December 11, 2024 • 27 mins
Bestselling thriller and romance novelist Sarina Bowen shares her secrets for sustained creativity
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is a longer one part of the series where
I interview fascinating people about how they take their days
from great to awesome and their advice for the rest
(00:24):
of us. Today, I am delighted to welcome Serena Bowen
to the program. Serena is the author of the thriller
The Five Year Lie, which recently hit number one on Audible,
and she's also a USA Today best selling author of
several romances, including the Brooklyn Bruisers series. So, Serena, welcome
(00:45):
to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
So maybe you could tell our listeners just a little
bit about yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Well, I'm a full time writer of fiction, and sometimes
it really freaks people out when I tell them that
I write between two and four books every year, and
a lot of people think I could never do that.
A lot of people think, well, they must be really terrible.
(01:14):
You know. There's varying reactions. I do possibly leave my
house a below average number of times in a week,
so that's one way that that happens. But It's something
I always wanted to do, and writing stories for a
(01:35):
living is really a privilege, and I just try not
to forget.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
That absolutely, Because you had a career in finance before this, correct, right, right.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
The business aspects of publishing have always been really interesting
to me, and I do spend an above average amount
of time thinking about it.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Was it hard to make that career transition? I mean,
what sort of precipitated that?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
You know? I just always knew that I would, Like,
I knew that I was really interested in writing and publishing,
and I also knew that I went to school on
deep financial aid with student loans that needed repaying. But
like I said, business has always been appealing to me.
So a twelve year career on Wall Street was really
kind of fun. Like I learned so much and I
(02:21):
don't regret it, but I always knew I would leave.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Yeah, And so how many books have you written at
this point? Because you mentioned that, yes, novelists are often
especially you are quite prolific, and that may be something
with the romance genre because the readers read a lot
as well.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
That's correct, that's right, yeah. But the other reason that
it has to do with genre of fiction is that
I also write in series, so I am not starting
over every time I write a new book, Like I
know something about the setting and I know the characters,
and there's like a greater storyline going on, and that
(02:59):
really does speed it up. Like if if you told
me I had to write four books in a year
and they were all unconnected, then I don't think I
could ever do that.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
So for something like The Brooklyn Bruisers, which is a
hockey romance series, correct, like, how many books would something
like that be in a series?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Well, that one ultimately split off and became ten ten
Okay that I started writing in twenty fifteen, and you
know that series went on for like eight years. So yeah,
the working in a series just speeds you up, and
it explains a lot of the mystery of how I
(03:38):
can write so many books in a year.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
But you still need to come up with a lot
of ideas. I mean, even if you are inhabiting the
same universe and have some of the same main characters,
they obviously have to do something different in the next
novel versus the one that somebody has just read. So
maybe you could talk a little bit about how you
do come up with ideas.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Absolutely, I mean, and it's honestly my favorite part because
when you're at the idea stage of any project, you
haven't made any missteps yet, you haven't painted yourself into
any corners. The world is still your oyster. You can
go wherever you want. And that doesn't mean it's always
easy to come up with the idea that I need.
(04:20):
But the other thing that's really fun about this job
is you get to lean in to your own fascinations.
There is a terrific author and researcher named Jennifer Lynn Barnes.
She is the author of a New York Times best
selling young adult series, but she is also a researcher
(04:44):
in psychology and a professor, and she studies fandoms and
our engagement with fictional worlds, and when she talks to authors,
one of the things he talks about is keeping an
id list, which means those locations and ideas and images
(05:10):
that always get to you that you always like and
so for She would use as an example in her
speech that she likes rooftops and ice cream, and every
single book she's ever read has a lot of rooftop scenes,
and everybody always likes ice cream, so like, whatever you
like that calls to you probably calls to another reader somewhere.
(05:31):
And if you become very familiar with the things that
really speak to you in a book, then it makes
it easier for you to draw upon these things when
you're stuck. So another way I like to think about
this is one time I asked all of my friends
what stories do you always click on in the news,
(05:51):
And I have like a list of these myself. For example,
I will I don't have any pets, but I will
click on any story about a dog that had to
go six hundred miles to find its way home or
something like that. And I don't really have much to
do with fine art, but I will click on any
story about somebody who found a rembrant in their basement,
(06:12):
or an art heist or recovered painting that was lost
for fifty years. So we all have these grooves that
were always interested. And I am particularly interested in cybersecurity
and personal security and also privacy and the way that
it's just changing so much. So I will read Wired
(06:35):
magazine from cover to cover every month, so all of
my own personal fascinations can make it into a book.
Like you mentioned the five year Lie in my bio.
