Join Mary Kole and Sara Zarr as they talk about the complex realities surrounding publishing and becoming a career author within a rapidly shifting young adult and middle grade marketplace. Sara Zarr brings insight and personal experiences to surviving the sudden and drastic changes within the YA marketplace, such as the popularization of certain YA genres and how that affects YA authors who specialize outside of those genres.

Join us at Good Story Learning to connect with other writers and gain access to exclusive resources within a community full of fellow writers to help you achieve your goals!

Episode 33: Sara Zarr, Young Adult & Middle Grade Author Transcript

Mary Kole: Hello, this is Mary Kole and The Good Story Podcast, helping writers craft a good story. With me, you will hear from thought leaders related to writing and sometimes not about topics important to writers of all categories and ability levels. Here is to telling a good story. Thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Mary Kole and this is The Good Story Podcast.

And with me I have a wonderful guest today, Sara Zarr. Sara, welcome!

Sara Zarr: Thank you for having me! I am Sara Zarr, do I need more? Just Kidding.

Mary Kole: “You know who I am!”

Sara Zarr: I'm the author of 11 books. I've been doing this about 15 years. I also host and produce the This Creative Life podcast. Been doing that since 2012, off and on. And I teach for an MFA program and I do manuscript consulting on the side, and I'm basically your average mid-lit full-time writer just trying to make it work in my second decade of this.

Mary Kole: That's amazing. And I love, I mean, listeners who have been with us for a while know that I have a lot of kind of debut writers, some more seasoned writers, But I love that we're going to get this perspective of 15 plus years, 10 plus books in the industry and what that looks like, the nitty gritty, the good, the bad.

Sara Zarr: A lot of nit and grit.

Mary Kole: Yeah, well, that's what we were just talking about before we started rolling is kind of the grit that it demands of you. If you are going to have a longer career in this industry and all the ways in which it has changed, even within two decades. Now, I was also saying to you, I came to publishing 2008, 2009, which was shortly after your debut.

And so we kind of we were kicking around in the same time frame. And it really has changed. Do you want to share? Share your thoughts on how the YA market which is kind of your wheelhouse has evolved?

Sara Zarr: Sure. I'm going to go even further back in history. I'm a Gen X, and a Gen X right in the middle of Gen X, born in 1970. And so when I was a teenager in the ‘80s reading young adult fiction, it was a lot of like Robert Cormier, Judy Blume, M.E. Kerr, S.E Hinton, you know, all of the, sort of, classic first wavey stuff.

And then in the 90’s is when I started writing and I thought, I'm going to try and write a young adult novel from start to finish. And what motivated me at that time was—there used to; I don't think it still exists; you might remember this—there was a contest called the Delacorte Prize for a first young adult novel?

And so that was a time when Delacorte, which was, you know, basically a part of Random House. It was basically meant an open submission time. So people with their first books and no agent could submit a full manuscript up to this contest. They gave a prize that included an advance and publication. So that was what motivated me to finish that first book.

And that was great because it's just good to have a goal. And I think anyone who wants to write novels. The first thing you have to reckon with is, like, you can spend, you can like research the business, you can like read all the craft books, you can go to all the conferences. But if you can't get to the end of a manuscript, you're not going nowhere.

So it was a good push for me to be like, okay, I'm going to write to the end of this. And of course I was like, a lot of writers were often a mix of extreme confidence and grandiosity and then like utter abject, like, self hatred. So I was like waffling between the two. But part of me was like, how could any book but mine win this prize?

I was very confident. I was like, this is my prize to win. I did not win. I don't think they even gave a prize that year. And I was like, "No book was better than my book." Like we'd rather publish nothing, you know? I could be misremembering. But anyway, that was like mid-'90s, mid to late ‘90s is when I finished my first book.

Mary Kole: So just a second, if I'm hearing you correctly, did that dictate your choice of YA as a category?

Sara Zarr: No, no, no. I just never thought of stories that were not YA books. It just was sort of my natural place that my storytelling machine was coming from. And then I also worked at a bookstore during that time. And for people who weren't around in the ‘90s or in bookstores in the ‘90s, literally the YA shelf was this wide. It was floor to ceiling, but it was this wide. There just wasn't a lot. That was a time when people like Sarah Dessen was getting, you know, she was one of the OG like ‘90s YA writers. Very few of them are still publishing today, she's one. Meg Cabot, Chris Crutcher, Chris Lynch, like just a lot of kind of classic YA realism, which is what I also do in my work.

So it was around the late ‘90s. I got my first agent with that book that I had finished for the contest. Didn't win the contest, did get me an agent, never sold, didn't even send that agent my second book because I was too intimidated. I wasn't I was not ready for an agent. Okay. And then the third book I sent to her and I waited. And waited. And waited and waited forever. And then I, like, said, this is not working for me. So parted ways with that first agent having sold nothing. So it was like a divorce with no children. Clean, a clean break. And she was a good agent. She had successful authors, but we were not connecting with my work. So then I just, kind of, I kept writing and I was always working jobs and then eventually found the agent who’s still my current agent. I think I signed with him in 2005. And then we sold my first novel, Story of a Girl, which is actually the fourth novel that I wrote that year.

Mary Kole: The three that you attempted, including the Delacorte contest novel, the three that you attempted with your first agent, kind of under that umbrella. Did you consider them just a learning experience?

Sara Zarr: Yeah, I never went back to it. And I think I think when I was writing Story of a Girl I knew, like something felt different when I was writing that book where, like, I cared about it enough to keep rewriting and rewriting and rewriting it for years. Whereas the other books, I just didn't care that much to go back and like, crack it, you know?

So that was a sign of something. And yes, so my first book came out 2007, and like you were just alluding to the YA market was different than it is now. There were a few things happening that made the mid-aughts an extremely robust time for that wave of young adult fiction, where the category of young adult was exploding into a many genre'd thing, versus kind of saying you've got realism, you've got historical fiction, and you've got some fantasy. That was like, the sort of makeup of YA.

With Twilight, we have to say, that exploded into more tentacles of like paranormal romance and urban fantasy and magic, but in a more familiar world, all that kind of stuff. And so a lot there was like a lot of publishers trying to replicate the experience and the profits of Twilight, but also that was when John Green, later Looking For Alaska, came out.

These were just a few things going on that writers my age, like those sort of Gen X YA writers who grew up on the YA of the ‘80s, were now writing and just things were exploding all over, and publishers had money. Like James Patterson started publishing in YA and he’s sort of my nemesis, but whatever you going to say about him, or Stephanie Meyer, anyone who you see as like a juggernaut, effectively helped fund the smaller books, such as what I write.

Those huge juggernauts are an example of like, a rising tide lifts all boats because there was just money. And so from like 2007 to 2011, I published almost a book a year, maybe a year and a half, with Little, Brown Books for Young Readers and mostly without increasing at least critical success. Story of a Girl was actually not that well reviewed when it came out. And then it was being a National Book Award finalist that kind of made people revisit it, but it was okay. I mean, it wasn't like panned or anything, but it was like it didn't get a ton of attention, but it slowly did it with word of mouth. And then that being a National Book Award finalist helped a lot. So, yeah, I kind of rode that crest until I'd say through 2011.

And then there's another shift in the YA world that I think we're experiencing a lot of now. There's the general like what I think of—I didn’t come up with this, but—the Marvel-ization of popular culture, the elevation of like franchises and like high concept and even things that are realism being like really epic realism, like one true pairing romance or life or death situations, stories where even if it's not set in a superhero universe, the characters are kind of effectively superheroes in their lives.

Mary Kole: I mean, I would pull on something like The Sun is also a Star, where there's a ticking clock for literal deportation from this character's life, everything she has ever known, which is, you know, added on top of a love story.

Sara Zarr: Right, Right, exactly. And that's sort of where we still are today. Also with the 2017, 2018 upheavals, the #MeToo movement, the increased awareness of the need for more diverse voices, all of that good progress and still just such a huge category with so many genres within it. I mean, romcoms are huge now, fantasy is still good, you know like there's a lot going on. But the kind of book that I write hasn't really changed with that.

Those changes in the marketplace, I still write family...let's say family dramas or coming of age stories with…they're not the highest stakes, you know. They're more like something that could happen to you or me. And that's what I like to write. And my imagination doesn't work in terms of those really epic things. So, you know, that's the combination of those changes in the marketplace and just being familiar and being around a long time and there's new things coming. So what I like to think is that the first wave of my career peaked and I hope there's another peak coming. But I'm in that in between space right now of just like, oh, what I do wasn't exactly lining up with the market, where can I pivot to find that audience that likes what I do? And they exist! But like, I mean, in a way that can financially sustain me.

So yeah, just all of that. That was a really long answer. I should’ve let you talk more during that.

Mary Kole: No, no. Some would argue that I should talk a lot less, but I did want to pull out a few things there. So we hear all the time that people are not that interested in a straight coming of age story. And by straight I mean simple. I mean, wait, there's also a huge, huge demand for LGBTQ and all of that, but that's not how I use the word specifically.

A lot of writers come to me in my editorial practice and they're like, you know, this is a significant summer for my protagonist, and they just learn a lot about themselves and they go berry picking and, you know, like read grandma's journal and all of this. So you have sort of rejected this idea that I'm going to do what the market wants, I'm going to follow the market, I'm going to mold myself, right? Which takes a lot of sort of self awareness and integrity, I think. Do you think that path is replicable for people who are now coming to the market and wanting to write Sara Zarr-style low concept stories?

Sara Zarr: [Laughing] I don’t recommend it!

“I have a low concept, low stakes novel. You're going to want to pay me a lot of money for.” I mean, I don't think this is a function of my integrity or like, rejecting something. I think it's just the writer I am. I cannot be a writer that I am not, I just cannot.

I tell this story a lot, but I actually tried. I was really mad at Nicholas Sparks in the early teens, and mid teens, because to my mind he was basically writing the sort of overwrought YA-type stuff that was just doing incredibly well in the general fiction marketplace. And it was just like, why? So I was like, I'm gonna…

And I read this interview, this sort of infamous interview with him that you can probably find if you go look it up. But he kind of, it's one of those interviews that authors do sometimes and mostly white male authors do this, where they're just like, there's zero self awareness, you know?

Mary Kole: I think James Patterson just had one of those.

Sara Zarr: Yeah, he just had one recently. But he immediately, I mean like the next day he was like, oops. But it was just, he was just kind of—this is Sparks, you know—no one really is doing what I do and this, that, and people want this kind of story and I'm the only one that's doing it. And I think he even said something specifically about YA.

Anyway, I was mad and I was like, I'm going to write a Nicholas Sparks book, god dammit. So I went to the library and like checked out a bunch of Nicholas Sparks books and I was like, I just can't, like, I can't. The only way I can describe it—and it's going to sound a lot more self aggrandizing than I mean it, but it's like someone who has good singing pitch trying to intentionally sing off-key in some way, like you just can't. And I don't mean to say I have perfect pitch as an author, but it's just I know what I do and what my voice is and I cannot deviate from it. I'm not one of those authors that can like do a million different things. It's like, I can kind of do this one thing pretty well, and that's what I do.

That's what I can do. So for me, it's more about I think the reason I've been able to keep being published. Because I can't change the type of thing I write. I just work so hard at making it the best version of that that I possibly can, which just means really digging deep on emotional complexity and authenticity and like the kind of stuff that's really hard, but you want it to look effortless. You just want the world to feel real and the people to feel real and people to have some kind of human emotion when they read it. So that's what I just try and like I have to do, like the best version of this that I can do, because that is, I would say within some categories of publishing at different times when they're when those things are on trend, you don't have to write the best version of that book to do well. I'm not saying you're going to half-ass it, but you don't have to be at the very, very tippy top of your game. If you've got a great concept and a great plot and you can write and get it done, that can be enough. But if you're writing stuff that's like these smaller stories or anything that's not currently in favor, you have to like knock it out of the park. And that just takes a lot of work time.

Mary Kole: Yeah, I love that answer. I do want to talk about your teaching and I would love to sort of put you on the spot for a second because I think there's still a lingering confusion about this, or everyone has a different answer. So I'm curious about yours of how you would define premise because you're saying, you know, it's either execution if you don't quite have the premise that's in favor right now.

Mary Kole: I really love your way of putting it. How would you even define premise to a writing student?

Sara Zarr: I don't know. I've I don't think I've ever done so in any of my classes.

Mary Kole: So I should clarify that Sara has taught at MFA programs. So probably..

Sara Zarr: [Laughing] This is why everybody hates MFAs!

Mary Kole: ...probably premise never entered the discussion.

Sara Zarr: I would not say that's true, but I guess what I'm saying is we talked about this a little bit, but I think I find it very difficult to talk about writing in the abstract. Like if I were looking at a manuscript and talking specifically about something that's different, but to kind of talk about like craft elements out there, I'm not sure I totally believe in that because if it's not something you can apply to what you're doing, I just it's not how my brain works.

And so consequently, it's not how I teach. But I'm sure there are teachers who would have a great answer for that. It's not my thing. Well, what do you mean when you say premise?

Mary Kole: You beautifully weaseled out of that, thank you. Yeah, I don't know. I don't turn the tables on me. I would just say what makes the story larger than life a little bit. And this answer could change tomorrow. So grab it. Grab it while it's here.

Sara Zarr: Sure. Okay. I see what you're saying, like what? Why this story?

Mary Kole: And why it matters? Because I do believe that stakes are central to what we're talking about that fits into this high concept, high premise label.

Sara Zarr: Right. So, for example, let's take my most recent young adult novel, which was called Goodbye From Nowhere.

Mary Kole: And I love that. What a beautiful cover.

Sara Zarr: I love this cover. This came out in April 2020, also known as early pandemic. No one knew what was happening. It's not good. And just again, to give perspective on even what I consider a successful career and to me, a creatively successful book, this is not going into paperback because it just flopped. So but let's just take the premise, okay?

And why? What is the bigger emotional stakes? So this character, this is a male point of view, a third person, but male main character, He's just sort of an average Southern California white middle class boy. And he's the youngest of three kids. He has two older sisters who are college age. And he finds out that his mother is having an affair.

And to take the story from what I would consider the usual story, like the plotline of a parent having an affair would be like, they're trying to hide the affair. And it's the affair itself that is the revelation, and then the fallout from that. In this case, the way he finds out is his dad tells him. So it’s an...

Mary Kole: So he already knows. Yes.

Sara Zarr: And the mom's not trying to pretend like it's not happening, but they don't necessarily want to get divorced. And more realistically, I think they can't afford to get divorced. And so they're trying to figure out, is this worth going through all of the financial hell of like, the family business finding a second housing bubble? Or is this just going to be like a thing that happens and it's over in six months and we can rebuild something but stay together?

