Sarah Fay on Her Fast Track to Publication with "Pathological" & Why Substack Might Be Better Than an MFA

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Well, I lived it for twenty five years before I
could write about it.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
So it is.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
About the twenty five years I spent in the mental
health system. So it was a long road.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Today's guest is Sarah Fay, a memoirist, writing coach, and
Substack strategist extraordinaire. Her debut memoir, Pathological, tells the story
of her twenty five year journey through the mental health system.
And though it took a long time to live Pathological,
it did not take long to write it and to

(00:36):
get it published.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
My dream when I was in New York. I was
in my twenties, and I used to dream that I
was you know, I'd sort of like daydream about this
on the subway going to work. So I used to
dream that an agent would call me and say, I'm
halfway through your book. I love it. Don't talk to
anyone else.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Sarah manifested her dream agent like a scene out of
a movie, just like she had imagined during the subway
daydreams of her twenties. It's one of those magical, inspiring
publishing moments that you just love to hear about.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
So Substack has completely transformed me as a human and
it's transformed so many of my clients like It's made
me far less jealous of other writers, It's made me
be more supportive, It's made me just a better human.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Sarah shares how substack has been a game changer for
her creatively, professionally, and even personally. She gives us some
fantastic substack tips from her expert pov plus we dig
into craft, structure, serialization, pr and more. This was such
an awesome, energizing conversation. You guys are gonna love it,

(01:44):
so let's dive in. There's nothing to writing. All you
do is sit down at a typewriter.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
And bleed.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Welcome to the Leaders podcast and support group about book
writing and publishing. I'm writer and podcaster Courtney Kosek, and
each week I'll bring you new conversations with authors, agents
and publishers about how to write and sell books.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Hi, I'm Sarah Fay. I'm the author of Pathological and
Cured the Memoir, and I'm also a substack strategist on
substack writers at work.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
When did you first identify as a writer?

Speaker 1 (02:31):
So I always say it was never even a question.
It just I don't ever remember making the conscious decision
to become a writer. I just was, and it was
never well, I shouldn't say that. There was one moment
when I was in high school and I told my father,
who was a lawyer, that I was going to be
a lawyer, and he said, oh God, don't do that.

(02:52):
So then after that it was just part of it,
and I went down the path of the most literary
you can get, which was I was a poet living
in New York, which is just dismal, dismal existence in
terms of financial security.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
But it was great.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
So I've done a lot of different types of writing,
which has been wonderful. So it's been a long career.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
What's your all time favorite book?

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Oh my gosh, that's always I was just thinking about
this question. My answer is always Brothers Karamazov Dostayevsky, And
it's a particular translation of it because what a lot
of people don't realize is Dostoevsky is really funny and
Brother's Karamazov is hilarious. But I mean, it just isn't
read that way. Everything's read very tragic. So it's that one.

(03:38):
But the Great Gatsby I teach in a university, so
I tend to teach the same books, and those aren't
always my favorite books, because that can be a little
bit misleading. If you try to get students to like
the books you like, it can be awful. But The
Great Gatsby has always been one.

Speaker 4 (03:56):
Just like the world. What do you love about The
Great gats Fee.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
I think it's also the mythology of it. But when
I first read it in high school, I was totally
in love with it, and so it's always been there,
and I reread it. I also reread every year Edith
Wharton's House of Mirth.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
Oh so I'd like to some books.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
So I reread Brothers Karamazov every year, and I reread
House of Mirth every year, And mainly it's just to
see how I've changed between the readings of it, and
how the characters strike me and how different it is.
So House of Mirth the first time I read it,
I was balling crying. If you haven't read it, it's
about Lily Bart and it's basically a woman's plight in

(04:37):
high society in the late nineteenth century. And so she
is unmarried, doesn't want to marry, and she has this
horrible descent into drug addiction and she dies, but she
makes all the wrong choices and you're like, no, don't
do that. It's Jane Austin gone very bad. But anyway,
when when I first read it, I just identify as

(05:00):
her as this really out of control person. And then
later years later I just had such a different I
just felt bad for her, But I wasn't.

Speaker 4 (05:10):
Like you were like, oh, the societal part is maybe
part of the problem.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
I'm just curious. Have you read The Artful Edit? Isn't
that about gout speed?

Speaker 1 (05:22):
Yep? She does a really great job of breaking that down.
I love Susan Bell and I teach that book. So
I teach creative nonfiction at Northwestern and I love using
that book because she breaks down writing in a way
that I always have. So I always separated revision, which
is for content, with editing, which is for style. She

(05:43):
just calls it the macro edit and the micro edit.
But I love it, and it's so fundamental to writers,
and so few people do it.

Speaker 4 (05:51):
Yeah, and I love that deconstruction of the book of
the Great gas Vias so fun.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
What's your dream writing routine?

Speaker 3 (05:58):
That's a really good question.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
Well, have you mind?

Speaker 3 (06:03):
What's up?

Speaker 2 (06:04):
Have you achieved it?

Speaker 1 (06:05):
I mean I have well it's kind of interesting. So
I have ever so probably for eight years, at least
solid eight years, I woke up every single day and
wrote every single day, three hundred and sixty five days
a year, holidays, everything, and that was my routine. And
then now I'm running a business, like hardcore business, and

(06:29):
it is it has changed, and so now actually my
ideal of routine would be getting back to my other routine.
So I have not stopped, because I still have an
author stack. But it's really interesting to be on the
other side of what so many people felt. I mean,
I teach in a university, but that's a pretty cushy

(06:49):
It's a really cushy job. You hear professors complain like
I don't even know what they're talking about. It's an
extremely cushy job. You have a lot of free time.
Now it's just I mean, I'm full blown running like
a six figure business, and it's just like, no, it's
all the time, and I'm obsessed with it, and that's great.
But I used to only be obsessed with my writing.

(07:10):
And I mean, we can talk about this, but there
was also you know, I put out two books in
two years, so I think also it was just a
kind of maybe not burnout, but maybe it was just like, oh,
I do need a break, and so yeah, it would
be getting back to what I used to do, I think,
but maybe that wasn't the best routine.

Speaker 3 (07:29):
Who knows.

Speaker 4 (07:30):
So okay, the next question is what is your real
writing routine? And I was just watching one of your
sub stacks, and you have your life scheduled, like, yeah, every.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
Minute it spoken to it is it is. I do
not know the word free time. In fact, I dislike
free time. I don't understand free time.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
I understand.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
I don't understand free time. I don't understand hobbies. I
understand how people have hobbies. I'm like, what are you doing?
You know you're wasting time to the ball or yarn
or whatever you're doing. But I get it, like it's
just not my thing. So yeah, I love to be
and that's something you know. It's the block schedule. But
cal Newport, who's at MIT he talks about and anyway,

(08:14):
when I discovered that there are just some people who
should not have blank space, and I am one of them,
and so give me an empty calendar, I am like,
I don't know what to do with myself. H so
as long as my brain is very directed, like we're
doing this there now, I don't always follow my calendar
to the minute. I have to say that, so I
don't want people to think that I'm so regimented that

(08:36):
I never get off track or I never go outside
of that I do.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
It's just there.

Speaker 4 (08:40):
As the parameters do, you usually stay pretty close.

Speaker 3 (08:44):
Pretty close.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
I mean today, I'll move it around according to what
I actually did, and I don't have a way of
comparing them. Sometimes they are wildly different, but usually it's
because I took really long on some task. I took
a long time setting up posts or something like that,
and so I went over. Usually it's because I underestimate

(09:07):
the amount of time something will take me. Almost always
I underestimate. So that's that's pretty much it. It's never
like I was flaking off, and that's not why I
didn't hold to it. Although every once in a while
I'll be walking and I'll just be like, I don't
care about dinner.

Speaker 3 (09:22):
I just want to walk. I love so I'm just
like I want to walk forever. You know.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
That's so funny.

Speaker 4 (09:30):
But you're doing mostly business writing now, right, that's like
a lot of your time.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
So a lot of my time is just running substack
writers at work, and then I just started a school
that's kind of attached to it, so getting to teach
creative writing. So it's called from Craft Career. So basically
using substack as a training ground for writers, which I
think it's amazing in that respect when we think about
pre nineteen nineties, no one went to an MFA program,

(09:56):
no one ever did a workshop ever.

Speaker 3 (09:58):
Yeah, and so those are.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
Are best writers. So my theory is that they learned
on the job. A lot of them were journalists, and
so substack has given us this amazing place where I
can do the same teaching I've been doing and then
also bring in other amazing teachers that I know, have
us teach in there, and then we use substack as
the lab. Basically, so right now I'm teaching voice with

(10:23):
Maria Hornbacker, who's just an amazing teacher, an amazing writer,
and so we're team teaching a voice class. And basically
what it is is they then get to the practicum
is on substack. So the idea being not only is
it like better than an MFA because you're getting practical experience,
but like maybe you would be paid for it. How
great would that be? You know, you're not stuck in

(10:43):
this MFA program or whatever it is. But so yeah,
so kind of building that and then substack writers at
work and then I do one to ones for substack too.
That actually takes up a great deal of my time
and I love doing it, but I've kind of I've
maxed out. I booked a month or two and advance
and I just can't even keep up with the demand.

Speaker 3 (11:03):
So and I love it.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
I do really love it, but again it's like not scalable,
like I cannot do it all the time, and there's
only one of me, So trying to find ways to
create cohorts where I can do multiple people at once.
And then there's my author stack. But there's also you know,
I have two books, so Pathological, my first memoir came
out during the pandemic, and it was just a bad

(11:27):
time for a book to come out, and it's just
a really bad time. Yeah, So basically, and especially my book,
which is about you know, six different misdiagnoses or diagnoses
that I received, and I kind of think of all diagnoses,
psychiatric diagnoses as being somehow off the mark or misdiagnoses
because they aren't reliable or scientifically valid. So that came

(11:47):
out at a time when pretty much the media was
just saying, go get a diagnosis, get your child a diagnosis.
Everyone needs a diagnosis. And it made sense because everyone
was suffering rightfully, so we were in the middle of
a global pandemic. There wasn't anything biologically wrong with you
if you were anxious and depressed during the Fana, right
So but here I had just put out this book

(12:09):
really critiquing diagnoses. So it did really well, and that's great,
but you know, of course I wanted the like seventy
thousand copies sold or whatever, and it did sell better
than ninety nine percent of the books. But I still
am really like, I haven't given up on it, so
I'm actively still promoting it, even though publishers really do

(12:29):
us a disservice.

Speaker 3 (12:30):
You have three months to sell a book.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
I know, that's so ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
It's awful. And then you're on the backlist and it's like,
but I like, no one promotes you nothing, and then
they're just onto the next book, onto the next book,
and no wonder they don't make any money. I mean,
they do make money, but like no wonder they don't
have a business model that works well because they just
give up too soon.

Speaker 4 (12:50):
It's a terrible business model. I want to go deep
on that. One quick question before we go. One piece
of writing that makes you jealous you didn't write.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
It, probably joe An Beard's The Fourth State of Matter.
Have you ever read that? It is an amazing essay.
Maybe we can attach to a link to the PDF
for to the book.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
It's in Boys of Our Youth.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
But it's just a stunning, stunning I mean, it's just
a perfect personal essay. That's one of them. There are
sometimes some substacks that I post that I don't wish
I had written, but I'm kind of jealous of. But
I think jealousy and envy is like the lowest, the
most base emotions for writers, and I feel it.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
Let me tell you, yeah, I don't.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
I think you can use it.

Speaker 4 (13:39):
You can use it to motivate you to be like,
oh shit, okay, I want to drop that.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
Like the other day, actually, so I was with a client.
I work with him every week and he's amazing. He
had four hundred subscribers when he came to see me.
And we work every week on his writing too. So
he really went all in and so he has since gone.
He now is four thousand in a year. Oh wow,
from four hundred to four thousand, he became a featured
sub stack. He's a best seller. Like it was just everything.

(14:08):
He's got crazy connections on the substack. So it was
just amazing. But we were working together and I had
this moment of like, he gets to do that. I
was just we're doing one of his pieces, and I
wasn't jealousy of the piece, but it was funny exactly
what you're saying, And I thought, Okay, what is this
saying for you to do?

Speaker 3 (14:25):
Yes, you got it. You gotta be paid your instruction stuff.

Speaker 5 (14:28):
Yeah, okay, So before we get into the book further,
I'm curious about your education.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
You're talking about like diy MFA is maybe a better path.
I mean, but you did the whole.

Speaker 3 (14:47):
You have the MA, you have the I know where Ice.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
Speaks, So tell us, I mean, do you feel like
you needed these things? Did Iowa live up to the fuss?
How did it help you form you?

Speaker 3 (15:02):
Well?

Speaker 1 (15:03):
First of all, so I couldn't wait to get out
of college. I went to Michigan. It wasn't Michigan's fault.
I didn't. It has nothing to do with that. But
I was like, I can't wait to get in the
real world. And then look at me. I spent like
ten years in school and then now I teach at
a university. It just backfired clearly.

Speaker 3 (15:18):
But so yeah, I mean it was interesting.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
So I thought I needed an MFA as a poet,
and so I went not to Iowa, but I went
to a low residency program, and that is different.

Speaker 3 (15:30):
I was living in New York.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
I did get into Columbia, but it's eighty thousand dollars,
which is ridiculous. Like, I'm a poet, What am I
going to do with an eighty thousand dollars teramp? And
so I ended up doing that. And I think low
residency programs where basically you work one to one with
a mentor over the year and you only go down
twice a year for workshop. I've never liked workshops. I
don't think they're very valuable, and so that was very

(15:54):
alluring to me. But then I got my MFA, and
suddenly there was a glut of MFA and the job market,
so there were no jobs, and so I have a
gift for this. So then I went and I got
a PhD in literature because I was reviewing books for
the New York Times and writing for The Atlantic on
arts and culture for some reason. Well part of that

(16:15):
was I got funding, so I got paid.

Speaker 3 (16:17):
Oh that's great.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
So that was it was basically bought me six years,
and I spent six years really in this lovely land
of literature talking about things that no one talks about
and the rest of the world, you know, just this
deep you know, these are geeky scholars basically, so it's
not literary writers.

