From Blogger to Published Author: Laura Gaddis's Inspiring Journey.

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're tuned into the Writing Community Chat Show, the live
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screenwriters and more indie or established. This shows for the
community and we invite you to be a part of it.
Head to the Writing Community chatshow dot com for more info.
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Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hello and welcome to the Writing Community Chat Show here
on the Friday night. Thank you so much for joining me.
We're going to have a great conversation. If you're watching
this now, please stick around because we're going to have
some great questions and great discussion and if you could
share it around for us, that'd be great as well.
So as you can see, it's just me today, it's
my face on the screen, not for too long, because

(00:52):
I'm going to bring to Nex's guest on as quickly
as i can so we can have a real good
conversation about her book and all things writing. Is on
holiday at the moment, which is very nice for him.
He would obviously love to be here and commiserations. He
sends his apologies for not being here, but he's busy
putting a tent up in Whales, So good luck to you.

(01:13):
Doing that, and I'm sure you'll watch this back and
have a good chat with us. But hello to people watching,
Hello Anie, thank you very much for tuning in again.
Already talked a little bit about tonight's guest. It's going
to be a fantastic conversation. I'm guessing it's going to
be emotional in parts as well. And you know, on
this show, we love those moments where we dig deep

(01:34):
into mental health and perseverance and strength. So tonight's show
is definitely going to be no different on that front.
So I'm going to bring tonight's guest on so once
so I have to look at my own face for
this amount of time. But tonight's guest is a brilliant author,
a writer of a memoir as well, which we've not
had for a while. I love it when people talk

(01:56):
about their own lives and write about their own lives.
So Laura gaddis if she wrote a memoir called Mosaic,
and we're going to chat all about that tonight. So,
ladies and gentlemen, again, Chris would do a better intro,
but I'm not great at that. I'm good at questions,
So ladies and gentlemen, please join me. And welcome Laura

(02:17):
Gaddis to the show.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Hi, thank you very much.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Hello, thank you. Sorry about the introduction. As I've said,
the best of them, I have to run all the
technology and work all that out. It still baffles me
every time I try and do it by myself. But
thank you so much for joining us people in the comments. Obviously,
if you're watching this live with us, feel free to

(02:42):
stick around to the end where you get to ask
some questions about all things writing. Or maybe you struggling
with writing a memoir yourself, or you've got a great
story to tell and you want some really good advice,
or maybe you've had similar experiences to Laura and you
want advice in that group. But stick with us to
the end and you have the opportunity to ask those questions. So, Laura,

(03:04):
the first thing we do on the show, I'm going
to stick with Agret's little trend. He always asks where
in the world are you coming from, and what's the
writing scene like in that part of the world.

Speaker 4 (03:16):
Yeah, so I live in Ohio. It's the state of Ohio,
and the United States where I am actually is a
tiny kind of college town.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
So the writing scene in.

Speaker 4 (03:27):
My town is maybe not the most happen, although I
do try to create community classes. I do creative writing
for the community, just to give them because there are
a lot of writers here.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
There's just not a lot of opportunity.

Speaker 4 (03:37):
But we are close to Cincinnati, which is a much
more vibrant city with a lot more opportunities for literary
people and bookstores and such. So yeah, it's overall, it's.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Fine obviously get involved in the community in setting up
workshops and things for people to get involved in. How
does that impact your writing on the day to day see,
I know the people actively doing it does not help
your writing process at all.

Speaker 4 (04:04):
Law it does a lot, actually, So I work with
a lot of different writers and I think all of
it helps. So I also I teach at the university
here in our town. I teach a lot of composition classes,
but also creative writing, and also the semester i'm doing
a popular literature, we get to delve into one genre.
I picked post apocalyptic for some reason. And then I

(04:25):
work with the community so they write memoirs, they write
I have fantasy writers, I have sci fi writers, I
have graphic novelists. And then I do book coaching, which
again I get a variety and it's very inspiring actually,
and it makes specially when I teach my community classes.
I give them writing activities and I do them too,
and we do them together and we all chat and
I learn from all of them. It's actually pretty fantastic.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah, it does sound brilliant. Normally when we ask that question,
like what's the writing scene, like, you know, we don't
even though everyone comes on the show is an author, Normally,
we don't tend to get answers like that. Way. You're
working so much in partnership with others and helping others
and you know, reading each of us work and giving
advice and tips and guidance, so that must be really
fulfilling for you as well on a personal level.

Speaker 4 (05:10):
It is, it really is. And some of the classes
actually have evolved more into like a critique group. I've
had a kind of a core group of writers in
the community that are working on their own books and
they want to really like gelled within themselves and they
like talk. So it's been very very good opportunity for
me to see that and to learn from them because
they have ideas that I would never think of for sure.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
M Yeah, no, definitely, And how is teaching popular fiction
as well, like diving into that, you know, on the
day job, so to speak.

Speaker 4 (05:41):
Yeah, so that's going to be new for me. I'm
just kind of actually prepping that class now. But I
could have picked memoir. I didn't think that a bunch
of eighteen and nineteen year old college kids, but I
will enjoy memoir as much as I do. So that's
why I went with post apocalyptic kind of dystopian novels,
especially post COVID, seemed maybe like a topic that's fresh

(06:01):
for them. But I am going to really angle it,
even though it's a literature course, toward like the lens
of a writer and how we look at genre and
the genre conventions and what is in these books and
what maybe is bending the genre a little bit, and
have them try their hand at writing it as well.
So I thought that would be a fun, fun way
to take that class.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
Yeah, No, it sounds like a brilliant class that loads
people probably love to be involved in. What goes into
creating a class like that when you're thinking about the
construction of what it's going to look like.

Speaker 4 (06:32):
Yeah, so, I mean a lot of times there's you know,
especially with the university classes, and this one's pretty open ended,
but there's certain projects, certain kinds of writing that they
have to do, certain critical thinking skills that I have
to touch on. This literature course, though, is one of
the more open that one, and the creative writing that
I do, the intro to creve writing are probably the

(06:53):
most broad and open, and I can kind of play
with it as I like. So I really just like
to show them a rye of things. I'm throwing in
Sweet Tooth, which is a graphic novel, which was my
husband's recommendation. I'm not the graphic novel person of the house,
where that will How fun would it be to read
a bunch of, like, you know, three novels and then
read a graphic novel and compare those things.

