Allie Rowbottom Shares Her Writing & Publishing Processes for "Jello Girls" and "Aesthetica"

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
I still remember that meeting.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
I still remember him being like, well, I would want
to read that book, and you think you can make
eighty pages by the end of the summer. And that, honestly,
like that assignment changed my life because I was like,
oh my god, eighty pages. I don't think I've ever
written eighty pages.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
But I went off.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
With a goal. And you know, just hearing someone be
like I would want to read that book, maybe think
all right, I guess I'll write it.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
That is today's guest, Ali Robottom, who I am so
excited to have on the show.

Speaker 4 (00:39):
Ali is the author of.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
The memoir slash family history slash cultural commentary Jello Girls,
which I freaking love, and the new novel Esthetica, which
is incredibly zeitgeisty in its subject matter and has been
getting rave reviews from people like I don't know, the
New York Times.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
I think, like, looking back on it now, wow, I
really wanted to go deep on my own, like on
my relationship with my body, my relationship with objectification, my
relationship with like my mother's feminism versus my own, and
the pitfalls to both of them. You know. It just
seemed to me from like the deeper. I got into

(01:19):
looking at Instagram and these girls and like their lifestyles
and a lot of the ideology around like OnlyFans and
that kind of stuff that like, culturally we love to
punish and shame women for striving to embody the ideals
that we've all been pumped with since birth.

Speaker 3 (01:40):
Estetica is the nuanced feminist introspection on modern beauty that
we deserve. And not only is Ali Robottom a super
hot lit queen who can string together a hell of
a sentence, but she's also really nice and generous with information.
In this interview, she shares a top secret tip for
writing good fiction, how she handled writing about her family,

(02:04):
and the most thoughtful and honest takes on publishing and more.
In today's episode, There's.

Speaker 4 (02:10):
Nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at
a typewriter.

Speaker 5 (02:17):
And bleed.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
Welcome to the Leaders, a podcast and support group about
book writing and publishing. I'm writer and podcaster Courtney Cosak,
and each week I'll bring you new conversations with authors,
agents and publishers about how to write and sell books.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Hi. I'm Ali Robottam. I'm the author of the memoir
Jello Girls and Esthetica a new novel from Soho Press.

Speaker 4 (02:49):
When did you first identify as a writer.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
I first identified as a writer probably when I got
into my MFA program and start and stretching my wings
and workshop and you know, figuring out that I had
some talent that was worth pursuing.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
I feel like you're a little rare because your mom
was a writer, so you got to see it modeled
a little bit.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah. I think that her version of being a writer
almost kept me from identifying as a writer, because she
wasn't successful in any way, and she was so emotional
about her work that it just especially when I was
a teen, it looked like everything that I didn't want
to be, as you know, one's mother might in any

(03:39):
way look you know, like that, but as in terms
of writing, I was just like, oh no, thanks.

Speaker 4 (03:46):
That's so funny.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
Okay, what's your all time favorite book?

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Okay, impossible question, So I'll just name one. I'm going
to say The Lover by Marguerite Durra.

Speaker 4 (03:57):
What's the book?

Speaker 1 (03:59):
It's a I guess.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
If it were published in today's landscape, it would probably
be called auto fiction. It's technically a novel, but widely
believed to be a memoir about the author's young girlhood
and sexual awakening essentially, and it's told in fragments, very

(04:21):
narratively slippery, but very beautiful.

Speaker 4 (04:25):
Interesting. Okay, what's your dream writing routine?

Speaker 2 (04:29):
My dream writing routine is I wake up, I get
my coffee, I go to my desk, and I have
a project that I am so obsessed with that I'm
ready to go first thing in the morning when I
wake up, and you write all day and I write

(04:49):
until I lose steam, ideally about four hours.

Speaker 4 (04:53):
Oh that's good. What's your real writing routine.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
It depends on whether or not I have a project
that fits those criteria I just listed, And obviously it
depends on what other sort of work related projects I
have going on, like if I'm working on someone's editing
manuscript or whatever. But like, my current writing routine is
basically my dream writing routine inasmuch as I get up,

(05:21):
I go to my desk. I just moved, not to
this house that you see in the background. This is
my godmother's place, but I just moved in LA and
our house is kind of in shambles, and I'll still
just get up and go to my desk and like
bang out a couple pages.

Speaker 4 (05:36):
Ooh, I love that. That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yeah, I feel very fortunate.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
What's one piece of writing that makes you jealous you
didn't write it?

Speaker 2 (05:43):
The Glass Essay by Ann Carson.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
Hmm, that's a good one. Do you want to explain
for listeners who may not know?

Speaker 1 (05:50):
Sure?

Speaker 2 (05:50):
And I should say that I don't wish that I
had gone through the heartbreak that.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
Then became the Glass Essay.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
But similar to the Lover, it's a fragmentary piece of writing.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
It is called an essay.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
It reads somewhat like a poem, and it is essentially
upbraided investigation of the writer's heartbreak and in with her
obsession with weathering heights and her mother.

Speaker 4 (06:22):
And her mother.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
H what is it craft wise or like poignancy?

Speaker 4 (06:26):
What draws you to it and makes you kind of envious?

Speaker 2 (06:30):
I think it's the pacing, honestly, and the tone obviously
the language, but the way that information is delivered in
that piece is so expertly done. I think that, more
than anything, is what I aspire to be able to
do in my own writing.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
Allie and I are going to get into all about
the writing and publishing process for Jello Girls, and then esthetica.
But first I wanted to start with her graduate experience,
since it seemed like that's where her first book, jell
O Girls.

Speaker 4 (07:06):
Was conceived.

Speaker 3 (07:08):
Okay, so before we get into the book, let's kind
of talk about when and why did you decide to
get an MFA and what can you say about the
cal Arts experience.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
Sure, I decided to get an MFA, having only recently
heard about the MFA as concept. I didn't study creative
writing in college until the very last year of my
studies at NYU, and then I sort of realized I
could take creative writing classes and that was revelatory.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
I was graduating in two thousand.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
And nine and there, you know, it was a really
bleak economic landscape and I just thought, like, I'm not
going to get a job. I've heard about this thing
called an MFA. It's essentially more school. I like school,
and I'm interested in pursuing writing, so I think I'll
just apply. I didn't really know enough, probably about what

(08:03):
to look for in a school, though, I you know,
I loved cal Arts and I was interested in it
like so called experimental writing, writing similar to the Lover
or the Glass essay, which was kind of having a
moment at that time, the fragment form, so I knew
I wanted to go somewhere where I could explore that,

(08:24):
and CalArts was one of like three or four programs
on a list I found online of experimental programs, so
I applied.

Speaker 4 (08:32):
Was it what you thought it would be?

Speaker 3 (08:34):
And did it get you started on the project or
definitely in your PhD? Right?

Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah, in my PhD, I was, and in my MFA
I was definitely writing material that would sort of lead
up to Jello Girls.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
The experience was wonderful. It was so much fun.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
I didn't learn a lot of like practical boots on
the ground writing uh lessons, but it did give me
a place sort of, like I said at the beginning,
like you build my confidence a little bit and just
really go in on writing and talking about writing. And

(09:08):
I think, you know, this remains true throughout my trajectory
as a writer. But like the opportunity to read and
critique other writers work, I think is a really it's
a great way to learn, you know, what's going on
in a piece of writing, and just to really get
clear with it for yourself. When I teach, I always

(09:28):
have my students write crit letters. It's just a really
helpful way to sort of think about work. But I mean, yeah,
Colrich was wonderful. I worked with Maggie Nelson there that
changed my life, and she really helped me with what
I was working on, which was like a fragmentary thesis.
I think it was like eighty or ninety pages when

(09:49):
I presented it as my thesis, so I guess it
could have been like a really small book, but it
wasn't quite ready.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
I used it to apply to Houston. I got my PhD.

Speaker 3 (10:01):
Then you applied to PhD at University of Houston right
away after MFA? Was that?

Speaker 2 (10:06):
How Yeah, I was still in my MFA, and again
I was a little like shit, what do I do?
And the general sort of buzz around that time was that, like,
contrary to popular belief that MFA was not a terminal degree,
you couldn't teach with an MFA. Nobody was getting jobs
with their MFA degree. And I was, you know, fortunate

(10:28):
enough to be. I was a year behind my now
husband in that program, John Lindsay, and I watched him
graduate and then try to find a job with his
MFA and it was just not happening. And he had
to go work for his dad, and I was like, wow,
I really, I think I'll just like see if I
can get paid to do five more years of school.

(10:49):
And that's what Houston gave me. And it was, you know,
it was awesome. It was really great.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
So, Jello Girls a family History? Can you explain the
premises and kind of how it got started?

Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah, So, as I said, I had written this sort
of primer to Jello Girls at cal Arts, which was
just honestly, it became like an essay. But it was
about a particular summer that I spent with my mom
right before I moved to California.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
I went to cal Arts.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
Taking care of her as she recovered from really gnarly
surgery on her liver, and that experience had been so
harrowing to me. I think I was just really trying
to like work it.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Out on the page. So fast forward to Houston.

Speaker 2 (11:37):
I'd been in the program maybe like a year and
a half, two years, and those first two years I
was teaching so much. I was slammed. I was taking
a full like literature course load, so very little time
to write creatively, and I was producing short, fragmented essays
that were just sort of very dreamy, but they didn't

(11:59):
ultimately like go anywhere.

Speaker 1 (12:02):
And it was coming time to.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
Think about what I wanted my dissertation to be, and
I met with my faculty mentor Matt Johnson, who is
a wonderful writer and he's a great teacher, and he's also,
like he was at that time particularly great for me
because he was a very like narrative I don't want
to say like conventional, but like just sort of bread

(12:29):
and Butter's awesome narrative novelist. And as I said, I
was like in the dream world, and he was very
like I think that, Like yeah, he was like, this
is great, you can write a sentence. Good. Can we
like figure out how to take this to the next place?
And do you have any ideas for something that can

(12:50):
sustain like a book length project? And the only thing
that I could think of really was this like familial
tie to Jello, which I really didn't know much about,
but I knew about an episode that sort of serves
as a thematic chord in Jello Girls, which is this
outbreak of mass psychogenic illness among a group of girls

(13:11):
in a small town in upstate New York called the
roy where my mom had grown up and where her
extended family had bought the patent to jello from its inventor,
and I thought like, okay, there's a lot of material there,
not to mention the fact that my mom has been
trying to write a book about this for years, for
almost my entire life, so that's interesting, Like her essentially

(13:35):
her failure to do so was interesting to me, and
her illness and how it connected to the girls and
her upbringing. So like, that was the only thing I
could think of, and I just sort of pitched it
to Matt and he was like, I still remember that meeting.
I still remember him being like, well, I would want
to read that book, and you think you can make

(13:56):
eighty pages by the end of the summer, And that, honestly,
like that assignment changed my life because I was like,
oh my god, eighty pages. I don't think I've ever
written eighty pages. But I went off with a goal,
and you know, just hearing someone be like I would
want to read that book, maybe think all right, I
guess I'll write it.

Speaker 3 (14:16):
Oh that's awesome. Okay, So I mean, how did it
go from there? Like, oh, and I guess important question
just that I'm very curious about your mom's memoir was
like a guide to you from what I understand, Yes,
how did you feel about the writing, Like were you

(14:38):
tempted to do other.

Speaker 4 (14:39):
Things with it, like use more of it?

Speaker 3 (14:42):
Or I guess I'm just thinking of your thought process
about how you're going to use it.

Speaker 2 (14:47):
Okay, that's a great question. I I was, honestly, I
think I was a little afraid of her memoir and
there were like so many drafts of it. It's hard
to think of it as like one book to me
because she wrote it. I mean, she wrote it from
so many different perspectives and standpoints and was just constantly

(15:09):
trying to get it right. I remember once I was
like really working off of that book, like using it.
I used it as sort of like a timeline and
as a way to, like, I don't know, understand what
was going on in her life during periods that I
wasn't alive for, and like.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
The writing I felt was so.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
Sort of unbounded and like messy and emotional more than anything,
which is how she was and in the best way.
But like that, I was very like, oh man, I
don't want this to sort of infuse itself into my work.
I want to write something that's like a bit more restrained.

(15:52):
So that was definitely a concern.

Speaker 4 (15:54):
That's so interesting.

Speaker 3 (15:56):
I think you did write a very like balanced, level
headed take on it that's still like so poignant.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (16:03):
But I just was curious from the few sentences you
pulled in. I was like, I wonder what else is
in there?

Speaker 2 (16:11):
You know, I kept, I kept, so it's all like
hard copy material. I do have a computer of hers
where I think there's stuff on it, but I haven't,
Like I keep meaning to get someone to like take
all the material off of it and put it on
an external drive. But like, yeah, I still have boxes
and boxes of her writing, and it's like what do

(16:32):
I do with this now, Like obviously I've made something
out of it, but I'm not going to throw it out.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
I have to keep it. I don't know why.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
Maybe someday I'll go back and want to read it again,
just like for fun. But you know now, also, I'm
glad I didn't put more of her actual prose in
the book, because I think that an issue that I've
had just sort of emotionally for myself in the aftermath
of publishing that book is feeling like I wrote this

(16:59):
book for her. I told this story that she wanted
to tell but just couldn't find a way to tell.
And I'm glad I did that. But in a way,
the book is like technically my memoir, but it's almost
entirely her story. And I think that much of my
life was like sort of lived as most kids probably

(17:22):
experienced this, but like lived in the shadow of like
her trauma and her story. So I think that if
I had put more of her writing and I would
feel even more like sort of overshadowed by her in
a way. And I think, like, well, one of the
great things about writing is now I got that book
out and I can like.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
Do other stuff.

Speaker 4 (17:43):
Yeah, was it cathartic? Uh?