Speaker 3 (16:35):
So yes, I do know.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
The Workshop, and I know people there and people who
teach there and got to know them. But I did
not go to the workshop.

Speaker 3 (16:42):
And I also know, oh it's separate. Yeah, they're separate.

Speaker 1 (16:46):
And it's funny because the Workshop has this, you know,
it's got a lot of cachet, which I think is
mostly undeserved, but mainly because my best friend was just
it destroyed her, Like the workshop just destroyed her. She's
such a talented writer. It's just such a mean place,
like it is just not it's not a mean place intentionally,

(17:07):
but they're favorites. This is what's wrong. With an MFA program,
Which is why I want to create this other thing,
is that you want the teachers approval. You know, it's
a clicky thing, and there's always a kind of embraced
style that's allowed. Right then if you do anything other
than that, And my friend did something other and she
just wasn't the darling. There's always a darling, and that's

(17:30):
the person who's pushed, and that's the person who gets
the big agent in the book deal or the three
people who do. Everybody else has either stopped their lives
and spent a lot of money to go to a
program that is not going to get them connections. It
is not going to get them a book deal. It
is not going to get them a job because there
are no more jobs in academia. No one is hiring

(17:50):
because they're cutting back.

Speaker 3 (17:52):
Oh but I was going to say so.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
The Iowa Writer's Workshop has this glossy like beautiful day
house is up on a hill over the Iowa River
and it's glass and it's lovely, and the PhD and
Creative nonfiction programs. Now, the Creative Nonfiction program has moved,
but it's like down on the river, like it's a.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
Barn it's like a building that was trying to stop
riots in the seventies. It is awful.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
So anyway, but I always like being the outsider of
the underdog. I'm a big fan. I think it's really
good to not be, you know, in some of these
other places. And I think that's what that is, what
sub Stack's doing. It's democratizing writing in a way that
I think really needs to be embraced because what it
shows is actually you don't need the gatekeepers, right, I mean,

(18:41):
you can if you want to go those routes. And
I love traditional publishing. I love traditional media. I still
write for them. I plan to put out all my
books with them. But you know, there's this really interesting
thing happening, which is that publishers don't really know how
to sell books anymore. And that's not a criticism of them.
I think many of them would agree. They know how
to sell books to bookstores, and once bookstores went away,

(19:03):
it's very hard to sell to individuals. With social media especially,
it's challenging.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
And so what.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
Substack allows is I've just seen someone like David who
I just mentioned, like, WHOA, he's just finding his people.
That's what he did. He found his stride as a writer,
and he found his people. And how amazing is that?
I mean, that's just and so now he's got this
whole he got pitched bin in it, he got asked
to meet with an agent.

Speaker 3 (19:27):
He's meeting with her next week.

Speaker 2 (19:29):
It's amazing. Hopefully and then those people will hopefully be
there to buy your books.

Speaker 4 (19:34):
And it's just such a nice funnel that we didn't
used to have. Yeah, okay, so I want to return
to pathological first books.

Speaker 2 (19:42):
I feel like always have the best origin stories because
people are usually working on them in some form for
kind of ever.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
And then you know, it's like such a hero's journey.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
So I want to know about the evolution of the book.

Speaker 1 (19:54):
Well, I lived it for twenty five years before I
could write about it. It is about the twenty five
years as I spent in the mental health system.

Speaker 3 (20:01):
So it was a long road. But oddly it has
a weird origin story, so I don't remember.

Speaker 1 (20:08):
Oh. I ended up writing an essay and it was
accepted by Longreads and so it's a long form essay
and it was about brackets and loneliness and solitude and
what's the difference. So it was a very theoretical essay,
and it didn't really mention mental illness. But then I thought, oh, okay,
there's thirteen punctuation marks. I'll write thirteen essays, you know,

(20:28):
I'll just do all the other punctuation marks. And suddenly
then my story of mental illness started coming out. And
that was how it grew. So it was a collection
of essays. I had an agent interested in and she
just said, essays don't sell. So she said, really, I
would turn it into a memoir. So I did, and
I wrote it in five months. I got an agent.

(20:49):
I actually went to a different agents. I like pitched
seven and they were all big, heavy hitters. And my
dream when I was in New York, I was in
my twenties, and I used to dream that I was
you know, I'd sort of like daydream about this on
the subway, you know, as I was going to work.
So I used to dream that an agent would call
me and say, I'm halfway through your book.

Speaker 3 (21:12):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (21:13):
Don't talk to anyone else. And that was like I
didn't have a book mind.

Speaker 3 (21:18):
That was just the dream of the writer. I just
wanted to be a fancy writer.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
I think I had read that someone he wrote the
art of feel Fielding. I can't remember his name now,
but that had happened to him, so I did.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
That time help me. So then here I am flash forward.

Speaker 1 (21:32):
It was twenty twenty years later, and I had sent
it out, this manuscript to these seven agents, and you know,
one had responded and wanted to set up a meeting.
And then the other, which was a big heavy hitter,
was Sunday. We were like just in the pandemic and
it was like cloudy and cold in Chicago. And I
get this email and it's from her, and she said,

(21:54):
I'm two thirds of the way through your book. Don't
talk to anyone. I'm going to see see my I
gives me chills, but to see my assistant and I
want to set up a meeting. And so like that
was my.

Speaker 3 (22:06):
Totally. It was really weird. It was just like, oh,
I got it happened.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
So then I got her and she was really great
because she asked for no revisions, which is unheard of.
The other thing was a couple of people had asked
me to pull the punctuation parts of it. So it's
a street memoir. There are three strands. One is my
story of being in the mental health system. But then
there are these two other strands to kind of alleviate

(22:31):
that solipsism and narcissism that goes along with telling that
kind of story. So basically there is a one is
the history of the DSM, so the Diagnostic Statistical Manual
of Mental disorders and how we got these diagnoses, and
then the other is this sort of wacky love letter
to punctuation, which is how it all started. And a
lot of people said, you've got to cut the punctuation,

(22:54):
and it doesn't it's no work for people. And this
my agent. Now she's still my agent, and she said no, no, no,
I love it. And I was like, you're my agent,
let's go. And we sold it in about six weeks,
even in the pandemic, and they asked for no revisions
and it was just unheard of. It was just sort
of the most amazing story and experience. No, we did

(23:15):
end up revising it, and there were some other things
that we thought would just tighten it, but it was amazing.
It was just so it happened very very fast. I
wrote a fast, It got an agent fast.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
So I love that.

Speaker 4 (23:27):
When was the long Reads essay that started it?

Speaker 3 (23:30):
It was in twenty.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
So it was in Best American too, which was really great.
And that was twenty two, so it must have been
twenty twenty or twenty twenty one. Now I can't remember,
but my book came out in twenty twenty two, so
it had to be sooner than that.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
Really fast.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
Yeah, it was all really fast and really recent.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
Oh I'm so curious.

Speaker 4 (23:49):
So had the idea of first of all, I would
have thought I was going to ask you about those threads,
and I would have thought punctuation came at the end.

Speaker 1 (23:59):
Yeah, funy, because one criticism I got this was from
an agent. No, it was from an editor. So we
went to sell it and I knew her, and so
she had said, oh, the punctuation just feels forced and
it feels gamy like that, like what you're saying, like
is if I added it later? And I was like, no,
it is, but anyway, So she's lovely. Err and I

(24:21):
won't say your name, but it makes.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
Sense as a spine.

Speaker 4 (24:24):
I just thought you would have started with the obvious
issue at hand, which is the mental illness stuff or
whatever black thereof.

Speaker 3 (24:33):
Or whatever it is.

Speaker 4 (24:35):
So let's talk about the research, because you know the
DSM threads. All the threads really required some sort of research.
How did you approach that? And then did you research
not only the history and stuff, but like did you
pull your medical records and like how far did you
take it?

Speaker 1 (24:54):
So basically the research, I mean, this is where my
PhD paid off, because I just learned, They talked, taught
me how to research and research, very very well and
very thoroughly.

Speaker 3 (25:03):
I mean, it's hardcore.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
When you get a PhD in English, it's no joke,
whereas they have PhDs in creative writing, which are sort
of different, and that's only a couple of years or
three years. But this is six years hardcore. And so
I really knew how to do research. But what it
happened was I had And the story is in the book,
but it doesn't tell the kind of meta moment of it,

(25:25):
or does it tell it.

Speaker 3 (25:26):
No, it does tell it.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
We were on my last diagnosis, which was finally bipolar one.
So I had gone from anorexia to general anxiety disorder
to major depressive disorder to ADHD to OCD and then
the two together and then bipolar two bipolar one, and
so I'm at bipolar one and I was chronically suicidal
at that point. So I had been chronically suicidal for

(25:47):
five years. I couldn't live independently. I was living with
my mother and I was really in a bad place.
I just moved out of my mother's and my sister
found me a new psychiatrist and I went to go
see her again. It was sort of winter, but it
was February, like cracking cold, and I went.

Speaker 3 (26:04):
To see him.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
And so typically, you know, when you go to a psychiatrist,
you have that intake. And at the end, I waited
for him to reify the diagnosis, the bipolar diagnosis, or
give me a new one.

Speaker 3 (26:14):
And he looked at me and he said, I don't
know what you have. And it just blew my mind.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
And so that moment once you know, and then he's
he's a hardcore biopsychiatrist, so he is really in favor
of psychiatry. Thinks it's the most noble profession. And he
said the DSM is a joke, like these diagnoses are
a joke. Now he doesn't take the insurance so he
could do this. But he when he said that to me,
I thought, I have to go research. I said, no

(26:40):
one knows what I have. And so I just had
to go research everything, and that's how that started, and
it came into the book later. So I hadn't started
the book when I started researching, So.

Speaker 4 (26:51):
Like, what years was that conversation?

Speaker 1 (26:54):
So that was twenty eighteen, that right, I've been recovered
for five years. Yeah, and that was when my recovery started.

Speaker 4 (27:04):
So all this like stuff had been swirling around for
a few years before the book. Yeah, in your personal
trying to figure it out. That's kind of nice that
you took a little break before being like, okay, I
must write about this.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (27:20):
We're so like that about our own lives, like, oh material, Okay,
so you've got these three threads. How did you think
about the book structure? You seem like a very structure
kind of forward.

Speaker 3 (27:35):
Yeah, yeah, I'm so, you know, looking on my new book.

Speaker 1 (27:40):
I am working on a new book, and it's so like,
oh my god, it's got to be structured. I have
no exactly what it is, of course I don't know,
but so yeah, so I knew, yeah, I knew it
was going to be those three I wrote it as
those three strands from the beginning. But the long res
essay did not have mental illness in it, even though
the time period I wrote about had that. So the

(28:02):
version that's in Pathological is different from the version that
was in Long Leads.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
So you just kind of charted it out and then
you wrote it so fast, so you just were in
the whole process, just fast and furious.

Speaker 1 (28:16):
I mean, yeah, And it's funny because I'm not sure
what my new book will be, but both of my
books thus far have been narrative, and uh huh. Mari
and I talk a lot about this, and she's actually
my book coach, and I said, you know, we were
talking and she said, well, you had the story before.
Of course it was easy, right, do you have the narrative?
You are you already how it hunts? It's kind of yeah,

(28:38):
And so basically I had the narrative through line. I
had the thirteen punctuation marks, and then for each narrative,
I basically chunked it by diagnosis, so all I had
to do was plug in the research for each diagnosis.
It was very much laid out for me. With Cured,
which is my second book, but I serialized it on
Substack and that's a other story. But that one I

(29:02):
have different strands too, and it is my story of
mental health recovery. So it has those three strands again,
but this time it's the recovery movement and the history
of it from the sixteenth century. And then the other
side of it is the tools that I use to
get well, not as like doctor prescribing, but just the
things that really allowed me to heal.

Speaker 4 (29:24):
And do you think of cured as ongoing in a
way too or does it have like a finite and.

Speaker 1 (29:31):
Such a good question, because that's that is the perennial question,
which is how do you know if you've recovered? Now,
my psychiatrist has christened me cured, so I did get
the green k life recently. But for a long time
I didn't tell anyone because I didn't want anyone to
say no, no, no, you can't because we don't really
talk about mental health recovery. You know, a lot of

(29:52):
people don't even know it's possible. I didn't until my
psychiatrist told me about a patient of his who'd recovered,
and I was like, what are you talking about? And
so then so there's personal recovery and there's clinical recovery.
And this is something I learned writing it. I didn't
know this at the time, but it used to be
your psychiatrist has to say you are cured, right, And
we wouldn't use the word cured because that does I

(30:15):
use it in the sense of the verb that we
are ongoing curing people like being cured was a very
long process, but we used to have that. The clinician decides,
and it was always the alleviation of symptoms or the
sort of diminishment of symptoms. And then there's personal recovery,
which means I have created a life in which I
am thriving. And that is what thriving means to me.

(30:38):
Does not mean I'm a Google executive. It does not
mean I have four kids in a nice car, or
whatever it's going to be. That is not thriving necessarily.
It could be that I still enjoy gardening, you know.
It could be that I have two cats and I'm
a wonderful mother to them, or whatever it might be.

Speaker 3 (30:54):
So when I learn that, it helped me.

Speaker 1 (30:56):
See, oh wait, I just have to create the life
that keeps me well, well, oh well I can do that.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
Yeah, I don't have to even and you're not going
to get rid of the symptoms because anxiety, mania, depression
and even psychosis sometimes can be considered part of the
human experience, so there's no escaping them. I have panic attacks,
I have variable anxiety. I don't struggle as much with depression. Now.
Sometimes I think it's funny because I'm writing an essay

(31:24):
about not crying. I don't think I cried for four years.
And the reason is I decided I cried so much
that I like extinguished.

Speaker 2 (31:32):
You were just like I don't.

Speaker 3 (31:33):
My good body's like, we never need to cry again.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
But yeah, So knowing that, then I got to create
this life and it is not It is not what
you would think. I don't travel. I don't like to travel.
It offsets me in a way that I don't like.
I love my cats, I love being home. I do
not go out often.

Speaker 3 (31:49):
I walk.

