{"id":30247,"date":"2026-06-26T10:07:57","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T17:07:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/?p=30247"},"modified":"2026-06-26T10:07:57","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T17:07:57","slug":"mother-daughter-duo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/26\/mother-daughter-duo\/","title":{"rendered":"Episode 2 Mother-Daughter Duo Rachel McLaughlin and Michele Burns"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-30249 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/v2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/v2.png 300w, https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/v2-80x80.png 80w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/h2>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">RESOURCES &amp; LINKS <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Writer\u2019s Fun Zone \u2014<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How To Write the Future<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Podcast \u2014<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/podcast\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/podcast<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Email Iman to be a guest \u2014 isllompart17@gmail.com<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ABOUT BEYOND THE ROUGH DRAFT\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Beyond the Rough Draft<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is a new interview series hosted by Iman Llompart on Writer\u2019s Fun Zone, the creative hub founded by Beth Barany.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The show dives into the messy and meaningful process behind writing \u2014 the moments of self-doubt, breakthrough, and transformation that shape every story.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Each conversation pulls back the curtain on how writers stay creative, curious, and resilient in the face of chaos.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Because writing isn\u2019t just about word count \u2014 it\u2019s about becoming who you are through the process.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Transcript for episode 2 &#8211; Mother Daughter Duo\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Greetings\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><b>Michele<\/b><b>:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> How are you?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Good. We&#8217;ll just wait a little bit then for Rachel to join.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Oh, she&#8217;ll, she, she&#8217;s ready. She&#8217;s, she&#8217;s ready. I&#8217;m just gonna tell my others not to, uh, FaceTime.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Oh, okay. Okay.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Uh,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> okay, well then I&#8217;ll just, um,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Rachel, Rachel is, looks like she&#8217;s coming. She&#8217;s coming now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> So Rachel and me online meeting, do not FaceTime cause we FaceTime each other a million times a day. Hello. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Hi, Rachel.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Hello. Can you hear me? All right.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yes, yes, we can.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah, I&#8217;ve, I&#8217;ve turned off my fan because I didn&#8217;t want that to interfere.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And how hot is it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. Yeah, it&#8217;s hot. But I mean, obviously a good thing is that for the most part, we&#8217;re always inside, so it doesn&#8217;t really affect all that much, but,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Well, it&#8217;s supposed to be cooler because it&#8217;s raining. It is not cooler. It is hot. It is muggy. It is. We haven&#8217;t slept, have we, Rachel?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Oh my gosh, no. No. Although mine was probably because I had caffeine a bit too late yesterday as too hard. Yeah. Yeah. That was my fault. Um, yeah, I&#8217;ve told the boys to be quiet and um. They&#8217;re doing all right so far. I&#8217;m slightly worried that my video&#8217;s just gonna do that thing that it likes to do sometimes where it freezes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Oh, okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> If it does that, I will just have to turn it off and back on again, but we&#8217;ll just,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. &#8217;cause it usually freezes on the most unflattering pictures.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, of course. That&#8217;s always the case. Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[01:51] Starting the Meeting\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Okay. So I just wanted to thank you guys for, for joining, making the time. Obviously I know that both of you have a full busy lives and families and everything to take care of, so I really appreciate it. Um, and I just wanted to give just like a little bit of an intro first before we get started. Then I&#8217;ll read both of your guys&#8217; intros and then we will get started with questions.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[02:24] Introducing the Guests\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, okay, so this is, my name is Iman, obviously, and this is Beyond the Rough Draft. The series I started while fighting through the chaos of my own romantasy draft. You guys obviously know everything about that. Um, it can feel like such a solo mission, but it doesn&#8217;t have to be. So in each episode I&#8217;ll be talking to people like you, uh, writers from all stages, how they manage the messy parts of creativity. Uh, because I feel like obviously people who are in our same situation, if they hear something like this, maybe they can find, um. Either adopt, copy, any mantras or rituals that you guys use to help get them unstuck and move forward with their draft.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So I will read a little bit about your bio first, Rachel. So based in the UK, Rachel is a writer currently working on her debut, An NA Speculative novel about the power of dreaming. Her background is in English literature and psychology two areas she hopes to bring into her writing with the focus on mental health, neurodivergence and inclusion. She is a keen reader of SFF, obviously science fiction fantasy. Psychological thriller and romance and when not reading or writing can be found chasing after two children or frolicking at a fantasy themed ball.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And Michelle is a busy lady with six grandchildren, six cats and dreams of seeing her stories in bookshops. And maybe even the big screen. As an ex deputy head teacher, singer, and academic journals contributor, storytelling is the thread that has run through her career. Her academic background is in computing and English language and literature, and she&#8217;s on the final edit of her debut novel whilst resuming a second she started 40 years ago. Wow.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So obviously no one knows this, but I will mention this now that both Rachel and Michelle are actually mother and daughter. So I feel like that is an extremely rare dynamic, um, that happens in the creative field. I feel like most of us, like I mentioned before, most of us feel like we&#8217;re doing it alone, so. The fact that you two are able to do it together and bounce ideas off of each other and kind of each other&#8217;s support system in that aspect, I feel is, is really great. So I feel like when I&#8217;m talking, I&#8217;m talking to my parents or to my sister about it they kind of get that this glazed look, sometimes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They don&#8217;t understand what it is that I&#8217;m talking about.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My mom was telling me, oh, I just watched a movie about a novelist and I thought that all you had to do was just write the damn thing and that was it, you&#8217;d be published. I&#8217;m like, there&#8217;s a little bit more to it than just that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah, I wish it could be that easy. But yeah, it&#8217;s just so much<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Me too.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> So much that goes along with it. So obviously I&#8217;m not saying that they&#8217;re not supportive, they&#8217;re definitely, uh, they definitely are, but it&#8217;s just different of course, when you&#8217;re going through the same thing. So, um, something else too that obviously the audience is not aware of is that Rachel and I know each other, we have, um. We have a, uh, biweekly meeting that we do to try to help each other, motivate each other to finish our books, and we met at a Jericho Writing Festival last year in London. So, um, yeah, that&#8217;s, I feel like that&#8217;s a nice, uh, fact to let people know that we&#8217;ve been through this journey for a little bit now together.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And yeah, definitely feel like without your encouragement, I still would&#8217;ve been stuck on like the first. I&#8217;m still stuck, but I would&#8217;ve been, I wouldn&#8217;t have pushed through as much as I have. So yeah, I really appreciate, appreciate it. So I&#8217;ll just get into like the questions now.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[06:12] Rachel&#8217;s Writing Journey\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, I just wanted to know like between, obviously Rachel in your case, creativity does run in your family growing up because obviously your mother&#8217;s also a writer, but, um, Michele in your case, was, was that the same, like, were your parents creative or did they nurture that when you were younger?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Um, very much so in that, particularly my mother. My Dad was very creative, um, in terms of, um, electrical things and building things he could do, and he then very unusually, actually got into computers. He ended up working for, um, Amstrad and Sugar, um, and helped sort of design the first computer. So he got into computing and was really creative with things to do with wiring. So he had a massive mast in his garden that he could do his radio hand to people all over the world, which was unheard of. You know, he was the first people to have color TV that he would wire up to some magical thing. Um, but my mom, my lovely, lovely, nearly 91-year-old mom is very much at the heart of this. She is so creative. She can turn any piece of material into beautiful clothing. Not so much now with the arthritis, but she always told us stories, and I know Rachel and my other two children will remember. She has a knack of personifying everything, be it a pencil or a sausage in a pan or a bird outside.