Speaker 1 (17:46):
No, I wouldn't say.

Speaker 2 (17:47):
I mean I like I I think there's a satisfaction
for me. I think satisfaction would be the right word
that comes with having something that you really really want
to say, something that like takes the book's.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
Length to say and saying it.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
There are things about Jello Girls that if I were
ready it now, I would absolutely do different. But like,
ultimately I said the thing, So that's satisfying. But it
didn't feel cathartic at all. I didn't feel like, oh
now I've said it and I'm unburdened and whatnot. It
was actually quite the opposite for me, and I think like,

(18:26):
in some ways, like the expectation that I had that
the book would be cathartic and that I could just
like release my relationship with my mom and like release
my grief over her death, because you know, when Jello
Girls came out, it was still fairly fresh, and it
just didn't work that way at all.

Speaker 5 (18:47):
Sad.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
Yeah, Okay, so let's rewind just a little bit back
into how it kind of evolved starting in your PhD program,
Like what came out of those eighty page and then
how did it iterate from there?

Speaker 2 (19:03):
That's a great question. Yeah, it was kind of a
total mass for a while, because like even though I
was like, Okay, I'm gonna write this book and Matt's
guiding me and he has like the knowledge of how
to write a compelling narrative, I still felt very invested
in the book being dreamy and sort of slippery, and

(19:26):
I didn't think that it was the right material for fragments,
which was like my go to for a long time.
This was actually, honestly, like aside from scholarly work, like
academic writing. It was one of the first things I
wrote that wasn't in fragments. I want to say, so yeah,
I like I wanted it to be super dreamy. I
wanted it to be like Lydia Yuknivich's The Chronology of

(19:50):
Water dreamy, and it just was not coming together. Like
those first eighty pages were great. They were mostly set
in the past. There was a lot of sort of
fluid movement in and out of time. But because this
book covers so much time, after maybe a first foolish draft,

(20:13):
I started to realize that, like and just getting feedback
also from mostly from my professors, I was like, Okay,
this is not going to work this way. It's just
not working. And I graduated from Houston with the book
like that. It was still very like dreamy, and I
knew I needed to do something to shore it up

(20:33):
a bit.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
And it was actually from.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
Talking to an agent who was interested, who it didn't
end up working with, but she was like, I think
you should make it more like, make it more like
Cheryl Strade's Wild And I was like, Okay, that book
is more commercial than what I had envisioned for myself,
but when I just picked it up and looked at it,

(20:55):
it's a very simple structure. It's one chapter in the past,
one chapter and the present.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
I think.

Speaker 2 (21:02):
I think that I'm right with that, And so where
Jello Girls isn't like that. It is one chapter of
like critical jello history information and then one chapter of
like personal history information. And when I started to restructure
the material I had that way, I saw that the
personal and the cultural histories were conversing with each other

(21:26):
in almost like a magical way, like they were just
lining up so neatly. So you know, after I figured
that out, the book just came together in a very
quick sequence. Restructuring can be like that, I think, And
like a lot of the time when people say, like,
you know, just write it out and let it be

(21:46):
bad and messy, what they're saying is like because you
can go in later and like gather that information up
and put a structure almost over it, like a cooking
fetter or something. And like, in some ways, like at
least with a book like Jello Girls, I think that
a more conventional structure allows what the book is really

(22:06):
trying to say to be said in a clear and
sort of resounding way, where otherwise it might get buried.

Speaker 4 (22:13):
Yeah, totally.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
I feel like some inventive stuff still lives in like
some of the short chapters where you just pop in
and you get like just the little taste that you
need of history at that moment. So, I mean, I
love doing that kind of research. How did you approach
the jello history research? And I know you took a trip,

(22:35):
but how did that all come together?

Speaker 5 (22:37):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (22:37):
I mean most of the research was from books that were,
you know, already written that gave it.

Speaker 1 (22:43):
To me in such a way.

Speaker 2 (22:45):
There's like a great book the author Carolyn Wyman even
Blur of Jelly Girls, which I was like so thrilled about.
But she has this like fun almost like picture book
of jello history, but it's like full of factoids and
stuff like that. That book was really helpful. Perfection Salad
by Laura Shapiro was also really helpful. So yeah, and

(23:09):
just like sleuthing around on the internet honestly, but yeah,
I mean that stuff. It's hard to remember, but I
spent like months and months and months just like reading
and I just I remember having so many aha moments
with that. But most of It honestly came once I
had graduated Houston, Like the Jello history pumped itself up

(23:31):
quite a bit in later drafts of the book once
I realized too, also that there was this like really
wonderful connection between the real women whose lives I was
following and the history of Jello.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
The research trip that I took to.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
Leroy was honestly, like I just remember being like I
knew that I knew all that, Like we toured the
Jello Museum and I was like, oh, yeah, I already
know all this. Like I still remember having that feeling
about it, But like what it wound up being more
productive with was talking to my mother's brother, who she

(24:12):
was estranged from and who I don't have a close
relationship with it all, But I felt like I felt
like I needed to talk to him, And I don't
even remember why, honestly, Like there's a way in which,
like I could have cut him out of the book entirely,
and that might have made my life easier, but yeah,
since he was in it, I felt like I should

(24:34):
talk to him. And we had like the briefest conversation.

Speaker 4 (24:38):
Did he know you what you were doing?

Speaker 2 (24:40):
He knew I was writing about Leroyan Jello, but he
did not know the angle that the book was going
to take. I think he had in mind a very
different book.

Speaker 4 (24:53):
He's like, not what I would have written.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
Yeah, No, it was honestly like I can't really honestly
share much about this, but in the aftermath of the
book's publication, I do remember one thing he said to me,
and he was not happy in general, but he said like,
your mother would have loved this book, and he meant
it as a you know, a negative and I was like, yeah,

(25:16):
she would have Thank you for that compliment.

Speaker 1 (25:18):
I know you don't mean it that way, but.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
Like, thank you.

Speaker 4 (25:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (25:24):
I thought including him was brilliant, especially after it was
like you talked to him almost right after that fucked
up situation from with your mom.

Speaker 4 (25:31):
No spoilers, sorry, guys, you gotta read it, okay.

Speaker 3 (25:35):
So yeah, I guess on that note, like you're writing
about your family, you're writing about your mom, you're writing
about you now has been some of the most important
relationships in your life, including your dad, which I saw
in your author's note, like he came to the table
with you and like, yeah, really, I guess you guys
had some conversations about this. So what was your philosophy

(25:56):
on writing about your family and you know, did you
learn anything from it?