So it's not the affair and the discovery of the affair that's the story. This is like, what's happening is a catalyst for this character's coming of age. And his coming of age is the beginning of the book. Like he has his first really serious girlfriend, they're really close, he plays baseball, he's like semi-popular or whatever, he's really close with his female cousin who lives in a town like three hours away. They're about the same age. His mom has always kind of been there taking care of things, you know, and now she's off doing this thing. Because he has not been trained by society to talk about his feelings, he's not talking about it with his girlfriend. And consequently, they break up. The only person left in his orbit that he feels he can emotionally depend on is this female cousin, but she's not there for that, you know? And it's sort of like, What are you going to do, kid? Then relying on all these women around you to support your emotional and practical life. And now, like, you have to deal with your feelings. So again, that's all a high concept plot.

Mary Kole: Yeah.

Sara Zarr: Kyle learns to deal with his feelings but there's other stuff that happens. It turns out he's kind of coaching Little League over the summer and the kid, like the son of the guy his mom is having an affair with, is on his old team. There is this thing where even though their immediate family knows about it, they're going to one final like, family reunion at the family farm and they don't want the grandparents to know.

So there is layers of secrecy. There are layers of secrecy, but another thing is I felt like for me and I don't know if, like readers are going to necessarily pick this up, but for me, it was kind of like what cracks in like the family of America were exposed during the Trump administration. So there was like everything seemed fine for a certain type of person in this country. And then Trump was elected and it was like, oh my god, this is a disaster. And like right underneath the surface of everything has been all of this stuff all along.

Mary Kole: Just simmering.

Sara Zarr: And so that's sort of a thing I was thinking about when I wrote this, how like one sort of appeasing event like this affair exposes like all of these problems not just in the family system, but like where Kyle realizes, like, I have no inner resources, I'm overdependent on my cousin. I don't know what to do with my feelings if there's no woman available, like my mom's not available, my girlfriend's not available, my cousin’s not available. Like it really truly is a coming of age where he has to grow up and take responsibility for his own happiness. So that's an example of what I would consider like the emotional stakes are not just like, Oh, I can't, you know, let my dad know that my mom's having an affair, which is like one way the story could be told. But it's like, okay, actually adultery is really common and people get through affairs all the time. So what if we, like, looked at it from a different angle and as this is just like something that's happening, that's causing this kid to have to just grow up, you know.

Mary Kole: I really like the idea of kind of twisting and I will add that to my ingredients list for a premise is, are you playing with expectations? Are you subverting expectations? A lot of people talk about tropes, and I would say the reveal of the affair is a huge trope. And yeah, I am hearing plot, but a premise statement for something like that does end up sounding pretty quiet by comparison, especially to what's happening now. So you were telling me that you've actually made a pivot into middle grade

Sara Zarr: Yes. So after Goodbye From Nowhere and just looking at sales and like really practical stuff like that, both my editor and my agent were like, what if you tried middle grade? Because we feel like middle grade is still a place where there's more room for this kind of coming of age story that you're so good at telling. Could you do that in a middle grade context? And I was like, I don't know. I never thought about it because I really…you could probably find old interviews of me where I'm like, I could never write younger than YA.

Mary Kole: [Laughs]

Sara Zarr: I wouldn’t consider going older. So I was like, I don't know. But there was a practical matter of, you know, it was a nice way of them saying like, we're not going to pay you for another YA right now, you know, unless I don't know, I could have, but I don't think it would have been the best move for any of us. So I was like, okay, I'll try it. So anyway, I started thinking about my life when I was ten, and that was a year where my parents got divorced. All in one year, my parents got divorced, my mom remarried, we moved to another town, I started a new school, all in that year. And so it was like, that's pretty good. Like, that's a pretty good classic middle grade plot. Anyway, long story short, it is this book, A Song Called Home, and it's been really well received so far, and I really enjoyed the experience of something a little cozier and something there's more constraints on a middle grade character, and sometimes constraints can help you figure out plot stuff. Sometimes they can be a pain in the ass and it's like. “Ugh.” So I just kind of—

Mary Kole: What do you mean by that? Is it is it? They literally don't have a car so they're...

Sara Zarr: Yeah, just can't like hop in a car and like go to a coffee shop because in all my books—any big Sara Zarr fans out there, you know—all my books, we're going to wind up talking in a diner or a coffee shop. That's called high concept plot. You know, she's kind of…middle grade characters are in a weird place because they do have a lot of independence. They're becoming independent readers and independent thinkers. They can, like, cook a little. They can sort of like get the walk to school, all that stuff. But they're totally victims of their parents choices. So whatever the parents are doing, that's what you're doing. Whereas a YA character has a few more options of breaking away from parental choices, a middle grade character is kind of stuck.

So, you know, how are they going to deal with the things that are foisted upon them that they would not choose to be having happen in their lives and again, like this one, there is like a little bit of a plot. There's a mysterious guitar that shows up on the porch near the beginning. There's an assumption about where it came from that drives some of the plot.