Speaker 3 (07:14):
So yeah, there's a lot of flexibility. I think it'll
hopefully be fun.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
I'll see, Yeah, definitely. People in the comments are already
saying that sounds like a fun genre. And he also
says I've examined some memoirs in some of her classes,
and she her students tend to enjoy Trevorah's Born a Crime,
So yeah, an little memoir potentially for people to look at,
but as fascinating as the day job sounds, and I'm

(07:41):
sure those creative writing courses would be absolutely brilliant, and
the seminar that you've created sounds fantastic as well. But
we always start with the road to writing. So I'm
going to play a little video, and then we're going
to find out how writing became something in your life
and how you got to where you currently are. So
this is the first year, So Laura, if you can

(08:16):
take us back to that first memory that you have
of writing becoming something that you wanted to do and
how you took the journey to do it.

Speaker 4 (08:24):
Yeah, my journey, and this isn't I don't think unusual
for a lot of writers, but it wasn't a direct journey,
and I took a lot of detours different careers and.

Speaker 3 (08:33):
Now here I am.

Speaker 4 (08:35):
I remember liking English a lot as a kid, and
I remember taking classes like summer classes and just doing
like short story writing, and I always thought that was
a lot of fun. I actually still have some of
those little books I made as a kid playing around
even in high school. I was very good at English
and language in particular and playing with words and stuff.

Speaker 3 (08:55):
But I also really liked psychology.

Speaker 4 (08:57):
So when I got to college, I actually majored in
psychology and Spanish, and I tried English. I had one
English class just to be sure, and I loved it,
but I was like, psychology is more practical.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
I'm going to do that. So I went on to
finish that.

Speaker 4 (09:11):
I got a master's in clinical psychology, and I worked
in the field for fourteen years and various things. I
did work in special at high school, I worked in
hospitalization programs with children, I was a licensed therapist, and
I think I did neuropsych testing. And I got to
a point where two things happened. I guess One, I

(09:31):
got a little burnt out. Psychology is a tough field.
I love it. I think it's fascinating. It plays a
big role in my book now. But it's hard.

Speaker 3 (09:40):
It's a really tough field to be in. And two,
we moved.

Speaker 4 (09:43):
That's when we moved here for my husband to take
his job at the university, and I had to leave
my job, and I was kind of at a crossroads,
and I'm like, well, this might be an opportunity to
go back to that writing thing that I really liked.
And they have a great MFA program at the university here,
and I took me a ca years to get in,
but I got in, and that's really where I just
kind of went full full time with the writing and

(10:06):
the teaching writing, and I haven't really looked back.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah, So what was it like then, obviously going from
writing short stories as a kid and enjoying, you know,
creative fiction in that sense, to then going, do you
know what, I'm going to study this. I'm going to
make it something that I'm going to do as a
career and a choice as an adult. What were the
differences and challenges that you faced it doing those things.

Speaker 4 (10:32):
It's definitely very challenging to make it a career because
unlike psychology, it was that was a little bit more
of like a clear career path, you know, right like
you graduate, even undergrad there are things you can do.
And then I thought, okay, now I'm gonna go to
grad school. And then there were jobs that you know,
I can get the licensure, and it was very clear,
this is not clear. I'm still unclear about what I'm doing.

(10:52):
Half the time, I'm trying to piece it together. That's
why I feel like I have about five jobs at
the same time. Teaching in various places and write and whatnot.
But it's you know, it also just evolved from the
fiction stories to nonfiction because while I was working in psychology,
I also blogged a lot. When blogging, I don't know
blogging still a thing, but maybe back in twenty ten

(11:16):
or so, I started a blog and that's actually when
this book Mosaic begins, Like in a way, there's there's
times where it starts in there that's elements of that
got pulled in.

Speaker 3 (11:28):
So that's when I started.

Speaker 4 (11:29):
Writing more nonfiction and people were responding very positively to
the blog, and I didn't expect that was the first
time I shared my writing and it snowballed from there
into the book.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
Do you think the blog in process and really helped
you in terms of giving you the encouragement that you
needed to sort of find your feet in writing? And
I know this is something that a lot of authors
talk about in terms of finding that voice. You think
that helped you grow into the writer that you are
today and the eventual finished book, Oh for sure.

Speaker 4 (11:59):
Yeah. It gave me a platform that was totally open
and the fact that you know, it was kind of
one of the newer things in the time in twenty ten,
where you could share your work pretty easily with a
pretty big audience. Social media was starting to pick up,
so I'd put it on Facebook at the time, and
I was gaining a lot of readers in a pretty

(12:20):
easy way, very little oversight. And yeah, it really gave
me a chance to work on especially writing short pieces,
short complete pieces, right, and something that made sense to
other people. And it wasn't just my own diary that
was hidden away. I had to write it for other people.
And I did that for many years, and I do
think it helped me formulate especially the format that I wrote.

(12:42):
Mosaic is kind of still in that mode of these
small essays all put together. So yeah, definitely that I
think that skill developed during that time.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
Take us back if you can in terms of going
through that process, because I can imagine I've done a
little tiny bit of blog writing in the past. Book Normally,
you're taking the thing that's happened to you in the
experience that you've had, you're thinking about it. Obviously you've
got your academic background as well in terms of psychology,
and maybe you're analyzing that a little bit. But then
you have to take that experience and maybe package is

(13:16):
the wrong word, but you are trying to make it
universal to as many people as possible, So you're removing
that sort of a layer of personality there because you're
trying to appeal to more people in your write. So
what's that like in terms of when you when you go, oh,
I've got an idea for this, I'm going to write
about this. I think it will resonate with people, think

(13:37):
they'll enjoy reading about it and get something from it,
but then actually craft in that what's that process like?

Speaker 4 (13:46):
Yeah, that's a really great distinction I guess between journaling
and blogging and an actual memoir and what memoir should
be doing versus what journaling and blogging often does, which
is just kind of saying this thing happened to me,
whereas you want to turn it outward and include the reader.
You want the reader to feel like they can see

(14:07):
a bit of themselves in your story, even though they
don't even know who you are. So it probably took
me a while to figure out how to do that,
especially when a lot of things I've wrote were soon
after the events happened, the emotions were still raw, like
without that space and time to reflect back. I think
it's a lot harder to write in a way that

(14:28):
you can turn that outward and make other people see
themselves in it. But yeah, I do think maybe over
time i've kind of I thought a lot about that.

Speaker 3 (14:39):
Going through the MFA.

Speaker 4 (14:40):
Program definitely helped. I mean I did, and a lot
of writers have this story as well. But I did
write a full memoir manuscript years before Mosaic came out,
and it never got published. One essay of is actually
in Mosaic right now because I couldn't let it go.
I just loved it. But I think that was maybe
part of that problem of that book was that it.

Speaker 3 (15:00):
Was too turned into me and.