That book has a really fun hook about a woman
who gets a text and it doesn't make any sense
because it turns out that that text was delivered months
(06:57):
after it was sent and this is a real thing
that happened in the news, and you can look it up,
and so it's that kind of little story like I'll
hear it. Somebody told that story to me, and that
book did not come out for five years because I
didn't know where it fit in. But if you are
somebody like me who needs a lot of ideas and
who needs to use those ideas regularly, then you are
(07:22):
well served to find a way to keep all of
these things close. So that means developing a notebook where
you keep your idea. So I have a page at
the back of my planner. It's called one line ideas,
and usually those things come from a news story like
I'm a police case that was resolved in a really
(07:43):
weird way, or a couple that met in a really
strange way, or you know, just just a one line idea,
as the page is called. But then I also have
a notebook for plots, where every page is like a
book idea, like a true a plot, and it doesn't
matter how good these are, and it doesn't actually matter
(08:06):
if the thing that I start writing about on the
first line actually turns out to be a good idea
for a book or not. Like I've got a whole
page to sort of prove that it's interesting or prove
that it's really actually not that great, And when I
am brainstorming, I will take this notebook off the shelf
and I will page through it, and invariably I will
(08:28):
find some little drops of gold in there that I
was like, oh gosh, that really was a good idea.
And then most of my books end up being like
two of these ideas, and I just it maybe took
me a while to realize that they go together.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
That is amazing, And I love that they don't all
have to be good ideas from the get go. You're
not saying like, I'm only writing it down if it's
you know, going to be another best selling book, Like
you don't know that going in right now.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
What you write down are those things that like tickle
you for a second where you're reading the paper and
you could just be scrolling, scrolling, tronal, but then you
read a thing you're like, wait, wait, hold on, and
then you write that down so you can save it
to think about it later, or you give it ten
minutes of your time to like see if it wants
(09:14):
to be something now. But it's it's the act of
stopping to say, hold on, that's different, that's speaking to me,
that's interesting, And to give yourself permission to recognize those
moments so that you can sort of institutionalize a way
of saving that stuff. Because I don't know about you,
(09:35):
but I can't remember anything right, Like I'm giving you
this long lecture about how to remember things, and I'm
just a total wrack like everybody else, Like what's on
my shopping list? I've got no idea? And yeah, So
another thing that I've had to do over the years
is to recognize that when you are in the middle
of writing a novel, which is somebody's like complete life story,
(09:58):
because they kind of all are, you cannot give as
much attention to other things in your life. Like that
occupies a really large part of your consciousness. And if
you want to write novels for a living, like you
have to make your peace with that, Like you just
don't have as much left over because it's just a
(10:20):
lot of work.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Absolutely. Well, We're going to take a quick ad break
and then we will be back with more from Serena
Bowen on her being so prolific and how she structures
her time to get so much done. Well, I am back.
This is one of the longer Before Breakfast episodes where
(10:43):
we interview fascinating people about how they structure their lives.
So Serena Bowen, who has written numerous romance novels also
a best selling thriller author, is talking about how she
comes up with ideas. And you just mentioned, Serena that
you need to have the focus to write fiction, like
you're not going to get much else done in your life.
I'm curious what a day looks like for you and
(11:05):
how you create this sort of mental space where you
are focused on cranking out these books. I mean as
you write, you know, say four of them a year.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Yeah, well, I knew you were going to ask me this.
The truth is that I wish I could come on
this podcast and say, well, I am one of those
people who writes before I look at Facebook or you know,
I've never had my day blown up by opening my
email inbox. But I am not that person. Like I'm
just as distractable and messy as everybody. And there are
(11:38):
when people also ask me when they hear everything about
my business, like oh, what percentage of it is writing
and what percentage of it is business? And I'm like,
I don't even want to know, because I fear the
answer to that question is a number that you know
would send me to drink. I on the other hand,
(12:03):
the only way to write a novel is to find
some immersive time. And sometimes my solution for the evils
of my inbox, and they are legion, is to get
away from the computer itself. So I find myself writing
(12:25):
a lot on paper when I am in my notebook.
It is sort of like a special location in my
brain that is free from other kinds of distractions. And
I guess I think differently with a piece of paper
(12:45):
and pen than I think when I'm sitting in front
of my keyboard. So feeling free to get away from
the computer is really important. I think I would get
a lot less done. And the other thing that is
really crucial to me changing gears, because I think I've
(13:06):
told you before that I'm not very good at shifting
is something that we do in writing called pre writing.
But I think works in other parts of your life too,
which is when you announce to yourself what you're going
to do. So when I sit down with that notebook,
I might literally write on the page, well, chapter four
(13:31):
is going to be a problem because I have to
solve the matter of how he got into the house
without revealing that the keys are lost, so you know,
and then I will just talk it out essentially with
my own, you know, struggling brain, because that is like
a shortcut to getting the correct thing to write. So
(13:56):
writing itself is lots of things. It's like, what is
the plot? But it's also what words did I use?
And you can't start three paragraphs in a row with
the letter I.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
And just it's all you could but look terrible. So
it's what are you actually writing out scenes than long hand?
You are in a notebook writing scenes in your novel.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Yes, but usually they start out as just little notes
and then maybe.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Like here I'm solving the problem how he got in
the house, okay, right?
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Or sometimes even when I and then almost all the time,
I end up maybe just scribbling out lines of dialogue,
and that starts moving things along faster, so then I
might actually on the next line write out all paragraph
of description, and suddenly I am actually writing the book,
like without having intentionally made that transition. So it's like
(14:51):
tricking myself into producing the next piece of work, even
when I feel that mentally, I'm still considering the next
piece of work. And it's an ex ileant because if
you discard your first three ideas, like okay, so the
first thing that happens is this, and then oh no,
that wasn't right. Okay, then actually the first thing that
happens is this, and if you fight it out a
(15:12):
little bit, then whatever you go and write in the
actual document will is more likely to be correct and
that I won't end up leading it later. So you know,
this isn't a bad way to solve lots of problems
like how what is this project supposed to look like?
You know? Anyway, it's it's useful, and I have tried
(15:35):
very hard to teach my children this, like how to
write what you're going to do before you write the thing,
and it's I've had varying success.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Okay, But do you in order to have this sort
of immersive time, I mean, do you just start writing
at a certain point in the morning. I mean, do
you have a work day that looks like a work day,
or do you kind of do it here and there?
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Okay, I would love to say that I was really
at that, and I'm just not.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
You start when you start.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yeah, because honestly, usually it's it's my inbox, like I
will look to see what's happened, and sometimes the thing
that's in there is like a big deal, and I,
you know, maybe it's somebody telling me like, okay, here's
your audio book back, here are all your files, and
now go upload it. You know, so I can't plan
my day because it's just it's never the same. There
(16:30):
are there are all entire weeks that I spend all
on business admin, and then there are weeks where I
just actually last week finished writing a book, which took
me a little longer than I thought, and the number
of hours a day I spent just writing that book
was such an extreme number.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
And then you just sort of decided that the business
stuff would happen later. Yeah, you emerged from that cocoon, right.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
I had no choice, and I really had to turn
up my words per day meter, and it kind of
it kind of stank, honestly, like it was really hard.
But but I did it, and I hadn't had to
do that in a long time. So at the same time,
when I was done, I had the satisfaction of looking
(17:15):
at that production and being like, you know what, if
you really have to do this, if it has to
get done, Look, you just did that, Like, yeah, that
is a word count that you finished. You finished the
novel and turned it in. Like if you had asked
me one month previously if I was capable of writing
the last twenty thousand words of a novel in four
and a half days, I would have laughed like, no,
(17:37):
that is never happening. But then I that's what I
had to do, So.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah, and you did it. All right. Well, we're going
to take one more quick ad break and we will
be back with Serena Bowen. Well, I am here with
Serena Bowen, who is a prolific novelist written several best
romance novels, the recent A five Year Lie, which is
(18:03):
a thriller that you can check out number one on
audible recently. So you read that one, right, Serena.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
I really enjoyed the transition to writing suspense from romance.
It was you know, it was a good time learning
how to do something new.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Well, was it very different? I mean, obviously you're still
constructing a plot and you're still coming up with good
ideas and executing on those ideas. So what made it different, Like,
what part of this involved shifting gears for you?
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Well, in suspense, the promise that the writer is making
to the reader is just different. And you are promising
the reader that you will trick them a little bit,
like you have to give them some clues to go on,
but then they get they're allowed to figure out parts
(18:59):
of it, but not the whole thing. So you have
this swinging pendulum of doubt that if you haven't put
that into the book, then you have not written a thriller.
And that is a trick that I had to learn
from scratch when I started, and I as I as
I go forward, I realized that I didn't understand it
well enough when I embarked. I mean, you know, I'd
(19:22):
written an entire proposal in like a giant chuck of
the book to sell it. I still didn't quite understand
the job until I got neck deep in it, and
then I had to figure it out in a hurry.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
So well, and one of the tricky things about that
I would imagine is you know what you know, right,
but you really have to put yourself in the reader's
head and like knowing what you know, but then making
sure that they don't know what you know? And how
are you ever sure, because of course you know? So
(19:54):
I'm I'm very curious how one threads that needle there. Well.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Honestly, I have found and still believe, after having written
two thrillers at least by now, because the second one
comes out in May, is that your editor becomes more
important with suspense because ultimately you need somebody to tell
you how heavily or lightly you have shaded in any
(20:19):
particular thing. So that second read from a cold reader
becomes more important in suspense. And I'm not sure there's
any way around that. Although if you ask me ten
years from now, can I learn to do that for
my own books? I might say yes, because I have
(20:39):
evolved that capacity for romance at least, like I can
figure out what my reader's experience is, and maybe someday
I'll be able to do that in suspense too. I'm
not sure yes.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
So I wonder if you could talk about a time
management challenge you have faced recently, and maybe how you
address that.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Well, I have had this desire. People talk about writing
as a job you can do from anywhere, and I
have not in my life, and I'm a good decade
into this job so far experienced that to be true.
(21:24):
So when I was a little baby, writer only a
couple of books in, I used to have to leave
my house to get good blocks of writing done because
I would look at the dishes in the sink and
I would do that first, and I was just unable
to sit down in chaos and write for some reason.
(21:45):
So I would go to a library and I would
feed the meter and I would have two hours and
they better count. And that is how I was productive.
But then I slowly transitioned into somebody who could work
at home, and I got really good at that. But
also the silence and the lack of stimulation around me
(22:08):
became like my new crutch. So I would like to
be somebody who can travel and you know, rite on
airplanes and write in hotel rooms and you know, have
a life where I get away from this place sometimes.
So that is what I'm trying to work on now.
(22:29):
And sometimes it's so easy to try technology as a
crutch for solving these problems, like I bought the fancy
Bo's headphones and then I forget to bring them with me,
and you know, so.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
I wonder have you had any success of writing somewhere
other than your house?
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Now I'm getting there. I mean it started with me
just really saying loudly like this is a thing I
need to figure out and I don't know if I
can do it, and then having friends like ask me,
you know, well, why is that like? And it turns
out it was less about cafe noise and more about
(23:06):
me struggling to switch between tasks. So if I am traveling,
then can't I can't move my brain into a working space.
I'll just be thinking about the next thing we're going
to do. And then, like I said, I had this
crazy crunch time deadline that I just survived, and I
(23:26):
had a business trip in the middle of it where
I went to Philadelphia for two days and then I
went to Toronto for one day, and then I came home,
and my deadline is just inching closer by the minute.
So I really had to figure out how to write
on the plane and how to not go down to
the hotel bar and see people that I knew but
(23:47):
rather to lock myself away in the hotel room and work.
And you know that the needing to do it is
what helped me understand that it was possible, and hopefully,
under easier circumstances, I will be able to do it again.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Yeah, maybe when you don't have to crank out twenty
thousand words in four days or whatever it was. Yeah, exactly. Well, so, Serena,
what is something you have done recently to take a
day from great too awesome? Well?
Speaker 2 (24:15):
I have just begun taking ice skating lessons. Oh and
one of the cool things about writing fiction is that
suddenly everything in your life is research. When I was
a derivatives trader on Wall Street, this was not true.
It had the benefit of when you left the office,
(24:39):
you really left the office, like you were not required
to think of your job because at least at that
moment in time, there was no way. There was literally
no way to do your job if you're not there.
So but this is the opposite of that, which is
that you can do any fun new thing and make
it matter for work. So in this particular case, my
(25:01):
husband had begun taking these skating lessons because he wants
to play hockey and I have skated all my life,
but in circles like everybody else, you know. So I
realized that I had a character who was a skating
(25:22):
coach in an upcoming book, and I thought, I don't
know how skating coaches talk. I can watch a lot
of YouTube videos and probably figure it out. But here's
this class. It's twenty dollars an hour, and I own
the skates already. I'm just gonna go to the class.
So I did that, and it has been so much fun.
(25:44):
Like first of all, today I finally figured out how
to do figure eights on my outside edge, thank you
very much, And that, you know, has taken me a
good month to knock out. But just the the ape
feel of doing something badly, like it doesn't matter if
I become a good skater, it could not matter less.
(26:07):
But it's really good exercise. It makes me use my
mind in a brand new way. And I also use
my corporate credit card because it's research exactly.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
It's all research, right, All of life is fodder. This
is wonderful. So Serena tell our listeners where they can
find you.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
I am at Instagram and Threads as Serena dot Bowen
and my books are at all of the bookstores.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Awesome, well, Serena, thank you so much for joining us,
and thank you to everyone for listening to one of
these longer interview episodes. If you have feedback for me
on this or any other episode, you can reach me
at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. And in the meantime,
this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
(27:24):
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(27:46):
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is a longer one part of the series where
I interview fascinating people about how they take their days
from great to awesome and their advice for the rest
(00:24):
of us. Today, I am delighted to welcome Serena Bowen
to the program. Serena is the author of the thriller
The Five Year Lie, which recently hit number one on Audible,
and she's also a USA Today best selling author of
several romances, including the Brooklyn Bruisers series. So, Serena, welcome
(00:45):
to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
So maybe you could tell our listeners just a little
bit about yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Well, I'm a full time writer of fiction, and sometimes
it really freaks people out when I tell them that
I write between two and four books every year, and
a lot of people think I could never do that.
A lot of people think, well, they must be really terrible.
(01:14):
You know. There's varying reactions. I do possibly leave my
house a below average number of times in a week,
so that's one way that that happens. But It's something
I always wanted to do, and writing stories for a
(01:35):
living is really a privilege, and I just try not
to forget.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
That absolutely, Because you had a career in finance before this, correct, right, right.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
The business aspects of publishing have always been really interesting
to me, and I do spend an above average amount
of time thinking about it.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Was it hard to make that career transition? I mean,
what sort of precipitated that?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
You know? I just always knew that I would, Like,
I knew that I was really interested in writing and publishing,
and I also knew that I went to school on
deep financial aid with student loans that needed repaying. But
like I said, business has always been appealing to me.
So a twelve year career on Wall Street was really
kind of fun. Like I learned so much and I
(02:21):
don't regret it, but I always knew I would leave.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Yeah, And so how many books have you written at
this point? Because you mentioned that, yes, novelists are often
especially you are quite prolific, and that may be something
with the romance genre because the readers read a lot
as well.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
That's correct, that's right, yeah. But the other reason that
it has to do with genre of fiction is that
I also write in series, so I am not starting
over every time I write a new book, Like I
know something about the setting and I know the characters,
and there's like a greater storyline going on, and that
(02:59):
really does speed it up. Like if if you told
me I had to write four books in a year
and they were all unconnected, then I don't think I
could ever do that.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
So for something like The Brooklyn Bruisers, which is a
hockey romance series, correct, like, how many books would something
like that be in a series?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Well, that one ultimately split off and became ten ten
Okay that I started writing in twenty fifteen, and you
know that series went on for like eight years. So yeah,
the working in a series just speeds you up, and
it explains a lot of the mystery of how I
(03:38):
can write so many books in a year.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
But you still need to come up with a lot
of ideas. I mean, even if you are inhabiting the
same universe and have some of the same main characters,
they obviously have to do something different in the next
novel versus the one that somebody has just read. So
maybe you could talk a little bit about how you
do come up with ideas.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Absolutely, I mean, and it's honestly my favorite part because
when you're at the idea stage of any project, you
haven't made any missteps yet, you haven't painted yourself into
any corners. The world is still your oyster. You can
go wherever you want. And that doesn't mean it's always
easy to come up with the idea that I need.
(04:20):
But the other thing that's really fun about this job
is you get to lean in to your own fascinations.
There is a terrific author and researcher named Jennifer Lynn Barnes.
She is the author of a New York Times best
selling young adult series, but she is also a researcher
(04:44):
in psychology and a professor, and she studies fandoms and
our engagement with fictional worlds, and when she talks to authors,
one of the things he talks about is keeping an
id list, which means those locations and ideas and images
(05:10):
that always get to you that you always like and
so for She would use as an example in her
speech that she likes rooftops and ice cream, and every
single book she's ever read has a lot of rooftop scenes,
and everybody always likes ice cream, so like, whatever you
like that calls to you probably calls to another reader somewhere.
(05:31):
And if you become very familiar with the things that
really speak to you in a book, then it makes
it easier for you to draw upon these things when
you're stuck. So another way I like to think about
this is one time I asked all of my friends
what stories do you always click on in the news,
(05:51):
And I have like a list of these myself. For example,
I will I don't have any pets, but I will
click on any story about a dog that had to
go six hundred miles to find its way home or
something like that. And I don't really have much to
do with fine art, but I will click on any
story about somebody who found a rembrant in their basement,
(06:12):
or an art heist or recovered painting that was lost
for fifty years. So we all have these grooves that
were always interested. And I am particularly interested in cybersecurity
and personal security and also privacy and the way that
it's just changing so much. So I will read Wired
(06:35):
magazine from cover to cover every month, so all of
my own personal fascinations can make it into a book.
Like you mentioned the five year Lie in my bio.
That book has a really fun hook about a woman
who gets a text and it doesn't make any sense
because it turns out that that text was delivered months
(06:57):
after it was sent and this is a real thing
that happened in the news, and you can look it up,
and so it's that kind of little story like I'll
hear it. Somebody told that story to me, and that
book did not come out for five years because I
didn't know where it fit in. But if you are
somebody like me who needs a lot of ideas and
who needs to use those ideas regularly, then you are
(07:22):
well served to find a way to keep all of
these things close. So that means developing a notebook where
you keep your idea. So I have a page at
the back of my planner. It's called one line ideas,
and usually those things come from a news story like
I'm a police case that was resolved in a really
(07:43):
weird way, or a couple that met in a really
strange way, or you know, just just a one line idea,
as the page is called. But then I also have
a notebook for plots, where every page is like a
book idea, like a true a plot, and it doesn't
matter how good these are, and it doesn't actually matter
(08:06):
if the thing that I start writing about on the
first line actually turns out to be a good idea
for a book or not. Like I've got a whole
page to sort of prove that it's interesting or prove
that it's really actually not that great, And when I
am brainstorming, I will take this notebook off the shelf
and I will page through it, and invariably I will
(08:28):
find some little drops of gold in there that I
was like, oh gosh, that really was a good idea.
And then most of my books end up being like
two of these ideas, and I just it maybe took
me a while to realize that they go together.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
That is amazing, And I love that they don't all
have to be good ideas from the get go. You're
not saying like, I'm only writing it down if it's
you know, going to be another best selling book, Like
you don't know that going in right now.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
What you write down are those things that like tickle
you for a second where you're reading the paper and
you could just be scrolling, scrolling, tronal, but then you
read a thing you're like, wait, wait, hold on, and
then you write that down so you can save it
to think about it later, or you give it ten
minutes of your time to like see if it wants
(09:14):
to be something now. But it's it's the act of
stopping to say, hold on, that's different, that's speaking to me,
that's interesting, And to give yourself permission to recognize those
moments so that you can sort of institutionalize a way
of saving that stuff. Because I don't know about you,
(09:35):
but I can't remember anything right, Like I'm giving you
this long lecture about how to remember things, and I'm
just a total wrack like everybody else, Like what's on
my shopping list? I've got no idea? And yeah, So
another thing that I've had to do over the years
is to recognize that when you are in the middle
of writing a novel, which is somebody's like complete life story,
(09:58):
because they kind of all are, you cannot give as
much attention to other things in your life. Like that
occupies a really large part of your consciousness. And if
you want to write novels for a living, like you
have to make your peace with that, Like you just
don't have as much left over because it's just a
(10:20):
lot of work.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Absolutely. Well, We're going to take a quick ad break
and then we will be back with more from Serena
Bowen on her being so prolific and how she structures
her time to get so much done. Well, I am back.
This is one of the longer Before Breakfast episodes where
(10:43):
we interview fascinating people about how they structure their lives.
So Serena Bowen, who has written numerous romance novels also
a best selling thriller author, is talking about how she
comes up with ideas. And you just mentioned, Serena that
you need to have the focus to write fiction, like
you're not going to get much else done in your life.
I'm curious what a day looks like for you and
(11:05):
how you create this sort of mental space where you
are focused on cranking out these books. I mean as
you write, you know, say four of them a year.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Yeah, well, I knew you were going to ask me this.
The truth is that I wish I could come on
this podcast and say, well, I am one of those
people who writes before I look at Facebook or you know,
I've never had my day blown up by opening my
email inbox. But I am not that person. Like I'm
just as distractable and messy as everybody. And there are
(11:38):
when people also ask me when they hear everything about
my business, like oh, what percentage of it is writing
and what percentage of it is business? And I'm like,
I don't even want to know, because I fear the
answer to that question is a number that you know
would send me to drink. I on the other hand,
(12:03):
the only way to write a novel is to find
some immersive time. And sometimes my solution for the evils
of my inbox, and they are legion, is to get
away from the computer itself. So I find myself writing
(12:25):
a lot on paper when I am in my notebook.
It is sort of like a special location in my
brain that is free from other kinds of distractions. And
I guess I think differently with a piece of paper
(12:45):
and pen than I think when I'm sitting in front
of my keyboard. So feeling free to get away from
the computer is really important. I think I would get
a lot less done. And the other thing that is
really crucial to me changing gears, because I think I've
(13:06):
told you before that I'm not very good at shifting
is something that we do in writing called pre writing.
But I think works in other parts of your life too,
which is when you announce to yourself what you're going
to do. So when I sit down with that notebook,
I might literally write on the page, well, chapter four
(13:31):
is going to be a problem because I have to
solve the matter of how he got into the house
without revealing that the keys are lost, so you know,
and then I will just talk it out essentially with
my own, you know, struggling brain, because that is like
a shortcut to getting the correct thing to write. So
(13:56):
writing itself is lots of things. It's like, what is
the plot? But it's also what words did I use?