Speaker 2 (26:00):
Yeah, my philosophy was very like and I think part
of this was just not having a lot of experience
with publication on sort of like a large scale. But
my experience was very like, I'm going to do what
I want and like, I'm going to do what's best
for the work, and people can get on board or not,

(26:21):
but at least I will have like been honest, and
I like, I admire that standpoint now and I and.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
In some ways, like I still feel that way.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
But I did at least well, that's not even true.
I was about to say, like I did retire from
writing about my dad with Jello Girls, but I didn't.
So I I still think that you have to write
what it is you need to write, and like you

(26:51):
hope that people will understand a lot of the time,
especially when people aren't writers, they don't understand. And that's
just unfortunately that's like part of the writing life as
I see it. I mean, as with all things, like
with my dad, I think he was really really hurt

(27:11):
by Jello Girls, And I think that you know, whether
or not that makes it. You know, so many people
read the book are like, why he's barely in it.
He's a very hard person to read in this way
or to understand in this way. But like maybe in
some ways his absence from the book was hard for him.
When we had those big like table talks about the book,

(27:35):
you know, he was so upset after reading an early
copy of it. So upset he was, you know, he
was apoplectic. So I was like really guarded when we
sat down at the table and like really anticipating going
like line by line with him and negotiating. But when
we did sit down, it actually turned out that he

(27:55):
wanted to tell me stories from his own life that
really had to do with Jello Girls. And he's like
incredibly secretive, so it was sort of an amazing moment
in time that he opened up to me and shared
honestly like a lot of TMI situations.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
But also like you know, interesting stuff about.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
His life that maybe like would never fit in Jello Girls,
but that he just wanted to tell me.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
So all to say, like, sometimes I think.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
That when people are hurt by nonfiction writing that includes
them or it doesn't include them, it has to do
with not feeling seen in like a fundamental way. And like,
this is my memoir about my experience. It's not really
my job to depict my father's like emotional internal landscape.

(28:47):
That would be his job if he wanted to write
a memoir. But like, I guess what I'm saying is,
I think that people really want to feel seen, and
sometimes work accomplishes that for them, and sometimes it doesn't.

Speaker 3 (28:58):
Yeah, and I think, I mean, I'm not saying this
about your dad, but just more generally. And what I
know from my own experience is sometimes when you react
that strongly, it's because it touched a nerve and you
were like, I am like that, you know, yeah, there's that.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
Well I still remember, like, honestly, the one wording thing
that my dad wanted to change was that at some
point in the book when I'm talking about his role
in my childhood, I say that he was a day trader,
as in like that was what he was doing. He
was day trading stocks. He was like day traders like

(29:43):
a dirty word. I would like you to say investor
or something like that. And I was like, Okay, fine,
that's no big deal. After all of this sort of
turmoil that was the one change he wanted.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
So I always find that kind of funny.

Speaker 4 (29:57):
That is hilarious.

Speaker 3 (29:58):
Okay, well, do you think you will write another Your
next piece was a novel.

Speaker 4 (30:04):
Do you think you'll write another memoir?

Speaker 2 (30:06):
I don't know, Like I think after this next book
comes out, I have a project that is a novel started,
and that's where I almost positive all of my emotional
energy wants to go right now. But I don't know. Obviously,
none of us know what's going to happen in our life.

(30:28):
But there are like certain experiences I predict I will
want to write about from a nonfiction perspective, I can
think of two. So yeah, probably to be honest.

Speaker 3 (30:46):
Let's talk publishing for Jello Girls. When did you feel
like it was ready enough? And was there a querying process?
Or did you know people from your programs? How did
it go from there?

Speaker 1 (31:00):
I love these questions. These are good things for people.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
To hear about. So I had graduated my program at Houston.
I had the draft still in its dreamy state, and
I was talking just a little bit to this one
agent that I had met through like a meet and
greet at the Houston program, and I was sort of
waiting to hear back from her. I wasn't queering out

(31:22):
with it. I didn't feel like it was ready probably,
but she had seen it because she had come to
the program, so I was waiting to hear about that.

Speaker 1 (31:31):
And I got into Tinhouse.

Speaker 2 (31:33):
As a scholar, so I was like, Okay, I'll go
to Tin House, you know whatever.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Cool, And I brought Jello Girls.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
With me to workshop in Joanne Beard's class, which was great,
and I met some of my dear, dear friends to
this day in that class and at that workshop. But
as I was like approaching going to Tinhouse, that agent
wrote me back and was like, I think you should
structure the book more like cheryl'street book, I said, And
I was kind of like aha, So I honestly, I

(32:04):
was at Tinhouse during like lunch hour working on reordering
Jello Girls, and I just remember just being like, Okay,
I got to get this done. And I was like
just anxiously cloistered away working on the reordering the book.
And at that workshop, I also met the person who

(32:26):
would become my agent. She's no longer my agent, but
she was my first agent and we met in one
of those like agent.

Speaker 1 (32:33):
Speed dating things, and I almost didn't go. I was like,
this is so late. Nobody gets an agent this way.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
I don't know what I was thinking, because I totally
got my agent that way.

Speaker 1 (32:43):
I just pitchedure Jello girls.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
I had a query letter that I had written, but
I again hadn't been querrying out or anything, and I
just gave her the letter and a couple of weeks
after the workshop, she emailed me and she had sort
of like checked me out, like asked Maggie Nelson about me,
asked a couple of people and they were like, yeah,
she's signed. So I signed with that agent and we

(33:08):
did a round of edits and then the book was
ready to go out on submission, And.

Speaker 4 (33:13):
Was that pretty close toward landed?

Speaker 3 (33:15):
Like did you go through another editing process once it
got picked up?

Speaker 2 (33:19):
Yeah, but very minor, like a couple of sentences it
like can you add a sentence here or there for
clarification kind of edits?

Speaker 4 (33:27):
Gotcha? Was there any fact checking involved?

Speaker 2 (33:30):
There was a legal read, which is different from fact checking,
but nobody fact checks, which is bizarre. I know, it's
so weird, it's so weird, but yeah, because I expected that,
I was like, really shocked honestly that they didn't do
more to cover their butts. But there was a legal
read which turned out as I hinted to, with stuff

(33:51):
about my mom's brother, like really a fucking lifesaver, he's
my language. But yes, the lawyer for Little Brown went
through the entire book and then we worked together on
like if there's any sections of the book that read
like wow, that's like a really interesting way of saying something,
it sounds like you're talking around something that's because of

(34:13):
the lawyer.

Speaker 4 (34:14):
Yeah, or like it seems like they thought yes exactly.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
I mean, I found out about Jello Girls after the fact,
so I don't really remember the release.

Speaker 4 (34:26):
What was the reaction, Like.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
It's something I'm thinking about so much right now as
I'm preparing to publish another book. So the book Jel
Girls did really well in terms of like critical reception.
I mean, I had no idea how to publish a book,
and I think that, like many writers, I was like, great,
I got this good deal from Little Brown. They're going
to take care of everything for me, and like it's done.

(34:52):
I don't have to do anything. But what I think
now is that that was not true. They really marketed
the book to like a book club audience, and that
might have been why, like you didn't hear about it.
I mean it wasn't really like build as sort of
like a literary nonfiction. It was much more so like
Jello Air reveals family secrets in retrospect.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
I would not have let them run with that angle.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
I would not do that. Now. You know, technically, yes,
I am a Jello Air, but there's like hundreds of
people who are heirs to jell O money because it's
you know, comes from a long way back, and people
marry and then procreate and then there's like right tons
of people.

Speaker 4 (35:35):
So and it's like darker than that.

Speaker 3 (35:37):
Yeah, tone wise, I don't think that like illustrates what's
going on.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yes, And I think that if you look at like
my Goodreads page, for example, you will see a lot
of disappointment because what was expected of the book was
like much lighter than what the book actually is.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
So a lot of people are like.

Speaker 2 (35:56):
What the hell is this?

Speaker 1 (35:57):
I expected a cookbook, you know.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
I guess like the publishing experience for Jella Girls was
like wonderful in so many ways. I was very fortunate
to get reviewed in a lot of different publications and
newspapers and like big places there was like a spread
and Oprah magazine, Like it was kind of unreal. Yeah,
but at the same time, like, I this is such
an interesting, like niche example, but maybe writers can relate.

(36:23):
Like I just remember feeling so like but hurt that
Franklin Park.

Speaker 1 (36:28):
Reading Series wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
Have me on and I felt it was because and
again like I don't know why, but it was like
they think I'm just like some celebrity memoirist, but like
the book is like the book is not that, And
it just felt like there was a separation between what
the book looked like and what it actually was, and
it was hurting me. Now that is all like in

(36:50):
the emotional realm. Looking at it now, I would be like,
you have to like push if you want to get
on this reading series, or like you have to market
yourself the way that you want to be marketed. You
can't leave that up to other people. But at the
time I was just like I remember feeling so lucky
that I had gotten this kind of book deal. I

(37:10):
had really anticipated Jell Girls being on like an academic press,
so and some of this was compounded by the issues
with writing about my family, my uncle and my dad
in particular, but I was like paralyzed by imposter syndrome,
having terrible anxiety around the time the book came out,

(37:31):
and not feeling like I could advocate for what I
needed or wanted with my publisher because I just had
this feeling like they would like take my book deal
away or something like that, which now I know would
not have happened if I had advocated for myself. But
it always strikes me as sort of a funny, a
funny issue with this book in particular because the book

(37:51):
is incredibly feminist and very like we must use our
voices as women, and yet in the publication process for it,
I had a lot of try, you know, practicing what
I preached and practicing my theory in that way, and
that is an issue a lot of women have, I
think with practicing feminism is like it's seems easier than

(38:13):
it actually is.

Speaker 4 (38:15):
Yeah, totally. And it's also kind of like a double
edged sword, right.

Speaker 3 (38:19):
It's like you get a big publisher, you know, they
kind of brand it in a maybe more commercial way
than you thought of it, and so you get commercial success,
but you also like or maybe it doesn't reach the
audience that you intended quite as fast.

Speaker 4 (38:36):
It's very interesting.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
Actly.

Speaker 4 (38:37):
Yeah, okay, So then did you need a break after that?
Did you pop right into your novel?

Speaker 2 (38:45):
I was like manic after our Jella Girls came out,
and I actually wrote a different book than Esthetica.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
I wrote another memoir.

Speaker 3 (38:55):
You know.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
Earlier I was talking about what brings me to my
desk and what makes writing ideal for me is to
have a project i'm fully like obsessed with, And one
of the ways that I learned that is through writing
this other book, which was a memoir about what didn't
go into jel Girls, which was basically like my childhood

(39:18):
and teenagerhood as a competitive horse girl. Oh and it
was such an emotional slog It was like I had
just done this big thing in publishing Jello Girls, and
I like went and wanted to just like press more bruises.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
But that book it sort.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
Of reached a point where I was like, this is
not happening, and I ended up adapting it into a
long essay that's in an anthology called horse Girls that
was edited by Helena Marcus, and it came out I
don't remember when it came out, twenty twenty. So after
I sort of like put that book to the side,

(39:55):
I was like, what do.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
I really want to write? And the answer was fiction.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
And I had had the idea for Esthetica for a while,
and I felt like, for a lot of the reasons
that I sort of stated about Jello Girls and marketing
and how it was presented, I wanted to like explore
a different side of myself, both as a writer and
also as like, you know, a personality and like Jello
Girls and the way I was presented as the writer

(40:25):
of that book is not me. So I was like,
let me like take control, and this is what I
want to be writing about. I want to write something
cool and current and like really like relevant to women
of my generation and younger women, but like specifically for them.
Like I don't want a book that's going to be
marketed to readers who it's for but not as much

(40:45):
as like this other readership.

Speaker 4 (40:54):
Hey bleaders.

Speaker 3 (40:55):
I have two quick announcements before we get into Ali's
latest book. One, I am throwing a partiy okay, I
am throwing a meetup for La Area writers. It's on Monday,
January thirtieth. It's free, one hundred percent free, you just
have to rsvp.

Speaker 4 (41:11):
It's like I'm doing a little rhyme here.

Speaker 3 (41:13):
Anyway, I did this for podcasters in December and it
was a blast. It was really fun and a great
way to meet new people. There is an event bright
link in the description, so if you're going to be
in La on January thirtieth, please RSVP.

Speaker 4 (41:28):
And join the party.

Speaker 3 (41:30):
Okay, And secondly, I'm going to need you to rate
and review this podcast.

Speaker 4 (41:34):
It helps people.

Speaker 3 (41:35):
Find the show, it makes me feel good about myself,
and crucially it helps me with guests outreach. So you know,
I reach out to someone big and they're like, oh yeah,
people listen to this show. Awesome, Sure, no problem, I'll
come on the show O give you all my secrets.

Speaker 4 (41:49):
So that's how we do it. Guys, rate and review
the show.

Speaker 3 (41:52):
It helps us all out and it takes you under
a minute.

Speaker 4 (41:54):
So just give the show a five star rating and
review on.

Speaker 3 (41:57):
Whatever listening platform you're on right now, Apple.

Speaker 5 (42:00):
Podcasts, cast Box, whatever, with Spotify, it's super easy. Just
go to the Bleeders feed and click the star in
the upper left hand corner and then click all five stars.

Speaker 4 (42:11):
Boila, you are done.

Speaker 3 (42:13):
Thank you so much, Okay, now we are going to
talk about Ali's new novel, Asthetica. They came out in
November and has received breathless coverage from everything I've seen,
and I'm happy to report that Asthetica was recently featured
in the Franklin Park Reading series that Ali mentioned she
was but heard about with Jello Girls. So her wish

(42:34):
has been fulfilled and you just love to see it,
so Phil listeners.

Speaker 4 (42:38):
In what's the premise of Esthetica?

Speaker 2 (42:40):
Okay, so Aesthetica is again. It's a novel is told
in two timelines. In one, the protagonist, Anna Ray is
a young, aspiring Instagram model who comes to La with
big dreams of instant stardom, and in the other, she
is a future thirty five years old, having become addicted

(43:02):
to plastic surgery, looking to undergo a controversial, risky procedure
called esthetica to undo all the past surgical procedures that
she's had and return her to a more natural state,
at least esthetically. And the conflict of the book is
really the conflict between her past and present self and

(43:27):
the sort of keening to return for her past self
and make the right choices as if there are.