Speaker 4 (15:03):
Not outward enough, And I had to learn how to
use form and metaphor and even incorporate other statistical things
and facts and stories I heard about other people and
incorporate that into my story in a seamless way so
it didn't feel disjointed. But that allowed the reader to
be like, oh, this isn't just about her, this is

(15:24):
about people, because a lot of people deal with a
lot of the issues in my book.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
M Yeah, and we do have the second part of
the show, which is what's the story. It's very hard
to talk about without bringing up some of the themes and
the topics and stuff. I suppose the question linked to it,
like what when you started out right in the blog,

(15:49):
what do you think you're trying to and again, achieve
is probably not the right word, but what were you
doing in terms of like why did you take that
step into a public forum to share the experiences that
you'd had, and why did you decide to do it
in the written format what you know, as opposed to
you know, going to speak to people or setting up groups,

(16:10):
because obviously you've mentioned about setting up community groups to writers,
and you could have quite easily done that in a
sort of public space where you were talking to people,
So why did you make that decision and what was
that like?

Speaker 4 (16:22):
So at the time I would say I was not
great at speaking to groups or speaking like I you know,
just a lot of anxiety and stuff, and especially being
a teacher that that kind of kills it and you
start just to get used to it normalizes presenting and
speaking to people and such. So I'm much better now
than I was back in twenty ten when I started

(16:43):
the blog. And again I think language just always came easy,
and written language came easy to me playing with words
and putting it on a page. It even formulating like
a blog post. I never thought that hard about how
to have a beginning, middle end, how to tell a story,
and so I think it was just an easy way

(17:04):
for me to do that. It felt natural. So that
was kind of my entry point why I started blogging
at all, though I think it is actually kind of fascinating.
I keep thinking about this to myself. I didn't want
to forget for myself. I didn't want to forget the
things because when you go through trauma, you go through
difficult times. In the moment, it's very real and visceral,
and then over time it fades. You know, memory is

(17:25):
faulty and it disappears, and I didn't want to lose that.
So I'm like, I'm going to start writing these things
as memories come to me and things that happened a
week ago. I'm going to document it and then it'll
always be there. And I think it's actually my husband
that recommended when I told them that that I turn
it into a blog. He's like, well, maybe other people
might like it. And that didn't bother me at all,

(17:47):
Like to share my writing didn't bother me at all.
It still doesn't. People always ask, well, how do you
write memoir? How do you share such personal things? And
that's not a scary thing to me and I don't
never has been, So I think that's how it all
came to be. Like I was a writer at heart,
and I wanted to document everything and I didn't mind sharing.

Speaker 3 (18:05):
So that kind of blends itself well to a blog.

Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah, No, definitely. I mean it's incredibly brave and powerful
thing to do in terms of, you know, writing a memoir.
As we've said before, we've not had many people on
that have done that, and I think one of the
reasons for that is a lot of people are not
so willing to share some of their most traumatic experiences
in their life on a page, even though you've kind

(18:30):
of got that layer of being removed from it because
you've you know, you've written it on the page, and
I'm guessing when I've done it before, you can you
can kind of just you write it, you're happy with it,
and then you send it off and you kind of
forget about it, even though people are coming to it
and they're reading it and maybe they comment on it
and things like that. So I suppose the question now

(18:53):
that I'm trying to get to is how did you
know that you were brave enough to be writing about
the trauma in your life and sharing that with other people?
And what was that like?

Speaker 4 (19:09):
Yeah, that's an interesting question, and I don't know if
I have the best answer for it. Because when I
teach just memoir classes, especially in the community, and we
have discussions.

Speaker 3 (19:18):
About this, I have I can see it in my students.

Speaker 4 (19:23):
I can see the ones who are not afraid to
just put it on the page, and they have stories
that are horrifying to me, you know, And I think
people read mine and I've been told that people have
cried all the way through my book, and that wasn't
my intent. But but I mean, if you make people
feel something, I think you've done memoir right. And so
I know, I can see the writers in my class

(19:43):
who have that ability, even if the story sounds just
awful trauma, abuse in their childhood, whatever it might be.
And then you know, then I have writers sometimes that
get the story up, but it doesn't have that magic
element of you really put it out there. And I
don't know how to tell people how to do that.
I think it's just either it's in you and it's not.

(20:05):
It doesn't scare you to put it out there, and
it doesn't bother me what people think about me, because
it's just my life. You can have whatever opinion you like,
doesn't change anything. But I know it's helping a lot
of people, and I somehow all of that in my
brain just makes it okay.

Speaker 3 (20:22):
And I understand. I mean, I teach a lot of fiction,
especially people who write fantasy.

Speaker 4 (20:25):
I feel like they really like to be removed, They
want to be in a different world. They write about themselves.
I see them echoed in their stories, but it's in
a very different way.

Speaker 3 (20:36):
That's almost like a weird distortion of their life.

Speaker 4 (20:39):
So they're still processing things, but it's not on the
page for everyone to know.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
From your professional background, did you ever sort of, like
obviously working in psychology and looking at how people would
have gone through trauma from an academic point of view
rather than your own personal life, did that ever factor
into writing at all? When you when you you said
your husband gave you the idea potentially for the blog
to start doing it that way, But did you ever

(21:09):
think when you came to sort of writing about the
events that had happened in your life that there was
a reason maybe was it a cathartic element in terms
of being able to write about those things? And did
you think about that from an academic sort of psychological
point of view, And yeah, did that factor in any point?

Speaker 3 (21:27):
I think it absolutely does.

Speaker 4 (21:29):
I mean, there's a lot of ways that people process
or don't process trauma, right and grief specifically, I think
processing grief, and I think writing for me was one
was maybe the main way. I mean, I went to
therapy and I did all the more traditional things, but
writing is a way to process events that happen in

(21:49):
our world, and the better, I mean, I think I
always try to quote Joan Diddyon and I do a
terrible job, But she says like I write to better
understand the world around me when I see what I hear,
and I agree with that.

Speaker 3 (22:01):
It's when I write stuff. By the time I get
to the.

Speaker 4 (22:04):
End, and I don't always know why I'm writing the
things I start off writing, but I end with some
sort of understanding that I didn't have before I wrote it.
And I don't think without writing, I would ever come
to that. And that's not for everybody, of course, but
I do think it is in that way cathartic. I
know a lot of people say writing memoir is like therapy,

(22:25):
which I mean at a personal experience, and after being
a therapist, I would disagree. I mean, there's, like, you know,
there's certain things about therapy. There are certain trained elements
of therapy. That's just not in writing, but the very
personal process of especially spending time with a book where
you spend I mean, it took me a couple of
years to write this book, and then it took a

(22:47):
couple more years of edits and rereading, and you spend
so much time on it that it does start to
become part of your story and it helps you understand.

