SpeakerCone: Heidi Hill - On Writing

Author Heidi Hill joins the program to discuss her writing career, including a stint as a periodical editor, hosting The Writer's Block for nearly two years, and her fictional series Songless, which has recently expanded with an audiobook.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hello and welcome to the program.
My name is Michael Finney. Today I am joined by my close
personal friend and author, Heidi Hill.
Would you like to say hello, Madame?
Hello. We have been hosting Writer's
Block for just about a year, a little over a year perhaps.
In this time we've learned a lotabout each other.

(00:24):
But for listeners of this program, maybe tell us some of
who you are, where you're from, anything important in a
biographical sense that listeners might like to know.
Well, I suppose I could start bysaying I'm I'm an I'm a native
Californian. My family actually came here

(00:45):
during the gold rush from Montana and Mississippi and all
parts east. I have been writing since I was
a little kid. I've done other things too.
I was a magazine editor for about a decade or so.
I would've been a mom for longerthan that.

(01:06):
And I also managed to get a, a nursing degree in the middle of
all of this chaos of my life. And I started writing seriously
fiction during COVID. I think a lot of us had had the
time to do it then. And that's when I really was

(01:26):
able to sit down with all these ideas that had been percolating
in my head for years. And so here we are with a novel
out and I'm working on a novellaand another novel.
Second follow up to Songless theDesert.
Yeah, that should be out, hopefully.
So maybe some this year, maybe some next year.
Crushing it in the grand scheme of things, I would say, you

(01:49):
know, I would like to hear more about the experience as an
editor for a magazine. Maybe relay that to what you
what skills or things that you learned there have continued to

(02:12):
be valuable as a writer in this new effort, as a as a novelist,
a fiction writer. Well, I, I think the most
important thing about having been an editor was that I spent
a lot of time fixing other people's writing.

(02:32):
And so I knew before I started writing, it's like, well, I
don't know if I'm this great writer, but I know I can fix bad
writing. That much I knew and still
believe I can see it and I can fix it.
And I think that was probably the most useful part to me that

(02:55):
I took away what well, in terms of writing specifically, and I
knew that I could, I could do that.
So it's like as long as I can get something down on the page,
I know I can work with it. And I, I feel that's proved
true. Now the other things that I
learned from being in publishingwas one, I, I understood the

(03:18):
business side of it. I understood that what they had
to offer was layout, cover design and you know, marketing,
I guess. But then also having worked in
that I did layout, I did cover design.
I was the sign off on the coversfor our magazine.

(03:40):
I did all of the things that seem mysterious, I think in a
lot of ways to writers. And so I wasn't in the least bit
intimidated by it. And I also knew that the only
thing they could really offer mepotentially was marketing, which
is a continuous problem for us all.

(04:00):
But at the same time, I mean, really at this point, they're
not really even offering that they they want you to have a
social media presence. They want you to have all of
this. So really all they're really
offering is to sort of take a bite out of my work.
And I just, you know, which is why I'm indie, obviously.

(04:21):
So I think these are the things that I learned from that, that
decade or so working and publishing.
I, I understood, you know, the, it wasn't a mystical thing what
they did to me, what they do. Let me say that again, their
work is not missed, is not a a mystery to me.

(04:42):
I understood it. So that allowed me to be much
more confident in proceeding forward and and doing all of the
stuff myself. You mentioned writing as a
child, as a little girl. How much of that do you think
carried over to your writing as an adult, or maybe even writing

(05:07):
as a young adult or a teenager? You know how much of that
effort, or that understanding that experience has a thread
carrying through to the writing that you do now?
I would say all of it. I mean, anything you do carries
a thread. I there are some things that I

(05:30):
wrote down. I I still have notebooks from my
childhood. I have a little box that my
grandmother had made. It's basically just like a metal
box, but she had painted it and all of this stuff.
She painted it gold and she put these Japanese and Chinese

(05:54):
postcards on it, painted and glued them to it.
So it's, you know, it's very pretty.
And she probably done this in the 50s or 60s when that sort of
style was very popular. And I've kept a bunch of writing
from my childhood in it, and I still have it.
And there are certain things in there that are in song list.

(06:19):
The desert, you know, specifically, there was a dream
I had when I was a kid that's always stayed with me that I
used in the book. There's a couple of things.
So all of those things accumulate and add up.
They're all there. And, you know, and I, I go back

(06:42):
to them. I, I have poems that I wrote
when I was in high school and I can guarantee you they're all as
melodramatic as a high school poem should be.
But I've pulled some of them outand been reworking a couple of
them and, you know, they're not.And you know, with the, so it's
sort of like a conversation withmy younger and my older self.
So I think, you know, all of that stuff is of value there.

(07:06):
There isn't a piece of it that should be jettisoned.
I mean, maybe you don't publish it or write it, but just the
experience of doing it. You know, it's the journey and
that's the part that matters. Yeah, very good.
I find when I look back at some writing that I can still

(07:27):
appreciate it. Most notably lyrics.
You know, those I, I think stillkind of translate across time if
you were really dialed into someof that stuff.
Fiction writing I didn't really do a lot of.
So I guess the things that don'tcarry over for me is maybe

(07:52):
journaling that doesn't necessarily play the same way.
I mean, there's, it's interesting to stumble on facts
you might have forgotten about things that you were
experiencing. But in terms of the the writing,
they're just, yeah, nothing useful in that sense.

(08:15):
But yeah, the lyrics, I, I think, and you do that too in
your songs. And I think there's a big
crossover between lyrics and poetry in general.
Absolutely. And 1st off, I would agree with
you. I have old journals.
I started looking at them and I was like, these are memories I

(08:36):
don't need to revisit. So I actually probably in the
last year I threw a year or so, I threw a bunch of those out.
So I, I hear you. I agree.
Journaling is, you know, it serves a purpose and I'm not
against it, but I don't know that it, it aids in the same way

(08:57):
the old poems do or an old storyor, or old song lyrics.
I guess I should have mentioned that I was in a band for a while
in my, my, in another life. And so I have lyrics and, and
songs. And some of that comes into a
song list, obviously. And, and in fact, one of the

(09:19):
songs in there is sort of a re adaptation of a song that my
band used to do. So it's it, I had to change the
lyrics around a little bit, but it's in there.
So it's, it's kind of it's a little special to me.
It's a little Easter egg for myself, shall we say.

(09:40):
But yeah, I I agree with you. The stuff that I can use is, is
the poetry, the journaling. I think it's a little, from what
I could see, it was a little self indulgent and which is
fine. I think journaling should be
whatever you need it to be. It's literally just your

(10:01):
thoughts at the moment that may,you know, we're not all Jack
Kerouac. We can't throw all our thoughts
out and have them, you know, be a best seller.
But yeah, I it's, there's a purpose.
But I, I would agree that the poems, the songs, not all of
them, but some of them really are the things that sort of hold

(10:23):
up. And maybe it's the intention
when you're writing them, right?I mean, when you're writing a
song, you're, you're, or a poem or even a short story, you're,
you're thinking about it in a different way.
You're, you're immediately thinking about it to share, to
share with others. While when you're journaling,
you're just sort of indulging inyour own thoughts.

(10:45):
Maybe that's part of it. Yeah, fair.
Now let's be sort of boots on the ground in terms of the
scene. I've been thinking about the
scene more. You know, not only, you know,

(11:05):
the publishing world at large, but the community that we
inhabit. You know, you have been, you've
been hosting the writer's block for a year and a half, almost 2
years, I think at this point. What have you, what have you
learned? What have you valued out of
that? How do you perceive it to fit

(11:28):
into the ecosystem of what you do as an author?
Anything along those lines? You know, I, I just feel like
we've been really lucky to be working together on that.
And this is a chance for me to hear some of your incisive
thoughts about it. Yeah.

(11:51):
You know, it has been great, hasn't it?
I think it's been a community builder for sure.
And I think that's important. I mean, it's it's connections
with other writers, it's sharingideas and it's, you know,
discussing in detail things thatwriters do.
You know, what is point of view?What is, you know, how do we use

(12:17):
symbolism? You know, we taught, you know,
what's the best way to do, you know, what do we do with AII
mean? These are all conversations that
are just, it's wonderful to havea group of people who are sort
of on the same page and being able to talk about that.
And it's inspiring. And I think it inspires everyone

(12:38):
who comes to that, to that spaceand, and I think it allows us to
explore our ideas and, you know,our, our creative intuition, you
know, in a relevant way. And I would compare it very much
to the experience I had as an editor where I say, you know,

(13:04):
you know, where you're, you're practicing your craft, where I
said, you know, as an editor, I,I spent years fixing bad
writing. And I think we do something
similar to that as a group in the writer's block, where we're,
we're, we're honing our ideas, where we're, we're figuring it
out. It's, it's not.