There's like classic middle grade stuff saying goodbye to old friends, making new friends. So again, like doing the absolute best version of that that I possibly could because there are lots of middle grade novels with that kind of a plot. So how am I going to make this stand out and again, it goes to the emotional authenticity and just like tapping into that memory and experience and just human psychology, there's this great quote that I love and I forget who said it. Who's the guy that wrote the screenplays for…I'm going to say Tony Gilroy. He wrote The Bourne movie. The first one especially. I heard him give a talk like online, and during the Q&A this great quote came out where he just kind of said “You’re paraphrasing, your like ability to be a good writer is going to be capped at your ability to understand human nature or your curiosity about human nature.” Like. So I feel like stuff like therapy, any kind of self help you want to do, really being curious about people, especially people who are different than you. Like all that stuff is so important to writing. If you write the kind of books where you need real like emotional complexity to make it stand out, you need to be curious about why people do the stupid shit that people do.

Mary Kole: And the noble shit.

Sara Zarr: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just all of it. Like we contain multitudes, right? So, I mean, you can be a selfish jerk and a really generous, loving person all at once. And so letting, letting characters be. You know what? One of the great surprises of this book, when I was writing it was toward the beginning. I was writing this scene and I was like, she like starts pocketing stuff. She just like, kind of starts stealing little stuff. And I remember doing that at that age, just being like, people think I'm a good kid. They're not watching their belongings. Like, I could just like, take that thing and slip it in my pocket or like light vandalism, just like the stuff you're kind of testing boundaries, sort of an outlet of like you're trying to be a good kid. So, you know, this character, she's just she's got sticky fingers and she's accumulating some things that don't belong to her.

Mary Kole: I love that. So I will say, I think that, you know, they've become buzzwords, authenticity, vulnerability, all of that. But I do very much want to underscore your point, that they never go out of style and people crave them for a reason. Maybe it's a reaction to our modern way of life and how superficial social media is. I don't know where that idea came from, but I do think that knowledge of human beings, that understanding of psychology, maybe not even in an academic sense, is just such an important ingredient for any work unless you're I mean, but even for like a potboiler, a detective story, the characters in genres where you don't really think emotional depth is as necessary are the ones that end up becoming reader favorites.

Sara Zarr: Yeah, totally.

Mary Kole: So I love that. I do love that about your work. I mean, I remember reading Story of a Girl. I remember resonating with it so much. It was set in Pacifica, which I was intimately connected with, having been from the Bay Area myself, and I just sinking into a character that you invite people to do that is something that I just love about your work.

Sara Zarr: Well, thank you. And I also will just say, like it's hard because I know people have asked me like, how do you do it? How do you do it? I'm like, Listen, we read my first, second drafts. They're not good. Like, it's very that all those layers and making it work. So it's not melodramatic, but it's like dramatic enough.

It's just a lot of going over and over it and spending a lot of time on key scenes and just pushing several steps past where I'm sure this comes up with your consulting work a lot, where it's just like your first you're going to reach for the bottom shelf stuff because it's right there. So like the cliches or the metaphors or whatever. You're like, that's the idea, to reach for the second shelf. Okay, am I going to go get the footstool and, like, get what's way up there? Like it's yes! You have to get up and go get the footstool. And it's fine if you're going to use that bottom shelf stuff in a first draft, kind of as a placeholder, knowing that as you go back over it, you got to just be like, okay, reach, past your first impulse, your second impulse, your third impulse. What are you really trying to get across here? And that takes like stretching and going and getting the stool and then maybe the ladder and like the pinchy thing that old people use? It's way up there. You have to reach for it, you know?

Mary Kole: And I don't think writers are lazy necessarily, but they do sometimes make lazy choices because the choices that add these layers of complexity and require this deep feeling, they're hard that stretch is is hard.

Sara Zarr: And I think at first like, you don't see it there so you think you are already reaching for the top shelf because it's already hard just writing. So that's where the pushing is. If you don't have an editor pushing you have to really get in the habit of pushing yourself. Just be like, okay, this is fine, but like fine's not good enough and I need to know what's there that I'm not seeing yet because it's not like you see the stuff on the high shelf and you're like, eeh nah, you just don't see it, you know? So you have to like scramble up the wall. And this metaphor is dead. We have to stop.

Mary Kole: I love it. But no, I absolutely love it.

Sara Zarr: So your nails are stuck in the concrete.

Mary Kole: You're dangling from a cliff getting a great Instagram photo. I did want to pin you down to a definition of melodrama, because I think drama versus melodrama is a really interesting thing that we kind of like glance off of.

Sara Zarr: I think it's another thing that can be hard to define. It's kind of the difference between sentiment and sentimentality. I think melodrama and sentimentality, it's like the signifiers are there it’s signifying that something deep is happening, but something deep is not happening because you're not doing the work, but you're trying to use a shorthand, I guess. I don't know.

I just watched The Gray Man the other night, which is like the new hot Netflix. It’s Ryan Gosling...and he's a spy. I don't know.

Mary Kole: Oh, I have heard of it. Which is about as good as it gets.