Speaker 4 (43:33):
Any where did the idea come from?

Speaker 1 (43:37):
So the idea.

Speaker 2 (43:40):
It came from I like, I'm trying to think about
like if there was one beginning, I guess it. If
I had to stay there was one beginning, it would
be that in the wake of my mother's death, kind
of like relatively early days for Instagram, like twenty fifteen,
twenty sixteen, it wasn't as huge as it became. I

(44:01):
got really into this one influencer in particular, and I
was like, didn't understand the smoke and mirrors that was
going on. I was grieving and comparing myself to her,
and she just looked so hot and like skinny and
perfect in every way, and I like, I guess on

(44:23):
some level I must have known that that was not
all that there was. I didn't quite understand how literally
photoshop she was or like surgically altered. But I was like,
you know, I know that like from my own experience
as a young girl dealing with mother loss as this
girl was dealing with, or you know, like fear of
losing my mother anyway, and like the pressures of objectification

(44:47):
and the imperative to self objectify as a means of
like gaining control. I felt like, Okay, what would that
be like in the era of Instagram when you're receiving
all of this instant validation for your behaviors.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
So I related to to her in that way. I
felt sorry for her.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
I also felt like jealous of her, and I just
wanted to like get.

Speaker 1 (45:04):
In there and explore that world.

Speaker 2 (45:06):
I guess I think, like looking back on it now,
I really wanted to go deep on my own, like
on my relationship with my body, my relationship with objectification,
my relationship with like my mother's feminism versus my own,
and the pitfalls to both of them. You know. It
just seemed to me from like the deeper I got

(45:28):
into looking at Instagram and these girls and like their
lifestyles and a lot of the ideology around like OnlyFans
and that kind of stuff that like, culturally we love
to punish and shame women for striving to embody the
ideals that we've all been pumped with since birth, and

(45:50):
it just seems like the loser always ends up being
a woman or women in these situations. No matter what
rose did you take, the end result often is punishment
and shame, especially in a public on a public platform
like Instagram.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
So I was like, Okay, that's interesting and I want
to dig.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
In on that. And it wasn't seeing a lot of
work coming out around social media, definitely not around plastic surgery,
and that remains true. And I just felt like the
work that was coming out felt really like finger waggy.
A lot of the time. It was like, Oh, you're
bad if you, you know, want to show your body
on Instagram or whatever, and that just seems so dated

(46:32):
to me. So I wanted to find a way into
this book and find a way to make this book
relatively non judgmental of its characters, and also to take
what seemed so like low brow and elevate it to
the high literary awesome.

Speaker 3 (46:49):
So, how did the writing and editing process go? How
many drafts did you do?

Speaker 2 (46:54):
And well? Turned out, I hadn't been a novel before,
and it's different been writing a memoir. I probably wrote
a draft and a half all the way through that I.

Speaker 1 (47:08):
Almost entirely scrapped.

Speaker 2 (47:10):
I was also like rushing quite a bit. I felt
like I think a lot of writers do after their
first book, Like I was so afraid of being a
one hit wonder. I just wanted the chance to do
it over and do it right this time, and by it,
I mean the publishing experience, and I just I felt
like I need to like capitalize on the success of
my first book now, and I'm it's just not happening

(47:33):
for me, And I just I was so frustrated and
so rushed and so anyway, that first draft and a
half was jrash, But I think I was just figuring
out how to write fiction, and also like figuring out
that I needed a plot that was gonna hold up

(47:53):
and facilitate the themes that I wanted to talk about,
not just like any plot, and not like a plot
that seemed like exciting and sort of click baity.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
It needed to be a plot that felt true to
me and my deeper interests.

Speaker 2 (48:09):
So yeah, it probably took a draft and a half
to two drafts to get to that place. And then
once I had the plot, it all came fairly quickly
in terms of like I maybe did one one and
a half more drafts before queering out with it because
I was changing agents. And then going from there.

Speaker 3 (48:26):
What was different, you know, going from memoir, What were
your big takeaways on what's different about fiction?

Speaker 4 (48:34):
Writing fiction?

Speaker 2 (48:35):
I think that, like, and I guess this is true
for like, it probably would have been true for writing
a second memoir as well. I think for a lot
of writers, the thing that's like the least natural to
us continues to be a sticking point. For me. Like
I said with Jellow Girls, like structure was not a
natural thing for me, Like it came only after someone

(48:58):
else was like, copy this or some structure, you know,
but just make it your own. I don't think the
structure is the same as plot, but like maybe in
some ways, writing a novel felt extra hard because in
addition to structure, I also needed to like make up
what happened, you know.

Speaker 1 (49:14):
In Jello Girls, obviously.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
Like I had to do a lot of like omitting
of things and like pruning, but like the sequence of
events was all there for me, and in Esthetica, obviously
nothing was there. I had to build it all. I
don't think that writing a novel is harder than writing
a memoir. I just think it's a different set of skills.
And like, you know, for me, after writing that first

(49:39):
shitty draft and a half, I had to like take
a break.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
I had to.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
Read a lot of craft books and like think about
plot m.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
So that's how it's different.

Speaker 2 (49:53):
And I, you know, I think too, Like I really
do try to and this is something that I would
probably do differently in Jello Girls if I were writing
it now, But like I do try to see my
nonfiction as much as possible, and by that I mean
like write and scene instead of summary, as simple as
it sounds, and like that said, you can get away

(50:15):
with telling a lot more in a memoir than in
a novel. And like I just hadn't figured out exactly
how to like translate summarize material into scene materials, So
that first draft and a half of Aesthetica was mostly told,
and I had to go back and be like, wow,
this is all summary.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
I gotta like write some scenes.

Speaker 4 (50:38):
That's really interesting.

Speaker 3 (50:40):
Was there anything you read in particular about plot that
you were like, oh this uncorrect?

Speaker 2 (50:45):
Yes, any students there or students of John's also will
roll their eyes and laugh at this. But like we
both love really like Bread and Butter almost like schlocky
craft writing books, like I love the ninety Day novel.

Speaker 1 (51:01):
I still use It's.

Speaker 4 (51:02):
I just started reading that.

Speaker 2 (51:04):
Oh good, yeah, okay, so I don't love the free writing.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
I have to say, like I find it really boring.

Speaker 2 (51:09):
I think it's good to do a little of but
like you can kind of sap the joy out of
it to me, But like the structure questions in the
back are golden.

Speaker 1 (51:20):
They're so good.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
They're very simple, but like I use them even for
short fiction. I use them for sometimes for nonfiction. Like
it's just good to like sit down and ask yourself
those questions.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
So love that book.

Speaker 2 (51:33):
John in particular loves story by Robert McPhee. It's a
really like bedrock kind of funny in some ways, like
screenwriting tone, like how to write your screen play. But
a lot of the questions are like similar to ninety
day novel, like fundamental, like good things to ask yourself.
You never get so good that you don't need to

(51:54):
sit down and be like, okay, like what is my
character's deep want? Is my plot pushing them to a
point where they need to like do something about it
and explore it. If that's not happening, you might want
to go back and revise. It's just fundamental. And I
think like, especially right now, everyone's on their phones, people

(52:15):
aren't reading the.