(13:26):
And I hope the, the metaphor follows over.
I'm not saying that there are, there's bad writing being fixed
in the writer's block. I'm saying there are ideas being
developed and that and, and waysof approaching problems that you
have as a writer or challenges you have as a writer are being
discussed and explored. And that's kind of the same

(13:48):
thing as just very, you know, objectively fixing bad writing,
you know, and the concrete idea of fixing bad writing, we're
able to sort of do that in an abstract way in the writer's
block. And I think that's really, you
know, been of use to me. It really helps me hone my
ideas. And I hope it's been of use to

(14:09):
everybody else how it's been of use to you.
Yeah. I mean, you come up with some
great topics for the for the space and it really is.
And and you you bring order to chaos in the space.
So that's been an excellent addition and help to do it.

(14:29):
I think that at large, all the voices are valuable because the
thing for me that I like the most is the topical conversation
and hearing the, the, the voicesand perspectives from around the
table. Yes, I like it to stay focused

(14:52):
and, and drive through, you know, the, the agenda that we
have, but only as a vehicle to make sure that we get real
perspective out of the, the people that regularly come.
That to me is the purpose of it.And in, in general, while I, I

(15:18):
like the people that come and hang out, we only have so much
time to tackle the discussion. And that to me, you know, to, to
keep things, to provide some order in, in the chaos of
conversation. That's, that's for me, The, the,
the, the point of that to, to beable to make sure that we get

(15:40):
everybody to, to think on and speak about the ideas.
And, you know, that's what I really like about it.
Well, I think that's a very useful place to be, right?
You're that that needs that. We need that.
I mean, we can all fly off. I mean, I know I do to a certain

(16:00):
extent. And so it's good to stay on task
and it's good to stay on the discussion.
Now there, there needs to be, the plan is very helpful because
it allows people to explore specific ideas in detail.
So yeah, I mean, I, yeah, I agree.

(16:21):
And given that we do it once a week, I think that there is
there's ample time to learn about each other.
But then to also address all of these other concepts like
keeping narrow focused thematically or topically for
one week doesn't ever mean that we're not going to get into

(16:41):
these other things in the futurethat, you know, that's that's
the thing too. I think we've have been fairly
thorough, you know, over the course of this year particularly
about really enabling granular conversations that actually
manufacture depth about that granularity.

(17:04):
That to me has been a big help. And to go back to the thing that
you were saying before in regards to AI in writing, you
know, bouncing our ideas off of LLMS to kind of find where the
gaps are or fill in those gaps in our thinking to develop the
outlines or the kind of pre production conversations that we

(17:27):
have in advance of the broadcasts.
I think that has been a a big help, not only in the sense of
like shoring up the trajectory of the conversation, but also
for me personally to interface with the LLMS in a very regular
way and to be able to learn how to optimize not only the ones

(17:50):
that I use, but how I use them. Yeah, I would agree.
I would agree. I mean, we're going to have to
use them. I mean, well, we don't have to,
but everyone's going to be usingthem.
And as a writer, obviously I don't want them writing for me,

(18:11):
but they do offer, they offer the ability to kind of bounce
ideas off. And, and you know, you have to
be the ultimate arbiter of whether it's a good idea or not
because an LLM is going to push you towards a mainstream

(18:34):
concept. It's going to not necessarily
understand nuance. Or challenge you.
It yeah, it will not challenge you unless you you fight, unless
you force it to it will it will stroke your ego.
And you know, sometimes that's OK.
Maybe you need to have your ego stroked that day and you know,

(18:57):
that's fine. But you, you need to understand
that that's what's happening. You can get it to stroke your
ego and you can get it it it's reticent to be mean because it
wants you to stay, you know. So it's, I guess means the wrong
word. Let's say critical in the same
way that say a person would be about your writing.