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And she would tell us all stories, um, throughout our whole life. So, I&#8217;m very lucky in that I had her, she&#8217;s definitely a massive contributor to both me and Rachel and my other children&#8217;s sort of journey.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh, okay. Wow.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So then, I mean, in terms of both of you, obviously Michele with, uh, Rachel growing up, like, um, how did you nurture her creative energy or when was the fir, when was it that you saw that she was really, when did she really come to you telling you that she was interested in writing?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Well, Rachel being my first. As most first children don&#8217;t come with a book that tells you how to deal with them, so you have to kind of work it out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And it didn&#8217;t take very long to work out that, Rachel, be careful here &#8217;cause your head might grow a bit. She&#8217;s very smart, um, very, very observant and uh, had a very serious side to the world. So when people would lean into her pram to smile, she&#8217;d kind of lean back and be thinking about it. Um, and so she would play for hours with little small creatures making up stories and sorts of things and draw. So, I used to spend Saturday mornings would be a drawing I&#8217;d get rolls of old wall paper and um, and, and, and even buy cheap ones.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Roll them out on the table and we&#8217;d have all sorts of pens and papers and, um, we would sort of draw stories really. So, you know, who, whoever was at that end would draw something on the other end. And then I would set up her toys at night when she went to bed so she&#8217;d always wake up in the morning and she&#8217;d always tell stories with her little figures and, um, read.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think that&#8217;s one of the key things. If you can read to your children and get into them a love of reading. A lot of it happens in here, um, because I love movies of books, but the books are no match for any of them because it&#8217;s all in here. And I think Rachel was like that so young. Um. It was easy to foster &#8217;cause she&#8217;s interested in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">She&#8217;s observant and and loves her loves her books.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. Yeah. And what about you, Rachel? Like when was it that you realized that you wanted to write? How long did it take you to actually push yourself to do that? Or were you, did you not have any um, I guess fears in terms of doing that right away?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Oh gosh. Um, I don&#8217;t know. So, I suppose I made, made up stories a lot when I was little. I remember writing a story when I was in year seven. Um, so I must have been about, I dunno, twelve or thirteen in school. Um, and really getting into it and like filling up half of my, my book in school, which is, was not what we were really meant to do, but I kind of got carried away and really loved it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I mean, it was kind of based loosely on, um, uh a game called Zelda at the time. Zelda and the Ocarina of Time. And I really liked, um, some creatures in there. So I made up a whole story about someone going into their world. Um, and I loved it. Um, I, I dunno where that is. Um, but that was probably the first full story that I wrote.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And then I think I wrote on and off for, wow. Years, really. Um, and then I did an English literature degree and decided I&#8217;d had enough of stories for a while, um, and didn&#8217;t read a lot after that. And so, I think it took quite a few years of bits of stories. I still, in fact, even now when I&#8217;m sort of clearing out, I&#8217;ll find a notebook or sketchbook with jotted down ideas or like the first 10,000 words of something written and think, oh yeah, I remember that, but it&#8217;s not been until the last couple of years, I actually sat down and wrote something fully. Um, just &#8217;cause life gets in the way. And I think there&#8217;s that feeling of, you know, am I really qualified to do this?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Can I actually write, you know, writers are people over there that, that are kind of, they know that they&#8217;re gonna write and they sort of, you know, they&#8217;re born thinking, yes, this is for me. Um, and, you know, do it as a first career. Um, I&#8217;ve obviously since learned that&#8217;s not at all the case. Um, but yeah, I think it took a long time before I felt like I could actually write something in full as an adult.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[11:55] Michelle&#8217;s Writing Journey\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And so then Michelle, were you already, um, writing when you had Rachel, or did you start writing a lot later?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah, I, I started writing really, really young. There was a, a movie that, that you may or may not know and, and listeners may or may not know, called Rosemary&#8217;s Baby, which is quite scary.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And I remember being completely unsatisfied with the end, so I had my little typewriter that my mom and dad had bought me, and I typed my own rewrite of the end and what happened next because I wasn&#8217;t satisfied. I even remember in, in sort of, oh, I dunno how old I must&#8217;ve been, six, seven. I remember in school writing a story that the teacher particularly loved and decided to read it out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So I&#8217;d always done it for fun. I liked writing for fun. And then, um. As Rachel said, life does get in the way and, and on on the, you have to go to work and you have to do things and, and we didn&#8217;t have technology to help us then, and we didn&#8217;t have, uh, we used to cook a lot more and do a lot more things so time was very short, but I used to write, uh, about being pregnant and my, um, birth stories, and Rachel is my oldest of three. Um, I was pregnant for five years running and had three children in three years, so I had a lot to write about. And so, I had some things, uh, included in National Childbirth Trust Magazine<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, I decided to do some writing and submit, um, things like jokes, um, some of which were adopted because I do quite like humor.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Wow.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[13:33] Family Influence on Creativity\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So then Rachel, like seeing your, your mom already doing this type of thing. Do you think that that helped you maybe move forward in that same path or,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah, I think so. I think because, um, because storytelling&#8217;s always been such a big part of our family, so my nan&#8217;s always told stories I think as well. When we were little, mom used to record stories for us to listen to when we went sleep as well. So, we&#8217;d hear her stories and there&#8217;d always be a, okay, I finished the story, now it&#8217;s time to go to bed. If you would like one more, you know, here&#8217;s another one. And there&#8217;d be another story and we&#8217;d just sit and listen to them like half the night. Um, so I think telling stories and writing stories, that has always been there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And I think when you see someone do that, it feels more accessible. Um, so yeah, absolutely. I think, um, there&#8217;s a lot of writing and storytelling and art as well in our family. Um, and because we just did that a lot since we were little, um, yeah, it felt, it felt more accessible.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And do you both like bounce off ideas also maybe like with, obviously Rachel, your grandmother in your case and Michele, your mom, or.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Definitely, definitely. I mean, um, it&#8217;s thanks to Rachel that I&#8217;ve kind of got off my backside and started getting serious about finishing all the stories that were started and I mean, there are a lot that I&#8217;ve sort of started a lot of ideas scribbled down in various notebooks or whatever, and it was only when Rachel thought, I&#8217;m gonna have a go at this. I thought, why have I left it this long? Why have I done that? I, I&#8217;d kind of got, I&#8217;d kind of gone sideways by writing in some academic journals, um, being a teacher. And it was actually when I did my Masters of teaching, I was approached by one of the lecturers who asked if I would write something with him.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, and then approached by somebody, um, about the use of computing and IT, and lessons. So, I kind of got sidelined a little bit and, and did some published work there, but all the time are these ideas that I&#8217;ve shared with Rachel and, and the other two, um, about comedy I like, I like comedy and I like to write about comedy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, so it has always been around, but I have to say is thanks to Rachel sort of knuckling down that I&#8217;ve got myself into gear really.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Well, yeah, that&#8217;s good. I mean, that&#8217;s why I feel like having this dynamic definitely can help inspire each other to move forward. Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Michele: Definitely.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah, and I think as well, so I guess it&#8217;s not just us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So you have shared, you know, your novel at the moment with, with Nan. Um, and she&#8217;s read things like my, when we did short, uh, flash fiction competition, we sent that to her, so she&#8217;s looked at those. Um, but also my sister and sister-in-law as well. So, they&#8217;ll Beta read. Um, so, um, and my cousin as well has Beta read yours.