Speaker 3 (22:55):
And that's I.

Speaker 4 (22:57):
Mean, I think you asked a part of the question
was knowing that I put it on the page, and
maybe I don't think about it as much.

Speaker 3 (23:02):
That's true.

Speaker 4 (23:03):
I mean, other people are reading it and crying and
I'm I'm over here just doing my thing, like writing
the next book. But because I think I've had my
time to process and and be like, oh wow, that
really was you know, it was a terrible time in
my life, but look how great I am now.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
And yeah, I think that's that's a cool thing about Memore.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
Yeah, I think I feel like it's almost the perfect
point to move on to the second part of the show,
which is what's the story. Normally, what we ask people
to do is give us the elevator pitch, or you
can read the back of the blurb or anything like
that if you want to. So I'll play that video
in a minute. But I'm just gonna ask one more
question in terms of, like, from your opinion, what do

(23:47):
you think is the perfect amount of time in order
to be able to reflect on a traumatic event, Because
you know, you might say, in order to capture the
event in its most southentic moment right in or at
least taking notes or whatever. Maybe it's a diary form
and taking examples from that moment is probably the best

(24:14):
way to sort of showcase that moment. But obviously it's
also the hardest thing to do in terms of reflect
on the trauma as you are going through the trauma,
so to speak. So how do you know when enough
times passed for you to be able to reflect and
then to be able to sort of analyze it and
digest it and then be able to write about it.

Speaker 4 (24:37):
Yeah, I think so that answer, I would guess is
very personal for every writer, and everyone has their own
answer to that. For me, I think, so a couple
things that you brought up I think are really good points.
For one, it does help to write things down closer
to the time of whatever event it is in your
life that you want to write about. And so a
lot of people do keep diaries and journals and those

(25:00):
great records for later on if you want to pull
those out and use them to remind yourself of details
and specifics that you would otherwise forget. So my blog
served as that the first manuscript that I wrote that
it really was I think I wrote it probably a
couple of years after you know I started the blog.
I had all that as like documentation almost for when

(25:22):
I went back to write Mosaic, I'm like, okay, I
can go back and if I don't remember what happened
in the you know this moment, I can go read
about it. So I do think that's helpful to have
kind of both, because I do think to get the
emotion across and not be too.

Speaker 3 (25:39):
Distant from our own writing.

Speaker 4 (25:41):
It does help to have time, and how much time
I think really depends on the type of trauma and
the person doing the writing for me. It was probably
a couple of years and then I felt like I
could really start writing pieces. I wrote pieces for different
websites like parenting websites like Scary Mommy, and The Mighty
does a lot of mental health pieces. That's when I

(26:01):
started writing those that I was still working in psychology
at the time, and I was starting to get my
feet wet, like kind of moving beyond the blog.

Speaker 3 (26:07):
But that's when I.

Speaker 4 (26:08):
Could really start telling my story and not feel so
sad or overcome with emotion that I could I could
write it as just a writer and not you know,
get too entrenched in it. But yeah, it definitely helps
to have notes or things documented somewhere because, yeah, memory,
memory fades and it can make it harder to reconstruct later.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
Yeah, And I'm guessing obviously, most people that end up
writing a memoir, they're probably not thinking, oh, at some
point in my life, I'm going to write a memoir.
They have to go through experiences that they feel other
people will learn from and gain a benefit from reading about.
So I'm guessing a lot of people I'm not thinking, oh,
this is a really roun thing that's happening to me.

(26:52):
I'm going to write a memoir about it, REvil. As
you've said, taking you know, a diary or a journal
you know is going to be a good thing for
your mental health in terms of getting it on the
page anyway. And then yeah, later down the line, if
like yourself, you've got that love for writing that does
come out and you can potentially turn your experience into

(27:13):
a mammo, then yeah, you've got some notes to go off.
And like I said about that level of authenticity, if
you're trying to think back to something without any notes,
it would be quite difficult to capture everything because you're
probably going to forget things because of the trauma and
the experience that you're going through. And yeah, you would
have key pinpoints, but having notes would definitely help. So yeah,

(27:37):
massive benefits there. But we're going to go on to
what's the story now? So I'm going to play a
little video, and then when we get back from that,
if you could give us the elevator pitch from that
would be really really good. I'll play this little video,
which is what's the story?

Speaker 3 (28:05):
All right?

Speaker 4 (28:05):
So Mosaic is on the surface a story of about
five or so years of my life starting with the
loss of my first.

Speaker 3 (28:15):
Daughter when I was twenty weeks pregnant.

Speaker 4 (28:18):
There were two more losses and then my fourth pregnancy,
ending in my daughter, Evelyn, who's now ten years old
in fifth grade. She was born two months early and
she she has a jut condition that causes low muscle tone.
And so it's about becoming a mother through all of that,
and then ending up being a mother but in a

(28:38):
way that was not expected.

Speaker 3 (28:40):
And challenging, and how I navigated all of that.

Speaker 4 (28:43):
It's also a story that incorporates my own mental health
throughout that and kind of exploring generalized anxiety disorder and
how that manifested through those years. It also explores relationships
with family members, especially my mother, and how that influenced
me being a mother and how our relationship changed over

(29:04):
the years watching her become a grandmother.

Speaker 3 (29:07):
So that's the surface. I think. At its heart, I
would say.

Speaker 4 (29:10):
Mosaic is about grief and loss and resilience and finding
hope by moving through things, by processing grief and moving
through to get to the next stage of life.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
Yeah, people say in the comments, it sounds really engaging.
Just when you were saying obviously with the description there
there's so many factors to it. I mean, I feel
like people could write a memoir just on the relationship
with their parents, or you know, a memoir based around
their mental health, and obviously when you look in at
trauma as well, and that could have been a book

(29:46):
in itself. So what made you bring all those pieces
together in one place.

Speaker 4 (29:54):
It was not intentional at first.

Speaker 3 (29:56):
Actually it was my first thought.

Speaker 4 (29:59):
So I had to come up with a thesis project
idea for my graduate program. And my thought was to
actually only write about my daughter Evelyn, because that it
was a difficult pregnancy with her, even though it ended,
you know, well, having a premature baby was difficult. She
was in the NIKU for five weeks learning about her condition,
which is pretty rare, and it kind of blindsided us

(30:22):
a little bit, and how to deal with that were
still it's a lifelong thing that we're still learning how
to help treat and help her along. That was my
initial idea and somehow, and I always tell my students
this too, in wonder what kind of book you're writing.
No matter how much you plan, I think you need
to leave avenues open for things that want to be
in your book. That you didn't think about. So as

(30:43):
I was writing, I said, well, I can't really write
about just my fourth pregnancy and Evelyn without talking about
what happened to me before, especially because our first baby
that passed away. We don't know for certain, but I'm
pretty sure she had the same condition that Evelyn had,
so it's something genetic, and the second and third losses

(31:03):
were early enough, but it could have also been the
same genetic thing. So there was that tie, like I
can't tell her story without telling the rest.

Speaker 3 (31:11):
The mental health piece too.

Speaker 4 (31:13):
I felt like I had to write about how that
was all impacting me, because obviously having high anxiety. I mean,
I've always been on a high anxiety kind of person,
but going through something like that doesn't help at all,
especially dealing with the medical establishment. It was very difficult
being a pregnant woman under very intense scrutiny all the time,

(31:38):
especially after you have one loss, and then you have
a second loss and a third loss, and they just
it became very oppressive and very overwhelming. So I couldn't
not write about my anxiety. And then I started noticing
there were elements about my own childhood that were kind
of mirrored in me being a parent to Evelyn once

(31:58):
she was born, and some of her experience with the
doctors and how I had different things. I was born
with scoliosis and so I had a lot of orthopedic
doctor visits, and I had a spinal surgery, and there
were things about that that mirrored things with Evelyn and
the surgeries she's had, and she has an orthopedic surgeon.
So I felt like I started writing the parallels there.

(32:19):
So that led to me writing more about my mom
and like, Okay, how did she and I interact when
I was a kid, And how do I interact with
my daughter? And how does she interact with my daughter?
And it became complex, which was a challenge for sure
to get the book cohesive enough to make sense to
another person. But I love the complexity of it because

(32:41):
I think it shows that it's not just about pregnancy loss.
It's not just Okay, I lost some pregnancies and I
went through some hard times, but it's okay, it's no
these difficult things happened. I also dealt with a lot
of anxiety, and it changed how I interacted with people
in my world. And I think those things are so
ubiquitous that I couldn't not and they were so innertwmed

(33:05):
that I couldn't not include them all. That's how it
kind of became mosaic. It was like all these pieces
coming together.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
M M, yeah, I love that. Yeah, And he says
in the common same anxiety here off the charts, women
in a gas lit and then a let of people
read that themselves. But yeah, so I suppose on the
back of that, obviously with you mentioning about your own
anxiety before obviously these traumatic events are happening as well

(33:35):
in your life and obviously before you reflecting back on them,
and how big a part did that play when you
were going through the actual experiences themselves. And could you
feel that getting worse? I say worse? You know, is
one anxiety sort of moment worse than another. I'm not

(33:56):
too sure, but in terms of like, you know, could
you feel that increase in over time and how did
yourself navigate that when you were in the moment.

Speaker 4 (34:06):
Yeah, Oh, it absolutely got worse. And I think so
these pregnancies happened pretty close together. I mean, there's four
pregnancies in five years. So in the first one we
were completely blindsided that there was anything wrong with the baby.
Until my sixteen week ultrasound, we thought everything was fine,

(34:26):
and then within two weeks she was gone. So that
that's a whole that's maybe the trauma that kicked off
everything and was very shocking to us. After that, just
the scrutiny that I talked about that they put me
under because of that first loss. Then I had to
go in for a lot of extra appointments, a lot
of extra blood work and testing, and every time you go,

(34:49):
you think, oh my, is this going to be the
time that there's no heart beat? Is this going to
be the time there's no harp? And when you have
that going in your head, that drives the anxiety. So
that happened through the second pregnancy, that happened through the
third pregnancy, got to the fourth pregnancy and they were like, okay,
now we're going to monitor you for more things and
pre term labor, and they it was off the charts
with what the and I know, the medical establishment is

(35:10):
doing what they know how to do and they're putting,
you know, every test they know, and they're trying to
monitor everything. But for someone, for anyone, that would be
too much, and for someone like me who has a
hard time not ruminating and thinking back and living in
the past and the present and wondering what's going to
happen next, and wonder if I could have done something better.
It drove me to a point where I actually stopped

(35:35):
going to some of the appointments. We got to a
point where so we were seeing regular doctors and the
high risk maternal feel medicine doctors, and I said, I
cannot do both anymore.

Speaker 3 (35:45):
Whatever it is it is, we'll deal with that at
the end.

Speaker 4 (35:49):
But for my own like I would have almost panic
before going to appointments, My mother in law had to
come to an appointment with me, what's because I couldn't
there to do another ultrasound to find out what was
going to be wrong next or what they thought was
be wrong, because there were things they thought were wrong
that we're fine. So definitely, it ramped up to the
point where I said, that's enough, We're going to deal

(36:09):
with it as it comes. And that was maybe a
saving moment for me. That Unfortunately, because she was born early,
that was only maybe a couple months worth of time
where I had some peace where I was like, I
will be a regular pregnant woman.

Speaker 3 (36:21):
I go every you.

Speaker 4 (36:22):
Know, however many weeks you want me to come, but
I'm not doing all the extra blood work and the tests,
and that that was I think critical for me because
I thought I was going to lose it at some point.

Speaker 3 (36:33):
It was it was too much.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
Yeah, No, I mean it definitely sounds like it. Yeah,
I mean the incredible level of resilience that you're talking
about here in terms of obviously having one real significant
trauma and then you know, having to go through that
multiple times with you know, as you said, you know,

(36:56):
multiple pregnancies within a five year period, and then a
heightened level of appointment and observation and things like that.
Do you know how you got through those moments? And
obviously do you explore that explicitly in the book?

Speaker 4 (37:12):
I don't know if I ever explicitly explore that. I
do include moments of the certain doctor's appointments, the ones
that were really pinnacle and memorable for me. There's actually
two doctors and the two two like the high risk
one was a cardiologist and one was a high risk doctor,
and I kind of pin them against each other because

(37:34):
the high risk doctor was terrible. After that appointment that
I document in the book, I never saw him again because.

Speaker 3 (37:40):
I just couldn't. I couldn't do it.

Speaker 4 (37:43):
But yeah, and then the cardiologists came in and said, no,
her heart's fine, what do you worry about. So there
were moments like that that I do document those appointments,
and I think, so someone with like super high functioning anxiety,
I get through a lot. I can do a lot
of things. People don't realize I have anxiety.

Speaker 3 (38:00):
Most of the time.

Speaker 4 (38:01):
I look calm, I sound calm, but inside I can
be panicked. I think I would just kind of go
in and like a fog and just say I'm just good.

Speaker 3 (38:09):
I just gotta do it. I just got to get
through it.