(19:19):
But let's be honest, most peoplearen't going to be that critical
either because, you know, they don't necessarily want to hurt
your feelings. I mean, it's the same thing.
The LLM is responding in the same way many people do.
It's not necessarily going to tell you, hey, I don't think
this is good. You know, it will, it will find

(19:40):
about 20 other ways of saying it, which most people will do
too, because they just nobody, nobody really, not a lot of
people are going to charge out in an attempt to confront you.
It's not, it's not a pleasant place to be.
It's a lot of work and most people are going to respond
negatively to being told something critical.
And I think that's a really important part of the writing

(20:02):
process is you're going to have to pay attention.
You have to pay attention to some criticism to make your
writing better. And that's very hard because
there's a lot of ego mixed in. There's a lot of insecurity
mixed in and you know it's. A lot of people will just close

(20:24):
the door on that. You know, the other side of it
too is if say you're really good, a lot of people close the
door on that too because they feel threatened.
So, I mean, you know, you're, you're dealing in a lot of ways
you're dealing with the, the LLMis giving you somewhat, not
totally, but somewhat human responses to your work, although

(20:44):
the LLM is probably not going tofeel threatened by it.
So you won't get that response, but it will placate you.
I mean, these are things to know.
So let's shift gears a little bit.
Let's talk about your writing While we're on the topic of
vulnerability, you know, let's hear about where the initial

(21:14):
push conceptualization for song list the series and song list
the desert, the 1st entry in your world that you're making
this mash up of fantasy and western romance, some would say
as well, you know, tell us maybesome background infrastructural

(21:40):
things, influences, anything along that line.
Influences CS Lewis, Jane Austen, Zane Grey.
I mean, it's it's that that's mymashup I would say who else?
Probably a little talking. I think, you know, I, I write

(22:05):
with a very clear Christian worldview and I don't apologize
for that. I mean, I have a character in
song list called the King who isclearly God.
So that is, you know, whether I mean, obviously he's not

(22:25):
technically God because I can't really write God, but that's
what it is. So for me it's AI said it in a
Western setting, sort of a alternate universe, alternate
history of the Old West in America.
The theme is, is a very Americanstyle type of Western.

(22:48):
Now it, it starts out in a valley where they're worshipping
a tree. So you can to protect them from
the vanishers who make everything disappear or not
everything but make things disappear.
And when something disappears, everybody gets all tense and
kicks you out. They exile you.
So this is the story. And they they have these

(23:11):
princesses singing to the tree to protect them.
One of the princesses, Hawthorne, loses her song voice.
The Vanishers take it. So she is basically from a
position of respect, authority and, you know, an elite

(23:32):
position, shall we say, reduced to nothing within seconds.
And, you know, she's got to figure this out and it, it
doesn't really turn out the way she thinks it's going to or to
begin with. So I'll stop there.
But in terms of the story, I think, you know, I had a little

(23:55):
kid, so I was watching a lot of fantasy, a lot of movies for
little kids, fairy tales and allof that.
We were engrossed in that world and it it comes out of that and
there are plenty of fairy tale illusions throughout the book.
It almost started out as a children's book.

(24:18):
It changed dramatically. You've read it, you know, this
is not a children's book. I think it may come off that way
until you start getting into theweeds of it.
Only in the first few chapters you can tell me if you agree
with that or not. But it, it gets very dark.
There's the dark night of the soul in the middle of it.

(24:38):
And so the idea came from that and it also initiated a lot from
my experience, dare I say in in nursing school when I was
getting a bachelor's in nursing,the some of the darkness, some

(25:00):
of the experiences there with a lot of the people involved in
that training. Oddly enough, I had one
experience where there was a young child in a pediatric
rotation where he had drowned. He'd been underwater for 8

(25:23):
minutes. Paramedics came in, shot
atropine into his heart and revived.
And I say this, it revived what was left of him.
So obviously if you're underwater for 8 minutes, you
have drowned, you have died. They brought him back and he

(25:43):
was, it was heartbreaking. I literally would leave that
clinical in tears coming home tomy 7-8 year old son at the time.
And it was just, you know, I just, it broke my heart to see
this little 4 year old just gone.
For all practical purposes, as one of the nurses said, you

(26:05):
know, all this kids got left to look forward to in life is, you
know, inspiration, pneumonia andbed sores, pressure ulcers, as
we call them technically. So it was, it was heartbreaking.
So I, I kept having this vision in my head of a, of how, how
could someone save this child who was unsavable?

