't have one of the ingredients you need, what do you do?" "Um, well, I go to the cupboard and I look at what's in the cupboard and I try and find something that'll substitute." "Aha! So what you're saying is you are creative, you just didn't know it yet." And this is one of the ways for me that cooking functions as a metaphor. At a very high level, it's an acid test for whether or not you really can be creative. At a much lower level, boy, there's a lot going on. There is so much going on. There is… I'm sure we are all familiar with the phrase necessity is the mother of invention. Recently, Sandra has had some dietary needs, some dietary requirements, and I've discovered that mayonnaise works instead of butter. How did I discover that? By doing all kinds of reading and research, and it's the same sort of thing that you do when you're writing. And so, in this episode, we're going to talk about cooking as a metaphor for us as writers for writing, and I think this is going to make all of us hungry.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] It's true. One of the things that I want to say is that… You were saying everybody cooks. I'm like, actually, that's not true. There are a lot of people who don't cook. Or who think that they don't cook. But when we're talking about cooking, when we're talking about creativity, there's this whole range, like, if you have selected a frozen dinner and you stick it in the microwave, that is actually cooking. It doesn't mean always that you have to start from scratch. Like, sometimes you're cooking and you are cooking using somebody else's kitchen, sometimes you're cooking using somebody else's ingredients, sometimes you are like, I'm just not in the mood. And there's still ways to be creative within that. Anytime you're having to make a choice, the choice is the creativity.

[DongWon] Well, and… Like, in writing and in reading, there's so many valences we put on certain kinds of things. Like, we look at French cooking. Right? Michelin star French tradition cooking as like so worthy and valuable compared to other traditions. But, I've had as much enjoyment eating at a very fine dining restaurant as I have standing at a counter in a gas station eating a taco. And the way you enjoy things… And a box mac & cheese at the exact right moment is one of the finest pleasures in life. Right? So they're different kinds of writing and different kinds of creativity and art that fit different situations. That doesn't mean that the box mac & cheese is inherently worse or less valuable than the 300 dollar tasting menu. I am nourished at the end of both of those. I… Both in body and in spirit. Right? And, I think, think about what you're getting out of the things that you're making, rather than how the world would put a price tag on the thing that you're making.

 

[Mary Robinette] Absolutely. And also know that, like, there are… That those degrees of interest and degrees of skill, and that skills are things you can acquire. That the, for me, the thing at the core of this, when we're talking about cooking, is nourishing… Although there's some really good stuff that's not particularly nourishing, like, give me a delicious s'more. Like, if that's, like, a toasted marshmallow? Oh, my God.

[Howard] Burnt sugar and air.

[Mary Robinette] Yes. So good.

[DongWon] There's a lot of different kinds of nourishing.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[DongWon] Right? There's body, there's emotion, this spirit, there's all these different things. Right?

[Mary Robinette] Yes. This is absolutely true. But if you're looking at something and thinking, oh, I can't do that because I don't have those skills. The top chefs did not have those skills either when they started.

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Mary Robinette] They learned them.

[DongWon] And you learn from recipes. Right? You learn from starting to read recipes from a book that explains the basics. For me, that was The America's Test Kitchen Cookbook. I know a lot of people sort of of my generation learn to cook from that book where it just goes through, here's the core techniques, here's how to break down a chicken, here's how to heat up a pan, here's, like, all the very basic techniques that let you learn the different components of what a dish is, what a recipe is.

 

[Howard] It… I hadn't thought about this before, but boxed mac & cheese may be kind of like fanfic. In that you start with something where you know exactly what it's be… You've seen it a thousand times, you know exactly what's in it. But you make the boxed mac & cheese and then you reach for the Panko breadcrumbs and the bacon bits and you put them in on top and now you've done slash fic.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] You've done your own take on Kraft mac & cheese or whatever. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Because at some point, at some point in your cooking journey, you realize, hey, you know what? I… What if I actually use real cheese instead of this powdered stuff, and a mixture of milk and butter? How do I get to that point? That might be interesting. I'm going to try that. As a writer, boy, what if I build my own fantasy universe instead of using Gray Hawk, instead of using Dungeons & Dragons?

[Dan] So, one of the things to remember about this is… Nobody looks at the home chef and says, "Aw, it's too bad you're a failed professional chef."

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Right. Yes.

[Haha!]

[Dan] Right? Like, just because you cook at home doesn't mean that you have professional aspirations, or that you need professional aspirations. And writing can be the same thing. It's something that we do because we love. Even if your goal is to eventually make money with it, you start because you love it. And it is a thing that brings you joy. And, so making sure that you know kind of what your goals are as a writer can help you deal with those thoughts of inadequacy or criticisms coming from outside. Somebody finds out that you're a writer, they'll immediately ask, "Oh, have you published anywhere? Have you sold anything?" Shut up. That's beside the point.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] That might be our goal, but that's not why we're doing it.

 

[DongWon] Yeah. And one of the distinctions I think about when thinking about what the difference is between… Not the home chef and a professional chef, but what I think of as sustenance cooking versus cooking for joy. Right?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] The… I resent sustenance cooking. When I have to make myself lunch in the middle of a work day, or it's seven o'clock on a Wednesday night and I'm starving and I need to prepare what to eat, like… I'm furious at the idea that I need to, like, stop and cook.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] Right? That's sustenance cooking. Versus cooking a meal with… For somebody you love or for yourself or whatever it is. And the difference, to me, is intention. Right? When you approach what you're doing with intention, that changes… That changes from the emergency I need to feed somebody box mac & cheese to the I'm going to build a sauce for this mac & cheese. I'm going to add the breadcrumbs. I'm going to do more with it. So, even if it is fanfic that you're doing, when you're approaching that fanfic with the kind of intention about what you're trying to accomplish and what effect you want to have on your audience, that, I think, is transformative and brings a different level into it.