And you can't start three paragraphs in a row with
the letter I.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
And just it's all you could but look terrible. So
it's what are you actually writing out scenes than long hand?
You are in a notebook writing scenes in your novel.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Yes, but usually they start out as just little notes
and then maybe.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Like here I'm solving the problem how he got in
the house, okay, right?
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Or sometimes even when I and then almost all the time,
I end up maybe just scribbling out lines of dialogue,
and that starts moving things along faster, so then I
might actually on the next line write out all paragraph
of description, and suddenly I am actually writing the book,
like without having intentionally made that transition. So it's like
(14:51):
tricking myself into producing the next piece of work, even
when I feel that mentally, I'm still considering the next
piece of work. And it's an ex ileant because if
you discard your first three ideas, like okay, so the
first thing that happens is this, and then oh no,
that wasn't right. Okay, then actually the first thing that
happens is this, and if you fight it out a
(15:12):
little bit, then whatever you go and write in the
actual document will is more likely to be correct and
that I won't end up leading it later. So you know,
this isn't a bad way to solve lots of problems
like how what is this project supposed to look like?
You know? Anyway, it's it's useful, and I have tried
(15:35):
very hard to teach my children this, like how to
write what you're going to do before you write the thing,
and it's I've had varying success.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Okay, But do you in order to have this sort
of immersive time, I mean, do you just start writing
at a certain point in the morning. I mean, do
you have a work day that looks like a work day,
or do you kind of do it here and there?
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Okay, I would love to say that I was really
at that, and I'm just not.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
You start when you start.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yeah, because honestly, usually it's it's my inbox, like I
will look to see what's happened, and sometimes the thing
that's in there is like a big deal, and I,
you know, maybe it's somebody telling me like, okay, here's
your audio book back, here are all your files, and
now go upload it. You know, so I can't plan
my day because it's just it's never the same. There
(16:30):
are there are all entire weeks that I spend all
on business admin, and then there are weeks where I
just actually last week finished writing a book, which took
me a little longer than I thought, and the number
of hours a day I spent just writing that book
was such an extreme number.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
And then you just sort of decided that the business
stuff would happen later. Yeah, you emerged from that cocoon, right.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
I had no choice, and I really had to turn
up my words per day meter, and it kind of
it kind of stank, honestly, like it was really hard.
But but I did it, and I hadn't had to
do that in a long time. So at the same time,
when I was done, I had the satisfaction of looking
(17:15):
at that production and being like, you know what, if
you really have to do this, if it has to
get done, Look, you just did that, Like, yeah, that
is a word count that you finished. You finished the
novel and turned it in. Like if you had asked
me one month previously if I was capable of writing
the last twenty thousand words of a novel in four
and a half days, I would have laughed like, no,
(17:37):
that is never happening. But then I that's what I
had to do, So.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah, and you did it. All right. Well, we're going
to take one more quick ad break and we will
be back with Serena Bowen. Well, I am here with
Serena Bowen, who is a prolific novelist written several best
romance novels, the recent A five Year Lie, which is
(18:03):
a thriller that you can check out number one on
audible recently. So you read that one, right, Serena.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
I really enjoyed the transition to writing suspense from romance.
It was you know, it was a good time learning
how to do something new.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Well, was it very different? I mean, obviously you're still
constructing a plot and you're still coming up with good
ideas and executing on those ideas. So what made it different, Like,
what part of this involved shifting gears for you?
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Well, in suspense, the promise that the writer is making
to the reader is just different. And you are promising
the reader that you will trick them a little bit,
like you have to give them some clues to go on,
but then they get they're allowed to figure out parts
(18:59):
of it, but not the whole thing. So you have
this swinging pendulum of doubt that if you haven't put
that into the book, then you have not written a thriller.
And that is a trick that I had to learn
from scratch when I started, and I as I as
I go forward, I realized that I didn't understand it
well enough when I embarked. I mean, you know, I'd
(19:22):
written an entire proposal in like a giant chuck of
the book to sell it. I still didn't quite understand
the job until I got neck deep in it, and
then I had to figure it out in a hurry.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
So well, and one of the tricky things about that
I would imagine is you know what you know, right,
but you really have to put yourself in the reader's
head and like knowing what you know, but then making
sure that they don't know what you know? And how
are you ever sure, because of course you know? So
(19:54):
I'm I'm very curious how one threads that needle there. Well.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Honestly, I have found and still believe, after having written
two thrillers at least by now, because the second one
comes out in May, is that your editor becomes more
important with suspense because ultimately you need somebody to tell
you how heavily or lightly you have shaded in any
(20:19):
particular thing. So that second read from a cold reader
becomes more important in suspense. And I'm not sure there's
any way around that. Although if you ask me ten
years from now, can I learn to do that for
my own books? I might say yes, because I have
(20:39):
evolved that capacity for romance at least, like I can
figure out what my reader's experience is, and maybe someday
I'll be able to do that in suspense too. I'm
not sure yes.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
So I wonder if you could talk about a time
management challenge you have faced recently, and maybe how you
address that.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Well, I have had this desire. People talk about writing
as a job you can do from anywhere, and I
have not in my life, and I'm a good decade
into this job so far experienced that to be true.