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, and so yeah, I think we kind of as a family bounce off each other and share ideas. I often find if I have an idea for a story in order to get a plot sorted in my head, I just need to tell someone I need to just sort of like get it all out in one go. And that. I&#8217;m not, I&#8217;ll normally do that to mom.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Or a good example though is it was my birthday recently, and we, we shared a takeaway round at my daughter-in-law&#8217;s house and there was Rachel, my daughter-in-law, my other daughter, and we spent the whole time talking about what we&#8217;d written, books so on, and Rachel&#8217;s, uh, latest idea.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We talked it all through, at the table. We all chipped in about what we thought. Fabulous. Absolutely fabulous.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. It&#8217;s like it ends up being like a workshop, so it&#8217;s, uh, yeah, really nice.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. And a free workshop too.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yes. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And, and we, people read that kind of genre, so it&#8217;s really nice.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[17:31] Facing Writing Fears\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, what is it about writing that scares you both the most and how do you face it, whether it&#8217;s individually or together?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I think we do face things together because I will, I will speak to Rachel and say, oh, it&#8217;s rubbish. What I&#8217;ve written is rubbish or no one&#8217;s ever gonna want to read this. And Rachel has done similar to me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, we&#8217;ve been very lucky that we&#8217;ve both been, not been in that same place at the same time. So, we&#8217;ve been able to encourage each other, and actually, I think the scariest thing for me is that nobody will want to read it really.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That that how awful that you&#8217;ve spent so much of yourself and time and energy and people aren&#8217;t interested makes me feel quite sad just saying it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It won&#8217;t be the case. It won&#8217;t be the case. I mean, I think that I would be right of worries about isn&#8217;t it, that you know, no one&#8217;s gonna really understand it or they&#8217;ll misinterpret it or think what you&#8217;ve written about is somehow some something deeper meaningful about you in a certain way that it&#8217;s not, um, or it would, yeah, it would just get misunderstood, really.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, and yeah, I think that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s tricky. I think the other thing that I find difficult I suppose it&#8217;s more of a challenge than a fear, but is the, when you are writing and editing, there seem, it seems like there are infinite possibilities of how you can write that chapter or that scene or that sentence and that thought of, have I picked the right one?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You know, have I said that in the way that expresses the thing that I have in my head. Um, have I put it on the page in the right way? And are other people gonna be able to interpret that? Because obviously, you know, we can&#8217;t know. We can only see it from our perspectives. Um, so I think that&#8217;s one of the things that I find quite difficult.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Oh, okay. Yeah, I mean, unfortunately most of, most of creatives, I feel like their biggest fear is that no one will like their work.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Mm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And how is it that you, um, try to move past that fear? So, you basically just talk to each other about it. You reassure each other<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> That you&#8217;re going on the right track?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. I call Rachel, um, I, I or I turn up randomly at her house, which I do quite frequently. Um, and I just say, oh, I just, oh. Or actually Rachel has noticed that I haven&#8217;t been writing. And we&#8217;ll say, have you done any writing? Oh no, I haven&#8217;t done any today, and then I&#8217;ll spill the, oh, I just think it&#8217;s awful and I dunno how to move from A to B and, and there&#8217;s always, there is a something in talking it through with each other I find.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Do you think so, Rachel?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah, absolutely. I think chatting through, and I think Iman, we found this as well in our, in our kind of working groups as well, that just having someone else to bounce ideas off of or, you know, we&#8217;ll sometimes say, you know, could we do something this way or could we do it that way?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Or we&#8217;ll say, I&#8217;m worried about this, and then we&#8217;ll end up saying to each other, actually, no, that sounds great. That sounds fine. And it&#8217;s just that little bit of reassurance. Um, I think the other thing that I find really helps is just reading, um, and particularly listening to stories. So, I think because maybe because we&#8217;ve got so much of that storytelling, I guess from Nan telling the stories a lot as well as reading. I really like to, I like to read physical books, um, and I like to read on Kindle as well, but I really like to hear them. Um, there&#8217;s something about having someone tell you the story. Um, and then for me, it kind of helps me imagine telling myself the story, if that makes sense.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Um, and, uh, or, or imagine a, you know, a narrator that you particularly like telling you your own story. I find that really helpful to, to get back in the swing of things, um, or, or just being somewhere different. I find that really helpful as well. Or I space, it kind of helps me get out of my own head.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um. So getting<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> That\u2019s very true actually, because we&#8217;ve talked about this before, haven&#8217;t we? About writing outside the house and um, obviously Iman, you mentioned Jericho writers. We&#8217;ve found that having people like yourself, having a community of people who get it, is hugely important. And but thinking back to what you were saying, Rachel, about being in a different space.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I, um, recently was due to go on a cruise with, with my friend, and, um, day before we were due to go, she got poorly and couldn&#8217;t go. So I went on my own and thought, okay, I&#8217;m gonna treat this like a writing retreat. So, I moved around the ship everywhere with my laptop and my headphones so I could just get in.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I did not get a lot of editing done because everyone was so lovely and stopped with a, oh, you on your own, do you wanna, you know, come sit with us or whatever. But being near seeing the sea and being relaxed and having enough sleep and letting somebody else do the cooking and just provide this food got me in such a space that I came up with a whole new idea for a book and Rachel knew it was coming throughout the week it sort of developed. Um, and I also found myself lots of beta readers who were like, oh, what are you writing? Oh, that sounds interesting. It, I think it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s incredible to have a, different spaces b, get in the relaxing space and c, your community.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. So did a lot of these beta, beta writers. Yeah, I was gonna say, I, I pronounce it differently. Um, did a lot of them come through?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Uh, they&#8217;re doing it now. They&#8217;re doing it right now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Oh yeah?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Wow. Yeah. That&#8217;s great. Wow.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[23:22] Finding Inspiration and Overcoming Blocks\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So then when it comes to like trying to move forward with any, um, when you&#8217;re stuck or anything like that, that&#8217;s, those are basically the mantras or rituals that you guys have adopted, maybe going somewhere else, speaking to people about it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, I think going to, um, conferences or going to author panels, so hearing other writers talk, um, as well. I think just being generally near like-minded people and, um, hearing them talk about their ideas is Inspirational. It doesn&#8217;t necessarily move my idea forward in that I&#8217;m not having a conversation with them about my idea, but I think it just, it kind of gets the creative juices flowing a bit and it gets you feeling ready to move forward. Um, so yeah, I mean, like we said, we, you know, we&#8217;ve all been to Jericho Festival. We went again this year and I&#8217;m now kind of on the lookout for lots of different conferences and I&#8217;m kind of, of the mindset actually, the more that I say yes to, the more I can go to the, you know, the more helpful it will be because, it&#8217;s just, it&#8217;s, I think just being around people that love writing and love reading just helps you get in that head space.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And on a practical note, you, you don&#8217;t have to actually go out if you don&#8217;t want to. And I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m thinking of a lovely editor we met who, um, is, um, confined to a, a mobile scooter most of the time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And you know, if you are in that position or you are, like I was, I had three very young children couldn&#8217;t go out. We are lucky that there&#8217;s so much online now and there&#8217;s so much free stuff you can access. You don&#8217;t have to spend a fortune. You can buy writing courses and all sorts, but you know, a, for the communities, and b, just for listening to other people, there are podcasts and there are all sorts out there, and it just, as Rachel says, gets you going. I mean, there have been days when I&#8217;ve thought, oh, I could never write like that, but of course you can&#8217;t. That&#8217;s not you. Um, but yeah, you don&#8217;t have to spend any money. You don&#8217;t have to actually go anywhere, although obviously it works for me. Um, just, just get creative, go looking online.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[25:28] Balancing Writing with Family Life\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And I mean, both of you, obviously, like I mentioned before, have your families, you have kids. So, I mean, what would you say to like the mothers who want to write but feel like they don&#8217;t have the time to write or they&#8217;re, they have too much going on?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah, so I guess, um, I know a lot of people really like to set goals of like a 1000 words a day or 500 words a day. I think it, if it works for you, it works for you. If, if it means you&#8217;re gonna end up feeling like you failed, if you don&#8217;t reach that target, then maybe it&#8217;s not a helpful thing. Um, I found that, uh, the notes app on my phone is my friend. So if I&#8217;m somewhere and you know, I&#8217;m putting fish fingers in the oven or I&#8217;m, you know, on my way to work or something like that, if I&#8217;ve got an idea, I can jot it down quickly and then I can know that it&#8217;s somewhere safe and I can come back to it later.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, I think also. You know, there&#8217;s a lot of advice out there that says you are not writing the book unless you&#8217;re sat down writing the book. But also, for all of that, there&#8217;s a lot of advice that says, writing doesn&#8217;t always mean words on the page. It can be thinking about your characters, imagining a scene.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You know, if you can&#8217;t get in front of your laptop or computer or whatever it is, you can still be forwarding the story, like advancing it by thinking through dialogue or you know, looking at a new place and thinking, oh, that might be a, a nice location for my next scene, or, hey, that conversation I just overheard, sparked something for the character dialogue that I want to move on.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So I think it&#8217;s just about finding a rhythm that works for you and just grabbing bits of time where you can, that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s what I found anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Oh, you are absolutely right. And. It does depend on you and you have to try things to know if they work or not. But, um, you know, the notes app on your phone or whatever is your friend but so are notebooks. I mean, I, this, this, um, novel that I&#8217;ve resurrected after 40 years. I have got written notes on that. I&#8217;ve even got, um, a back of an envelope where I started writing something when I was out once. I&#8217;ve still kept that from a long time ago. And then, you know, I, I find a nice fresh notes notebook and a nice pen will often get me writing, but then it stops.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So I think use everything. Use everything. You can use notebooks, um, use bits of paper, use notes use voice to text. Speech to text is so underrated. Um, but you get ideas at any time and you will find, everybody says this. I certainly get this from comedy writers who suddenly see something and it pings an idea and you have to get it down because if you don&#8217;t, you never quite remember it, you know, as you think it was.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[28:12] Inspiration from Everyday Life\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And I think because we, we both work with people, working with other people and seeing other people often makes you think, oh, what if the classic question. And I was, I was picking up one of my grandchildren in, in school and I was looking at this lovely, lovely old lady. She was just so lovely. I say that and I&#8217;m quite old, but lovely old lady and she was so sweet, and I thought, wouldn&#8217;t it be interesting if she went around killing people?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">People asked her to because they were horrible. And I was stood in the playground getting this whole idea in my head thinking I need to write this down somewhere. So thinking time is also hugely important.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[28:51] Creative Collaboration and Brainstorming\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Plus, plus, as Rachel has said, we are quite arty. So, um, we have had, we do have creative days, so that will be Rachel and my other daughter and my daughter-in-law.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And, uh, my daughter-in-law may sit and sew something and my my daughter, who&#8217;s an artist will probably draw something or say something and I will be there with bits of paper drawing out characters and linking up on a diagram, and Rachel will be doing the same. So whatever works for you is right.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: Mm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah, makes sense.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And yeah, I mean, I&#8217;ve heard that too, where people say, you know that only if you&#8217;re writing it means that you are actually writing. And that&#8217;s not the case. At least not with like, um, meetups and, uh, writing sessions that I&#8217;ve had. They always say also in the beginning, you know. Brainstorming, outlining, thinking of things up in your head.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I mean, um, trying to even brainstorm, just like you said, um, without writing anything down is also part of the writing process.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> But yeah, just obviously eventually you write it down because otherwise<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> You can&#8217;t just have it all in your head all the time, so, yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> No, you can&#8217;t.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman and Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[30:03] The Writing Process: Good and Bad Days\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Um, what does the writing process look for both of you like on your good and bad days?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Oh, okay. Um, uh, a good day would be I\u2019m, I wake up and I&#8217;m really in the story. So I wake up thinking about a scene and I think, great, I&#8217;ve figured out a problem to whatever plot hole or whatever issue I was having the day before. And I&#8217;ll get up and I&#8217;ll sit down and I&#8217;ll, I&#8217;ll be able to write, and I&#8217;ll write a few 1000 words.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Obviously that&#8217;s assuming I&#8217;m not at work, no one else needs me at the time, you know, I don&#8217;t get distracted by chores. Um, all of those kind of things. Um, and, and, and then I&#8217;ll feel like I&#8217;ve made some progress, whether I go back the next day and change or is another matter. I&#8217;ve, I&#8217;ve kind of done some, um, a bad writing day I think will be, um.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Uh, a day where maybe I feel uninspired, or I feel a bit stuck. Um, and then added to that there are too many other responsibilities and things that are happening that mean that I don&#8217;t have time to sit and work it through in my head. So, I know that I&#8217;m stuck and I also know that I don&#8217;t have time to move on from it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, so either I&#8217;ll do no writing or I&#8217;ll do a small amount and it&#8217;s kind of like in pieces and I&#8217;m sort of doing a sentence here and there and I go back and look at it and think it just doesn&#8217;t hold together. Um, and why did I bother with the time that I had? Um, yeah. So, I think it really varies for me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It, it, it, you are so right and I think a good day you just know that something has worked or you&#8217;ve moved something forward and you have to acknowledge that even thinking through something is moving it forward. A, a bad day, well, I think, I think it&#8217;s when Rachel FaceTimes me and I&#8217;m sat here is a good day, and if she FaceTimes me and I&#8217;m sat in front of a TV in the other room, it&#8217;s a not very good day.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, I just, I just find it very difficult some days to to get into that mode, you know, you&#8217;ve been to work, um, I dunno, the washing machine&#8217;s broken down. Um, you&#8217;ve got a letter asking you for some money for a bill. You&#8217;ve paid all these other life things that need sorting out and I sometimes just cannot put them over there to get to writing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think sometimes you just have to acknowledge, I I&#8217;m not gonna get much done today. So, I console myself with her. But actually, not doing it today means I&#8217;ll be fresher tomorrow. So, I&#8217;m always trying to put a positive spin on the bad days because you, you&#8217;re gonna have them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Mm, yeah. Yeah, that&#8217;s true. Do you feel like you both have more good days than bad or good way around?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Uh, I mean, I would say I, I would say I have more good days than bad.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I would say, again, a, a bad day can be turned into a good day if you&#8217;re talking to other writers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I think that, you know, one of the things that we were told quite early on was the Find your Tribe, and I think I really underestimated how important that is.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, and how nice it is to have other people to talk to. And I think you can feel really stuck and speak to someone and then, you know, not necessarily write anything, but somehow move it on in your head and then it feels productive again. Um, so yeah, I, yeah, I would say I have more good days, but probably because I rely, you know, on other people, like both of you to kind of help move on if I&#8217;m feeling a bit stuck.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah, I would say more good days than bad days because even, even on a bad day, I&#8217;m thinking I haven&#8217;t written anything. I haven&#8217;t finished that scene, or I haven&#8217;t wr written that. So that&#8217;s kind of a good day. So yeah, definitely more good days.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. And I also kind of feel like sometimes good days and bad days are subjective, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You know, someone thinks that bad day is really bad because instead of writing like what we were saying, Rachel, instead of writing maybe 500 words, they only wrote 200. Um, in reality, that can be a good day because at least you\u2019re 200 words further than you were before.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. And those 200 could be a 200 that, that sticks throughout all of your drafts.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You know, you might change loads of other things, but you spent so much time on those 200 that actually they endure and they, they just really work. I can find that sometimes I&#8217;ll write paragraphs and paragraphs, and then I&#8217;ll go back to I and think, oh, actually, I, I didn&#8217;t need this entire scene. I can kind of summarize this as that happened yesterday in a few sentences.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, and then that&#8217;s, you know, thousands, couple of thousands of words gone. Or I&#8217;ll have something where I&#8217;ve written a sentence and then it stays from draft one. Um, and you just, I, I guess you don&#8217;t know what those. What those days are gonna be. Which ones are the ones where you have the work that stays and the work that you, you rehash, but you know, any, any progress is progress.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I think, I think between us, we&#8217;ve just kind of worked out that there aren&#8217;t any bad days. They&#8217;re just days where we don&#8217;t necessarily measure in the ways we&#8217;d like to.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> So maybe we&#8217;ve just invented a new, a new way forward.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because also, I mean, you could also feel like maybe you&#8217;re having a really good thing, like, Hey, I&#8217;m inspired, I&#8217;m writing all this, and then you read and you&#8217;re like, it, this is crap.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah, it happens. It really happens. Yeah, absolutely.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I did, I recently, I wrote this lovely thing and I thought, you know what? This has no value at all, and it was gone.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it can definitely be really subjective. Just because you think you might have had a bad day doesn&#8217;t necessarily mean that&#8217;s actually the case, so, yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[35:24] Overcoming the Inner Critic\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, how do you guys quiet the inner critic? Or maybe not quiet &#8217;cause I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s possible, but try to, uh, maybe l not live with it, but move past it. Kind of keep it there, obviously there with you, but kind of, um, be able to kind of, uh, write over that, that obstacle, that internal obstacle.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I think it&#8217;s what you were saying, Rachel, about find your tribe.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[35:54] The Importance of Writing Communities\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think, you know, you need to find your own ways, your support systems, and you know, we, we do rely on each other and, and family for that. There&#8217;s no doubt. But, we&#8217;ve also got, um, uh, as well as, um, I know Rachel speaks to you regularly. We&#8217;ve also got another little band that we met in Jericho, um, not this year, the year before.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Who are ladies uh, more my age. Rachel was the youngest group and we just help each other by letting each other know how we&#8217;re doing, what&#8217;s going on. And there is such wisdom in the group. You know, there we&#8217;re women from very different places in terms of not just geographically, which is the case, but in terms of life commitments and writings styles and genres, and what we are doing and where we are. And literally just talking to them can make me think, Yeah, it&#8217;s okay. I can do this. You know, everybody else is having the same problem. Do you think Rachel?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, I think you&#8217;re right, Iman, that you, you never get rid of that inner critic, and I don&#8217;t know that you always want to, because I think that&#8217;s sometimes what pushes you to go actually, is this as good as I can make it? Um, we had a very interesting talk, I think it was Ruth Ware, uh, spoken.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And she was saying, actually, I, you know, would I want it to go possibly not, because it helps me be a better writer. It kind of challenges me to say, is this the best that I can make it? If not, let me push it further, and, and I think that&#8217;s a really valid point.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. Um,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Um, so I think being able to learn to live with it, listen to it when you can, don&#8217;t let it stop you altogether. Um, but I think just remembering that all writers have had it, and you know it, like you said at the start, writing can feel really lonely. I think even when you know other writers, even when you&#8217;re related to other writers, when you are in it, um, you know your story is yours, um, and, it can feel like a lonely process, but every, every other writer has been there and every other writer has had that moment where they&#8217;ve kind of completely doubted their story or, you know, maybe it&#8217;s just a chapter or a paragraph or a sentence, but that self-doubt is I think, just a part of writing, which is<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Tricky in an industry where there are lots of rejections and lots of waiting, uh, you know, and lots of, uh, lots of gray areas.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[38:18] Motivations Behind Writing\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, but yeah, and I think also remembering why you are writing in the first place. You know, are you doing it because you have a message that you really want to get out into the world, or are you doing it because you just love it and it would feel wrong not to write, you know, are you doing it? Um, you know, I guess whatever reason it is, maybe it&#8217;s a combination of those, maybe it&#8217;s something else. Um, but I guess going back to that motivation, um, that I find for me sometimes then can outshine that little, that voice that&#8217;s like, oh, actually is this good enough? Can you do this? Are you sure this is for you?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Do you have that? On um, because I remember when I was first trying to figure out, you know, how I could move forward and get past the, uh, inner critic and that internal obstacle that we all have. Um, I saw somewhere where they said that you should, right in front of you, wherever it is that you do your writing, put why you&#8217;re doing it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Like maybe write a post-it notes or put it on the whatever bulletin board that you might have hanging up and put why the reason exactly the exact reason why you&#8217;re writing? Like do you guys, do you do that or do you have something like that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I, I, I don&#8217;t have anything written, but I know, I know why I&#8217;ve written the book that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s done now. Um, and I, I wrote that because I needed to write down, in a sort of cathartic way and a sort of support way for me how awful it was to watch my dad, who is was so smart, watch him die of dementia and watch people who I thought were experts in his nursing home who weren&#8217;t and it was so traumatic in the sense, and you know it&#8217;s coming and you know, they can&#8217;t do anything about it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But the whole thing was just so, um, unexpected. The feelings. I just had to get it down. Uh, it&#8217;s sort of a tribute to him. But also, once I&#8217;d realized it&#8217;s a tribute to him, I thought, there are so many other people that need to know this. There are so many other people that need to understand. Um, so I&#8217;ve, I&#8217;ve, that is really firm. With my novel I started 40 years ago, I think there is gonna be a similar message that, that a about that, um, it, it&#8217;s very different. Um, but it, there is a message there and it is about dealing with your own thoughts. It, the characters are not me. And, and as Rachel has said before, people sometimes think that everything you write is you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, and you do draw on things. But I think because I&#8217;ve got that strong feeling inside, I know why I&#8217;m doing it. I, I don&#8217;t need to write it down. It, I know it, I do. Have you written it, Rachel? Anywhere?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Um, so I&#8217;ve not written that. I do have, you probably can&#8217;t see, but I do have a sort of, that more has kind of, I guess, themes for that particular book that&#8217;s on there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, and those link to, I suppose sometimes it&#8217;ll be messages that I wanna get across. Um, for me, I suppose there is that, just knowing that now I&#8217;ve kind of refound writing and, and, I got back into it as an adult, I can&#8217;t imagine not doing it. Um, so I feel like that&#8217;s just always gonna be a driving force.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, but I think the other thing is being able to write and share your writing is, is actually a, a real privilege, um, whatever form that takes. Um, being able to feel, um, safe enough to have the capacity to have the time to write stuff down and share it with others, um, it is a really brilliant thing and I think, um, sharing, writing and, and thoughts is, can be really powerful. You know, like we all know lots of examples of books that kind of change the world and, um, how much kind of trends, um, can come about. Um, you know, if you think about romantasy and things, how, how, how much a few select books change the reading taste of like, you know, hundreds and thousands of millions of people.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, but I think that&#8217;s a really, a really powerful thing, um, and a really brilliant thing to be able to do for anyone that does it. Whether your read your readership is, is big or small, you know, whatever that looks like. Um, so I think that&#8217;s quite a nice driving force, just knowing that actually being able to do it in the first place is quite a privileged thing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah, that&#8217;s true.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It&#8217;s also a vulnerable thing, I think. I think it, you know, it, it is, I think people forget that it is quite vulnerable. People are looking and criticizing and, um, yeah. So, yeah. Powerful. Yes. Vulnerable too, I think.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. It takes a degree of bravery, I think, um, to share stuff. Um.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think even, I know we&#8217;ve been doing it for a few years now, but even when you sort of hand something over to someone to read, it&#8217;s kind of like this to read it, but I also don&#8217;t want you to read it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. I dunno that that will ever go away. I, I often hear other, uh, authors kind of talking who are much further down the line, like decades and decades in with lots of published books and they seem to feel equally as awkward and squeamish about sharing network work for the first time. So I think it&#8217;s just part of writing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. What is it that they say? It&#8217;s basically like sending your child out into the world, so, yeah. Yeah,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. Absolutely.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Um, have you ever, have either of you ever considered giving up writing, and what was it that pulled you back to it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I mean, I never thought, I&#8217;m not going to write again. I didn&#8217;t write for a few years because I had babies to look after. I was single mom. I had things to do and, and it was just very hard. But I don&#8217;t think I have ever thought I\u2019m not gonna write. And I think it, it&#8217;s just, as I say, you know, Rachel&#8217;s a big part in pulling me back into just do it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, but I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve ever thought I won&#8217;t ever write again.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve ever thought of giving it up forever. I think. You know, the idea of being able to pursue it as a career, um, which is obviously what I&#8217;m kind of aspiring to, is something that maybe a decade or so ago I felt wasn&#8217;t, didn&#8217;t feel very feasible, you know, when, when you are kind of just outta university or just into kind of the workplace and thinking about things like finding somewhere to live and paying bills and all of those kind of things. The idea of trying to rely on or make a living through writing to me felt like, like it was something that I couldn&#8217;t achieve.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, and I, I think I didn&#8217;t have confidence in my ability to do it or the stability, I guess, of, of the whole writing and publishing world to be able to make a living to do it. Um, but I think, um, so, so I think I kind of parked it for a really long time. Um, but I think getting a little bit older, just realizing that it&#8217;s something that I love, I can&#8217;t imagine not doing it whether I ever make any money from it or not, um, it&#8217;s just something that I love to do. So, I, I can&#8217;t, I don&#8217;t think, since rediscovering it, I&#8217;ve had the thought of, um I don&#8217;t wanna do it anymore. But I guess then that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s a request to you, Iman, is if I come into the writing group and say, I&#8217;m gonna give it up just remind me of this.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> What did you say when we were doing the recording? You said No.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Never. Never. Yeah,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Exactly.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[45:53] Writing Strengths and Challenges\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What are your, um, what do you think are your writing strengths and where do you still feel challenged in your writing process?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> That&#8217;s so interesting. I, I am an underwriter, not in terms of insurance, uh, when they underwrite things, but I, I, I wr get to the point quite quickly.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, which is a strength and a weakness, but I think my biggest strength is probably writing dialogue. I have always seen and heard things, and I think that probably goes back to the fact that I really, um I, in my head, everything I&#8217;m writing is on TV or a screen. I can see people, I can hear people having worked with people all my life.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, and so I think dialogue is my biggest strength and my underwriting is a bit of a weakness. You are very different, aren&#8217;t you, Rachel?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes. So, I think, um, I guess because my background&#8217;s, you know, psychology and sort of emotional mental health, I think being able to imagine what a character&#8217;s going through is something that I really enjoy and I&#8217;ll give a lot of attention to because I really enjoy it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, but then I&#8217;ll have a tendency to overwrite, um, and really get into a character&#8217;s head and that then I find dialogue more challenging and that kind of um, really interesting and fun to play with, um, tension between everything that&#8217;s going on inside and then what is said on the outside. Um, so whereas I think mom, you tend to have kind of, uh, smaller drafts first time round.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I tend to have huge drafts first time round, and then we&#8217;re kind of working in the opposite. You are, you are kind of filling yours up and I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m cutting mine down. Um, so yeah, I think, yeah, definitely being able to whittle down what I want to say into something a bit punchier. Um, that takes some time for me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. Yeah. I felt like in the beginning when I first started writing, I was like, your mom, Michele. You know, I was, I would underwrite, but I feel like dialogue is always one of my biggest, biggest strengths. But then when I was being told in the very beginning of the process that I needed to write more, dialogue I feel for me is still pretty good, but now I feel like I&#8217;m writing too much. I&#8217;m like, what&#8217;s going on?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> So, it&#8217;s so hard, isn&#8217;t it? You swing one way and another.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It&#8217;s, uh, it&#8217;s tricky.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. Uh, what has surprised you both most about the writing?<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[48:24] The Journey of Writing Across Generations\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Journey. Um, especially maybe seeing it unfold across generations between the two of you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It&#8217;s so hard.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I mean, you said very early on, Iman, about just write the damn thing. And that&#8217;s what I used to do, I used to just get an idea and I used to just write it, uh, type it out my little typewriter when I was younger and then thankfully we&#8217;ve got computers, but I have handwritten stuff and just spit it all out and get it all out and then think, hang on a minute, there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s no real hook in the first 500 words. And why? Why, why do I need to know this here and where is this going and where does this loose end tie up and hang on a minute, um, do I need that person to say that? It is really a difficult thing to do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Editing is really hard. You have to kind of step away and I think learning that there is so much to it. You know, you have to be in the head of every character. You need to understand what&#8217;s going on in the setting. Um, and it, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s not an easy thing to do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Rachel, what, what do you think?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah, so, yeah, so I really agree with that. I think also I think I had, and it&#8217;s probably my perfectionist tendencies, but this idea that if your idea for a story was really good, you know, your first draft would be amazing because, because the idea is so good, it would naturally, if the, if the book itself is good enough, it would come out you know, shining and it would, it would be in a, a close to polish state, um, since redrafting, a lot of times, a lot, a lot, a lot of times. Um, I realized actually I can kind of keep the idea, but chopping and changing and rewriting a lot doesn&#8217;t mean that that original idea was a bad idea. It just means that it took a lot of time and it&#8217;s taking time to kind of polish and refine. It&#8217;s like sort of chipping away at a marble statue idea, isn&#8217;t it? It&#8217;s, you know, you start with a chunk of rock and that is okay, it&#8217;s gonna take time to make it the thing that needs to be. Um, yeah. And so I think that maybe stalled me a bit in the process that I thought actually, if I&#8217;m having to re-edit and change this and redraft, does that just mean this isn&#8217;t, you know, this is a no go for this or not, but actually I think I&#8217;ve learned hearing other writers talk about the process that&#8217;s not the case at all. Actually, redrafting is a huge part of it, and that is normal. And that doesn&#8217;t mean the idea&#8217;s bad.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Um, I think the other thing is. Uh, you know, we&#8217;ve said it, we&#8217;ve said it before and I&#8217;ll say it again. People, you know, you\u2019re writing<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Or your, I think I underestimated how important knowing other writers is, um, for the process and helping each other out, but also just general writer wellbeing. Um,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And feeling good about what you are doing and not feeling alone. Um, and you know, like we said, obviously we have that within our family, but I think it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s really important to have it broadly and really nice to speak to other people in your genre and different genres. Um, that I think the importance of that is, is way more than I ever expected. Um, yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. Yeah. I mean all, well, I was gonna say all three of us, but I&#8217;m interviewing you guys. Um, I know that, I know that, um, both of you are working still on books. You don&#8217;t have anything self-published or out there in, in the moment at the moment, but I know you obviously will very soon. So in terms of that, um.