[Howard] Okay. Pop quiz. What is sustenance writing? I'm going to say email.

[Laughter]

[DongWon] I was going to…

[Howard] I'm going to say email.

[DongWon] I think journaling can be sustenance writing. I think email. But I do think there… There's a lot of kinds of writing… I think a lot of writing… The kind of writing you would do for fanfic, the kind of writing you do just as tests to see if something works. Right? I think there's a lot of times people are sitting down and forcing themselves to write. They're like, I have to get a thousand words out today. Right? Otherwise I can't call myself a writer if I'm not doing that. I think writing when it comes from obligation as opposed to a pull towards craft and attention… And that's not me saying that writing… That kind of sustenance writing isn't important.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] It's hugely important and valuable. And learning how to do that's import… In the same way that me learning to feed myself, even though I resent it, is also important.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah, but also, like, learning to feed yourself in ways that you don't resent…

[DongWon] Exactly.

 

[Mary Robinette] Learning to do sustenance writing in ways that you don't resent. Like, I… One of the things that I often find is that I have something that's prepackaged, that's available. So, for my emails, I have templates, often. These are things that you can do. And also, for me, when I'm writing… Like, when I need to make progress on a project, sometimes I have to do sustenance writing on that, where it's like, I just have to make forward progress. And if I break it down into small chunks that… It's like meal prepping. Where I'm like, I know that tomorrow I'm going to be able to do actual, like, prose writing, but today I can do my meal prepping, I can set all of my ingredients up, I can make a bullet list of these of the things that I need to do. And often, when you do that prep… When you walk into the kitchen, it's like, oh! As a complete accident, we have… I've got… It turns out that I don't actually love shopping for groceries, and doing the menu planning. But I really enjoy cooking. My husband is often… He's doing some volunteer work that's 20 minutes away. And so he will let me know, I'm on my way home. And it's not a predictable time. So what I've been doing is, I've been doing all of the sous chef work, all of the prep work, and then I get that 20 minute notice, and I walk back into the kitchen and I cook. And I'm finding that that is actually starting to influence the way I'm writing, too. That I will do some prep work, and I'll take a little bit of a break, and then I'll come back and it's like, oh, look at this gift that I've given to my future self.

[DongWon] This is me spending a day and making stock…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Kimchee for the month. Whatever it is.

[Dan] Yeah. There's this… I love this idea, and it's reminding me of the cooking thing that I'm going to horribly mispronounce, because it's French. Maison plase? [Maison plais?] The idea there is that you prep all your ingredients in advance. That you pre-chopped everything, that you premeasured everything. So that when it's time to cook, you just have them close at hand. And I'm realizing as I listened to everyone talk, that that's how I use outlining. That if I have my outline, and I am an extensive outliner… I outline scene by scene. And so when it is time to write the next thing, I can open that outline and look at it and I know who's in this scene and what it is supposed to accomplish and what is supposed to happen and blah blah blah. Which is just like having everything pre-chopped and I can just pick it up and throw it in a pan.

[Mary Robinette] And it doesn't have to be outlining. You can also, if you're a discovery writer, you can also bank sensory details. So that you've got those ready at hand. So what does this room look like? I will often use C. L. Polk's five four three two one technique. Where I just write down, okay, what are the five things that are visible in this room? What are four things that I can hear? And I'll just go through those… All five senses so that they're banked, so when I sit down, I've already thought about that. Even if I'm doing some discovery writing.

[Howard] We're going to take a quick break. And after the break, I'm going to argue with someone who's been dead for 150 years.

 

[Howard] All right. In the nineteenth century, French chef Antonin Careme famously declared that there are five mother sauces. Espagnole, veloute, bechamel, tomate, and hollandaise. And I looked at those when I learned this and realized four of those are thickened with a roux, which is butter and flour. And one of them is a water and oil emulsion. Dude, there are only two mother sauces.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] There are only two, because four of them are exactly the same thing, all you're changing is the flavor. I bring this up because this only ever happens in cooking. I've never had writers argue about what kinds of forms there are for writing, or anything.

[Mary Robinette] Oh, you are not hanging out with the right writers. That's all I have to say. There are only three stories.

[Yeah]

[Mary Robinette] It's only Man meets man, man… It's like…

[DongWon] There's only The Heroes Journey, there's only Save the Cat, there's only…

[Howard] Yes. The one I heard was there's only two stories. Somebody… Stranger comes to town and somebody goes on a trip. And I'm like, those of the same story, it's just the point of view.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. There's only one story!

[Howard] The point here is that I love structure, I love formula. And the first thing that happens when I look at a formula or a structure is I begin asking it… I begin trying to break it. I wrap it around things it shouldn't be wrapped around, I play with taxonomy. I love this. Does it result in good cooking? Eh… Maybe. Sometimes. Does it result in good writing? It can. What are the things where you've done this? Where you've taken a form and you've said, well, this form is interesting, but it really doesn't mean what I think… What everybody says it means. I'm going to do something else with it.