(26:28):
And I think that was an inspiration for it.
And, and this story started sortof coming, you know, growing out
of that that idea because it wasso frustrating to see this what
had happened was there was a party and they had an above

(26:51):
ground pool and the kid, you know, they're supposed to take
the ladder away. One of the teenagers who was
there didn't take the ladder away and the kid got in and they
found him at the bottom of the pool.
So this is this is the thing. So it's like I that was where
the seed of this whole story came from.

(27:13):
While we're on this cheerful theme, let's go into your
experience with the audio book, which is now alive.
It's out. After a long road of production
and manufacturing, it is finallyin the market.
Yes, it is. That took me a long time.

(27:36):
That was a learning curve. I had no real background in
doing that and I figured it out.I suggest that to everyone.
Just just you can't. It can be done.
And so, yeah, it's out. I'm very proud of it.
I think I did a, you know, I hada lot of challenges, you know,

(27:59):
one of not the least of which was my equipment breaking near
the end of it. So we lived past the finish line
on that one. So, yeah, I know the audio book
is out. I, you know, encourage you to
listen to it. I I'm pretty proud of it.
I don't know what else to say onthat on that.

(28:19):
That's a little happier note than where I.
What do you think was more work or a more enjoyable experience
writing it or producing the audiobook side of it?
Well, I mean, I think obviously writing the novel was more work.
It took longer. Maybe I started it in 2020,

(28:42):
published it in 2023. I might have started the
audiobook midway to the maybe inearnest, probably the beginning
of 2024. It took me a year and a half to
do that, mainly because of the learning curve.
A lot of false starts had to figure it out.

(29:05):
So I mean, but they're both verychallenging and the book was
obviously harder. It's harder to write the story
than to just read it at the sametime.
You have to, I think you have toread it well, you have to
perform it. I, I will say that after doing
an audio book, I have a whole new respect for actors and their
abilities and their intelligencein understanding the material

(29:30):
they're given. Because you can't just read it.
You can't just read a story. You have to perform it.
It has to be enjoyable for a listener.
It's not just, you know, you're not reading a form.
It's a story. It has to live, you know, and

(29:52):
you think back to like Homer andyou know, and and Milton and all
these these great writers, they perform these things, these
blind, the blind Bard, they called him.
I mean, these great stories wereperformed.
So I think that's a really greattool for a writer to have if if
that's something you're drawn to.

(30:13):
I mean, I had a background whereI did do some performing again,
you know, I used to sing in a band.
So, you know, so for me, it, it,it was something I, I wanted to
do. And so I, I really kind of threw
myself into it and it was, it was enjoyable just as it, you

(30:37):
know, enjoyable in a different way than writing, But it was, it
was part of it. And I'm, I'm glad to have it as
my skill set. And I'm going to keep doing
audio books for my books. Maybe means I published slower,
but I don't know. Does it matter?
It's the journey, right? Speaking of the journey you're

(30:57):
on, the work you're producing now, what can people expect from
you now I know what you're working on.
I've, I've been beta reading some of this stuff, but where
are you headed next? You know, we, we know that the
desert was volume 1, so we have to assume there will be some

(31:21):
other volume, but perhaps there's even more out there.
Well, the the second book in thein the song list series, the
main novel is going to be the Fort.
It's written the rough draft, first draft, pastor rough draft.
I'd say the first draft is written and I'm I've started

(31:45):
editing it. I had to finish the audio book
that became my raison d'etre. Just my my reason for living at
that point was that audiobook. So that is out.
So the Fort will be the next main book.
I'm optimistically looking at getting it out next year early

(32:08):
next year. I think that's that's the
reasonable response. You know, if that that's the
reasonable thing to say, we'll leave it at that.
Now, I have a novella that's also really close to being done,
as you well know, Sir. And I am looking at getting that

(32:28):
out this year, maybe the fall. Yeah.
And probably I'll have an audio book for that too.
Now, the novella is a shorter piece.
It's an ancillary piece. And I've, I've liked this idea
and I think I'm going to do it for the Fort too, because I have
an idea for that. So the Fort will be the

(32:48):
continuing story of, of my my 2 main protagonists.
So they, they will and so they will be, you know, what their
life is like going forward afterthe desert and what they're
going to be doing because there's more to do in this in
this particular segment of the songless saga.