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[51:51] Current Writing Projects and Future Plans\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is there something in terms of what you are working on now that you want to share with us? Like what is the latest project that you&#8217;re working on? Can you give us some information on that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Always. Um, so the one I&#8217;ve sort of alluded to is, um Book club women&#8217;s fiction, very bittersweet with a, a, a, a moral dilemma.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A very morally complex family dilemma of assisted dying, but with dark comedy. Um, and, uh, as I say, beta reader feedback is very good. I will be querying in the next few days I&#8217;ve already spoken to, uh, an agent who, um, is happy to hear from me. Um, and I was invited last year actually to, to submit the full manuscript, but I hadn&#8217;t finished it at the time, so I&#8217;m pleased to say that&#8217;s finished.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And, and cheekily the other one that I&#8217;ve dug out from, um, 40 years is another black comedy um, set in 1985 before body positivity has hit the masses. The sort of Sweeney Todd meets Bridget Jones is coming soon too.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah, so I am, I&#8217;m querying the new adult speculative dark academia. Um, so in the query trenches and trying to distract myself as much as possible, which is why I&#8217;m working on a second dark academia novel, which is, I suppose is more sort of paranormal. Um, but again, in that speculative new adult space. Um, yes, that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s helping me get through the waiting of querying, which has anyone who&#8217;s queried knows is very stressful.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> But that novel that Rachel&#8217;s written is really good.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> You have to say that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I don&#8217;t, I could have, I could have moved on to something else.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> You do. You do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah, I was gonna say, I&#8217;m sure it is. Obviously, I read the, the one that she has changed now, the um,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah, it is very different.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Broken Dreamer one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The architect ones. Uh, but yeah, I told her I was, I was jealous of her writing chops. I was like, damn, I feel like I would have to get maybe five or six edits just to get to the level that she did.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I&#8217;m sure was very few edits. So, yeah. But that&#8217;s something else that all creatives do. We need to stop comparing ourselves to other people.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> We, we do, but we never will. We never will because<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> That&#8217;s true.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> We, we have to, in, in order to make sense of something, we have to judge it and put in it in a little compartment in our head.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And so we will never stop comparing. And I don&#8217;t think we, I don&#8217;t think we can. I think we&#8217;ll always do it. But we need to just switch it into that positive mode because sometimes you could admire somebody&#8217;s writing and think, actually that wouldn&#8217;t work. I mean, honestly, if Rachel wrote the book I&#8217;ve just written, and vice versa, we could not use as writing styles that we have, and actually, Rachel, you&#8217;ve missed the opportunity to say that my book is good too. That should have come a bit sooner.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I, I was, I was, I was coming with that. Of course. It&#8217;s amazing. Of course it is. But I have to say that No, no. It is amazing. Um, yeah, absolutely. I think, yeah. Yes, it is. Um,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Just appreciate, just appreciate other authors for what they&#8217;ve done.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And, and, and know that they were where you are and you might be where they are. And just appreciate the fact that we are all so different. I mean, I have no idea why I like killing people in a funny way in books. I have no idea. Uh. I just don&#8217;t know, but it makes me laugh and I like to laugh and that&#8217;s just my thing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I thankfully, Rachel, if Rachel had written something similar, people might look at our family and worry just a little bit, but it hasn&#8217;t happened. Um, that doesn&#8217;t mean you can&#8217;t kill anyone in your books, Rachel, but, um, it, it&#8217;s, you know, it&#8217;s, I have to say is fantastic to have her to be able to rant at, or more often than not, we&#8217;ve come through, uh, you know, I&#8217;ve said, how about this? And we&#8217;ve ended up giggling at all the ways that how can kill people or things that can happen and, you know, somewhere in the book. And it, it&#8217;s, it is brilliant<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[56:13] Supporting Fellow Writers\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><b>Rachel: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, I think it&#8217;s nice as well, just that like with writing groups as well, just sharing each other&#8217;s successes. So, I, I know that when you know mom gets a, an agent and a book deal, I think I&#8217;m probably gonna be as excited as you are and vice versa.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think it&#8217;s just, you know, in the same Iman for us in our, in our group. I think there&#8217;s just, when you kind of build up that, that network of people, you, you share those successes together and it&#8217;s just such a nice thing. Um,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman and Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I know, but I&#8217;m your mom, so, when you were, when you were just invited to send off a manuscript and you were excited, I had to be all cool and calm and you know, there are ways you have to behave as a mother because you are coming to, you know, there&#8217;s a role.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Of course, of course. But no, I think, yeah, I think the other thing I&#8217;ve seen a lot of is writers helping out, other writers, you know, and we&#8217;ve had as well, obviously Iman, you beta read mine and, and we&#8217;ve kind of, you know, in our writing group, we help each other and, you know, those are things that obviously we will do for each other for free, um, just because we want to help each other. And I think that&#8217;s part of that sharing success, um.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And are, aren&#8217;t other writers fabulous?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Michele:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> You know, other writers that we&#8217;ve met are fabulous. I remember, you know, that, that idea that if I tell somebody something, they might use it. Forget that everything&#8217;s kind of been done.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Just share and be as helpful and open as you can because you get it back. Uh, writers are fantastic people.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah, yeah, there really are.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[57:41] Final Thoughts and Encouragement\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But yeah, I mean, thanks so much guys for making the time and for coming on here, Michele and Rachel, and uh, thanks everyone else for tuning in. Just wanted to say, obviously every writing journey has its own rough patches and your story might be the one that someone else needs to hear.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So everyone just needs to keep showing up for your draft and for yourself. And that&#8217;s me included. So yeah, thank you so much.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Rachel:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Thank you very much for having us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iman:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> You\u2019re welcome. Speak soon. Bye.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">FEATURED GUEST: RACHEL MCLAUGHLIN\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Based in the UK, Rachel is a writer currently working on her debut; a YA speculative novel about the power of dreaming. Her background is in English Literature and Psychology; two areas she hopes to bring into her writing, with a focus on mental health, neurodivergence and inclusion. She\u2019s a keen reader of SFF, psychological thriller and romance, and when not reading or writing, can be found chasing after her two children or frolicking at a fantasy themed ball.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Connect with Rachel:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Instagram: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/rachel_j_writes\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/rachel_j_writes\/<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">TikTok:<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/amandeepahuja77\/\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@rachelmwriter<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><\/h2>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">FEATURED GUEST: MICHELE BURNS\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Michele is a busy lady with six grandchildren, six cats and dreams of seeing her stories in bookshops\u2014and maybe even the big screen. As an ex- Deputy Headteacher, singer, and academic journals contributor, storytelling is the thread that has run through her career. Her academic background is in computing and English language and literature and she\u2019s on the final edit of her debut novel whilst resuming a second she started forty years ago!<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Connect with Michele:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Instagram: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/michelej_burns?igsh=MTY1MWJoYWxxYTU1OA==\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/michelej_burns?igsh=MTY1MWJoYWxxYTU1OA==<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">X: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/mjmothership\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">https:\/\/x.com\/mjmothership<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">TikTok: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@michelejburns\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@michelejburns<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Facebook: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/mikki.burns.948\/?