Speaker 1 (31:50):
I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't eat chocolate.
I don't you know, I'm like, don't do all these things.
I don't want to be in a romantic relationship. I
admitted on NPR that my closest so structures are my
cats and some that is like admitting to the world
that I'm a cat lady and Taylor.

Speaker 3 (32:10):
Sith but so yeah, So basically it's been.

Speaker 1 (32:13):
You know, if only people knew that I was sick,
and my mental illness is very real and I'm always
very clear about that, but if I had known, oh
I don't have to do these things, you know, I
could actually create a very different life and be okay,
probably would have been a different story. I can't say that,
but I would think maybe it would be a different story.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
So yeah, I mean I definitely have had ed stuff.
And so I was going to ask you that question
in terms of that too, because it's also like you
have to eat food.

Speaker 4 (32:45):
So it's like I don't know if being cured, like
to me, it's like I don't know if I'm capable
of having a totally normal relationship with food, where like
I don't think about it in any sort of weird
way ever, I don't think that's like it's like, can
I feed myself without like going down a neurotic spiral.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
That's more my like my gags.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
And that's where I was. That felt like being cured
actually to me for a long time, like that was
enough for me. And it's so funny that you say
that because just today I eat nuts. Now my mother
has gotten sick and so I'm you know, of course,
like eating walnuts because it's supposed to be good for
brain health. Oh yeah, I'm like massively eating walnuts. And

(33:26):
what I realized was, wait a second, now I'm eating
for health.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
How interesting? Uh huh.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
And before I would have never eaten nuts because it's
so fattening, you know, or whatever it is, and just
not that I was afraid of fat.

Speaker 3 (33:40):
Like you said, I had gotten to.

Speaker 1 (33:41):
A place where I was like passively neurotic about it.
I was okay, but I had little flare ups sometimes,
but the flare ups always were kind of hearkening back
to anarexia. And so that was stays with you. I mean,
especially if you have it young. I mean, it just
stays with you. And it is very hard.

Speaker 3 (34:00):
I don't even think.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
We escape it, you know, body image stuff.

Speaker 3 (34:05):
Very hard.

Speaker 1 (34:06):
But I'm fifty two, so at some point it had
to I hoped it was going to go away. And
now it does feel like it's definitely different because you
can be neurotic about being healthy too, totally.

Speaker 4 (34:20):
Well you talk about that a little bit too in
the book with the exercise.

Speaker 3 (34:24):
Yeah, and I have that. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (34:26):
No, just one more thing on that is, so I'm
forty and I'm like at the point where I'm like, okay,
am I gonna have a kid? Maybe one kid? But
it's the ED stuff is making me so crazy. I'm like,
maybe I would just pay a hundred thousand dollars to
have a surrogate. I know that, psycho, but I'm like,

(34:46):
I really value not losing control of my body. Anyway,
I'm writing about this, yeabit, it's a whole thing. And
I have considered myself cured or whatever for fifteen years,
but I'm like, oh, this is a major threat.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
Yeah, And I mean, you know, the other thing about it,
which I think is interesting is like me being cured,
Like is that so neurotic or crazy?

Speaker 3 (35:12):
I mean it is.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
I've never wanted children, so I look at pregnant women
and I am like, that is the most alien thing
I have ever seen.

Speaker 3 (35:20):
I'm like, that is nothing.

Speaker 1 (35:22):
There's nothing normal about what you're doing your body. But now, meanwhile,
everyone says and even my mom said it the other day,
she said, oh, I look at you know, baby carriage,
and I think I did that and you know, as
a woman you have to do that.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
I'm like, no, you know, really, you're perfectly fine and
I've worried about it.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
When I was thirty, one of my friends was really
close friend in New York was fifty eight, and she said,
you're gonna regret it. You're going to regret not having kids.

Speaker 4 (35:49):
Now.

Speaker 1 (35:50):
I have said I don't want kids since I was
thirteen years old. I told my mom that I wasn't
gonna have kids, and so I have known deeply, and
I still think, goodness, no child had to suffer through me.

Speaker 3 (36:06):
Very lucky. I saved some creature a lot of pain.

Speaker 1 (36:10):
But so yeah, so just thinking about like, I don't know,
is that so wild in the sense of I don't know.
Maybe it's okay to think that, like I don't want
something occupying my body. It's like, is it okay to
want to be with my cats more than I want
to be with people?

Speaker 3 (36:25):
Maybe totally, Maybe it's okay.

Speaker 2 (36:27):
I think, Yeah, the conversation should be broader than it is.
It is like a major thing.

Speaker 4 (36:33):
Anyway, we could probably talk for an hour about that, Okay.
So the publishing journey for this sounds like it went
super fast. Then that was just like six weeks and
you sold the book. Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 1 (36:52):
It was basically well, so we went to market it
to sell it in April, like mid April, and we
sold it like late so yeah, oh wow, it was
really fast, and considering it was I didn't think we'd
sell it because it was the pandemic. But it's still
really I don't want to say easily, because you know,
you go to twenty two houses, I'm twenty two publishers,

(37:13):
so it's it's brutal. I mean, twenty people passed. I
don't want to make it sound like I was the
hottest ticket in town.

Speaker 4 (37:20):
I mean I was very long known. Yeah no, I
mean I got a huge book deal, like it was
all great.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
But I think sometimes people think it is very hard
to keep getting turned down. And then when we sold it,
when we kind of knew when people were already interested,
my agent said, do you want me to stop telling
you that if other people pass? And I said no,
because I wanted to hear what the criticisms were of it.
They aren't really criticisms because when people are passing, it

(37:49):
just means I don't know how to sell this, That's
what they're really saying. And I think people get when
I learned that it was much easier and so I
was curious why they thought they couldn't sell it or
what they thought was problematic in terms of selling it.
No one said there was a problem with the writing
or the thing. It was just like, no, we don't
know how to do this, or you know, there's some

(38:09):
aspect like the punctuation. We don't think that's going to sell.

Speaker 2 (38:12):
So then was fact checking hard?

Speaker 3 (38:14):
Did you have?

Speaker 2 (38:15):
I want to know about the revision. It sounds like
you did a little revision. And then what was the
fact checking process?

Speaker 1 (38:22):
We did a lot. Actually, my editor was very hands off.
I think I had one editorial letter. How was it
just one editorial letter? But she was the one who said,
why don't it was not so focused on the DSM,
And she said, why don't you just go all in
on the DSM? And so I did, for better or worse.
I don't know if that was good or bad, but
so the and I think it did.

Speaker 3 (38:43):
I know it.

Speaker 1 (38:44):
Focused the book. So then yes, the fact checking was
intense because they don't do it for you. They don't
do even really any editing for you. I mean, I
was shocked at I mean, this is HarperCollins, this is
a great publishing house, and it's not them. This is
just the norm. Now. They don't have the time and
they don't have the people to do it.

Speaker 3 (39:04):
So I ended up I hired a fact checker.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
I actually wrote about this for poets and writers, about
the fact check memoir and what that means.

