Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see as a guest.
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Mindy: We're here with Lynn Ng Quezon, author of Mattie and the Machine, which released in November of last year from Santa Monica Press. One of the things that is really interesting, and I'm sure that my audience is familiar with this by now, is that I started out my life attempting to become a serious writer on a messaging board called Agent Query Connect, which is now defunct. However, it was such a source of knowledge for me and also just comfort. And there were so many people there that I relied on, and I know that they also relied on the boards. And I've had many of them on the show, and you were one of them. So, if you could talk a little bit about what it was like for you as an emerging writer to have that as a resource and to have a community. And for this episode, I really wanna focus on community and support among writers, and also connectivity and networking.
Lynn: There are tons of script writers in LA. I was writing middle grade and young adults, and trying to find somebody who wrote that category was really difficult in person. So I went to the internet, and I actually cannot remember how I stumbled upon Agent Query Connect. I was doing a search. I think I saw on the boards a young adults middle grade group was starting up. So I basically just approached the group and I said, "Is it okay if I just sort of like, watch you guys?" You're doing exchanges online. You're swapping manuscripts. I wasn't sure if I was ready to jump in on that, because all of you guys, at least to me at the time, seemed like you knew what you were doing, and I learned so much from the group. I learned how to give and take feedback. Everybody is really terrific about it, and everybody brought different things to the table. But the thing is, is that we all wrote different genres - quite a bit of Sci-fi. I was writing historical. A couple of other people are writing fantasy. Basically how I learned how a healthy critique group functioned was off of this. I've always been grateful for that. More than half of the group at this point has been published. Which is really amazing, I think.
Mindy: Real quick, because I am confident many of our old AQC board members are present and listening to the episode, share your screen name, if you would, so that everyone recognizes you.
Lynn: Okay, my screen name is Sakura Eries, a modification of my fan fiction writer name. I remember you as BBC with the black cat avatar. It's a little bit funny calling you Mindy because I think of you as BBC.
Mindy: So many people still do. I personally identify an area of my life as BBC. Just for listeners that aren't familiar, my screen name at the time was big black cat 97. And everyone affectionately referred to me as BBC, and then I have Le Chat Noir as my avatar. Even now, I'll get emails every now and then from people that'll be like, "Hey, BBC. I was just wondering," and I'm like, "Oh, yeah!" And then I've actually had a couple of times moving through the publishing world, if AQC happens to come up, and I'll be like, "Oh yeah. I was a moderator there, and it was very important to me." And they'll be like, "Oh, what was your screen name?" And then I'll, "Oh, I was BBC." And they'll be like, "Wait!" I actually had a pretty major editor at a pretty large publishing house who, at the time, had just been an intern and was kinda lurking on the boards, that was like "wait a minute. That was you?"
Going back to what you said about the proliferation of screenwriters where you were at the time and how that wasn't necessarily helpful to you - it is interesting to me. It is very specific, down to your age category and occasionally also the genre - although I can obviously swap manuscripts with my main critique partners at the beginning of my life as a writer who was also a critique partner, were RC Lewis, who writes strictly Sci-fi, and MarcyKate Connolly, who writes mostly fantasy, and I was writing post-apocalytpic dystopian that was very much realistic. There was no fantasy. There was no sci-fi. Yet, we were extremely efficient critique partners for each other. However, when it comes to age category, that I think you do need someone that is operating in the same arena as you because there are certain elements that are extremely important, and I can say as an editor, and I will have folks that are writing YA or even middle grade, and they will have a POV or chapters or even the entire book, is written from the perspective of an adult. No. No, that's not... That will not work. So, you do have to know the "oh no, no nos" are for that age category. And also just especially in the times that we're in now... Censorship being such a big issue. I just found out I've come under fire in another state here just this morning.
Lynn: Oh.
Mindy: Oh no, it's okay. It is to be expected, and I'm surprised it took this long.
Lynn: What's your state count?
Mindy: Missouri. Texas. Florida. Today, we added Pennsylvania. I'm sure that there are others that I just have not been brought to my attention yet. I've started to make it on to the lists. So it begins. I'm not saying that people should write in order to keep themselves safe from the censors, because also the censorship issue is something that we are talking about a lot inside of publishing. The average person, if they're not moving through the school system world at this point, probably don't know much about it. A new writer that isn't necessarily inside baseball might not be aware of some of the things that are going on. So, I do think it is important to be connecting with people inside of the age category that you're writing for, and if you can find someone within your genre as well, I think that's super important.
Lynn: I would definitely agree with that because when I moved out of LA and I moved up to the Bay Area, and I was connecting with the local writers here, my first group that I connected with... They were doing chapter book and picture book. I was the only YA person there. That was really awkward. They were very nice people, they were. Giving feedback was difficult 'cause I didn't read the age group. They didn't know how to give me feedback. That relationship lasted two months, but I need to find another group. I was fortunately able to find a local group that was able to join. We do mostly YA. They're great. What you said makes absolute sense because we all write different genres as well. One of them was doing horror. Another person was doing fantasy. Another person was doing magical realism, but we're all writing middle grade/YA. SO even though the genres are so different, we kinda know what the audience is. I don't have a teenager. I'm not a teacher. I don't have that experience. The people that are in my group, they have teenagers, one of them was a teacher, and another one... He works with children's theater. So we are able to exchange information that way, and at least I can sort of keep abreast what's going on. You probably, since you're still working at schools, you probably know a bit more than me.