_rdr\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/mikki.burns.948\/?_rdr<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ABOUT THIS EPISODE\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In this heartfelt second episode, host <\/span><b>Iman Llompart<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> sits down with mother\u2013daughter writing duo <\/span><b>Rachel McLaughlin<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><b>Michele Burns<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for an intimate, meaningful conversation about creativity, fear, and the power of growing as writers side by side.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rachel and Michele dive into how storytelling has shaped their family across generations, how they each found their way into writing during very different life seasons, and how creativity becomes both anchor and expression through motherhood, identity shifts, and self-rediscovery.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They open up about their deepest writing fears\u2014being misunderstood, not being read, or exposing too much of themselves\u2014and share the rituals and mindset shifts that help them keep writing even when the inner critic gets loud. Through laughter, honesty, and a rare look into a shared creative relationship, they show how writing can be a lifeline, a mirror, and a bridge between generations.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you\u2019ve ever questioned whether your writing is \u201cenough,\u201d this conversation is a reminder that every draft, every wobble, and every return to the page matters.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Episode Highlights<\/span><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A beautiful glimpse into the creative lineage of a mother and daughter writing together<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How life transitions\u2014motherhood, career changes, self-discovery\u2014shaped their writing journeys<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Their biggest writing fears and how vulnerability plays into their work<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The small rituals that help them move through overwhelm and get unstuck<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The unique support system they\u2019ve built for each other through honest feedback and encouragement<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The surprising emotional depth and messiness they\u2019ve discovered in the drafting process<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sneak peeks into their current projects\u2014from morally complex women\u2019s fiction to dark academia and speculative YA<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ABOUT THE HOST: IMAN LLOMPART\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Iman Llompart is a Spanish American romantasy writer and interviewer based in Dubai. She\u2019s working on her debut novel and hosting <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Beyond the Rough Draft<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in collaboration with Writer\u2019s Fun Zone.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Iman\u2019s mission is to create space for honest conversations with writers \u2014 the kind that reveal both the doubt and the discipline behind the craft.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Connect with Iman:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Instagram:<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/imanllompart\/?hl=en\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/imanllompart\/?hl=en<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">LinkedIn:<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/iman-llompart-2a13741a9\/\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/iman-llompart-2a13741a9\/<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Email: isllompart17@gmail.com<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ABOUT WRITER\u2019S FUN ZONE &amp; BETH BARANY\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Writer\u2019s Fun Zone, founded by Beth Barany, is an online creative hub that supports fiction and creative nonfiction writers through coaching, podcasts, and resources.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Beth is an award-winning author and creativity coach whose mission is to help writers craft their best work and bring their stories to life.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Learn more:<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Listen to Beth\u2019s Podcast:<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/podcast\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How To Write the Future<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">CONNECT WITH THE SHOW\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Listen &amp; Subscribe: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/creators.spotify.com\/pod\/profile\/beyondtheroughdraft\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">https:\/\/creators.spotify.com\/pod\/profile\/beyondtheroughdraft<\/span><\/a> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/h3>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Share your thoughts<\/span><\/h3>\n<h3><strong>Follow on Instagram:<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/bethbarany\/\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">@bethbarany<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> |<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/writersfunzoneblog\/\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">@writersfunzoneblog<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> |<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/imanllompart\/?hl=en\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">@imanllompart<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Want to be featured?<\/strong> <\/span><\/h3>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Email Iman Llompart at isllompart17@gmail.com<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">CREDITS\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Host: Iman Llompart<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Guests: Rachel McLaughlin, Michele Burns<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Produced in collaboration with: Writer\u2019s Fun Zone<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Edited with: Descript <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/email.descript.com\/e\/c\/eyJlbWFpbF9pZCI6IlJNRExCUUFBQVlIdXhVUDF2MFhEWTFWS2FfWHAyUT09IiwiaHJlZiI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmRlc2NyaXB0LmNvbT9sbXJlZj1fdzFXQ0EiLCJpbnRlcm5hbCI6ImMwY2IwNTAzYTE5YjAxYjJkYTA2IiwibGlua19pZCI6MTU2OX0\/25f8341a8209bb3d0da94d7824926b9cac821d677d7fd7bcd9f01c0282653ea7\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">https:\/\/www.descript.com?lmref=_w1WCA<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Distributed by: Spotify <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/creators.spotify.com\/pod\/profile\/beyondtheroughdraft\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">https:\/\/creators.spotify.com\/pod\/profile\/beyondtheroughdraft<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a9 2026 <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Beyond the Rough Draft<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> | A Writer\u2019s Fun Zone Production<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>RESOURCES &amp; LINKS Writer\u2019s Fun Zone \u2014 https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog How To Write the Future Podcast \u2014 https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/podcast Email Iman to be a guest \u2014 isllompart17@gmail.com &nbsp; ABOUT BEYOND THE ROUGH DRAFT\u00a0 Beyond the Rough Draft&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":30249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","tve_updated_post":"","tve_custom_css":"","tve_user_custom_css":"","tve_globals":{},"tcb2_ready":0,"tcb_editor_enabled":0,"tve_landing_page":"","_tve_header":"","_tve_footer":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[6658,7376,2663,7374,7378,7375,7377,7220,6086,7371,7372,7380,7370,7379,1335,347,2501,2581,7373,4958],"class_list":["post-30247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-writing-tips","tag-beyond-the-rough-draft","tag-creative-lineage","tag-creative-process","tag-creative-vulnerability","tag-dark-academia-writing","tag-drafting-process","tag-generational-storytelling","tag-getting-unstuck","tag-iman-llompart","tag-michele-burns","tag-mother-daughter-authors","tag-overcoming-self-doubt","tag-rachel-mclaughlin","tag-speculative-fiction-writer","tag-womens-fiction","tag-writers-fun-zone","tag-writers-journey","tag-writing-community","tag-writing-fears","tag-writing-mindset"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Episode 2 Mother-Daughter Duo Rachel McLaughlin and Michele Burns &#183; Writer&#039;s Fun Zone<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Host Iman Llompart talks with mother-daughter writers Michele Burns and Rachel McLaughlin about creativity, fear, and growing together.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/26\/mother-daughter-duo\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Episode 2 Mother-Daughter Duo Rachel McLaughlin and Michele Burns &#183; Writer&#039;s Fun Zone\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Host Iman Llompart talks with mother-daughter writers Michele Burns and Rachel McLaughlin about creativity, fear, and growing together.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/26\/mother-daughter-duo\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Writer&#039;s Fun Zone\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/bethbarany\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-26T17:07:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/v2.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"300\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"300\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Iman Llompart\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@BethBarany\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@BethBarany\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" 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