(33:11):
So, and then the ancillary novelis sort of a prequel.
It's going to be, it's called The House That Jack Built, and
it's about my male protagonist and he is sort of a cavalry
soldier. It's the best way to explain
him. And he is this is this story

(33:32):
happens before he meets Hawthorne.
And it's basically about him finding his himself as a as a
servant, A servant king, shall we say, in the biblical sense,
his role in the world, who he sees himself as.

(33:53):
He's defining it in this story is the best way to put it.
You can you can speak to it if you want.
So this is sort of a prequel. It happens before the desert.
But I mean, you can look at it in either way, but it's a lot
shorter piece. You can get a feel for things
from it. I have another idea for an
ancillary with a couple characters I'm going to spin out

(34:17):
from the Fort and I, I yeah, I'm, I'm working that on my
head. It's, it's, it's in there and
it, it is demanding access to this world.
So that will happen. Now there's a book 3 to complete
this section of the songless saga that I have a rough draft

(34:38):
for, which will be the third book.
It'll it'll be like a three arc story.
I don't, I try to write them as complete as possible.
I don't really have cliffhangersper SE, but the story moves
forward and it's like, I don't think anyone wants to read a
1200 word book. So because they all seem to be

(34:59):
around 4 or 500, about 1200 words each.
I'm sorry, 120,000 words each for these, the larger books.
So we'll see how that plays out.But I have the Valley rough
draft already. I have some ideas past that, but
they're very vague at this point.

(35:20):
So yeah, that's that's where thewhole songless world stands
right now. Are there any things that we
have not discussed here today onthis recording or that you would
like to say that you haven't yetsaid?
I think what I would like to sayis I have chosen to do sort of

(35:44):
these mythic westerns because, you know, the thing started out
as I love horses, so I wanted horses in them.
You got to have a world before cars to have horses be relevant
at all. Otherwise you're just, it's a it
doesn't work. So that's where the time frame
came from. But as I was working in this

(36:07):
this world, you know, I realizedthat this is this is a very
American world. This is our mythos.
The Western, you know, I mean, Idon't think I'm saying anything
anyone doesn't already know. But the Western, they are our
Knights. They are our heroes.
And I believe in that. I believe we have to have our

(36:29):
heroes. I believe we have to have that.
We have to have our happy endings.
We have to have, you know, this American sense of who we are in
our mythos. And although I'm dealing in an
alternate world with a king, which sounds very much like
something we shouldn't have in aRepublic, we we kind of do have

(36:50):
a king in our Republic being, you know, God.
And I'll stand by that. You can disagree, but that's my
feeling on it is this Christian God who is king and of, of this
world and I, these are the things I will explore.
And I, I think that's very important to think about as we,

(37:16):
as we go forward, is to understand our own mythos, our
own culture, you know, and to really elevate it sort of in the
same way Percy Granger, if you know, the composer as a British
composer, went out and found allthese little country tunes and

(37:40):
the country tune, you know, everyone said, why are you doing
those? You know, the Lincolnshire
poppies, right? He said, these are beautiful
songs. Listen to them.
When I elevate them into this, this great music, you know, same
thing that Tolkien's doing with the Shire.
He's elevating the simplicity ofof these people.

(38:02):
He's making the mythic. They're the ones you know, you
know it. It is the the little tiny
hobbits who save The Who, who finally who do the hard lifting.
And so I think that's kind of the spirit of my work
ultimately. And that's why I, I ultimately

(38:24):
am very glad that I found this, you know, this concept of the
western, the mythic Western, andthat the Western found me.
And I thank the horses in my life who made it possible.
Hey, Heidi, thank you for takingthe time talking today.
You're welcome. Thanks for having me on,

(38:45):
Michael. I appreciate it.
Absolutely. Always good to have a chat with
you. This session was always
destined, you know, We just had to get to a good point in your
work to be able to utilize it tohelp cross promote and stuff.
Absolutely. But as always, a joy to talk and
you know, even learn some thingsI didn't know today.

(39:07):
This is probably true. I mean, we you don't necessarily
ask me questions like. This right.
Yeah, Good opportunity. Well, thanks again and we will
talk again before too long.