Mindy: Well, one of the things I try and that I counsel other people that do write, young adult specifically, is not to worry too much about slang in particular or also whatever platform happens to be at the time. Because it'll date your book so seriously. So, for example, the very first novel that I ever wrote that was YA, I was in college. So we're talking late 90s. A major part of the plot unrolled over communications through AOL Instant Messenger. 10 years later - AIM doesn't even exist anymore, and nobody knows what it is. You know, Facebook was huge. Now it's not. Everybody was on Twitter. That's kind of fading. And the teenagers, they are on Instagram, and they are on TikTok. I learned very early on - don't be specific. Don't mention music. Don't mention a specific social media platform. Don't use specific slang. And traditional publishing is gonna take 18 months to two years for that book to make it into print anyway. And in two years, what you said in that book might be comical. That is a very specific facet of YA, and that is one of the reasons why, like you said, I do think it is important that we operate closely or within the arenas of people that are also writing something at least similar to what we are writing. Moving on then, I wanna talk about finding that group and the importance of the critique partner and tying that in with your own journey. So talk to us a little bit about Mattie and the Machine, and how you moved forward from AQC and into the realm of the published author.
Lynn: For Mattie and the Machine, I had queried at that point three manuscripts and they all got trunked. It's part of the journey of the writer, and you just sort of had to keep on going. What happened was I decided to try something completely different, and so I moved up to 19th century America. When I wrote my other manuscripts, it was because I really was in love of that ancient Greek era. But what happened was, was that I was flipping through this set of mini biographies about famous women, it's called Girls Who Rocked The World, and I happened across Margaret Knight's biography. I hadn't heard of her before. I fell in love with the character, but I knew nothing else about the era. And the thing about historical is that... And you know this, because you wrote a historical yourself, you have to get the set correct. I spent a lot of time trying to get the set correct. So, she was an inventor that was famous for two things. One is that she was a child inventor. And the second thing is that there was a lawsuit involving a machine she invented, but a man stole the design. And so she had to go and sue this guy in order to get the patent rights back. And so I saw that story and I was like, "Okay. I have to write the story." I went so far as to go to the National Archives on the other side of the country to get the lawsuit records. Dig them up. These things are like hand-written from 1870, and I transcribe them all. And then I wrote the whole thing out. I got the patent for the machine, and so I broke that all down. This is how this thing was built, how it functioned.
The thing is, is that I have to re-mold this for a modern audience. There's things that I was trying to write on the page portraying her correctly as an inventor and about this whole lawsuit. Some of the texts I would lift directly from the deposition documents. This is what I put out in front of my group. And so what they really helped me to do, because I am an engineer and I have an engineer brain and I sort of look at things a certain way, they were able to sort of reel me back and go, "This part is okay, but you're writing a certain way and then you get to this point, and it's like you just jumped back two centuries." That's how my group really helped me. I spent two years researching it. Two years writing it, and I spent two years querying it. And to be quite honest, I didn't think it was gonna get picked up. When I was getting towards the end of the two years, I was like, "I'm gonna get up to 100 queries, and I'm gonna send out 100 of them. If I don't get anything after 100, then I'm just gonna end it." On Manuscript Wish List, that's where I found Santa Monica Press. They had an open call for submissions, and they were looking for young adult historical. I'll put it in and just see if they pick it up. And it got picked up. I was still sort of cautiously optimistic pretty much up until the ARCs got sent out.
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Mindy: With historical, we tend to go really deep in the weeds and we wanna explain why this is the way it is. And we want our research to get on to the page, and that doesn't necessarily make for interesting reading.
Lynn: I will agree on that. I went a bit in that direction, and I needed my critique group to reel me back. And actually there was another scene where she accomplishes this first big goal, and so now she can move forward and my critique was like, "That's it? She's not going to have a celebration? She need to have celebration." Everybody was saying it. So the thing about critique groups is like if one person says it, out of a group of five, it's kinda like up to you to decide if you wanna take it or not. But if everybody's telling you that, then you really have to pay attention. So there is actually like...
Mindy: Absolutely.
Lynn: ... half a chapter in Mattie and the Machine that was not part of the original. I was not intending to put in there, but because my critique group was basically screaming at me, "You need to put this in there!" I put it in there, and it made it a better book.
Mindy: You need those critique partners to tell you where you're doing too much and where you are not doing enough. You can't see it to yourself. Tell me a little bit about how you feel now, because you had a quite a long journey. It was a lot of work for you. I was working for 10 years to get an agent, and I know that you had a similar timeline and similar struggles to me in terms of moving from being an aspiring writer to being a published author. So, how does it affect your process now? Are you continuing to write? Do you feel a lift of pressure or do you feel more?
