How to Make a Quiet Novel Roar

You kids I can’t even with Catherine Newman right now because I am a Wreck and a Sandwich myself at the moment but wow, she’s a good writer, so honest it’s like there’s no skull between her mind and the readers. We talk about what it means to use yourself and your world in your fiction and what it’s meant to Catherine to play as big as she possibly can and go bigger and deeper with every book. We ALSO talk about Catherine’s totally granular technique for planning and tracking and keeping her eye on the ball in every chapter while still pulling in all the other things while making sure that if it’s Friday night a teacher character doesn’t get up and go to teach the next morning and the blackberries never ripen in April, and let me tell you that I just went back and listened to that now and I am about to implement it because it’s brilliant. Ok, time to let you listen (although links to what Catherine and I are reading and loving are below). ALSO… Truth? We wanted to tuck the transcript away behind a paywall, but it turns out we can’t do that and still give you the episode… so, here it is. But we have to pay someone to make a good one, that you can read. And we still have to pay ourselves and all our people. BUT LOOK YOU GET ALL OF US. We’re not just one writer, we’re a whole bunch—a Groupstack, and yes we coined the term, and you get a lot of bang for your subscription. So, if you could kick in, we’d cheer. Please don’t make us try to sell you Quince clothing or gambling sites to support the pod. #AmReading Catherine: A Truce That Is Not Peace by Miriam Toews KJ: EPISODE TRANSCRIPT KJ Dell’Antonia It’s fall, y’all, and there’s got to be a T-shirt that says that, right? So it’s, you know, fresh notebooks, sharpened pencils, sharpened sense of ambition, excitement after the languid summer days, and, of course, the glory that is decorative gourd season. You can say that with all the swears that you like, but I’m not going to hear “falling leaves” and “Halloween,” which means it’s time for smoky, eerie, witchy reads, and I have just the thing for you—Playing the Witch Card. Expect a woman starting over again after her marriage collapses, hampered by her magic-obsessed daughter, her flaky mother, her enchanted ex, and a powerful witch who’s thrilled that she’s back in town—and not for a good reason. To keep her family together, Flair has to embrace the hereditary magic that’s done nothing but ruin her life in the past and make it her own. I was inspired by what I see as the real magic of tarot cards, which play a huge role in this book—and tea leaves and palm reading, and honestly, every form of oracle. They’re here to help us see and understand our own stories, which is pretty much what Flair figures out. And as someone for whom stories are everything, I love that. You can buy Playing the Witch Card everywhere, and I hope you will do exactly that—and love it too. Multiple Speakers Is it recording? Now it’s recording, yay. Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. I don’t remember what I’m supposed to be doing. All right, let’s start over. Awkward pause. I’m going to rustle some papers. Okay, now—one, two, three. KJ Dell’Antonia Hey, kids, it’s KJ, and this is the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast—the place where we help you play big in your writing life, love the process, and finish what matters. Today on the pod, I’m talking with Catherine Newman. She is the author most recently of We All Want Impossible Things and Sandwich, and also, earlier in her career, Waiting for Birdy and Catastrophic Happiness, as well as two fabulous “how to be a person in the world” books for kids that, honestly, I think we could all benefit from. I’m considering just, you know, sending out copies. They are How to Be a Person and What Can I Say?—that one’s really useful. Okay, so now, just out, she has Wreck—which kind of comes after Sandwich, but you could read them separately. They’re both small, intense books. Wreck, like all of Catherine’s work, is inevitably about exactly what I just said—it’s how to be a person in the world. Which—I didn’t actually ask Catherine this; I’m recording my intro for y’all after talking to her—but she would not tell you she knows how to be a person in the world. But she is so fantastic about the part where we’re all figuring it out, and being aware that we’re all figuring it out. And that’s what all of her books are about. In the interview, which you’re going to love, she calls herself the queen of the slight plot element, which made me laugh really hard and also made me realize that I think Catherine Newman is the modern Anne Tyler. So tell me what you think in the comments on the show notes—which you’d better be getting. They are at...there’s no hashtag in our name—AmWritingPodcast.com—or search anywhere they will have the books that Catherine mentions, and also all of your chances to do all of the things, like have your First Page appear in a Booklab episode. Talk to us. Get in there. Tell us what you’re thinking about writing. Write along with us. Really just—just all the community stuff that we all so desperately want. Okay, here comes my interview with Catherine. I know—gosh, it was so fun to talk to you. You guys are going to love it. Catherine Newman, welcome to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, where you’ve been at least once, maybe twice—I need to go and look. It’s so fun to have you back. I remember us walking in the woods before you had finished We All Want Impossible Things in 2021. Catherine Newman I remember it too. KJ Dell’Antonia Which, actually, for three books, is not that long ago. Catherine Newman Hey, that’s true. I know... I remember your dog. KJ Dell’Antonia He’s here somewhere. Catherine Newman You had a young dog with you. It was the best. And you—you said so many things that I’ve thought about so much on that walk. But I don’t want to derail the thing you want to talk about. KJ Dell’Antonia But, but same—it was a great walk. We must do it again. All right, meanwhile—okay, so I already described in the introduction all the things you’ve ever written in the past and raved about you, so don’t—don’t worry about that. You’ve been—sorry you don’t get to hear the petting. But the question is, tell us—tell us a little bit about Wreck. Catherine Newman Yeah, so Wreck... KJ Dell’Antonia I know, I know, it’s painful. Elevator pitch or whatever you want to say, because seriously, I did just tell everyone about them in the intro. Catherine Newman I really need an elevator pitch. I feel like We All Want Impossible Things was like a woman whose best friend was dying while she, like, slept with everybody. KJ Dell’Antonia Yeah, it was joyful. Catherine Newman That was easy. KJ Dell’Antonia Also sad. Catherine Newman Sandwich was like Cape Cod for a week, reproductive mayhem, sandwich generation. Wreck is so weird because there’s these two sort of very slight plot elements. So it’s, you know, a woman in her mid-50s living in a house with her husband of many years, her daughter, who’s between college and grad school, and her dad, who was fairly recently widowed and in his 90s. And that’s mostly what the book is, but the little plots are that she has a rash—she notices that she has a rash—and it inaugurates this kind of diagnostic tornado. A slow and quiet tornado, but a tornado nonetheless, where she has to see a billion doctors. She has to constantly check her patient portal to see if she’s dying or not, and anyone who’s had—who’s been anything but healthy in the last 10 years will understand the patient portal. KJ Dell’Antonia Yes, I love the checker. I checked a patient portal from a hockey-rink parking lot, and that’s a mistake, just FYI. Catherine Newman Just don’t... KJ Dell’Antonia To anyone considering it, don’t do it on a Friday night. Don’t do that. Catherine Newman Just don’t even look. And then the other plot point is that there’s an accident—there’s a collision between a car and a train—and a schoolmate of her kids, like someone they went to high school… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe