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Alison Nissen: Let me make sure my mic is on. We had so many problems with the
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Alison Nissen: why there, make sure it's on the right sides.
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Alison Nissen: It is okay, perfect. Alright, little silence.
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Alison Nissen: Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Florida writer Podcast. With your host, Alison, Nissen. And today I am lucky enough to be with Lily. I own a Mackenzie Lily. Could you give us a 60 s elevator pitch about who you are and what you write.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Well, clearly, I'm a woman.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and I've written. I've published altogether 8 books. 3 of them have been poetry collections, 4 have been novels, and the last one I publish is a hybrid memoir
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: so I've explored lots of different genres
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I think that's about all I want to say at the moment, but but I also feature the novels feature sexy older women who are still living full lives and still eager to explore and learn more about themselves in the world.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: So
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: yeah. And I'm eager to continue growing and learning more about myself in the world.
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Alison Nissen: Well, that's fantastic. You caught my attention with hybrid memoir. Explain that to me.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Well, it isn't I. I think we tend to think of memoirs as being more
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: autobiographical.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: And, you know, sort of just looking at moment to moment things in our days. But mine is a combination of things. It has a little bit of that in it, but it also has a lot of my critical writing
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: about poetry, about art and art is a really big feature in the whole book. So
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: it's
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: it's a hybrid. It isn't just.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: You know what you expect from an ordinary memoir.
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Alison Nissen: Well, that's very interesting. I am, as everyone knows, been working on my own memoir, for I feel like 20 years now, and I'm
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Alison Nissen: like to say I'm not that old, but I probably am. And anyway, I'm
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Alison Nissen: mine. My personal memoir is.
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Alison Nissen: It's a series of
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Alison Nissen: short stories, more
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Alison Nissen: blog like stories about my life.
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Alison Nissen: and and and so some of them are
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Alison Nissen: more of the critical faction than just a story of what happened.
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Alison Nissen: So I find that I like the term. I think that's a really interesting way to present
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Alison Nissen: the totality of the work.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Yeah, I do, too.
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Alison Nissen: So you like to write?
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Alison Nissen: typically fiction. Is that correct?
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Yes, but poetry is really the foundation of my work. I remember having a dream years ago.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: where somebody in the dream was telling me that poetry would would be the foundation of my writing.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and so I took that to mean that the kind of intensity that
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I think we experience. When we read poetry and write, it would be present in my other writing, as well.
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Alison Nissen: So is your poetry
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Alison Nissen: based on real people.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Well, my poetry, I isn't necessarily. I mean, we're all we're humans. And and I'm a human. I'm writing poetry. I'm writing about humans. And so at times real people appear in it. My husband appears now and then, and he's always really happy when he reads a poem that includes him
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: but others others to appear. But I don't necessarily have people in all of my homes.
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Alison Nissen: Oh, interesting! Alright! So how do you start writing your poems?
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Well, they start.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: It's hard to, you know
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: of.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: say, really, because they start from lots of different
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: places. And sometimes I'll just get caught up by an image.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and and I'll just enter that image and see where it takes me.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: And sometimes I get, you know, have an emotion
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and emotional reaction to something. And I sort of need to immediately respond to that in writing.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: And that can produce a poem.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: lots of different things. Yeah.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: TV, news.
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Alison Nissen: Yeah, there's there's always a lot to write about when you turn the news on.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I know.
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Alison Nissen: And do you, do you journal? How do you come up with your ideas? How do you develop them?
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Well, I've kept a journal for years, and in fact.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I've been reading
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: all of my early journals recently.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and and and discovering
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: you know what a struggle it was for me as a younger woman to
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: except that I could write, and and that eventually I might even get published. So it's fascinating to look back at that younger woman and see
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: you know what was troubling her, and and then to be able to say to her, Well, hey, you publish, you know it worked out. Okay.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Did I answer your question?