Lynn: So I feel a bit more pressure because Santa Monica Press, my editor has been awesome. I feel so much gratitude for them for picking my book out of the slush pile. I mentioned before, I'm not that great with social media. Trying to figure out how all this works. Promoting a book now is difficult 'cause I just got on to Instagram. I looked at TikTok, and I sort of went away screaming. I don't know that I should admit that, but it's like trying to figure out how to give Mattie the best chance out there. So, I have my first school visit scheduled for next month. That's both exciting and terrifying. At the time that you were launching, the whole thing was like blog tours, stuff like that. I don't... Do people even do blogs anymore?
Mindy: Not really.
Lynn: All the stuff that I learned before about the time that you and MarcyKate were debuting. You're my first batch of people that I knew that were actually moving on so I was like, "Oh, this is what they're doing. I should keep track of it." It took me 10 years. And now I finally caught up with you, and now the landscape's changed. So, I'm grateful for you having me on this podcast. I really appreciate that. But yeah, I'm still trying to figure out how that part of the business works. It doesn't really affect the writing part because I'm still writing. That part I feel like I know pretty well, and at the time that Mattie and the Machine got picked up, I was like 75% of the way through another manuscript which is a completely different genre. So I'm just chugging along on that. That is sort of like a comforting space, 'cause I've been in it for 10 years. I know that part. Being motivated to write is not that difficult. We'd exchange a couple of emails about school visits. Because you've worked in a school environment, maybe it's not quite as terrifying for you. I went to school in California in the Bay Area, and we never had authors visits at my school. I don't even have that to fall back on. I don't know what they're supposed to be like.
Mindy: Yeah, well. I mean, I can tell you... So on the social media front, I've said multiple times on this podcast. I'm gonna say it again. I don't think it sells books. It connects you to your readers, and it can help people aware of you as a human being and maybe aware of your book as well. But I don't think it matters, if I'm gonna be totally honest with you. I think it's a nice to have it because people will reach out to me. People that have read my books will send me a message on Instagram or they'll DM me, usually Instagram. I answer everybody. It's like I will absolutely have a conversation with anyone. So, that is how I use social media these days... Is more of connectivity. It's not gonna sell books. If you happen to go viral for whatever reason, and usually that's gonna be a TikTok, then good for you. But the truth is, I'm not even present on TikTok. I have an account. I've made three or four reels. I'm not gonna put myself into it. I don't care enough, and it shows if you don't care. I've absenteed myself from that platform. If other people wanna make TikToks about me, cool. That would be super helpful. Please do it.
But when it comes to school visits... Yeah, high school's hard. High school's hard when you're in it, and it's really hard to walk back as an adult. And if you have any trauma from high school, it will hit you in the face again. Working in a high school for 14 years was the most beneficial thing to my writing career. Understanding teens today. Being connected with them. How they think and feel and move through the world today, which is completely different from how I moved through the world in the 90s. But also, people are still people. Teenagers are still teenagers, and they wanna have fun. They wanna laugh. They don't wanna be condescended to, and they don't want to feel like you are imparting a lesson. They don't wanna feel like you are making a point and teaching them something. My most successful school visits are one where I just go in. I talk about my book, but usually in terms of... I'm not trying to sell them my book. I talk about whatever the book is about. With Heroine, I talk about where I got the idea for the book, and then I talk about my research a little bit. And I talk about the opioid epidemic. I just talk around it, and I get them interested in the idea 'cause they don't... They know when they're being marketed too. That's what I do. Man, I love doing it. I miss being with the kids. I miss being in front of the kids. I love interacting with them. So man, I love school visits. I'd do one every day. I know that they're scary, and I have the benefit of 14 years of being in front of them, being ready for their comebacks, and being ready... 'cause some of them are gonna give a shit and it's like... I got good, as a librarian and then as a sub, at fending them off and coming back at them in a way that is appropriate and also respectful towards them. But just like a little bit of back and forth, and then they're like, "Oh, okay. You're cool." I mean, it's a tight rope. It's a tight rope. Last thing, we just talked about social media. So I know that you are putting yourself out there so that listeners can find you and follow you there. Why don't you let people know where they can find you online and where they can find Mattie and the Machine.
Lynn: You can find me online at Instagram, ngquezon, N-G-Q-U-E-Z-O-N. My author website is at NgQuezon dot wordpress dot com. So that's N-G-Q-U-E-Z-O-N dot wordpress dot com. And if you go over there, you can find information about where to find the book, and also there's reader's resources. So stuff about Margaret Knight. I did all that research. So for anybody who is interested in geeking out about those particular details about 19th century women or Margaret Knight, the inventor... There's some drawings. Just in case somebody really wants to know have all these parts work. Dumped them into a Reader's Guide, and so that's something that you can also download from my website. And then in terms of where Mattie and the Machine is available, you can find it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, IndieBound... Basically, if you wanna find all the other places, you can also look it up on my website.
Mindy: Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.