Speaker 4 (38:11):
I'm gonna sit here, I'm gonna let them do what
they gotta do, and I'm gonna get out of here.
And but you can do that so many times, and
then it starts to break down to the point where
I would be in tears and I just couldn't go anymore. So, yeah,
I don't think too many of the sid I think
two of those appointments are in the book most of
the time, though, I think it's more about.

Speaker 3 (38:31):
The in between stuff.

Speaker 4 (38:32):
And then it moves on to the third part of
the book onto my daughter really and when she was
born early and what we had to do in the NICKU,
because that was a whole other new experience that we
were not anticipating having a five week hospital state with
her at all. So then everything shifted to her and
her medical needs and what was going on with that,
which is another kind of parental nightmare in a way,

(38:55):
but at least it was off of me, because I
think that was Yeah, that was that was intense, for sure.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
Yeah, No, definitely. Obviously you've talked about your daughter and
your relationship with your moment, how that developed or has
probably still developed, And how was it with you with
your partner in those moments when you were trying to
move forward but also still very much in pain from

(39:25):
the past, and what did you do to help each
other's sort of mental health in that space?

Speaker 4 (39:30):
Yeah, I mean, so we worked very well together. We've
just always been kind of a perfect match. I think
there is an I write an essay in here called
the Odds, and in it I wanted to explore because
I knew that we had gotten through four losses, including
a baby that was born alive and died and a

(39:50):
child who was born prematurely and we didn't know what
was happening. Those are heavy things for couples to get through,
and so I wanted to know more about how many
couples actually survived things like this and how many end
up breaking up. And you know, it's very common for
couples not to stay together. And I think somehow the
way we play off each other and the way we

(40:13):
can support each other when the other one's breaking.

Speaker 3 (40:15):
Down just always works.

Speaker 4 (40:17):
And we did a year of therapy together because I
told him, I think I need to just talk to someone,
and he wanted to go along, so we did. We
worked that out together, and we could understand where each
of us was coming from. We didn't There was never
any blame or criticism between the two of us that
anyone could have done anything different or you know, it's

(40:39):
we always respected each other and respected the process, and
I think we both took the time to grieve and
it just worked, which is fantastic because a lot of
the appointments. And if he wrote a memoir, I tell
him he should write a memoir about this time because
I would love to know his perspective on this, because
he's in He shows up in the book. But obviously
it's from my perspective of how I see him, but

(41:01):
I'm sure inside he was also dying to a degree
to be the person watching all this and there's nothing
you can do. But he was always the one there
for me. He was always the one that took me
when I needed to go and if I need to
get to the hospital, and he would listen to the information.
He's a mathematician, so he's very analytical and he can
take in information and dispense it.

Speaker 3 (41:22):
And he was.

Speaker 4 (41:23):
Kind of that into it for me, like or condu
it maybe it's a better word, like between Especially if
I was emotionally distraught, I think he could take it in.
He could kind of detach from that to take in
the stuff and help us work through it, which I
know not everybody has that, and so I feel very
fortunate that we have that dynamic and that it worked.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
Yeah, and he says, oh, that's so sweet, mister, And
you and I feel the same about one brilliant. I mean,
even just listening to it that I feel like, like
you said, a lot of cripples wouldn't survive experiences that
you've been through. And again maybe there's I know you've
written a memoir, but maybe there's a book for couples
out there, because you know, if you've clearly got that relationship.

(42:12):
I know it's difficult sometimes to pick a relationship that
just works and pick it apart and go, well, why
does this just work? But yeah, maybe that's something that
you could do together in the future. And like you said,
hearing his side of things and his perspective would be
great because again I don't think there's many books out
there that are about these experiences but from the male
perspective as well. And obviously everyone would be going through

(42:37):
this as a pair anyway. And like you said, a
lot of reasons readers have reached out to you and
said about their experiences, and I should imagine, yeah, you've
got both sides of the coin there, So yeah, maybe
push him a little bit more.

Speaker 4 (42:54):
He used to be a writer before his math career.
He was under writing and journalism and such. So I'll
keep I'll keep trying.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
Yeah, So we've got about fifteen minutes left of the show,
which is normally when we go into the community questions time.
So if you're watching now, send your questions in for
Laura and I'll try and get through as many as
we possibly can. But I'm just going to play a
little video which is communic questions, So we'll just wait

(43:38):
for some questions to pop in, but we will ask
some of the staple questions that we ask on the show.
So one of the first ones is if you could
take any character for fiction and make that character your own.
Maybe if you could write the memoir for a fictional
character to switch it up a little bit, which character
would you pick and why what would you do with them?

(44:01):
You know?

Speaker 4 (44:01):
So I was thinking about this, and I've been reading
a lot of fiction lately because the book I'm writing
right now is fiction, and I tend to read the
genre that i'm writing in, and so I just read
The Midnight Library I'm Matt Haig, which is a great book,
and the Librarian, Miss Louise Elm was a fascinating character.
And I don't want to spoil anything people haven't read it,

(44:22):
because I think I think people should go out and
read it. But she was fascinating to me because she
played kind of a dual role, right. She was like
and she was very symbolic to the main character. She
was kind of the foil to like the main character,
and she was always the person kind of pushing the
main character through the whole book. But there was both
the real miss Elm and then like this, we don't

(44:43):
know miss Olm. Look, maybe an imaginary miss Ole, maybe
a different realm miss Elm. And so I really like
that concept. I would maybe pick someone like her. And
now the idea of writing her memoir would be fascinating too,
because she was complex, but I think think not drawn
out in that in the book because it wasn't the

(45:04):
book wasn't about her per se. But she would be
fun because I think she had a lot of So
she was the school librarian for this this main character
when the character was a child, but she also had
her own issues with her home life. So it's like
she was really supportive to the kids at school, but
then she had like this background, this mysterious background where
she didn't know, like I guess her family kind of

(45:26):
disowned her and didn't like her. And I was very
curious about that. So maybe maybe her memoir would be fascinating.

Speaker 2 (45:32):
Yeah, definitely would. I love when you get side characters
and your brain, the right brain just goes off and
you think, oh, what's that backstory like? And yeah, I
can't remember, Hagel, let you do that. So Anya's got
a question. She says, what is your favorite post apocalypse book?

Speaker 4 (45:51):
Well, another good question because I'm reading a lot of
them now to prep for my class. I just read
Station eleven, which I am Saint John Mandel. That was
fabulous and I was impressed with so just I'm finding
post apocalypse. Mean, obviously post apocalypse always kind of the
same story, right, some big thing happens, most people die,

(46:14):
and then you end up with these cultures of groups
of people trying to survive. But somehow in Station eleven,
she really played with the storyline and weaving together, which
I think I'm fascinated with, which is why I tried
to I like to write stories that thread line there
storylines together.