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Alison Nissen: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fine. So you also
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Alison Nissen: help other people
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Alison Nissen: right? Creatively. Is that correct?
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I do. I'm I've been well I taught for over 30 years
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: high. So college freshmen and women.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: You know, introductory writing, college writing.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and and then, when I quit doing that at in 2015, I started teaching at the University of San Francisco, has
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: an entity called the From Institute for Lifelong learning.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: And so it's designed for older adults.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: And I since then I've been teaching creative writing in their program, which includes memoir
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I've taught
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: flash, non fiction and the personal essay and lots of things but it's just been wonderful to be working with older adults
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: who are excited about exploring, you know, in writing now, and it's exciting for me to be able to teach them because they're so engaged.
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Alison Nissen: What's the biggest
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Alison Nissen: what?
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Alison Nissen: What's the biggest lessons that
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Alison Nissen: you're able to communicate with your students? So I'm referring to like like, you know, they they come to you with the desire to learn
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Alison Nissen: and I imagine that they are all over the spectrum as far as writing readiness. Some people have probably been writing their entire lives, and some people probably haven't done much with writing since they were in high school or college.
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Alison Nissen: And so how do you start somebody down that road of creative writing.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I think, by giving them permission to write without
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: high expectations of the results at the beginning.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: because, you know, as as we all know early drafts think
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: they they just do for professional writers, too.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and you have to get through those early drafts to begin to weed out and to find what it is that you're writing about.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: So so a lot of that is just giving them permission, and you know, to be a lousy writer, and not to be too judgmental, and then to show them how to begin working with the material so that they can bring to the surface the real treasures in it.
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Alison Nissen: And how many of them are working on memoir.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Well, I'd say most of them are working on memo to some degree.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and some of them, many of them actually aren't really sure how to go about doing it.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: So they need some guidance in, you know what's what's possible, what's what's you know, to avoid the difference between memoir and autobiography, and so on.
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Alison Nissen: Yeah, I find that working with people that are excited to learn, but haven't quite
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Alison Nissen: a again using your language, given themselves permission to put the words on paper and understand they don't need to be perfect from the get. Go.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Yeah, please don't be perfect.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Please make mistakes.
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Alison Nissen: Now, when what? Now? When you read something perfect, you think oh, my goodness, it's written by AI.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Oh, I know, I know, and I just recently for the first time, tried out AI to see what it was like, and I had. So what I did is I I submitted a couple of drafts that students had given me.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and I was just amazed in like in a second AI chat book, whatever it is. G pt, well, whatever anyways, so so it spit out in a second. What would have taken me, you know, a half hour to write, but and it it had all in categories, you know, symbolism and language, and this and that, and and it was better than what I
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: could do, I mean, so I was really, I was really shocked and and and distressed. I almost told my students you don't need me anymore. Just just submit your stuff to this. You'll get lots of feedback, but it.
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Alison Nissen: Keep playing with it. You're gonna not think so good of it not not.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: What is.
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Alison Nissen: Of it in a little bit.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I I I do understand. I mean it. It's very mechanical, the sound that comes through and and it's also not very good. And I was trying to create configurations through this zoom class I was teaching, and I had 25 students, and I had, you know, 4 breakout rooms. And anyway, I gave them all this material, but it it couldn't handle that the way I needed it. So it definitely does have limitations.
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Alison Nissen: Oh, yeah, I have a I I received a certificate in the 16 types which is the Meyer Briggs type indicator.
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Alison Nissen: And I thought, oh, I'll make myself a cheat sheet for all the different categories.
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Alison Nissen: and it was not correct. I was very disappointed. I was like I spent all this time working, thinking. It was just giving me exactly what I needed. And then I went back and thought, it's not right. So it it's definitely something that yeah, it will. It will continue to improve. But when it first came on, my students were using it, and I was very confused. And now I actually encourage them to use it once or twice, because
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Alison Nissen: they need to understand its limitations and and to discern
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Alison Nissen: what good writing is compared to what mechanical writing is.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Yeah.
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Alison Nissen: There's a difference. Because, you know, Chat Tbt will never give you that emotional connection that you can create with creative writing.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Well, I also discovered that it uses a lot of language that is sort of generic.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and it's, you know it doesn't. Again, it doesn't have the feeling of what a real person might
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: create by not being perfect. And so the language that comes out the diction is much more interesting than what the machine can make.
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Alison Nissen: Yes, 100 like don't ever use the word fosters again, and that's all I gotta say. I mean, I was, I was working on a website. And and I was making light of the word fosters, because every single thing I put into Chat Gp. The word Fosters come back, comes out of it. And I'm like, Please, I don't ever want to hear that word again. And yet sometimes it really is the right word, and that's what's disappointing is like it's ruined. The word for me.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Oh no! Oh no!
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Alison Nissen: Alright. So so tell me about your writing process. You you you start on paper. Do you go on computers. How do you do you make a list? Do you sit down at your desk at 10 in the morning or 8 in the morning, or 4 in the morning?
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Never. I mean, I'm not a morning person. I really. I had to set my alarm to make sure I was gonna be up in time to do this interview. No, I'm I. You know what what I had to do, because I have been working all these years.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and married my current husband when I was 54, and he had he had a daughter.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: 5 and a son 10 that I became a parent for
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and and so I had to, and and I was teaching part time as well, and keeping the household going and etc. So I had to learn how to you know grab time to write, and and so but what I discovered is, if I could
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: write for an hour a day, or, you know, try that. And even if it was just a half hour that in a year I would have the rough draft of a novel.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: And that's what happened. So I was able to, because I, you know, had that discipline I was able to produce a lot of work. I I've published a lot in addition to the books, but you know, lots of short fiction and essays and poems and etc. So it's really
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I I could never get up in the morning and do that. It's it's become, you know. It's part of my day, and I know that at some point in the day I'll find my time, and I'll and I'll do the writing that I want to do that day.
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Alison Nissen: Oh, that's that's great, I know for me personally.
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Alison Nissen: I really have to set the intention, or it won't happen.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Yeah, well, it is an intention, too. You know, the way I'm working. Yeah.
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Alison Nissen: Yeah.
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Alison Nissen: Well, Lily, I owna, Mackenzie, how can people find out more about you? How can they find out about the books you have.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Well, I have a blog, and every Monday I post something new about
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: it usually has to do with reading or writing.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and and so it's Lily. I owna mackenzie.com just LILY
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: IONA MACK ENZI e.com.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and you'll probably learn more than you want to.
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Alison Nissen: Alright, Lily, are you ready to switch to our rapid fire questions.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Sure.
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Alison Nissen: Do you participate in any extracurricular activities.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: You know I love I love tennis.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and I played tennis
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: aggressively, until I could no longer do it because of bad knee
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: but I still am. I'm really loves the tennis world, and I watch tennis when I'm biking on my stationary bike, or whatever cooking in the kitchen.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Does that count? Is that extracurricular.
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Alison Nissen: Absolutely absolutely. I might myself have enjoyed a game or 2, and watching the masters and.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: The.
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Alison Nissen: The different opens that are out there.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I know.
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Alison Nissen: Do you have a favorite accessory.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Well, I have a favorite accessory.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Huh?
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Have a favorite accessory.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I think. Yeah.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: You know, I can't think of anything.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I mean, when you are thinking about accessories. Are you thinking like clothing? Or
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Alison Nissen: It's an open, ended question.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Well, you've got me. You've stumped me.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: don't I guess I don't have a favorite accessory. And now I'm worried that I don't have a favorite accessory.
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Alison Nissen: Yeah.
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Alison Nissen: how about? How about a favorite pillow in your house?
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Favorite pillow.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Oh.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: well, yeah, I mean, I can get lower back pain. And so I make sure I have this special lumbar pillow that I put
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: behind my back when I'm sitting for long periods of time to keep.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I'm getting back pain. So I that's my favorite pillow, not very sexy.
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Alison Nissen: And final question, if you could paint a room in your house, what color would you paint it.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Well, you know, I've been so conservative in the colors I've chosen
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: in our host.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and and I thought often, well, wouldn't it? Wouldn't it be fun just to really do something dramatic? And and have.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: you know, ruby red
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: wall against a black wall, or something? I don't know, but just to do something unusual
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: So I would like I would like to. I would like to try something like that completely. I turn upside down. My ideas about color, and what should be appropriate in in a house.
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Alison Nissen: Lily, Iona Mackenzie. Thank you so much for stopping by.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Thanks for the interview, Alison, and good luck with your podcast.
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Alison Nissen: You have been listening to another edition of the Florida writer, podcast with your host, Alison, Nissen.
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Alison Nissen: Alison out.
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Alison Nissen: we're all done.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Okay, thanks, my dear. Good luck with your own memoir and getting it finished.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Are you writing other things too?
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Alison Nissen: I am. Yes, yeah, of course.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Larry!
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Alison Nissen: Part of the problem.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: You're thinking, writing, too.
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Alison Nissen: Lily, Iona Mackenzie has published poetry, essays, and short stories in over 170 venues.
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Alison Nissen: She's also published 4 novels.
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Alison Nissen: She blogs
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Alison Nissen: at Lily, Iona, mackenzie.com, and teaches creative writing at the University of San Francisco's Prom Institute for lifelong learning
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Alison Nissen: for more information about Lily, visit her blog
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Alison Nissen: at Lily Mackenzie, Nope.
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Alison Nissen: Visit her blog at Lily, Iona mackenzie.com
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Alison Nissen: for more information about the Florida Writers Association. Visit us@floridawriters.org until next time.
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Alison Nissen: Let me make sure my mic is on. We had so many problems with the
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Alison Nissen: why there, make sure it's on the right sides.
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Alison Nissen: It is okay, perfect. Alright, little silence.
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Alison Nissen: Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Florida writer Podcast. With your host, Alison, Nissen. And today I am lucky enough to be with Lily. I own a Mackenzie Lily. Could you give us a 60 s elevator pitch about who you are and what you write.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Well, clearly, I'm a woman.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and I've written. I've published altogether 8 books. 3 of them have been poetry collections, 4 have been novels, and the last one I publish is a hybrid memoir
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: so I've explored lots of different genres
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I think that's about all I want to say at the moment, but but I also feature the novels feature sexy older women who are still living full lives and still eager to explore and learn more about themselves in the world.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: So
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: yeah. And I'm eager to continue growing and learning more about myself in the world.
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Alison Nissen: Well, that's fantastic. You caught my attention with hybrid memoir. Explain that to me.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Well, it isn't I. I think we tend to think of memoirs as being more
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: autobiographical.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: And, you know, sort of just looking at moment to moment things in our days. But mine is a combination of things. It has a little bit of that in it, but it also has a lot of my critical writing
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: about poetry, about art and art is a really big feature in the whole book. So
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: it's
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: it's a hybrid. It isn't just.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: You know what you expect from an ordinary memoir.
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Alison Nissen: Well, that's very interesting. I am, as everyone knows, been working on my own memoir, for I feel like 20 years now, and I'm
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Alison Nissen: like to say I'm not that old, but I probably am. And anyway, I'm
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Alison Nissen: mine. My personal memoir is.
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Alison Nissen: It's a series of
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Alison Nissen: short stories, more
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Alison Nissen: blog like stories about my life.
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Alison Nissen: and and and so some of them are
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Alison Nissen: more of the critical faction than just a story of what happened.
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Alison Nissen: So I find that I like the term. I think that's a really interesting way to present
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Alison Nissen: the totality of the work.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Yeah, I do, too.
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Alison Nissen: So you like to write?
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Alison Nissen: typically fiction. Is that correct?