[Mary Robinette] Um... [Kaily.]

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] But it is… I think that is the heart of this, is that we'll hear a writer say, "Oh, I don't want to do anything formulaic." And the difference between formula and formulaic is very interesting. So I tend to think of writing as recipes. And when I am doing recipes, I always wind up swapping something, because, you know what, I just want a little bit more of this, or a little bit more of that. And when I'm writing, also, it's like, the number of times that I have secretly done a retelling of something and I just haven't told anyone that it's a retelling… And I haven't asked… I've like filed the serial numbers off really hard. No one's noticed. No one's noticed, but I'm using somebody else's recipe. This is… Like… There are… You go to a restaurant and you order the cream Brulé, and there's a whole bunch of… Like, boy, that is a very simple dessert that you can really mess up. But that's something… That's a recipe that someone invented, and it has become a genre.

[Howard] Someone whose first question was, can I use this blowtorch in the kitchen?

[Laughter]

[DongWon] The answer is yes.

[Howard] Yes, you can.

[DongWon] [garbled] fire.

[Mary Robinette] I had a Parmesan cream Brulé with a spicy red pepper jelly on top of the Brulé part is an appetizer that was transcendent. And that was someone going what if… What if I take this well-known thing and swap some stuff out?

 

[DongWon] Because, I think, getting to sort of the core of what you're talking about, and the core of what Howard's talking about in terms of, like, yes, there are the mother sauces, yes, it's important… Blah blah blah blah blah. But what matters more is that there's technique behind each of the mother sauces. Right? And I've read so many cookbooks that have been completely transformative to my practice, that have been so useful. The one that I think made more of an impact than any other is a book called Ratio by Michael Ruhlman. And Ratio, it's a very slim book, and it's just teaching you not to think in terms of recipe, but giving you the logic of why recipes are structured the way that they are. The ratios that go into thinking about food, into thinking about drink, and to thinking about… I mean, Samin Nograt's Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat is getting out this in a different way. Right? Those are the four elements of any dish. Salt, fat, acid, and heat. How are you applying them, that's going to make things delicious. Right? And so, think about ratio, think about elemental ingredients, and you'll see the logic behind the recipe. And then, any recipe you run into, you could figure it out. Right? Any book you want to write, if you understand the ratios, if you understand the core elements, you can write a mystery, you can write a space opera, you can write a romance, you can do whatever story you're trying to accomplish.

[Dan] I am trying to imagine… We're recording several episodes today. This one is coming before lunch.

[Laughter]

[Dan] And I am trying to imagine what this episode would be like if we recorded it after lunch. When we were full, and we didn't want to think about food anymore. We wouldn't get this enticing description of cream Brulé.

[DongWon] Dan, you're underestimating our ability to get hungry thinking about food.

[Laughter]

[Dan] And writing is a lot like that. And I think a lot of it, a lot of the time… Writer's block, for example, comes down to that same idea of I am full right now. There are words in my brain, I have already written some of them, and I'm just not feeling it anymore. And that's okay. Sometimes it is time to get up and take a walk and digest a little bit.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah, and…

[Dan] Because that is going to help you feel excited about writing again.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah, and sometimes the reason that you are not interested in cooking or food is because you're ill. And you need to take time to rest. And it's okay. And we don't… We so often have that write every day. And it's like if you don't cook every day… No. You absolutely don't have to cook every day.

[DongWon] If you're feeling uninspired, go out to eat. Go to a nice restaurant. Go to a place you've never been before. Try a new cuisine. Try a new dish that you've never tried before. And that'll help inspire you. You've got to put in the tank to get stuff out.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. One of the things I just want to quickly hop back to when we were talking about the salt, fat, acid, heat, is that this is something that I have been thinking about more and more over the last year is thinking about the why. So, like, I tend to sit down and talk to you about what a mystery structure is. But why does it work? When we talk about the long night of the soul, or in a heist structure, the false… The all is lost moment. But that's the plot twist where, oh, this was the secret plan all along. And I think it's because there's a contrast. And so when I see people who are playing with the recipe, and they swap an ingredient out, but they don't understand what that ingredient does. That's, I think, when you get the fiction that feels lifeless or formulaic. Because they aren't swapping it with intention, they're just swapping it to swap. They're just swapping it to do something different.

[Howard] That's… Gary Larson of The Far Side perfectly described that contrast element in cooking when the polar bears are sitting outside the igloo and one of them says, "Man, I love these things. Cold and crunchy on the outside, and soft and warm in the middle.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Anyway. But, yeah, that… If you don't know why these things are there, then when you make the substitution, it's a roll of the dice.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] You're going to make the wrong sub.

[Dan] Okay. So this is bringing your metaphor back around to a place where the puppetry metaphor also got two. Which is the idea that execution is a vital part of this. That any recipe that you follow is going to be uniquely yours because you are the one who made it. Just like when we were talking about the mother sauces, and the idea that we joked that there's only one story. Something happens to a person. You could reduce all recipes down to somebody eat something. Like, when we get that granular with it, it's not helpful anymore. Whereas, you think about a hamburger, for example. That is a formula. That is a recipe. Although every hamburger that you've had is different from every other hamburger that you've had. You can get very creative with it, you can deconstruct it, you can add different elements to it. But ultimately, it is going to be uniquely yours if you are the one who made that hamburger. And I would rather eat your hamburger than a generic one somewhere else.

