Show Notes
Rachael Herron’s latest: The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland, is, truly and in so many ways, the book only she can write. It pulls from every part of her life: identity, spirituality, a love of what’s magical in the world, her joy in crafting and her understanding of community and family. I, of course, wanted to know: how did you find the guts to put it all on the table? We talked about vulnerability, the challenges of writing the book of your heart, and learning to play with what you fear. Rachael says, “I’m spoiled for any smaller kind of writing. I’m not sure I can go back.” You’re gonna love it. Links from the Pod: The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland Ink in Your Veins podcast Rachel’s website: https://rachaelherron.com The Jennifer Lynn Barnes “take my money” list. The War of Art, Steven Pressfield#AmReading: Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch, Tabitha Carvan Transcript below:
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT 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, listeners, 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. I am KJ Dell’Antonia, and today I am bringing to you an interview with Rachael Herron. I just finished talking to Rachael, and I really enjoyed this. We talked about vulnerability. We talked about the challenges of writing the book of your heart. We talked about what should show you where that book is, the idea that the fear is where you should play. It’s, it’s a really great interview, and I know that you are going to enjoy it. Let me tell you a little bit about Rachael. She is the author of so many, so many books, thrillers and romances, and most recently, in the book that we are talking about, The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland. And I have to read you—Rachael’s going to describe this to you, but I got to read you the very short thing that basically made me say, take my money. And it went like this. A psychic tells Beatrix Holland that she’ll experience seven miracles and then she’ll die. No problem, though, Beatrix isn’t worried. She is above all things pragmatic. She vastly prefers a spreadsheet to a tall tale. Then the miracles start to happen. It’s a really great book, and more importantly, it’s a big book. It is a book where Rachael is writing what comes from deep inside, and it is a book that only Rachael could write. And that is why I asked Rachael to join me today. I hope that you enjoy this interview, and before I release you to it, I just want to remind you that the place to go to talk more about writing big and playing big in your writing life is anywhere that we are: the AmWriting Podcast, Hashtag AmWriting, AmWritingPodcast.com. Find us on Substack. Find us by Googling. Grab those show notes—you should be getting them—and join us for all the different ways that we need to come together in a community to give each other the strength to do our very best and biggest work. So I’m going to ask you to describe The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland to me. But also before I even do, I want to say how much I enjoyed it. And also so we have been spending most of our time on the AmWriting Podcast lately talking about writing—writing big and striving big and trying to do something different and bigger and better than what you have done before. We, I think as writers, we’re always trying to up our game, but there’s upping your game, and there’s reaching for the stars. And I felt like this book reached for the stars in a way that you maybe didn’t even set out to because to me, as someone who has read much of your work and followed your career and listened to a lot of the Ink in Your Veins Podcast and sort of just knows what’s go
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I want to take you inside my favorite yoga studio in Santa Barbara. It’s called Yoga Soup, and it’s a giant, grounding mix of movement, actual nutrient-dense soup in a crockpot, fresh fruit from local trees, and community. My husband Rob and I practice there a few times a week, and one of our favorite instructors—who is also a middle school English teacher—starts every class by reading a poem. She weaves its themes throughout our practice and reads it again at the end. Now, I’ll be honest with you: these classes are often equal parts healing and deeply unsettling for me. Why? Because I’m in there without a notebook or phone, frantically trying to memorize brilliant lines so I don’t lose them! A few weeks ago, she read a poem by Mary Oliver called “Today” from her 2012 collection A Thousand Mornings. One line hit me like a bolt of lightning: “Today I’m flying low, and I’m not saying a word. / I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.” I spent the rest of the class scrambling to hold onto that concept because the “voodoos of ambition” are my constant companions. They’re the noisy, bossy, pushy engine behind everything I make, write, and build. They drive the desire to “play big.” And if you’re listening to this podcast, I bet your voodoos are pretty loud, too. But as I wrestled with Mary Oliver’s words, a new thought took root: What would happen if we actually let those voodoos take a day off? In this Write Big session, I’m reflecting on: * The double-edged sword of high ambition and why we need energy to drive big work. * Why scrambling to capture every thought is just another “voodoo” in disguise. * How giving your ambition a rest—letting it sink into child’s pose—is actually what allows it to wake up re-energized and full of life. Writing big requires big energy, but it also requires rest. This week, I’m offering you a permission slip to fly low, be quiet as a feather, and let your ambition sleep for a little while. Until next time, stop playing small and write like it matters! #AmWriting is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
You’ll get a regular Write Big episode tomorrow!
Have you ever looked at a project you’ve poured years of your life into and realized… it’s fine? Not catastrophic. Not terrible. Just fine. No one wants to read a book that’s fine — and I am certain you don’t want to write one. The first step in making sure you do better than fine is to catch yourself when you know you’ve hit a wall — which is way easier said than done. We get so used to plowing ahead, getting the words down, prioritizing FINISHING that we often forget to stop and make sure we are writing what we really want to be writing. Think of that pause like checking in with your gut or your heart: do you love this? Because if you don’t love it, your readers aren’t going to love it, either. In this Write Big episode, KJ and I sit down for an honest, behind-the-scenes look at what happens when you hit a wall—and decide to set off a stick of dynamite instead of trying to climb over it. Both of us recently threw out huge portions of our current projects (my Write Big book, and KJ’s novel) to start fresh from page zero. I share the story of my 12-hour wrestling match with ChatGPT over the books subtitle (yeah — 12 hours on the subtitle), the “tough love” reality check I got from #amwriting recurring guest therapist Dr. Diana Hill, and how answering one simple question—are you actually centering your reader?—changed everything about my book’s tone, structure, and voice. Meanwhile, KJ opens up about why she threw out her protagonist, embraced a dual-timeline structure, and ignored the well-meaning advice of friends who told her NOT to keep starting over. We talk about: * How to recognize when a book is polite or timid instead of alive. * The difference between an echo chamber (which AI can sometimes be) and a true truth-teller. * A method for salvaging the gold from an abandoned draft without getting bogged down by old words. * Why starting over isn’t “falling behind”—it’s standing up for your conviction. If you’re feeling stuck, lost, or secretely suspecting your current draft needs a radical pivot, we encourage you stop playing it safe and build something alive. Let’s get back to work and finish work we LOVE. #AmWriting is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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