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Yes, but poetry is really the foundation of my work. I remember having a dream years ago.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: where somebody in the dream was telling me that poetry would would be the foundation of my writing.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and so I took that to mean that the kind of intensity that
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I think we experience. When we read poetry and write, it would be present in my other writing, as well.
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Alison Nissen: So is your poetry
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Alison Nissen: based on real people.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Well, my poetry, I isn't necessarily. I mean, we're all we're humans. And and I'm a human. I'm writing poetry. I'm writing about humans. And so at times real people appear in it. My husband appears now and then, and he's always really happy when he reads a poem that includes him
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: but others others to appear. But I don't necessarily have people in all of my homes.
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Alison Nissen: Oh, interesting! Alright! So how do you start writing your poems?
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Well, they start.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: It's hard to, you know
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: of.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: say, really, because they start from lots of different
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: places. And sometimes I'll just get caught up by an image.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and and I'll just enter that image and see where it takes me.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: And sometimes I get, you know, have an emotion
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and emotional reaction to something. And I sort of need to immediately respond to that in writing.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: And that can produce a poem.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: lots of different things. Yeah.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: TV, news.
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Alison Nissen: Yeah, there's there's always a lot to write about when you turn the news on.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I know.
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Alison Nissen: And do you, do you journal? How do you come up with your ideas? How do you develop them?
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Well, I've kept a journal for years, and in fact.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I've been reading
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: all of my early journals recently.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and and and discovering
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: you know what a struggle it was for me as a younger woman to
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: except that I could write, and and that eventually I might even get published. So it's fascinating to look back at that younger woman and see
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: you know what was troubling her, and and then to be able to say to her, Well, hey, you publish, you know it worked out. Okay.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Did I answer your question?
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Alison Nissen: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fine. So you also
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Alison Nissen: help other people
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Alison Nissen: right? Creatively. Is that correct?
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I do. I'm I've been well I taught for over 30 years
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: high. So college freshmen and women.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: You know, introductory writing, college writing.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and and then, when I quit doing that at in 2015, I started teaching at the University of San Francisco, has
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: an entity called the From Institute for Lifelong learning.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: And so it's designed for older adults.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: And I since then I've been teaching creative writing in their program, which includes memoir
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I've taught
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: flash, non fiction and the personal essay and lots of things but it's just been wonderful to be working with older adults
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: who are excited about exploring, you know, in writing now, and it's exciting for me to be able to teach them because they're so engaged.
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Alison Nissen: What's the biggest
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Alison Nissen: what?
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Alison Nissen: What's the biggest lessons that
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Alison Nissen: you're able to communicate with your students? So I'm referring to like like, you know, they they come to you with the desire to learn
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Alison Nissen: and I imagine that they are all over the spectrum as far as writing readiness. Some people have probably been writing their entire lives, and some people probably haven't done much with writing since they were in high school or college.
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Alison Nissen: And so how do you start somebody down that road of creative writing.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I think, by giving them permission to write without
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: high expectations of the results at the beginning.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: because, you know, as as we all know early drafts think
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: they they just do for professional writers, too.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and you have to get through those early drafts to begin to weed out and to find what it is that you're writing about.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: So so a lot of that is just giving them permission, and you know, to be a lousy writer, and not to be too judgmental, and then to show them how to begin working with the material so that they can bring to the surface the real treasures in it.
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Alison Nissen: And how many of them are working on memoir.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Well, I'd say most of them are working on memo to some degree.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and some of them, many of them actually aren't really sure how to go about doing it.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: So they need some guidance in, you know what's what's possible, what's what's you know, to avoid the difference between memoir and autobiography, and so on.
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Alison Nissen: Yeah, I find that working with people that are excited to learn, but haven't quite
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Alison Nissen: a again using your language, given themselves permission to put the words on paper and understand they don't need to be perfect from the get. Go.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Yeah, please don't be perfect.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Please make mistakes.