[Howard] I would rather eat your hamburger then let you eat it.

[Laughter]

 

[DongWon] Well, when you talk about execution, one thing that comes to mind is I think a very important thing. I cook a lot. I feel like I'm a pretty good cook. I like to cook, I make good food, people enjoy it. The number of times something goes wrong in the kitchen while I'm making a meal… Making a meal I've made a million times before. Last time I roasted a chicken and a number of small things just went slightly off the rails. Right? I was like, oh, I don't have the soil. I was making the cocktails, I was like, oh, I don't have lines. You know what I mean? And it's just like things inevitably go wrong. In terms of it could be as dire as you burn yourself, you cut yourself. It could be as minor as this is the wrong kind of onion. Right? And how you respond to that, and how you move through that, I think, is what defines a great cook from somebody who's struggling. Right? And when I see people… I've been to people's houses and they're struggling with the food is not at the level that they wished it would be, it's because they don't know how to respond to a setback. They let the setback overwhelm them and don't understand how to improvise, how to move, how to replace, because they don't know the core elements that were talking about. They don't know the ratios, they don't know the broader elements. So the reason we're talking about all these things is when you're writing, something is going to go wrong.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Right? You will get derailed in your process, a character arc is not going to work the way you want it to, an emotional beat's not going to land, an action scene won't land. How do you move past that? How do you fix that?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. And I think, for me, when I have that, I try to look for the opportunities, I try to look for… Going back to puppetry, there's a thing about the joyful mistake. Croissant… Some dude forgot to put butter in when he was making… It's like puff pastry exists because somebody was like, oh, no, I forgot to add butter at the right time, and had to fold it in later to compensate. And now we have this joyful, joyful thing. So when you… When something isn't working, you can step back to what was I aiming for, what were my goals, how do I accomplish that anyway? And then it winds up being a joyful mistake that brings… Because of your response to it, because you brought your own choices to it, you wind up with something that is different than everyone else is making.

[Howard] It was a chemist at 3M who was trying to come up with a new adhesive and came up with an adhesive that really only barely worked. And that's why we have Post-it notes. This is one of the reasons why writing is so much better than cooking. Your joyful mistake may not be right for this book. But you can put it in your trunk and it will literally keep for decades.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] The puff pastry is not going to last that long.

[DongWon] It freezes pretty well.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

 

[DongWon] One thing I want to tag onto this is to return to the cream Brulé for a moment. One of the best cream Brulé's I ever had was at a Japanese restaurant which did a black sesame cream Brulé. Incredibly delicious. Combining a traditional East Asian ingredient with French technique and style and riffing on this sort of thing. When you're cooking, you're going to be pulling from lots of different traditions. You're pulling a technique… I make a lot of Korean food. I frequently pull in what would be a French technique into making a Korean dish in terms of sautéing the onions a certain way before hand or whatever, whereas Korean cooks would just toss them in. Right? And it's not that one's better or worse, it's just I put a spin on it by combining these different traditions. But it's also very important to understand why a food… To understand what the dish you're trying to make tastes like for the people who originated it. Right? I lived in Portland, Oregon for a few years, and that is a town that loves to make a biscuit. I also feel like that is a town that learn to make a biscuit by calling a friend who visited the South once and they described it to them over the phone.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] Some of the worst biscuits I've ever had in my life. They are…

[Mary Robinette] Listen…

[DongWon] Tough.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. You and I, both Southerners… I also lived in Portland, Oregon, and every time that people would be like, you should go to this place, their biscuits, they're Southern biscuits. I'm like, these are not biscuits.

[DongWon] They are so committed to the worst biscuits I've ever had. But the thing is, what I feel in so many cases is, they haven't had enough of the original thing.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] They don't know what it's supposed to taste like, so they're trying to re-create it. And when it comes to tradition, and when it comes to writing, when you're pulling in elements from other cultures, when you're pulling in structure from another culture, there is an obligation, I think, you have to understand what the origin thing was. You're not trying to replicate it. But if you want to pull elements from it, you need to at least have a facility and be able to recognize what the thing was.

[Howard] What you're saying, if I can distill this all the way down to the roux, is good cooks gotta eat, good writers gotta read.

[DongWon] Absolutely.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] I think that might be the point where we do the homework.

 

[Howard] All right. Listen, this whole episode has been about giving you a metaphor for helping you to understand the way you write. The tools that are in front of you. If we've done this correctly, every time you sit down to cook or to eat, part of your brain will also be writing. Because we are terrible people and we may have just done that to you.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] And I'm going to double down on that. Make a list of your top three comfort foods. Top three. Then make a list of your top three comfort reads. These can be specific books, or they can be styles of books. Now, map them, one to one, on to each other. As logically, as rationally, as deliciously as possible.

 

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

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/18-32-the-kirsten-vangsness-expansion-pack

 

Key points: Imposter syndrome, and the expansion pack you bring from your life, from your experiences. Expressing is cathartic. Love the art in yourself. Everybody has the right to create. Anyone gets to play with the great creative gods. Honor what the audience brings. Imposter syndrome? First, agree that you are an imposter. Second, if you want to write, you are a writer. Avoid gatekeepers, including yourself! We have already gone through some gates, look back at those, and use that to get through new gates. Take care of your personal well and your art well first, let the commerce well fill when it can. 

 

[Season 18, Episode 32]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses, The Kirsten Vangsness Expansion Pack.

[Erin] 15 minutes long.

[Howard] Because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

 

[Mary Robinette] And we are with our special guest, Kirsten Vangsness. Kirsten, would you like to introduce yourself to our listeners?

[Kirsten] Sure. Hi. My name is Kirsten Vangsness. I am most notably seen [garbled] in my hair and a keyboard. I have played Penelope Garcia on Criminal Minds coming up on its 17th season. I am a Los Angeles-based playwright, I have written four or five… Oh, shoot. I've cowritten five episodes of Criminal Mind. But I've written a few one acts… I've written a one person show that… I mean, he's my friend, but Neil Gaiman has been quoted as saying this is his favorite one person show. I took a couple of plays to Edinborough in 2019. I am the host of Kirsten's Agenda, which you can find on YouTube. I make stuff. That's me.

[Mary Robinette] Fantastic.

[Kirsten] I have a cat…

[Mary Robinette] We are so excited…

[Kirsten] [garbled]

[Mary Robinette] Yes. That was also… For our listeners who are not watching the video feed, Kirsten has an extremely adorable tuxedo cat behind her. Whose name is Atrao.

[Kirsten] Atrao.

[Mary Robinette] So I… Atrao. I was delighted. Delighted to meet both of you, actually.

 

[Mary Robinette] So what we're going to be talking about is the idea of imposter syndrome and the expansion pack that you bring from your life, from the experiences that you have. So, Kirsten and I both have a theater background. Longtime listeners have heard me talk about puppets, like, a lot. What do you find yourself, like, pulling from your performance experience when you are writing?

[Kirsten] One of the… I started writing… Writing became a gateway drug when I was in fifth grade and I got a huge crush on Harriet the spy and I started keeping a journal. Then, when I started to audition for things, I realized there weren't any parts for me that I could do in a monologue way that really showed what I wanted. They were too narrative or… I don't know. Like, you needed to kind of get in there in one short period of time and you realized, "Oh, it needs a conflict, it needs something fun to do." So, writing, I would kind of walk around my room and be like, "Okay. If I was coming up with the perfect monologue, this is what it would have." I would kind of talk and do it, and then write it down, and talk a little bit more. So that was actually how I started to write. Then I would go and do the thing that I just sort of barfed out of my mouth, and it would be way more successful and get me way more attention, or… I used to do these monologue festivals. It would cost like $50 to do, and you would get $55 if you won. I didn't have any money. So, like, I need to win this thing. So it became really important. Because then you got seen by casting directors and stuff. Then, as I… I always knew, just from writing in my journal, how cathartic expressing and necessary… Expressing. Period. I think that's true for every single human being. But when I was performing, it engages the brain, the writer brain, in a different way, because… And I've noticed this when I've written the Criminal Mind scenes I've written for the character that I play. There's the writer Kirsten, and then when actor Kirsten is doing what writer Kirsten wrote, she's like, "Holy goodness. I'm discovering something over here that…" So you get to have a different perspective. Especially, I think, if you're willing to come… Which is how I do, from any kind of creative standpoint, where I believe love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art. I'm not special. My job is to stay out of the way and let… Be the muse, let the muse come, blah blah blah. Everybody has the right to create. Everybody has the right to make something. You get an award or people like it, that's great. But I think that if you're willing to stand in personally from the work, you can kind of interact with it in a way that isn't so, like, "Look at this thing I made. Look at this thing." It's like you're here and I… I've actually… I'm going to name drop again. I actually learned that a little bit, or I learned to take ownership of that, from watching Neil Gaiman. Because I've been around him enough times and watched him sign books. Obviously, he's such a meaningful writer for many of us. The way he is able to engage with people who say to him, "This book is so important to me," and he can honor it, because he stands outside of the work. Like, he understands, like, that's something that I get… I get to play with the great creative gods, isn't this wonderful. I know the secret, which is you get to play with them. Anyone gets to play with them. Any of us who know that secret should share it. I do think that there are people who are gatekeepers, and act like you need to have some sort of rights to do it. I don't believe that. I can't believe that, because I'm not good enough of a writer to believe that. I… Sometimes I am and sometimes I'm really, really not. I have to make that very clear as we… I have written very good scenes in things that have been televised where I have literally started the scene like, Person One says something important.

[Laughter]

[Kirsten] Person Two says the opposite thing. Person Three comes in with an anecdote. Like… It's so… Did I answer that question?

[Yes]

[Kirsten] Talk about expansion packs.

[Garbled]

[Howard] [garbled] you absolutely answered the question.

[Yeah]

[Howard] The best of us, and the rest of us, do that same thing. I cannot count the number of times I've flipped through a script that I thought was ready to be illustrated and realized that there is a dialogue bubble that says "Punch line goes here, Howard."

[Laughter. Right. Right.]

 

[Mary Robinette] My current novel has a thing that says, "Bilbert makes funny joke here."

[Yeah. Yeah.]

[Mary Robinette] unfortunately, it's actually really bad joke here, which is much easier to fill. The thing that I especially like that you were talking about is honoring what the audience brings to it. I think that that personally is something that I brought out of my theater experience, is recognizing that only half the show exists until we get in front of an audience. They… Each person in the audience brings their own thing, whether that's the people on the set or the people who are watching it, or the reader. For me, like, when you talk about the great creative gods, that's the audience is actually that, because that's who I'm writing for, that's… That meeting in between us is what I'm looking for.