Speaker 3 (39:12):
I was less.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
Concerned with fact checking me because so much of the book,
and this was very intentional, is just me. I don't
write about other people. It's very focused on my experience.
And part of that was artistic, and part of it
was just personal. So the artistic choice was I was
completely isolated during those that time, and I think anyone

(39:33):
who struggled with mental illness knows that feeling of like
I am just totally cut off from the world. And
so that felt very true to that experience. Like someone
said to me, but your mom never really comes into focus,
and I said, I know, so that's exactly like you've
gotten the experience of it. But then the other part
of it was just personal and that my parents didn't

(39:55):
want My family did not want me to publish the book.
They thought it would ruin my life. It could have
been true. Once it was successful, they were like on board,
or they were just worried, and so they did say
they were, and so they didn't ask to be in
the book, so I felt like I had to also
leave them out. So there was just a lot of
those choices to make, so I didn't feel like I

(40:16):
had to fact check my memories or when things happened.
I mean, I keep a crazy calendar, so a lot
is on there.

Speaker 3 (40:24):
Early days.

Speaker 1 (40:24):
I mean, what happened when I was twelve. I couldn't
get those records. I did try from Northwestern, but the
eating disorders clinics since closed, So again there was that stuff,
but all my other medical records were all accessible and
then oh amazing. Yeah, so that was not a big
deal and I didn't really worry about that. I also
have a terrible memory, so anything that comes to me

(40:48):
comes pretty whole cloth, and I think, okay, it's got
to be right.

Speaker 3 (40:52):
But I did check.

Speaker 1 (40:53):
So two people I've been in relationships with are in it,
and they both got to read it, and I said
I would take anything out. My mother got to read it.
I said I would take anything out that she didn't want,
and everybody was fine with all of it. But what
I was really fact checking was everything I said about
the DSM.

Speaker 3 (41:09):
It had to be impact.

Speaker 1 (41:11):
Because I was, you know, I was making strong claims
and a lot of people do think that diagnoses are
perfectly hunt they're medical and they're scientific and just what
I thought. So I had to make sure it was
absolutely perfect and that took a lot, and then so
me fact checking it. Hired a fact checker. I had
hired an at two editors. Oh yeah, it was a lot,

(41:33):
three editors actually, and a proof reader.

Speaker 4 (41:35):
People don't talk about that a lot, but that's the reality.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
I think. Did they pay for a legal read?

Speaker 1 (41:41):
Yeah? But what it is, and this is what someone
warned me about, is that it's actually a legal read
for them, not for me.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
Uh huh.

Speaker 1 (41:49):
So it is not protect I mean, I'm sure that
they think about it, but it's really about if they'll
get sued, not if I will. But I did form
an LLC before it came out, so I was protected. Supposedly,
it doesn't really protect you that much, but I did it.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
So then it came out during the pandemic. Tell me
about what you did to promote it.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
Oh, we did so much. So I did you know?
You have an in house publicist, but these days you
are really expected to hire an independent publicist, even if
you're at a major house. Now, no one told me to,
but that was kind of the underlying expectation. Everyone I
knew who had a book coming out with a you know,
major house was hiring someone. So I just felt I

(42:29):
had to do it, and I did, and I got
burned really badly. Oh and she got nothing. She charged
twenty four thousand dollars and she got me two minor podcasts.
Oh it's brutal. And so I did fight and I
got some of them. I got about eight thousand back.

(42:50):
Good for you, But I could have fought more, but
I didn't. But there's no like them in weathermen. They
don't have to deliver. They don't have to deliver correctly.
There absolutely there is no obligation to deliver. And it
is the craziest thing when you think about it, that
anyone does it. But I will say this, so I
don't want to like slam independent publicists. But then I

(43:10):
was in a bind. This was, you know, a month
before the book came out, and so I'd fired her
and I got some of the money back, and then
I did go to another publicist and they got me
a slew of podcasts. I mean they got me a ton. Oh,
they were wonderful. And this is you know, forty a
I can promote them because they're really great and they
were very nice. They were not taking any clients and

(43:32):
they made an exception for because of my agent, and
it was just really they were wonderful and so.

Speaker 3 (43:37):
They got me a lot. But I will say that
what moved the needle.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
On the book in a visible way, in the way
that publishers view it was I was on MPR MPR's
one A, and I was on television. I was on
a local news show in Chicago, and those that the
biggest like barometric effect of like we could see the jump.
You know. The problem is so but to forty years credit,

(44:03):
they got me a ton of podcasts and that's evergreen
like that just it's perennial.

Speaker 3 (44:07):
It just keeps going.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
Who knows when someone's going to find a podcast exactly.
And so that is what I'm trying to tap into
on substack. And it's another kind of pet passion project
of mine, which is how can we help authors sell
their backlist to books?

Speaker 3 (44:23):
And Pathological is having a.

Speaker 1 (44:25):
Very long life. It is a perennial book it's not
dated in any way. Medical students are reading it now
and being asked.

Speaker 3 (44:32):
I've just asked to.

Speaker 1 (44:32):
Do grand rounds at a hospital, which means you go
and talk to doctors to tell them about your book experience.
And then plus, all my readers on substack are suddenly
finding pathological so it's having this really beautiful long life
and that's what I want to see more of and
being able to give authors that and maybe hopefully changing

(44:53):
the way publishing works.

Speaker 4 (45:00):
Let's talk about substack for a second. So you weren't
on substack when the book came out? Did you get
on right after?

Speaker 2 (45:07):
No?

Speaker 1 (45:07):
I was on it, so basically, you know, I ended
up on there just like so many writers, which is
that the marketer at HarperCollins said you have to start
a substack. So I went and started a substack. What
I was doing I just had a kind of premise
which was start with a question, and I would just
ask a question, then I would answer it.

Speaker 3 (45:26):
I asked it.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
And it was great.

Speaker 3 (45:29):
It was really good. I mean, I really.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
Enjoyed writing it. I came over with like a three
hundred person email list, and I think I did not
get one new subscriber the entire time I was on there.
This was pre notes that we just didn't grow in
the same way. But then my agent introduced me to
the head of writer relations at Substack. She sat down
with me kind of went through my substack, said, changes, changes, changes.

(45:52):
This is something they do when they usher big writers
and big names onto the platform. They kind of tell
them what works on the platform and what now. It's
nothing that they're hiding. It's not like private information, but
it is what I do with one to one clients,
which is it's just very different to have someone who
knows what works on the platform sit down with your substack,
look at your gifts, talents and expertise, and kind of

(46:14):
go through it and say, oh, what if you tried this,
this and this and so she did and I made
all the changes, and I grew by like two thousand
subscribers in six months. It was just incredible. Then I
started Substack writers at work because I went to them
and I said, can I teach this? I mean, I'm
a teacher, And I was like, can I share this
with people? And they said, of course, they would meet
with all of us individually. They're the coolest people and

(46:35):
the most wonderful people. So then I started substack Writers
at Work helping people on the platform and I love
doing it, and then started one to ones. They set
me up to do that, which was really great. I
would never have done it if they hadn't set me
up to do it. And then now it's just continuing
to snowball.

Speaker 4 (46:53):
And then Cured too, like then having that knowledge is
at how you were like, okay, I should just see
you this other project.

Speaker 1 (47:01):
Partly, I mean my part of my PhD was on
the serialized novel in the nineteenth century, so I'm a
big Dickens fan and i love the serialized form. So initially,
like you'll see on the URL substec Writers at Work
was originally I was just going to teach serialization and
then I realized, wait a second, this is really narrow
and I would love to just help people on the platform.