Sara Zarr: I watched it. It was like Sunday night we made popcorn. And it's really weird because you're watching it. You're like, Oh, the music is cool. Oh, the camera tricks are cool. Oh, Ryan Gosling looks cool, Chris Evans looks cool. And then about halfway through you're like, I think this is bad. And then like toward the end you're like, I think this is pretty bad, there's not really a story. It's a lot of flash and camera tricks, but what's actually happening in the plot when you think about it, is like nothing that makes sense or, you know, doesn't have any depth to it. And then at the end over the end credits, there's another like really. Cool song and like a cool animation on the end credits. And so you're like, wait, was that a good movie? Then you're like, no. No. So I just think it's that disguising, you know, playing a style on something that doesn't have the depth to try and like take a shortcut to evoking an emotion would be like a melodrama or sentimentality versus digging for a true sentiment or like the real interpersonal drama in a situation. And I think once you're on the lookout for it, you can see it in books as you read and you'll see it a lot in movies just like, this is a lot of style that's fooling me into thinking something deep is happening. But if I think about the relationships and what's on the page or on the screen, there is nothing deep going on in a way that's at all believable.

So it's a kind of an unearned, emotion I guess.

Mary Kole: I love that. And now that I'm thinking about it and I feel that way about I don't know if you watched in Deep Water the Ben Affleck vehicle.

Sara Zarr: Oh, yeah, yeah. The Adrian Lyne...movie yeah.

Mary Kole: And it was I don't know, it was just a lot of chaos, but without any emotional logic behind it. Like we didn't care or I didn't care about the relationship. And I was like, You guys are just being odious to one another for—

Sara Zarr: They looked good though. That one I enjoyed more than a movie like The Gray Man, if only because The Gray Man, the substitute for a story in that is just like a lot of gun violence and car crashes and plane people falling out of planes and stuff. I have more tolerance for it. In a story like Dark Water, where at least I'm not like watching a bunch of people shoot each other and like, there's some nice clothes and everything and it's kind of sexy, coincidentally Ana Amaris.

Mary Kole: I thought it was like Ana de Armas.

Sara Zarr: Yes. De Armas is in both of them. And she's good in both, but under underused. Underutilized.

Mary Kole: She is a very good looking human being.

Sara Zarr: Yeah.

Mary Kole: Yeah. Okay. So I love that. I even love the shelf metaphor. So those are writing tips from Sara Zarr that you give in your MFA teaching. So let's have it out. Should a writer this is such a common question that I get. Should a writer get an MFA? Sara Zarr?

Sara Zarr: So much depends on the situation. So if you have the money to spend and you want that degree because you want to get certain kind of teaching jobs or have certain kind of academic opportunities that require you to have a master's and you want to accelerate, you can afford to accelerate your learning about writing in that way. I think it's great. I don't think people should get into big debt to do it.

If they don't have an end goal with the degree, you know, like getting the this is the step now to a Ph.D. you know, like that's a path that if you want to be on that path, you do need to get a master's, you know, So that makes sense. You got to get it. You got to pay for it however you can.

But I think for the average person interested in improving their writing, I don't I wouldn't say go into debt for this and like you're going to have a guaranteed outcome and like this is a great step to publishing none of that. And to be super clear about it, I teach for MFA programs. I do not have an MFA.

Sometimes I wish I did because while I can teach for these low residency programs, because they're sort of in a different category, they treat that faculty like adjuncts. Most universities categorize that faculty as adjuncts. But if I wanted to teach in a university program that was not like a low residency model and wanted to be like an assistant professor or full professor, I would have to have at least a master's. So sometimes I wish I did have that. So that's an example of like, that's a good reason to get one. If you want a life in academia, you need those degrees. So I don't have one. Clearly, that hasn't held me back. On the being a published writer front. And I don't I don't personally like want a life in academia, so hasn't really held me back there.

I like the low residency model and how accessible it is for people that wouldn't be able to like move to a town or quit their job or whatever. Like it makes it really accessible. But it's a lot of money and that you don't have to spend to improve your writing, which is why I also do I do MFA teaching, but I also do, you know, just a freelance manuscript consulting because not everyone wants or can afford an MFA, but I think they could still get MFA level mentorship using some, you know, like Good Story Company or freelancers like me or whatever you can get as much out of that, but you're not going to have the advantages of a degree.

Mary Kole: That's a really good breakdown. I will say from everything I've heard on the academic side, that life that a lot of people sort of dream of is getting harder and harder to come by. Which is another sort of. Yeah. Especially anything tenure track. Everybody is being sort of shunted off into adjunct teaching. I really like that point about low residency programs. I usually, if I'm going to recommend something, I recommend low residency as a way of, you know, as a way of not giving up your entire life because usually people do come to those programs maybe a little bit later once they have a career or get more serious about writing or whatever, that that's kind of a mid-stage decision from what I've seen.

So speaking of kind of this, this mid-career or midlife perspective that you bring to the table, you were telling me before we started recording that you if you could go back ten, fifteen years and advise yourself, you would maybe do things a little bit differently. Can you talk a little bit more about that in the context of your overall publishing journey and future?

