Episode 34: It Always Goes Dark

IN THIS EPISODE

  • Jennie and I chat about my daughter’s amazing male kindergarten teacher, “Mr. E,” while we wait for Mel to dial in.

  • We chat about the Pete the Cat empire, Mr. E’s Pete the Cat scavenger hunt, and Jennie makes a confession about Amazon.

  • Mel and I have a little mom competition over diapers. I talk about the Fort Worth Competitive Mom Circuit, and Jennie talks about the dreaded school car pool.

  • “All the people are just alone in their own little bubble” of SAMENESS.

  • I talk about going to see a medium, who I end up interviewing for the podcast (episode to come)! Jennie jokingly tries to edit my conversation as I tell the story. But I connect my visit to the medium with my writing as I tell the story about my best friend, Robyn, dying over a decade ago and how it has affected both my life and my writing. Jennie goes into full-blown therapist mode and reminds us that these deep WHYs are what we come to writing for. She also connects the book world I’ve written about in my story to the psychic realm, where characters go and can’t come back.

  • I write about the first moment my main character notices a boy in middle school. I had just attended a workshop where the instructor said not to write about bodily sensations, which only served to challenge me to go back and write about bodily sensations… Jennie translates “don’t write body sensations” to “don’t write bad crap!” She persuades me to read part of the “body sensations” scene I wrote, and we talk about why it works.

  • Massive amounts of information go through our heads really fast in the real world. Sometimes you have to figure out how to work in small connections in your writing, small important bits that your characters will process without belaboring them.

Recommended Reading (and Journaling)

After This: When Life Is Over, Where Do We Go?

By Claire Bidwell Smith

And Then There Was Heaven, A Journey of Hope and Love

By Roland M. Comtois

This book was written by the medium I saw. 

One Line a Day: A Five-Year Memory Book

By Chronicle Books Staff

This is the journal I use and the same one Melanie references in the episode. 

Previous
Previous

Episode 35: Grief and Writing with Roland Comtois

Next
Next

Episode 33: Voices of Doubt