(47:24):
So I broadened it. But it started there's a lot
in my archive on serializing on substack, but then broadened
out and so yeah, So Cured came about because I
wrote it as a manuscript. HarperCollins had optioned my second book,
and so we went to them and they passed on it,
and so that happens often. Part of it was too

(47:46):
much like pathological was how they felt, and that's not
a bad thing. It was just that they felt like, Okay,
we didn't really know how to sell this book, and
so we're not gonna be able to sell this book either,
which is really great for them to say. So then
I thought, so Basically, my agent and I decided, and
my editor at HarperCollins was incredibly supportive and wonderful. They're

(48:07):
wonderful at HarperCollins. I have no complaints. It's more the
publishing industry that I feel like is kind of a mess.
But so they both were really encouraging about why don't
you serialize it on sub stack, so I did. My
idea was, Okay, we'll show proof of concept and then
we'll go sell it. So this past May was when
that was going to happen, like April May, and there's

(48:30):
been a turn and basically publishers are really wary about
publishing any mental health memoirs. So you'll still see memoirs
mental health memoirs coming out, but like right now, with
social media, mental health influencers and a lot of misinformation,
supposely people just aren't buying them. And so we did
not go out with Cured, which is kind of okay

(48:50):
with me actually, So now I'm just kind of moving
on to my next book and who knows, you know, again,
I was way ahead of the curve on Pathological, meaning
right now. I actually just watched like one episode of
a sitcom that just came out. It's called The English Teacher.

Speaker 4 (49:06):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Jordan Bryan Alvarez.

Speaker 3 (49:08):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:09):
And what's so funny about it is like they make
fun of the students giving themselves diagnoses, and that.

Speaker 2 (49:15):
Was like, I stand up about it.

Speaker 1 (49:17):
This is in the mainstream, like wait a second, and
I do feel that like we have just seen everything
I hoped to prevent has happened. Like I am the
Canary and the coal mine and no one listened to me,
which is now You've got kids on social media diagnosing themselves.
It's all like become. Diagnoses are in the hands of

(49:37):
the public. It was never meant to be like that.
They're very shaky, so only a professional should be doing them.
So I feel like Pathological is having its day, and
I actually just relaunched it. So I'm being publicity for
Pathological right now. It probably will forever because I don't
know that there should be something called the launch, and
so I feel like cured will be ready in like

(49:57):
three years.

Speaker 3 (49:58):
Because people don't want yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
Say that it's possible to recover, which is sort of
fascinating too.

Speaker 4 (50:03):
Can you give us like the broad idea of your
next book?

Speaker 1 (50:07):
Yeah, so my you know, and again I don't know
what this will be, but my mother sadly was diagnosed
with dementia, and so it's accelerating very quickly, and it's
just like her descent has been. I mean they say
this pretty much every once, is this about dementia and
Alzheimer's is gradually and then suddenly it has felt sudden

(50:28):
like it started in January and it is like falling
off a cliff. But it has been really fascinating. I mean,
she's a wonderful, brilliant woman, like my favorite person on earth.
She's still herself one hundred percent. But you know, now
we're like moving her into a care facility, and all
of that facility always sounds so bad.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
It's not that bad. It's a lovely home. It's a residence.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
It's like an apartment, but anyway where she can have care.
So anyway, so I was just very interested in kind
of this idea of curing, you know, like here we
were given this diagnosis, and is there any hope? And
I have been very much addicted to hope, and it's
very on and off for her, and so I'm.

Speaker 3 (51:06):
Like, I don't and then you know, it's not going
to be that bad, and then it is.

Speaker 1 (51:10):
And my sister's been like dark dismal, like this is
just going to get worse, and it is. But it's
been fascinating too because Alzheimer's. You know, my mother has
like the plaque decay and her brain. They showed it
to us. She has a stroke years ago. They can
show us the damage. But they were very careful and
they said, which is what I always wanted with mental
health diagnoses, which is they said, we've were giving her

(51:32):
the diagnosis of dementia. But you have to realize this
is not a firm diagnosis. We really don't have a
way of proving any of this right and me and
Alzheimer's too, you know, they said, we think the underlying
causes Alzheimer's, We do not know. We have no definitive tests.
There is supposedly a spinal test now, but my mom
does not want to get it, and there's gene work,

(51:54):
but there are people who can still get it without
the gene and et cetera. So yeah, but it's just
been fascinating that they were so careful because I said,
I'm really worried about her becoming this. I don't want
her to think of herself as someone with dementia, and
this was early on, and they were like, yeah, we
don't want her to either. That can be very, very debilitating,
which is exactly what happened to me with diagnoses and

(52:15):
me starting to identify with them. So, you know, I
think it's more of a you know, an essay or
a I don't know if it's a full length book really,
but this first year and how fundamental it's been in
terms of how are we going to deal with this
and what diagnosis are we going to go with and
all of that. But so that was what I was thinking,

(52:35):
but I'm really not sure. It's hard. I've never been
in a position where I didn't know what my next
book was, and now I really don't know what it is.

Speaker 2 (52:42):
Even if this doesn't wind up being it sounds like
it could definitely be a book, but like giving yourself
the like extra project of it as like a way
to research your hope or whatever.

Speaker 4 (52:54):
There's something beautiful to that too.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
It was going to be a history of hope. And
what's really fascinating is, I don't know if you've ever
seen Google and Graham. Have you ever played with that? Oh,
you can cancel your plans tonight, because that's what you'll love.

Speaker 3 (53:07):
It's so fun.

Speaker 1 (53:08):
So it's end like the letter and then Graham, it's
what Google. So in their corpus of books they have,
you know, millions and millions of books, they allow you
to search the frequency of a word usage, so how
popular a word has been over time, so you can
search them like eighteen hundred and two. I think twenty
twenty is the latest. I mean it's twenty twenty two

(53:29):
is the latest time. And it will show you like
what years people were using the word hope more or less,
or you can do Frankenstein like you can do any word.
And what's fascinating is hope just was used and used
and used, and then in two thousand and four it
just fell off. It was never used. And hopelessness too,
like no one used it. And it's really fascinating because

(53:52):
even for Obama's campaign, the Audacity of Hope campaign. It
didn't really come back into the vernacular, but it is
coming back because I've seen people. I've heard people using
it a lot since you know, Kamala's almost said inauguration.

Speaker 3 (54:07):
For nomination. I haven't got the inauguration yet.

Speaker 4 (54:12):
Hopefully, Oh my god, Okay, amazing. Well, I hope good
things for that. And please come back and talk to
me about that if when it happens, actually before we
do the final little run, I would love it. You

(54:32):
are the substack queen. You get into the nitty gritty.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
But what's some like more like big level philosophical stuff
about substack tips.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
See, that's what I love. Actually, So substack has completely
transformed me as a human, and it's transformed so many
of my clients, Like It's made me far less jealous
of other writers, It's made me more supportive, It's made
me just a better human. And I think because it's
such a supportive environment. So really being on substack as
this incredible personal growth, transformation opportunity. I know that sounds

(55:07):
woo woo, but I really I think it is just
incredible how much I've seen people grow and develop who
had so much insecurity and really felt like I'll never
you know, this is not for me. You know, I've
had I just had a client and one of her
posts just went viral, you know, and then she had
come on and she said, I'm a playwright, Like I don't,
you know, I'm a screenwriter. I don't know how to

(55:27):
do this. I'm not going to do it. It's never
going to work. And it took a year for her
to get her stride. So I think that's part of
it is give yourself time. Substack is a long game.
It is a long game, and that is a beautiful thing.
So I always think, you know, make substack your home,
make it you. That is the only trick is that
it's one hundred percent you. But the main thing is

(55:50):
really knowing you.