Sara Zarr: Yeah. So before I sold my first book from the time I graduated from college, so let's see, I got my B.A. in like 1992 or something, and then my first book was sold in 2005. So in those intervening year's, I was working various like I was an account rep for a commercial printer when printing was a thing.

Mary Kole: [Laughing] On paper?!

Sara Zarr: I worked as a database indexer for a kind of a this is before Google as the Thompson Company. You have this product called LexisNexis Info Track. I was database indexer. I worked at various administrative assistant jobs, so I was never on a career path. I was dedicated. I was just like whatever job and I would change jobs like every couple of years. I just get easily dissatisfied. So whatever job and then working on my writing now that I'm 51 and not 35, I wish that I had also had a career path that was not writing related. So and especially doing that in my first few years of being published, I think I had an opportunity timewise and economically to go back to school and get some.

I don't think I would have gotten an MFA, but I think some degree in something. I have other interests, you know, like writing is not the only thing I care about. There's other things I could have done and I could still do. I'm not saying like 51 is over, but I'm very reluctant at this age and stage to be like, go back to school, like, do prerequisites, pay the money, spend the time come out when I'm like 58 and try and have a career or I don't know.

So I wish one thing I think a lot of us that started in the mid-aughts, it was this time with a lot of money floating around and advances were kind of at an all time high and even like writers like me who were writing my little family dramas were getting good advances that I could make a living as a writer and like help put my husband through grad school, you know, great stuff like that. So you don't think at the time when you're in the middle of that, it's like, do you ever…if you're reading like celebrity gossip magazines or if you grew up watching like Entertainment Tonight or whatever, it always be like, M.C. Hammer is bankrupt and you're like, “What?!”

And I think all of those people who, like, have a moment of huge celebrity and high earnings, if they don't make decisions right then about preserving that money or pivoting like investing in a business or something at that stage when they have when they're flush with all of that, they have regrets. So on a much smaller scale, I have those kind of you know, you just don't think about when you're in the flush of a career peak.

Of course, you don't think like I'm going to someday be on the downward slope. You just don't think about it. You honestly think like, and especially with social media, if you're getting constant, like, I go on Twitter, I have like tons of notifications, like everyone loves me, everyone loves my books, everyone can't wait. I'm invited to speak at all the conferences.

I'm just like, this is going to be like my life now. And it's like, no one sustains that. Like, it just doesn't happen. There's a few outliers, you know, who you could say sustain that over a whole entire career, but it's very rare. So I think about a lot of the people who started around when I did, a lot of them, I don't even know where they are or if they're writing anymore.

So it's a certain kind of hubris to think like, that's not going to be you. So I would just, you know, whether you're watching this and you're just starting out or you're watching this and you're like, having a lot of success right now, it's just like you can't, you're not entitled to that forever, you know, enjoy it while you have it. Be grateful and also be making alternate plans for when you know what you do is not in the current zeitgeist or you're tired. You can actually like start not wanting to write anymore. I mean, there's a lot of things that can happen that you don't see coming when you're at a peak. And I'm sure people tried to tell me this or people were talking about it, but I think we all have to be a foolish optimist to be in this business in the first place.

So I think we all just kind of think, well, yeah, like that's probably not going to be me. Like that might happen to everybody else but it's not going to happen to me. So I think it's just being ready to like write out the ups and downs and, and if you are in a situation where like you have a big payday, like assume that's your last big payday, not in a like anxious hoarding way, but just like, okay, what can I do with this money? That's going to enable me to keep writing when my chips are down?

So just things like that, just practical, like sustainability and longevity. Like you said, we don't talk about it a lot because there is you don't want to create a self fulfilling prophecy where you're one of those people who's always like and we all we've all seen them where they're publicly bemoaning or even saying numbers like I used to make this much.

And now I can't even or they're like, I just can't like, I don't get this marketplace. It's not for me. And like, I hate everything. Like, don't do that because you don't want to create a self fulfilling prophecy of like, yeah, you are going to people are going to see you as damaged goods. I guess it's just how the marketplace is. So everyone understandably wants to project an image of, if not success, like I'm okay, like I'm not worried. Just be like, I'm good. I'm not worried, but we're all worried. They’re worried. And everyone I know, again, has been doing it a while, is on these down slopes and up slopes, you know, or making like comebacks or pivoting to something totally different. So you just have to you're going on a ride like you're going on a ride and you don't know…

Mary Kole: If you like it or not.

Sara Zarr: And yeah, you know, you don't know when you're going to be at the peak and when you're going to be in the valley. And like when you're going to feel like you're all of a sudden at the back of the line when you thought you were the VIP. I mean, there's, just like a lot of different things that can happen. And the better you are at handling that, the more you are actually going to be able to just like keep writing and like focusing on what draws you to keep working and do that.

Mary Kole: I love that, thank you. I mean, I do think that it's very taboo to not present as anything but a roaring success. And I was actually involved behind the scenes in the Judy Blume masterclass. And in her interviews I was reading the transcript as I was putting together their little workbook for it, and she said something like when she went out of her comfort zone and this is me attempting to like, bring it back around to the origin story you told us about, you know, about YA and the market, when she attempted a or an adult novel really kind of vulnerably doing something different than people expected and it got you know she got some kind of very discouraging review or some feedback. She was..