Speaker 3 (46:32):
So she has different characters, different.

Speaker 4 (46:33):
Storylines, different times before the virus came and after the
virus came, and so that might have been my favorite
one that I've read. But I've read some really good.
I mean The Road by Cornwick McCarthy's always classic and
that's good. The Crossing by Jason Mott is another good
one that I'll be teaching.

Speaker 3 (46:50):
So but yeah, Station eleven was really good.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
Yeah, it's a good show. Yeah, and you did say
a great book. Loved the HP, So yeah, it's good
when you're a teacher and you can get a TV
adaptation of something as well for kids to yea, get
into a little bit some some modern students, I say
something maybe sound really old, but they like to be

(47:17):
able to see it on the screen. But yeah. The
next question that we have is if you could take
the ending to any fictional story, what would you change
and why?

Speaker 3 (47:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (47:31):
So this one's hard for me because I tend to
not dislike endings. I know there's a lot of people
who don't like endings to books or movies or TV
series and they get all upset. I was talking to
my husband about Lost, and we'll get this is maybe
dating me a little bit lost his fears back.

Speaker 3 (47:47):
But people were so enraged by how Lost ended, and
I was fine with it.

Speaker 4 (47:53):
I think maybe though, because I here's the thing. As
a writer and a writing teacher, I think a lot
about beginnings and endings, and I can hell, by the
time we are consumers of books and movies and TV shows,
those writers have also given a lot of thought to
beginnings and endings, and I think some viewers want a
neatly wrapped up ending, and I'm just used to that's

(48:14):
just not how it goes.

Speaker 3 (48:16):
So I'm okay with that.

Speaker 4 (48:19):
I think what I have more issue with, maybe is
when they take books and try to make them into movies.
If I can, if I can change your question a
little bit, I mean to me, that's where I feel opinionated.
Like I read, I like Gone Girl. I like the
book a lot, and then the movie was like, well,
didn't quite achieve what the book did to me. That's where,

(48:42):
like I think things don't quite translate well. But endings,
I'm generally Seinfeld. Seinfeld might be the one TV series
where I was like, ugh, that was kind of a
lotdown because it was so big.

Speaker 3 (48:52):
But books, I.

Speaker 4 (48:54):
Can't honestly cannot think of a book that I would
change the ending to.

Speaker 2 (48:58):
Yeah, no love that. I'm just going to go back
to your own writing for a minute in terms of
the beginnings and endings, Because when you write a memoir,
you said it was about four or five years of
my life. How do you decide when you're writing about
your own life, when the beginning is and when the
end for that book.

Speaker 4 (49:15):
Yeah, that's and that's a good question. And I get
that a lot because I think people get confused with
like autobiography and memoir or even celebrity memoir you know
the Trevor Noah book that came up in the comments.
Celebrity memoirs are interesting, but they do fall maybe a
little bit more on the autobiography side, right, like they
kind of tell you the full life from I mean,
I read Becoming by Michelle Obama was like, I was

(49:36):
born in Chicago and I lived on the South Side.
I went to the school in memoir. Doesn't generally do that.
Nobody wants to know where I was born and what
school I went to because I'm not that interesting of
a celebrity. So yeah, choosing that container for the memoir
can be tricky. I think of it less. I guess

(49:57):
of like the years. Sometimes it's the years of the life,
but sometimes it's just when the main event began and
when you feel like maybe like emotionally, you resolved something
about that. And so like when I stopped writing Mosaic,
it was pretty close to the actual time in my life,
but there was time that went on.

Speaker 3 (50:16):
I stopped writing when.

Speaker 4 (50:17):
Evelyn was about four, I think is the last time
in the book and by the time it was published
she was nine, so there were things that happened after that.
I could have kept going, but emotionally, all the threads
felt like they thought those actual story arcs came to some.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
Sort of resolution, even if it wasn't complete, and the.

Speaker 4 (50:38):
Emotional threads came and when they all kind of complete
at the same point, you're done.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
And that's not it's not the most clear.

Speaker 4 (50:46):
It's hard to sometimes tell, and you just have to
keep writing until you feel that moment.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
How does it feel then knowing that obviously friends and
family like friends of family, maybe not so much Like
with your daughter she can read about that exact moment
in your life when she's older, Yeah, she's Yeah, ever
sort of had any weight in your mind as to

(51:12):
the fact that she can do that, And like I know,
obviously a stranger reading your work, some of them may
come up to you and go, oh my god, just
you know, your story really inspired me and things like that,
and that's great in a moment in time, but then
they're gone again. You're probably never going to see him again.
But with somebody who's there on a regular basis, and
there's a big part of your life obviously them having
a window, which is not like you know, it's not

(51:34):
like looking at a photograph or a picture. It's your
thoughts and feelings and experiences of that time. So does
does that bear any waiting onto your mind when you
when you release this book?

Speaker 4 (51:47):
Maybe somewhat, But I don't know because I don't because
I think with memoir too, and I think maybe this
is when I get, especially newer memoir writers into my classes.
I think they have to like spill their guts on it,
to say everything that's.

Speaker 3 (52:01):
Happening and every emotion they have.

Speaker 4 (52:03):
And really, you open that curtain when you want people
to see things, and you close the curtain when you
don't want them to see things. And so and my
curtain stays open a lot. I mean, I'm, like I said,
I'm not afraid to share. I'm a pretty open person.
We were a pretty open family in terms of communicating
about this. I know, maybe you know, even one or
two generations back, people didn't talk about the loss of

(52:25):
a child or pregnancy loss. And even now it's hard
for people to discuss that or they get dismissed or
they feel too embarrassed. And within my family, including like
my parents, and my sister, and my husband and his family,
and with our daughter. It's always been very open and
there's no shame. I've never felt shame or embarrassed by it,
and I don't want her to feel that way either.

(52:47):
I want her to know she had a sister, and
she does. She's always known, and she's always known that
her sister likely had the same condition that she has,
and so there's no there's no secrets. I guess that
I'm afraid she's going to learn in terms of it
coming from such a deep place.

Speaker 3 (53:04):
So it is. I mean, when you write, it's a
little deeper than just when you're telling a story. So
there is that.

Speaker 4 (53:11):
And I know there's things that family members have said, Oh,
I didn't realize that about you, or I didn't know
you thought that, or and that's fine though, I mean
that's I think that means that I've done a good job.
If I can surprise people who know me the best
with little things, that means that I've dug deep enough.
And yeah, and Evelyn's read a lot of the book actually,
and she's heard me read it, and yeah, she's she's

(53:33):
just excited.

Speaker 3 (53:34):
She's in a book.