Speaker 3 (55:51):
Do have to focus. You just do.

Speaker 1 (55:54):
It's just much easier to grow. So so many people
just want to get on and write. That was what
I did, and it's really not very easy to grow
that way. So if you can have a focus of
some sort, now it doesn't necessarily have to be you know,
it doesn't have to be the genre you're writing in.
So it doesn't have to be journalism or health and
wellness or whatever it might be. It could be, but

(56:15):
it also might be a theme, or it might be
a mode like start with a question, like you have
to have something to root people in instead of just
throwing your writing out into the void.

Speaker 2 (56:27):
Like Courtney Substance.

Speaker 3 (56:29):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 (56:30):
I see so many of those where it's like, come on,
give me a name, just give me a name.

Speaker 3 (56:34):
To throw me a bone on this.

Speaker 1 (56:37):
Exactly, like and I always say that title, so it's
your about page, and I have a lot on this
on on substack writers at work. Your about page is
a rite of passage if you know what you're about
and you can articulate it to someone else, and you're
about page, your short description in your title, you're on
your way amazing.

Speaker 4 (56:55):
Do you have any bucket list writing goals?

Speaker 1 (56:58):
Well, yeah, so I'm you know, just again, I think
having my substack, so I'm giving more attention to my
author's substack and trying to have that really built. But
I've just been submitting more. So I've done I just
submitted an essay and working on a new essay. So
doing more freelance is basically more realistic, and maybe that's

(57:18):
okay for a while, even instead of putting the pressure
of a book on myself.

Speaker 4 (57:22):
Yeah, and I heard you say, you're like, forget the
other goals.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
I got a revenue goal.

Speaker 3 (57:28):
Yeah, Like that's.

Speaker 1 (57:29):
It is right now. I mean, because I was sick
for so long, I just did not say for my
old age and being with my mother and my father
and my stepmother. It is obnoxiously expensive to get old
in this country. It is seaful, it really is. I
cannot believe that people aren't outraged.

Speaker 2 (57:46):
I didn't know.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
I didn't realize, but you know, you're talking thirteen thousand
dollars a month for a nice place to live. That's outrageous.
That is unbelievable, and no one can afford that. So
either you have to stay in your home, which means
you have to stay healthy and you can't have anything
go wrong. And we're living a long time, and so
I am hardcore saving every penny I make goes to

(58:08):
my old age.

Speaker 3 (58:09):
Well.

Speaker 4 (58:09):
I love hearing writers say that they have like a
money goal, because sometimes we can get in the headspace
and that's like ghost sure, it's like no, it's not.

Speaker 2 (58:17):
It's like we need to.

Speaker 1 (58:19):
A little capitalist.

Speaker 3 (58:21):
What it is now? And what's so funny?

Speaker 1 (58:24):
Is I love it for other people more than I
love it for myself. I mean, it is weird. I
just have found this space where I get to other
people's success. It gives me so much joy I cannot
even tell you, and way more than my own, which
is I don't think there's anything like psychologically wrong with
me with that, but it is. It's just it's so

(58:45):
cool to watch people succeed, and I feel like part
of it is I just think I'm putting money in
the hands of really good, talented people. That's been my
experience across the board on some stack. Now, if it
were people I didn't believe in or I didn't you know,
but every person I've worked with has been a phenomenal
human And the idea of giving the money, like why

(59:05):
should Jeff Bezos have as much as he does? There's
this exactly that's given to other people.

Speaker 4 (59:11):
What's one piece of writing advice you wish you could
give your former self.

Speaker 1 (59:16):
I think it would be it would be the working
hard as hard. I worked really hard. That working as
hard as you are is going to pay off. And
you need the confidence too, like I was missing confidence.
Confidence as a writer is everything. I mean, there are
so many people and you can see it on substack too.

(59:36):
They are not tremendous writers. You do not have to
be a tremendous writer to communicate well and move people.
Theirs style and pretty sentences all for it, love it,
don't anybody get mad. But that is not actually going
to necessarily reach the most people. So I think that's
what I definitely would have said that, which is you've
got to have the confidence and you've got to have

(59:58):
more resilience. Like that is just everything. And I was
so sensitive and I was so waiting for someone to
come and sweep me up and do everything for me,
and it just like that doesn't happen.

Speaker 4 (01:00:09):
What's one tip for writers trying to get.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
A book published?

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
Get on substack?

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
Really, everyone's your agent or your editor is probably going
to tell you to get on anyway. But mailing lists
sell books more than social media does. So right now,
and this is just from my agent, is like, you know,
publishers just not impressed unless you have a million followers,
they're just not Social media does not convert anyway, because
not it doesn't convert anything anymore. And so having that

(01:00:39):
in mind is like, just don't waste time on social
media and substack is a great place to you know, again,
you can have your showing your chops, you can get
editors interested. There are agents on the platform all the time.
There are editors on the platform all the time, and
that's just a place for a writer to be right now.

Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
All time. Favorite piece of your own writing, pathological Pathological.

Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
Yeah, I think, I mean really, when I go deathbed moment,
it's like, Okay, I did my work on this plant.
I did, I did pathological, I did cured, I said
what needed to be said, and that that is my
deathbed consolation for sure.

Speaker 4 (01:01:19):
It's a wonderful, wonderful book.

Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:01:22):
How can listeners connect with you online?

Speaker 3 (01:01:25):
Substack?

Speaker 1 (01:01:29):
I've actually moved. My website is on substack. I am
not on any other social media platforms. And it is
wonderful to be centrally located. That is, by the way,
a marketing technique. So they either say be everywhere or
be one place. So I am one place and so
you can find me on substack. So if you want
to learn about substack, go to writers at work dot net.
And if you want to find my author stack, go

(01:01:51):
to cure Atthememoir dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The Bleeders.
Writing is so much better with friends. I'm your host,
Courtney Cosack, and hey, let's connect on social media. I
am at Courtney Cosak. Last name is Kocak. I am
on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, Blue Sky, all the places.

(01:02:14):
So find me there and make sure you're signed up
for The Bleeder's Companion substack for all kinds of newsletter exclusives.
There is a link to subscribe in the episode description.
I send out awesome stuff to my free subscribers, and
I also have a paid subscription where I take you
behind the scenes of all my best buylines. I've written
about my return to stand up comedy and how I

(01:02:36):
got ready to crush my first showcase, my MFA and
whether or not I think it is worth it. And
I also have some mini workshops behind the paywall. They're
freaking awesome. So again, there is a link for the
newsletter in the episode description. I encourage you to check
that out and join me again next week for an
all new episode. In the meantime, Happy Eating

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
H

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