(21:24):
So when I was a little baby, writer only a
couple of books in, I used to have to leave
my house to get good blocks of writing done because
I would look at the dishes in the sink and
I would do that first, and I was just unable
to sit down in chaos and write for some reason.
(21:45):
So I would go to a library and I would
feed the meter and I would have two hours and
they better count. And that is how I was productive.
But then I slowly transitioned into somebody who could work
at home, and I got really good at that. But
also the silence and the lack of stimulation around me
(22:08):
became like my new crutch. So I would like to
be somebody who can travel and you know, rite on
airplanes and write in hotel rooms and you know, have
a life where I get away from this place sometimes.
So that is what I'm trying to work on now.
(22:29):
And sometimes it's so easy to try technology as a
crutch for solving these problems, like I bought the fancy
Bo's headphones and then I forget to bring them with me,
and you know, so.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
I wonder have you had any success of writing somewhere
other than your house?
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Now I'm getting there. I mean it started with me
just really saying loudly like this is a thing I
need to figure out and I don't know if I
can do it, and then having friends like ask me,
you know, well, why is that like? And it turns
out it was less about cafe noise and more about
(23:06):
me struggling to switch between tasks. So if I am traveling,
then can't I can't move my brain into a working space.
I'll just be thinking about the next thing we're going
to do. And then, like I said, I had this
crazy crunch time deadline that I just survived, and I
(23:26):
had a business trip in the middle of it where
I went to Philadelphia for two days and then I
went to Toronto for one day, and then I came home,
and my deadline is just inching closer by the minute.
So I really had to figure out how to write
on the plane and how to not go down to
the hotel bar and see people that I knew but
(23:47):
rather to lock myself away in the hotel room and work.
And you know that the needing to do it is
what helped me understand that it was possible, and hopefully,
under easier circumstances, I will be able to do it again.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Yeah, maybe when you don't have to crank out twenty
thousand words in four days or whatever it was. Yeah, exactly. Well, so, Serena,
what is something you have done recently to take a
day from great too awesome? Well?
Speaker 2 (24:15):
I have just begun taking ice skating lessons. Oh and
one of the cool things about writing fiction is that
suddenly everything in your life is research. When I was
a derivatives trader on Wall Street, this was not true.
It had the benefit of when you left the office,
(24:39):
you really left the office, like you were not required
to think of your job because at least at that
moment in time, there was no way. There was literally
no way to do your job if you're not there.
So but this is the opposite of that, which is
that you can do any fun new thing and make
it matter for work. So in this particular case, my
(25:01):
husband had begun taking these skating lessons because he wants
to play hockey and I have skated all my life,
but in circles like everybody else, you know. So I
realized that I had a character who was a skating
(25:22):
coach in an upcoming book, and I thought, I don't
know how skating coaches talk. I can watch a lot
of YouTube videos and probably figure it out. But here's
this class. It's twenty dollars an hour, and I own
the skates already. I'm just gonna go to the class.
So I did that, and it has been so much fun.
(25:44):
Like first of all, today I finally figured out how
to do figure eights on my outside edge, thank you
very much, And that, you know, has taken me a
good month to knock out. But just the the ape
feel of doing something badly, like it doesn't matter if
I become a good skater, it could not matter less.
(26:07):
But it's really good exercise. It makes me use my
mind in a brand new way. And I also use
my corporate credit card because it's research exactly.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
It's all research, right, All of life is fodder. This
is wonderful. So Serena tell our listeners where they can
find you.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
I am at Instagram and Threads as Serena dot Bowen
and my books are at all of the bookstores.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Awesome, well, Serena, thank you so much for joining us,
and thank you to everyone for listening to one of
these longer interview episodes. If you have feedback for me
on this or any other episode, you can reach me
at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. And in the meantime,
this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
(27:24):
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(27:46):
listen to your favorite shows.
Before Breakfast News
Host
Laura Vanderkam
Show Links
AboutPopular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com