[Kirsten] Absolutely, because that energy, the gods and goddesses in non-binary gods and creatures of power, they are… There's an energy that happens between you and the audience. I'm doing this thing I just started in LA called Bits. By the time this airs, I will have done a couple of them. The whole idea [garbled] are these really incredible writers who write things, but we don't finish it. Sometimes the thing that makes you finish it is to do 10 minutes or less of it in front of a room, and say, "I'm making this thing," and take that terrible, disgusting, horribly apathetic to your insides leap of I'm reading this in front of people, and I don't even know if it's good, I don't know where it's good. I'm hoping that these parts make sense. You know, as you start to do it, because you'll feel this wave of energy coming at you. Whether that wave is apathy or joy or curiosity, you'll feel it. It is really interesting. Because it does teach you what you're saying to the audience.

[Howard] The wave of apathy is kind of like the sound of one hand clapping.

[Laughter]

[Erin] I think one thing that's cool is you feel it from yourself as well. Like, you get things from the audience, but I… I do not really have as much of a theater background, but I'm a big karaoke person…

[Laughter]

[Erin] As some of you folks…

[No, I can tell]

[Erin] In Writing Excuses land know, and, like, what's funny is you can be at home and, like, maybe your practicing your song, but when you get up in front of people, you sing differently, because they're there.

[Yeah, that's right]

[Erin] I think the same thing when you read your work. Like, sometimes I'll go… I like to read unfinished things that are just like those little bits that you're talking about. I'll start to read a sentence and as I'm reading it, I'm like, "Oh, that's not right. Actually…

[Laughter]

[Erin] Like, that word is not the word that I should be saying." Sometimes I'll try to revise it, like, on the fly and try to like remember what did I just say, because that was the thing, because in the moment of being in front of the audience, being there and seeing them brought something out of me as a creator that I didn't get in the same way when I was reading to my cat, as lovable as she is.

 

[Kirsten] That's right. I think it's two separate things. To write on your own in your privacy, to create in your private world, that has its own trappings, right? Like, I destroy myself when I write. Like, I have to know that there is a person that lives in me, that is just going to constantly tell me what a failure I, how pointless it is, or, like, why are you doing this? You're already on a show. You're already successful. Like, just… It will do anything it can to get me to stop. Then there's another… Is another kind of risk you're taking, like you said, when you're at home, doing your karaoke, and then when you go out in the world doing it. It's like the Heisenberg principle. The observed object is going to change by the act that it is being observed. And we at least all say we want our work to be seen and heard, so we have to get it observed. But it's so terrifying to have it observed, too.

[Mary Robinette] Yes. Absolutely. When we come back, we're going to talk about imposter syndrome and how to take these pieces of our lives and use them. But right now, let's take a quick break. Do you want to tell us about your thing of the week, Kirsten?

 

[Kirsten] Oh. Here's my thing… My thing! I asked if I could do plural things, and you said I could come so here's my plural things. I have a show on YouTube. I highly recommend Season Two, Season One's a little dated, because it was pandemic time deeply. But it's called Kirsten's Agenda, and it is about art and self-actualization. I don't remember most of it, but I do know that I made stuff during… I wrote things, I wrote songs, I interviewed a bunch of smart people. I have heard that it is helpful for stuff. So that is something that I would like to plug. Then, this is not something that I made, but it is a thing, it is my thing of the week, because I'm deeply invested in it. If you happen to be listening to this and you're going to the Edinborough Fringe this year, there's a show called Blue written by a wonderful playwright named June Carryl. It is about the insurrection, it is about the George Floyd incident, it is about… It's so beautifully told and so smart. It's an hour long and it's wonderful. It's called Blue by June Carryl. If you happen to be in Scotland in April, go see that at [garbled assembly room]. That's… Those are my things.

[Mary Robinette] All right, listeners. You have your marching orders. You're going to go listen to Kirsten… Or watch Kirsten's Agenda on YouTube and obviously you need to buy tickets to the Fringe festival in Edinborough. It's in April. You have plenty of time to make those plans.

[Kirsten] It's in August. It's in August. August! It's in August. They have a little time.

[Mary Robinette] They have some time.

[Laughter]

 

[Mary Robinette] Fantastic. So, now that we are back, I want to talk about imposter syndrome, because that's something that I think it's everybody. One of the things that you were talking about before the break, Kirsten, was why should I even do this? I don't even have… But also, your already successful. So there are these multiple parts of everyone's life, where there is an area that you have success, and then there's the new venture that you're trying. For a lot of our listeners, that new venture is writing, where they're very early in their career and maybe you haven't finished anything yet. What are the things that we can… I talk about with my own life that I came into writing with an expansion pack from the theater that I already knew how to deal with character. Because I had already been inhabiting characters, but structure was a hot mess.

[Ha ha!]

[Mary Robinette] What are ways that you can look for the skills that you already have and find out what your expansion packs are?

[Kirsten] I would say the first thing is to… I heard this… This was a black woman talking about imposter syndrome in business. It applies hugely with her, much less for me… In different degrees, depending upon the privilege in which our society has endowed us at this period of time, but she was saying, in terms of imposter syndrome, to get an agreement that you are an imposter. She was saying that where she is, the spaces in which she goes through life, it wasn't designed for her to be there. So she is an imposter. When you look at it like that, it's kind of cool, meaning, like, good for you for getting in there and doing it. So, I mean this in a different way obviously, because I want to make that distinction very clear, I am not trying to say that I'm going into the same situations like that, but I'm saying internally, get into agreement that you feel like an imposter, I think, is always the first thing that can end that argument. I'm a big fan of ending arguments inside myself. So, okay, I'm an imposter. Number one. Number two, I want to write. Because I want to write, means I am a writer. End of conversation. I wouldn't want to do it… I wouldn't have… I have a right to do it, because I want to do it. That's it. End that conversation. So there's some of these things that just need to be just stopped, and you need to let… Like, you need to do an act of spirit. Right? Like, don't go into your reptilian brain, just act of spirit. Then, I think, in terms of like, we all have what we need. I mean, we all have in our little hobbit bag of tricks what you need to do it how you do it. How I write is totally different than how other people write. So when I… Yes, it might be nice to read how other people do it, to give you freedom. But, like, I can't… Like, the way I write, I have to go back and edit every two seconds, which people say is terrible, you should never do that. But sometimes that's how I have to do it to make it work for me. I think that, like, you can pride yourself once you know and take pleasure… And I need to learn how to do this… In what you don't know. Like, I cannot learn to outline if my life depended on it. Like I… Literally, if my life depended upon the outline, I would be dead on the ground.

[Chuckles]

[Kirsten] But… Because I don't know how to do it yet. But it's going to feel so good when I do. But I still don't know. I think that that's part of the… It's called expansion pack for a reason. It's going to expand. So boring if it was just like the pack. You know what I mean? That's it… That's all you have. So I think that you just know what you're built with and then you go forth.

 

[Howard] Kirsten, I think in the first half of the episode you gave us a critical tool here. You talked about how we want to avoid the gatekeeping of any of this. Hey, get the gatekeepers out of the way, you should be… Hey, don't gatekeep yourself.

[That's right]

[Howard] Just stop that. We can all see ourselves doing it. Oh, I shouldn't do this because I'm… No. Week. I'm gatekeeping. Why am I gatekeeping? Because I'm afraid of failing. Because I'd rather go get a sand… I don't know. But figure out why that gatekeeper's there and then show him the curb.

 

[Erin] Yeah. I also think, like, what you said about feeling like… Understanding where the world is kind of working with you or the world is working against you is, like, you have… Everyone has gone through some gates already in your… Whether it's in your personal life, in your professional life, like, you know how to get past gates, like, you've made it somehow. So, sometimes I think we look at the gates in front of us that are closed, and we forget to look behind us at the gates that we've already unlocked, scrambled over, dug under, however you got through it, you got through it. Maybe you left a little bit of yourself behind. Maybe you got a scrape in the process. But you did it. I think going back and acknowledging that is a great way to take power forward for the next gate in front of you.

[Mary Robinette] I literally got chills when you said that, Erin. Just FYI. Yeah, that's… I think that that is absolutely important is to honor the experiences that you have had, whether they're positive or negative, for what they can teach you about the road ahead of you. In one of our other podcasts, I talked about the fact that I cannot tell you exactly how to navigate through the experience of being a writer because I start from a different point. So the experiences that I passed through our different. But, to Erin's point, to Kirsten's point, I can look at the things that I have gone over, and that can help guide me forward. I have… actually, have a conflict that I'm going to resolve after I get off this podcast. In fact, thank you.

[Chuckles]

 

[Mary Robinette] So, one of the things… I'm going to circle back to something from the beginning part of the episode, Kirsten, when you were talking about your gateway into writing, which is that you started it by monologueing. By trying to find monologues. Where you are now, what tools are you still using from that?

[Kirsten] Oh, I still… I mean, look. I am a… I think that there are people that move in a linear fashion, and there are people like little onions that just go in a little circle. I'm the circle kind. So, like, I'm doing the same… I dress the same as I did when I was five. So, it's like… I just go a little more provocative, a little more provocatively. I'm going down a road and I'm stopping the road because it's not going to make any sense to anybody but me.

[Chuckles]

[Kirsten] But I think that the things that I use, luckily for me, the way in which I speak to myself, the way in which I externalize, a lot of stuff I write about is about all the people who live inside of us. I do a lot of like persona stuff… Very easy for me to write dialogue, just based on the various things that I combat with inside of my own person. So, dialogue is really easy for me, because I can do it based on what goes on inside of me. If that makes any sense. So I think just journaling… To me, you know how you know you're a writer? You know how I know I'm a writer? I write. If you wrote a sentence today, I will argue, that by dint of recording yourself saying something, writing something down, drawing something out, you are a writer. That day. Check the box. You might want to be more of a writer, by writing a little longer. But if you don't right, are you a writer? Like, who's the actor? The one who has the nachos commercial that's running all the time, making money by just sitting on their couch, or the person who is doing day to day today scene work and monologues and plays for two dollars a night? Like, who's the actor? Like, who's the writer? So, like that's… To me, the act of doing it creates more moments of success. Like, I… You have to make the gross stuff, and then through all that gross stuff that you're puking out, there'll be like a little bit of gold.

[Garbled]

[Howard] I had a friend, years ago, said, "Lots of people will tell you you can't write. Don't let any of them tell you you don't."

