The 5+1 with YOURS IN BOOKS author Julie Falatko, Part II (The Julie Falatko Uncut Experience)
Wherein the author contemplates a 'tasteful rager' (i.e., a rager at which the word 'wherein' would feel at home)
This is the second of a two-part interview with the very funny and insightful Julie Falatko, whose latest book YOURS IN BOOKS, is out September 21. Preorder it now! Part One of this interview is available to read here.
Last week, you got the first three questions I asked Julie Falatko, my friend and fellow writer who also puts out a newsletter I highly recommend and that you can sign up for here.
I’m going to get right to the second half of her interview without too much of my signature preamble (funny how that rhymes with ramble). Excitingly, I’m working on a few things and have several deadlines (some foisted on myself and some foisted [foisted in a way one welcomes, a no-arms-twisted foist] by others) to meet over the next few months. I do have another 5+1 for this month with Elissa Sussman and hope to do a few more this year but the schedule will be more sporadic than it’s already been. However, if you like the newsletter, or know someone I should interview, please get in touch with me. I really do like writing these.
So, without further ado, here’s more hilarity and wisdom from Julie. If you haven’t read part one of her interview, once again, I’m going to suggest that you do. (This may be me politely foisting it on you. For your own good.)
IMP: You recently shared a Craigslist ad for a band for a tasteful outdoor rager. I'm intrigued by this, and think you'd put together an excellent one. What are the components, do you imagine?
JF: Right after I got this question from you, I realized that I am perhaps a one-woman tasteful rager. My 15-year-old cracked a joke in the grocery store, and it was really funny, and I laughed. Too loud, apparently. He told me that he would never tell me a joke in public again. Ah, such is the life of those of us who rage tastefully.
So the tasteful rager would have me, laughing too loud.
And, according to the Craigslist ad, you need a live band, and beer, so sure, sure, I’ll go with the pros on that one.
Streamers, but tasteful streamers, you know? Pastel. Or silver. But then we’d tear them down, raging.
And lots of food, because what’s a party without food? When I think “tasteful outdoor rager” I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks “deviled eggs, obviously.” And the ultimate rage food, a savory duckling on a spit. I could find someone on Craigslist to turn that spit.
IMP: I'm hoping people aren't sick of my pandemic time capsule question but it's really been interesting for me to ask. So what five items would you put in your pandemic time capsule?
JF: 1. Little Lad’s Herbal Corn. This was our “special occasion” snack pre-pandemic, but apparently my first reaction to an impending apocalypse is to get five bags of the special snack every grocery trip. It’s my equivalent of using the good plates every day, I guess. I don’t have good plates. But I do love this Maine-made, vegan, addictively tasty popcorn, and it still feels special.
2. My night guard. I wore my previous night guard very occasionally and it lasted a decade. I’ve chewed through two of them this past year. Better than cracking a tooth, I guess.
3. Printouts of the middle grade novel I revised twice. The one I wrote in the summer of 2020 is a meandering doorstop of a thing, plotless and overlong, and the revision of that revision, from March 2021, has a plot and is half the length of the previous. I’m proud that I figured it out. And while the thought that anyone might study my writing habits one day strikes me as preposterous, I’ll assume the person opening this time capsule will be sufficiently impressed that I actually got creative work done. They’d better be.
4. My husband gifted me a little sign that says “I AM VERY BUSY.” I’m supposed to put it on the stairs leading to my office if I’m doing deep creative work, and then the children won’t interrupt me to ask where their socks are or if they can borrow my tape. I will put it in the time capsule because it did help me get work done. I can also put it in the capsule because [insert some sort of heavenly trumpet blare here] we are renovating the shed in our backyard to be a writer shed, so for the first time, I’ll have a whole separate place to work, with a door and everything, so I won’t need to sign (or, let’s be real, I’ll need a different sign, one for the door).
5. The last thing I’ll put in the time capsule is this embroidery project I did. Or half did. I love all the cute embroidery projects everyone is doing! The witty sayings! The little vignettes with cups of coffee and a monstera plant! Owls! So I decided to try it as a hobby. I thought it would be meditative, and I’d have art when I was done. Turns out I hated it. Like, a lot. I wasn’t bad at it. I just didn’t like it. I get why people do. It’s not for me. I don’t know what else to do with this half-finished pattern of flowers, so I’m shoving it in the time capsule. I hope you don’t mind.
IMP: You've had the experience of writing both picture books as well as chapter books and novels for older kids. What aspects of your process are the same for picture books as they are for longer novels and what do you do very differently?
JF: It’s taken me a while to realize my processes are the same, and that’s why I’m still struggling with novels. I should probably do some hard thinking about my novel-writing process and figure out a way to make it more efficient. Except: no. I don’t want to do that. Because it takes a long time, but it works for me. The way I write is to take the initial idea I have and free-write it, explore it, and watch as it takes shape. At some point I try to outline it some to give it a form. But I always end up playing with tense and plot and character motivation. Which can go pretty quickly if it’s a picture book. I can do three drafts with completely different plots in a week. With a novel, that takes more like two years.
One reason I’m ok with this process is that the things that emerge in the early drafts, which often get deleted in revision, form the underground foundation that you can’t see but which holds everything up. And those layers are really important, even if, on the final read, you can’t see them. You don’t know that originally, there was a subplot where the main character had a best friend who spent the summer in France, and now that echoes only in this one paragraph. This penguin needed to live in a strange college/animal shelter hybrid for six drafts in order for him to show up on the main character’s doorstep on the first page, with the college/animal shelter now only an unseen echo that exists before the book begins.
It has taken me a while to realize all this. For a long time I thought I was someone who wrote a lot but took forever to finish anything. I thought it was a problem, and now I see that it’s a process, a way to get to the sort of stories I want to write. There is no shortcut to getting there for me. So now, when I’m writing, I remember that I’m writing to get it down, not to get it done. I mean, yes, eventually, I do want to get it done. But if I think I’m going to get it done each day when I sit down to write, I’ll be disappointed. It’s 99% getting it down, and then that one glorious 1% day when I get it done. I’ve done it enough that I know I’ll get there eventually. Just not today, probably. Today I work on getting another layer down.
Other stuff (really, just one other self-promotional thing):
I realize I should (or could) probably use this newsletter to occasionally slide in some self-promotion. And I will use a photo of Paul Newman and Robert Redford playing ping pong in tiny shorts to make sure you don’t mind it too much. (Weird how Paul Newman is known now for his dressing, when he’s quite undressed above.)
So, September 4 was Bobby McMann Day. He’s the foxy coach in my novel GIMME EVERYTHING YOU GOT who arrives at Powell Park High on September 4, 1979 and — via his extreme attractiveness and his very short shorts — inspires main character Susan McKlintock to join her school’s first-ever girls’ soccer team. What begins as a daydreamy quest to make something happen with Coach McMann (who’s actually a decent guy who’s not looking to seduce a student) prompts Susan to get out of her head and onto the pitch — shooting her shot in soccer and in life.
Anyway, you can buy my book here. It’s quite a lot of fun.
Here’s are two more photos: Sixers legend Julius Erving (you know him as Dr. J) in some small shorts and Harrison Ford in a monochromatic tiny shorts ensemble made interesting by his addition of the long-sleeved sweater. Again, if you enjoy men in aggressively hemmed short pants, you’ll probably like my book.