Speaker 1 (52:16):
Way they used to. It's just a fact.

Speaker 2 (52:18):
So like make your book really readable with these like
five thought points. Another book that I really love and
I don't remember the authors of this one. It's like
a couple people, but it's called self editing for fiction writers.
I almost like don't want to tell people this because
the tips in that book are so good it will
take like it's like giving away a secret weapon. But yeah,

(52:41):
that book is great. I highly recommend it.

Speaker 4 (52:42):
Ooh, thank you.

Speaker 3 (52:50):
So Esthetica Publishing and finding a new agent, what was that? Like?

Speaker 6 (52:55):
Oh my god, this book, Asatka has been such an
amazing learning experience for me as a person, and like
has coincided with some real like personal growth. So one
thing I didn't mention is that when I had that
like first shitty draft, I was in such a rush.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
I was like, Okay, let me just like I want
to leave like current agent, we're just not in the
same place anymore. Let me like query out with this
like first twenty pages of this garbage I've written, and
just like see if I can get someone you know.
I was like I'd need someone else, like whatever. So
I queried out with it like just twenty pages, and

(53:41):
a couple people wrote back and they were like, this
is good this is great. I want to I want
to read more. And I was like, oh my god,
it's all happening. One agent in particular, like got on
the phone with me. She was like really pushing, and
then I sent her the rest of the book, and
literally like in order to send her the rest of
the book, I would like writing chapters in order to

(54:03):
send it to her. I was in a deranged place
and like stuff in my personal life was just crazy,
Like I.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
Was just like not on top of my game.

Speaker 2 (54:15):
So I sent her this like just written draft and
she wrote back to me after like a week and
was like I'm so sorry, like this is not for me.
Basically like very nice. But receiving that email also coincided
with my first day of therapy with the therapist who
had become my therapist for several years, and I just

(54:36):
like walked into her office and like how a complete
break down that was her first meeting of me. But
looking back on it now, it was like, oh, I
just feel so much like tenderness for where I was
at then and just like the sort of mania that
fell over me after publishing Jellow Girls, and that agent

(54:58):
was so nice about letting me off the nicely. So
I then you know, went home and got back to
work and like really redid the book and took my time,
and when I was finally ready to query out again,
I queried out with it. It was very different than the
book is now inasmuch as what was missing was as

(55:22):
much emphasis on plastic surgery as there's now, which I
wanted to add but didn't have, like didn't feel ready
to add.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
I kind of knew that agents.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
Weren't going to love that part of the book, and
essentially like talked to a couple people, but in the end,
the only person who like really really really wanted to
represent the book I felt was my now agent, Aaron Harris.
And I chose to query Aaron because a friend of

(55:52):
mine had almost signed with Aaron and really really loved her,
and it was like she chose to go with someone else,
but it was like complete We like could have been
either and she would have been happy. And like Aaron
was so helpful to me when it came to just
sort of filling the book out and she was like,

(56:13):
I think we need to fill this book out, Like
do you have ideas for how to beef it up?

Speaker 1 (56:17):
And I was like yes, I do.

Speaker 2 (56:20):
I want to add this like crazy ass procedure and
like pump up the plastic surgery side of things and
like really like go in on that. And I really
expected her to be like no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
that's not the direction. And she instead was like, yeah,
let's do it, like let's get weird.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
And I love her.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
So much and I'm really grateful for that because like
that's what I did. I like wrote everything that I
wanted to. I got as weird as I wanted.

Speaker 1 (56:47):
And like.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
When we had gone through a couple edits of that
material together, you know, despite some like tear on my
part and like a couple places where Aaron was like, Okay,
I could see this being an issue, but I was like,
let's just do it.

Speaker 1 (57:06):
Let's go out with it. And so we did.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
And that was late spring twenty twenty one.

Speaker 4 (57:11):
I want to say, and then how long was it out?

Speaker 2 (57:14):
So long? Now? Well, you know, Jello Girls sold in
like a week or something crazy and Esthetica took like
a couple months. I have to say, like I just
had this sense about the book when we sent it out.
I was like, this is gonna be like nobody's gonna
want to buy this book, even though I thought it

(57:35):
was really good, and like, you know, I had John,
my husband, read it before I sent it out.

Speaker 1 (57:41):
He thought it was really good. Aaron thought it was
really good. My writing group thought I was good. But
it was like I just know it.

Speaker 2 (57:47):
I don't know how to Maybe that was just the anxiety,
and so when it happened, I was like, see, I knew,
but like, I don't know. I just had this sense
about it. So it went out. After it was out
for a week, I just started to be like, yep,
it's happening. Nobody's gonna want it. Then people started to
pass giving like really sort of vague reasons as to why,

(58:10):
and that you know, trickled in slowly, and I was
just sort of like at first, really crushed, and then
I started to feel creative and like defiant about it. Yes,
almost as if like, Okay, if I wrote a book

(58:31):
that everybody wanted, then I wouldn't have written the book
that I want to write. And as much as like
what I see being published is not where I like
align creatively. A lot of the time, there's a lot
of books that come out, you know, obviously every year,
and a lot of them are not up to the
standards that like I hold for myself. All to say,

(58:54):
like I started to get to a point and also
like this was dovetailing with the publication of my husband's book,
which went out on a really small press and was
like becoming this like cult altlt sensation. After like every
agent in New York had passed on the book and
nobody wanted it. Come to find like it was selling
better than I don't know. We were making so much

(59:16):
money off of his little book. I don't mean his
little book, but like his book on a small press,
and I was just like, Okay, there's more than one
way to do this. What the establishment thinks will sell
is not always what will sell. I got to that
point I like let go of a lot of like
my own like perfectionism and all this stuff. It just

(59:36):
sort of like fell off of me. And then at
the end of the summer, after I'd gone through so
much emotional turmoil, my now editor Mark Dodin, made an
offer on the book, and that just felt like a
proof positive. All you need is one person, and sometimes

(59:56):
you know, the most challenging work is not the work
that everybody wants to acquire, and it's not the work
that everyone wants to read and feel like good about
themselves with. It's like work that challenges and it's gonna
push some people and it's going to like be uncomfortable
for some people, and some people are going to be
really seen by it. I feel really seen by it,

(01:00:17):
and that's you know, that's my goal for my work anyway,
So I was overjoyed when Mark made an offer on
the book. Also, like I loved what Soho was putting out,
So I felt like really glad to have landed there.
And I think like for the trajectory of my career,
I started at a huge press with a big advance,

(01:00:38):
and like I think a lot of the times, yes,
that is a dream scenario, and it's really hard to
say no to a lot of money when someone offers
it to you. But like when it's your first book,
it can really set you up for challenges down the
road because like, as we know, a lot of books
don't earn out their advances. I think it's like eight
out of ten books, yeah, Jell Girls has not earned

(01:01:00):
out its advance still really yeah, I mean that's what
happens when you get a big advance. It's a lot
of money to make back, and especially if like your
publisher isn't selling the book the way that you sort
of think they should be, or you know, it just
gets sticky really quickly. So now I feel like I'm
just sort of starting off in a different place with

(01:01:21):
a big indie press that feels like really true to
me and my work, and I don't know, it's great.
I'm really happy about it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:28):
Yeah, being true to what you think about publishing or whatever.
It's kind of like feminism, right, It's like easier said
than done.