Speaker 2 (53:35):
To be honest, so we've got about seven minutes left roughly.
So if you again, if you're watching now and you've
still got questions and you want to send them in,
then please do and I'll answer those. Ask I will
answer them, Laura will Book, I'll ask the questions. Yeah.
One of our final sort of staple questions that we
have is, again it's a little bit more abid, but

(53:58):
you're looking back at your writing career, it on your deathbed,
what would you be happy with? What is success to you?

Speaker 4 (54:06):
I think, so this is this is fascinating that you're
asking this now because I was just kind of reflecting,
not that I'm on my deathbed, but I'm already reflecting
on this as especially as a writer, as someone that's
a creative like any I think any creative field. It's
really hard to pinpoint when you've made it, when have
you been successful, because you're always seeing what other people

(54:27):
are doing, and you're seeing the success of like books
that are on bestseller lists and that are getting mentioned
in reviews and different things, and.

Speaker 3 (54:35):
You're like, well, my book's not and so I started.
So there have been.

Speaker 4 (54:38):
Moments since the book came out in March that I
have been pretty down about it. I'm like, I didn't
sell that many books, or I didn't get this review
or whatever. So I started thinking about, like, well, what
did I want, especially when I switched careers, what did
I want? And what I wanted was to have a
book published by a traditional press, and I have that.

Speaker 3 (54:55):
I wanted to teach writing to other people. I do that.
I wanted to help people finish their books through coaching.
I do that.

Speaker 4 (55:01):
So I'm like, I think I am successful Actuinitely, it's
just not always what we imagine. I think it, especially
like being an author can be often glamorized. It's hard
work and I didn't I don't know one can prepare you.

Speaker 3 (55:18):
It's like becoming a parent.

Speaker 4 (55:18):
No one can actually prepare you for how hard it is,
especially because a lot of.

Speaker 3 (55:23):
The promotion and stuff is just me.

Speaker 4 (55:25):
I'm booking things, I'm finding things, I'm going to things,
I'm paying for things, giving talks like and and so
I think if it can feel like you're not successful,
but I think looking back, even just looking at it now,
I'm like, no, I've I've hit all the marks, and
there's I can only it can get better, Like I
know I have two more books that I'm trying about

(55:45):
in the world, and I still have things with Mosaic
to promote, and I still have classes to teach and
other writers to help. Like it's just going to grow
and get better. So that's what I So it's interesting
you asked that I was just reflecting on it's easy
to get trapped under the thoughts of like, this book
is not successful, it's not on the New York Times

(56:06):
bestseller list, and that's not true.

Speaker 2 (56:09):
Yeah, definitely. I think that's a really important thing to
remember in terms of like remember the things that you
wanted to achieve and keep reminding yourself that you did
achieve those things, because you know, I've saw it myself
when we've been to festivals with some really you know,
they're on the New York Times Bestsellers list and they're
up there, and they've got their own complaints. And I

(56:33):
feel like, even when you get success to that level
in terms of like monetary success or you know, fame
for writing book, people still have the same issues and problems,
if not slightly different ones. So if you can't concentrate
on the successes that you've had, you're always going to
focus on the negatives and if you do that, you're

(56:55):
not going to enjoy the experience. I had to sit
down conversation. Was a best selling author and I was
chatting to him about and I was a little bit
tipsy at the time, and I just said, can I
just asked, like about the money situation, because you're really
interested as a writer, especially if you're trying to make
money as a writer and be in that sort of

(57:16):
space and you know, provide for your family. I just said,
can I just ask, like how much you make it's
like a best seller. And he's like, I don't I
don't worry myself with that. I just I just write
the next book. And he's his wife like, yeah, that's
exactly what he does. He does. He just writes the
next book. Like he didn't even ask about the finances,

(57:38):
and she told me, and I was like, what like?
And I thought if if I was in his position,
because it was like over one hundred grand a month,
and I thought, if I knew that I was earning
that amount of money from the next book potentially, and
if it didn't do well, that money could disappear, the
pressure that that would put me under on that next

(58:01):
book would would probably see me you know what I mean. Yeah,
so it's one of those things. Maybe you know, the
best way to do it at all levels and at
all points is just to go, I'm just doing this
book and that's what happens, will happen. And yeah, so
we've got a couple of minutes left. If anyone's got

(58:23):
any more questions to send them in and yeah, before
we do go, Laura, can I ask you to share
all your sort of details in terms of where people
can find you on social media and things like that.

Speaker 3 (58:37):
Absolutely. So. I do have a website.

Speaker 4 (58:39):
It's just Laura Gaddis dot com, nice and simple and
everything on there I think will link you to my
social media. But I am on Instagram at Laura Gadis Writer.
I also do write a sub stack and I do
maybe one every month or two or I just kind
of update people on what I'm doing, my book tour
and such, and that's a life of a writer and

(58:59):
that's just at lauragatas.

Speaker 3 (59:02):
Those are kind of the two big places that I'm
on social media.

Speaker 4 (59:05):
And like I said, my website's a great place I
have all my articles and links and book coaching information,
and on social media, it's all on Loregatis dot.

Speaker 2 (59:12):
Com brilliant, absolutely love that. So yeah, if you're watching
this back or you're listening to the podcast, obviously the
Laura has just given us all that wonderful information that
as well. Obviously if you've resonated with her story as
well and go out and buy it, we'll put links
into the description of the show when Chris Haggett does

(59:33):
all that when he gets back. But yeah, it's been
fantastic to chat to you, Laura, and you know, I'll
end the show now unless there's anything else or any
advice that we want to say.

Speaker 4 (59:44):
No, just keep going. If you're a writer, just keep
you can't stop. It's a relentless field. You just have
to keep writing and keep trying and keep questioning, you
submitting and doing whatever you gotta do, and just you'll
get there. H Yeah, thank you very much for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
No, thank you for coming on and sharing your journey
with us. Been fantastic chat. So you really good advice
there as well, and you know, the resilience and the
fact that you've managed to share your story with the
world as well. It is fantastic because, as you said already,
so many people resonating with your story and getting an
awful lot from it, so you know, thank you on
behalf of them for doing that as well. Yeah, we

(01:00:23):
look forward to all the things that you do in
the future as well. So from me, I'm going to
end the show now, but thank you very much for
tuning in and listening or watching this live with us.
And yeah, we'll be back next week, same time next
week with another show, so please check our socials for
that and you'll see who's with us next week. But

(01:00:44):
from myself and Laura is goodbye, and we hope you
all have a brilliant weekend and lots of writing gets
done or reading or just relax if you want to
do that. But yeah, whatever you're doing, I hope you
have a fantastic time doing it. So it's goodbye for me.
Thank you everyone,

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