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I will also, just to layer onto that, continuing to use theater as the metaphor, that sometimes you go through slumps. Where you cannot find a gig. At all. Or you can't even get in the room to audition. That doesn't make you stop being an actor. It doesn't… Likewise, as a writer, just because you don't make a sale doesn't mean you aren't a writer. Then, also, one thing I want to say for mental health. If you have to take a break, surgeons go on vacation, they're still surgeons. So if you have to take a break from writing, you're still a writer, even if you're not actively doing it because of mental health or other health things.

[Kirsten] Yes. I would say, though, that creativity is one of those wonderful, terrible, jealous mistresses. That once you open Pandora's box, if you try to shut her again, you will feel pain. Your body will scream at you. So maybe not writing… Maybe you can take a break from writing, but your creativity is something… It's there, and it's there for you, always. It's always there for you. That's the thing that I find so touching about it. I can leave her forever and she's always there. She might be, like, "you forgot about me and I feel lonely and you need to tend to me more so I'll wake up to you. You're going to have to be nice because I'm not just going to drop pearls of wisdom at your feet right now because I'm a little mad." But she's always there. If I can impart this to everybody, if I could give… I want to share this with the world, that's how important this is. Because I am very… Like, I have a successful job. People can point… Look! There she is. She must get paid for that. She's… Like I do the thing.

[Chuckles]

[Kirsten] Also, you see my name on it. Write… Cowritten by there's my name. That is great and fine. But if I don't… If I knew a lot of rich successful people that were happy, I would… If money and success made you happy, I would know a lot of rich and successful happy people. And I don't. I would say equal, but maybe not even that. There's your art well and there's your commerce well. They are not the same well. Very rarely can I say that I have… put… my commerce well is the thing I make money doing. Your art well is your art well. You hope that the art well becomes a commerce well. But it becomes a commerce well, it's kind of, now, it's a job to make you money. You can't… To put all of this into this isn't fair. Like, so we have to also look at the joy of the doing of it and the deep, deep important cool value of the doing of it. The fact that you are writing, that's cool. The fact that you're writing and that no one's paying attention to it, no one's giving you money, that's even cooler. That's what they write songs about and make movies about is you. So, like the second you become successful, you're just like, "Whatever." You chew up gum. You're going to get attention for that. But, like, I want everyone to know that coming from someone whose commerce well is very full, I always have to keep my art well full. That's my responsibility, and our responsibility as people to our own inner artists that needs tending. The world will become progressively a more kind of place you want to live in if we each just tend to our own pleasure, tend to our own art well.

[Erin] Just to feed on to that, and to add to what Mary Robinette was saying earlier, the most important well… I love that, by the way. I love the art well and the commerce well, and there's also, like, your personal well. Like, your actual I can exist as a person well. That is the well that you really, really must feed the most, because if that well goes dry, you lose it all. So, sometimes you have to… I have found that, literally in the last week, that I was struggling, staying up late, working on a project, not doing very well, and then I was, "You know what? I'm going to go get eight hours of sleep. I'm just… It's going to put me back, but I'm just going to try it." Then I woke up, and the next day, my art well… My personal well was refilled, and so my art well was moving much faster than it was when I was, like, struggling through the art and letting the personal go. So, it's really about making sure you feed yourself so that you can feed your art and then hopefully we all become rich and happy and successful at the same time.

[Mary Robinette] Amazing. I think that that is a great point for us to move on to our homework, which will give you, dear listeners, something to fill your art well with.

 

[Kirsten] Ooo. Okay. So I came up with this. I'm going to try to make it concise. Brevity is not my forte. I have these big questions that I always write about. I always write about time. I'm fascinated by time. What is young, what is old, who lives inside of us? That Madeleine L'Engle quote we are every age we've ever been. These are things I think about all of the time. I also think about the female sexual response cycle all of the time. These are two things I constantly think about. So I end up writing about them, because there my big questions. Now you might know what your big questions are. You might be like, "Oh, these are the things I think about all of the time." I'm talking about big [contemplations?] Like what do we do after we die, or, I really, really, really am this political affiliation. This is why and I feel deeply about it because… What are your big questions? If you don't know what they are, or even if you do know what they are, get a recording device on your phone, whatever. I like those voice to text things very much. I use that almost all the time. Record yourself. You can hear yourself, because I think cadence and the way things you're stressing on is important. And see the words. Go on a rant. Rant about your philosophical big question or questions. Then, sit down, make it easy on yourself if you can only I feel stressed out, I can't do it for too long. Like, make a timer. Like 10 minutes. Do it… Do a little mini. Mini task. Now make a scene based on that philosophical idea. Don't write about the philosophy. Have the people doing the thing. Make a thing where you try to avoid talking about the concept. But show the concept. Maybe even don't even have any dialogue, if you don't want to, just by their behavior you see it. That is my homework.

[Mary Robinette] All right. Fair listeners. Your task is to identify what your big questions are, and then write a scene in which you have characters living out and embodying that big question.

[Kirsten] I would expansion pack this and say do all that while making sure that at least all three wells are filled up as high as you can get them. The other two, the personal as Erin was talking about, and the commerce, as high as you can get them at that moment, before you get to this. That would be my… Be gentle with yourself. Give yourself grace as you do it. That would be the expansion pack part of that.

[Mary Robinette] You should maybe do that by taking a break and go watch the Kirsten's Agenda.

[Laughter]

 

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

[Howard] To stay up-to-date with new releases of upcoming in person events, like our annual writing retreats and Patreon live streams, follow Writing Excuses on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Or subscribe to our newsletter.