Speaker 4 (01:01:35):
Yeah, totally. So we talked a little bit about it.
But do you know what's next?

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
I do know what's next. I'm not really ready to
talk about it. But it's another novel I have, Like
you know, I have a start, I have a plot.
That plot will change, I'm sure, but like this time,
trying to get that like in a good shape before
I really go in on the book.

Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
But again, like I know that it'll.

Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
Change no matter what, and I'm going to keep writing.
You know, I've had a really nice time writing short
fiction recently. That's been really fun. So I'm going to
do some more with that. And yeah, I don't know
what's on the bucket list, any big goals. Well, you know,
I'm so I'm like laser focused on Esthetica right now

(01:02:26):
in terms of like promoting it and doing everything I
can to get it out and successful, which is another
big difference from Jello Girls. So, you know, Esthetica in
and of itself has been like a bucket list thing
for me, and there's been a lot of like interest
from media outlets and that feels really validating and exciting.

(01:02:50):
You know, there's like a part of me that's like, yes,
many people passed on this book, but like now here
we are and like a lot of people want to
write about it and like interview me and reviews that
that feels really good. I think that in the future,
like I know that my career is going to grow
and change in some direction I can't foresee, but I
would really love to get to a point where I

(01:03:13):
can be less like boots on the ground, like mailing
up books myself, you know, like I love doing that
stuff and everything, but like promoting aesthetic that has been
a full time job for me these past couple months,
or just like you know, doing pr stuff for myself,
and I don't foresee ever not having to do that,

(01:03:35):
and I think it's like realistic for writers to expect
to do that stuff for themselves.

Speaker 3 (01:03:39):
But like.

Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
I guess I would just love to have to do
it like a little less and to be able to
like sit back and relax and enjoy the publication process
and not hustle like quite so hard.

Speaker 1 (01:03:53):
Like I will still hustle, I just don't want to
hustle like quite so hard.

Speaker 4 (01:03:58):
I love that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:59):
That's the bucket list, just ten percent less. Please, Yeah,
exactly what piece of writing advice do you wish you
could give your former self?

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
Take your time.

Speaker 2 (01:04:09):
It's better to have a really quality piece of writing
out there that people are going to love and be
excited about and keep reading for years and years and
years then to you know, quickly dash something off and
get it out and have it fall flat in some way.

(01:04:31):
It's really easy now to publish in some ways, and
I totally, as I've stated in this interview, understand the
imperative to like rush and just like get it out,
but also like that work will be out there forever
and you want to make sure it's your best work.

Speaker 4 (01:04:49):
Yeah. Oh that's so good. I've been thinking so much
about that lately, I'm like.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
Just chill, Yeah, just chill.

Speaker 3 (01:04:56):
What's one tip for writers trying to get a book published?

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
You know, a little bit location dependent, but I don't
know if it necessarily is with social media and the internet.

Speaker 5 (01:05:07):
But.

Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
Involve yourself to the extent that you feel comfortable in
literary communities. You know, find those communities that you want
to be a part of. If it's you know, the
scene in New York, like find a way to live
in New York.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
Or visit if it's not.

Speaker 2 (01:05:22):
If it like exists online, There's so many little cultures
and communities that you know, one could want to be
a part of, Like find that and then put yourself
out there. A lot of writers can be kind of awkward,
so like, don't be awkward, Like find a way to
like get your bravery going and just introduce yourself and
do favors for people.

Speaker 1 (01:05:44):
Like it's a great way to.

Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
Learn and grow, but you know, it's also a good
way to make friends and alliances that will help you
down the line. It sounds so like conniving, but I
think like it's also like a way to be really
joyful and in touch with other writers while also like
setting yourself up for success totally.

Speaker 4 (01:06:03):
What's your all time favorite piece of your own writing?

Speaker 2 (01:06:06):
Oh my god, I saw this on your pre questions.
I don't know if I can answer that.

Speaker 3 (01:06:10):
Like, I know it is a little Sophie's choice, but
it's so hard.

Speaker 2 (01:06:19):
I will say. Like, I published an essay recently. It's
called Last of the Long Hot Days. I don't know
if it's my favorite, but it is a piece that's talking,
it's doing a lot of work to just put out
questions that have really been on my mind lately, and
like I guess for that reason right now, it feels

(01:06:43):
kind of precious to me. So yeah, we'll just go
with that for now.

Speaker 1 (01:06:46):
I know it'll change like tomorrow.

Speaker 3 (01:06:48):
But what are your social handles? Where are you online?

Speaker 2 (01:06:52):
Yeah? I'm mostly an Instagram writer, so my handle is
just my name. It's at ali Robot can find me there.
Same handle on Twitter, but I mostly just throw there
and like retweet and leave.

Speaker 3 (01:07:07):
Thank you so much to ali Ah. That was such
a great conversation and she offered so much great perspective.

Speaker 4 (01:07:14):
What a treat.

Speaker 3 (01:07:16):
So make sure you buy a copy of Esthetica, and
I highly recommend Jello Girls. If you love a dark
feminist takedown of an American classic. Thank you for joining
me for this episode of The Bleeders.

Speaker 4 (01:07:28):
Writing is so much better with friends.

Speaker 3 (01:07:31):
I'm your host, Courtney Cosack, and hey, let's connect on
social media. I am at Courtney Kosak last name is Kocak.

Speaker 4 (01:07:39):
On Twitter and Instagram.

Speaker 3 (01:07:41):
And make sure you're signed up for The Bleeders Companion
substack for all kinds of newsletter exclusives. There's so much
good stuff that I send out to my free list,
and I actually just launched a paid subscription with some
extra goodies where I take you behind the scenes of
all my best buylines. I published a post about my
return to stand up comedy and how I got ready
to crush my showcase.

Speaker 4 (01:08:02):
I wrote about MFAs and whether or not I think
it is worth it.

Speaker 3 (01:08:07):
I also did one of my favorite workshops I've ever taught.
It's a manifestation workshop that I did for the New Year,
but it's really good anytime of the year. So there's
so much good stuff for free subscribers and even more
for paid subscribers, And there is a link in the
description for that. And join me again next time for

(01:08:27):
another all new episode. In the meantime, happy bleeding

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Allie Rowbottom Shares Her Writing & Publishing Processes for "Jello Girls" and "Aesthetica"

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

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Allie Rowbottom Shares Her Writing & Publishing Processes for "Jello Girls" and "Aesthetica"

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