Sara Zarr: First of all was this Wifey?

Mary Kole: No. Maybe it was the..

Sara Zarr: Wifey came out in the seventies.

Mary Kole: No. Okay. So this was the plane crash in New Jersey one. This sort of later? Yeah. No, I think.

Sara Zarr: Because Wifey was the dirty book we passed around in junior high. I'm just. I want to read something semi-dirty from the seventies.

Mary Kole: But that's a vibe. That's definitely a vibe.

Sara Zarr: But I interrupted the crucial, like the climax of the story.

Mary Kole: Yeah, the nugget Sara Zarr! No so, but just hearing somebody multi-selling just beloved that's so..

Sara Zarr: Yeah.

Mary Kole: Jude like if she still has days where she feels like she'll never write again or where feedback knocks her down or she feels discouraged or she like, you know, goes out of her wheelhouse and feels like she has been pigeonholed creatively. Like these are universal artistic things. And so I really hope that this interview normalizes, talking about it and, you know, admitting that not everything is always going to be a peak, but if you weather the valley, there might be another peak after that.

And I just feel like so many people, to your excellent point of wanting to preserve their image and kind of their capital in publishing and never say a bad word against anything that's going on in the industry, that's also quite lonely because you're maintaining something that you could be more open about because it's very reasonable to imagine that your peers are kind of on the same ride. And instead of building a community around some of these ideas, we're sort of secret-ing them as like this, shameful thing.

Sara Zarr: Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying and I'm not recommending necessarily that people like go out and like tweet all their worst experiences.

Mary Kole: Yeah, no, no, no. That's, that's an instant recipe for disaster.

Sara Zarr: Yeah, I think that's where you need a community of trusted writer friends who you have these conversations with. Otherwise, you do end up with that cognitive dissonance of just like I'm acting like everything's fine, but like everything feels bad. So, I mean, you just have to like be selective in how and where you share. I think even when you're just in the interest's of being real, you can be real without being like self pitying or dismissing your privileges. You know, like you just there's a lot of self awareness that needs to be around how you express that, too, because it's like if you can't acknowledge the privileges you've had, then don't be out there complaining that like, I don't get big advances anymore, you know? I mean, just don't.

Mary Kole: Yeah, no, I love this conversation. I love you. I love your work. It's been a while since we've kicked around together on the conference circuit, but I. I just. I adore you, and I just want to thank you so much for your honest insights, your time, your wisdom. Sara Zarr.

Sara Zarr: Thanks for having me. I'm. I love this. I love to get to talk about this stuff. And I think it's complicated and rich. It's a rich text. To be just like in this life for the long haul. Yeah.

Mary Kole: Yeah. Well, everybody check out Sara’s books! Obviously, check out her brilliant pivot to middle grade and her podcast. And you've also I mean, we didn't even get on to this, but you've published as well.

Sara Zarr: A lot of this stuff I just talked about. I tried this book, This Creative Life, is a little self published thing I did to go with my podcast, and it's a lot of kind of everything I've learned about not the craft, but the tagline is like reading between the lines of a writing life. So all this stuff from starting with just like giving yourself permission to call yourself a writer all the way up through should I, like, do mainstream publishing or self publishing?

And like, why does it feel bad? I just try to..

Mary Kole: “Why does it feel bad? A Publishing Story.”

Sara Zarr: In a conference speech. All the stuff we've talked about on my podcast, I just tried to like, put it all in this little this little guy. It's ebook or paperback.

Mary Kole: I love it. Well, thank you for sharing your thoughts on this creative life with me.

Sara Zarr: And maybe if I ever do come back, I would be happy to talk at greater length about the self publishing path.

Mary Kole: I would love, yeah!

Sara Zarr: Additionally, published authors might want to know about it.

Mary Kole: I would love to hear about your experience actually, I think you as we were saying, I'll stop referencing our little pre-banter because it makes people feel left out. But you know, there there are different paths for every writer, different paths for every project. You don't necessarily have to stick to the one that you're on. And so I would really love to discuss how you made those decisions and what the process was like.

Mary Kole: So so it's not goodbye, it's bye for now Sara Zarr.

Sara Zarr: Bye for now. Thanks, Mary.

Mary Kole: Thank you so much. And this has been The Good Story Podcast. And here's to a good story. Thank you so much for listening. This has been The Good Story Podcast with your host, Mary Kole. I want to give a huge shout-out to everyone at The Good Story Company. You can find us online at goodstorycompany.com. And the team is Amy Holland, Amy Wilson, Jenna Van Roy, Kate Elsinger, Kathy Martinolich, Kristen Overman, Michal Leah, Rhiannon Richardson and Steve Reiss. Also a shout-out to our Patreon supporters and to everyone listening out there. Here's to a good story.

Become a Good Story Learning Member! Gain access to a supportive community of writers and a multitude of writing resources to help your story be told.