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Alison Nissen: Now, when what? Now? When you read something perfect, you think oh, my goodness, it's written by AI.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Oh, I know, I know, and I just recently for the first time, tried out AI to see what it was like, and I had. So what I did is I I submitted a couple of drafts that students had given me.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and I was just amazed in like in a second AI chat book, whatever it is. G pt, well, whatever anyways, so so it spit out in a second. What would have taken me, you know, a half hour to write, but and it it had all in categories, you know, symbolism and language, and this and that, and and it was better than what I
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: could do, I mean, so I was really, I was really shocked and and and distressed. I almost told my students you don't need me anymore. Just just submit your stuff to this. You'll get lots of feedback, but it.
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Alison Nissen: Keep playing with it. You're gonna not think so good of it not not.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: What is.
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Alison Nissen: Of it in a little bit.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I I I do understand. I mean it. It's very mechanical, the sound that comes through and and it's also not very good. And I was trying to create configurations through this zoom class I was teaching, and I had 25 students, and I had, you know, 4 breakout rooms. And anyway, I gave them all this material, but it it couldn't handle that the way I needed it. So it definitely does have limitations.
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Alison Nissen: Oh, yeah, I have a I I received a certificate in the 16 types which is the Meyer Briggs type indicator.
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Alison Nissen: And I thought, oh, I'll make myself a cheat sheet for all the different categories.
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Alison Nissen: and it was not correct. I was very disappointed. I was like I spent all this time working, thinking. It was just giving me exactly what I needed. And then I went back and thought, it's not right. So it it's definitely something that yeah, it will. It will continue to improve. But when it first came on, my students were using it, and I was very confused. And now I actually encourage them to use it once or twice, because
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Alison Nissen: they need to understand its limitations and and to discern
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Alison Nissen: what good writing is compared to what mechanical writing is.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Yeah.
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Alison Nissen: There's a difference. Because, you know, Chat Tbt will never give you that emotional connection that you can create with creative writing.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Well, I also discovered that it uses a lot of language that is sort of generic.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and it's, you know it doesn't. Again, it doesn't have the feeling of what a real person might
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: create by not being perfect. And so the language that comes out the diction is much more interesting than what the machine can make.
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Alison Nissen: Yes, 100 like don't ever use the word fosters again, and that's all I gotta say. I mean, I was, I was working on a website. And and I was making light of the word fosters, because every single thing I put into Chat Gp. The word Fosters come back, comes out of it. And I'm like, Please, I don't ever want to hear that word again. And yet sometimes it really is the right word, and that's what's disappointing is like it's ruined. The word for me.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Oh no! Oh no!
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Alison Nissen: Alright. So so tell me about your writing process. You you you start on paper. Do you go on computers. How do you do you make a list? Do you sit down at your desk at 10 in the morning or 8 in the morning, or 4 in the morning?
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Never. I mean, I'm not a morning person. I really. I had to set my alarm to make sure I was gonna be up in time to do this interview. No, I'm I. You know what what I had to do, because I have been working all these years.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and married my current husband when I was 54, and he had he had a daughter.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: 5 and a son 10 that I became a parent for
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and and so I had to, and and I was teaching part time as well, and keeping the household going and etc. So I had to learn how to you know grab time to write, and and so but what I discovered is, if I could
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: write for an hour a day, or, you know, try that. And even if it was just a half hour that in a year I would have the rough draft of a novel.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: And that's what happened. So I was able to, because I, you know, had that discipline I was able to produce a lot of work. I I've published a lot in addition to the books, but you know, lots of short fiction and essays and poems and etc. So it's really
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I I could never get up in the morning and do that. It's it's become, you know. It's part of my day, and I know that at some point in the day I'll find my time, and I'll and I'll do the writing that I want to do that day.
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Alison Nissen: Oh, that's that's great, I know for me personally.
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Alison Nissen: I really have to set the intention, or it won't happen.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Yeah, well, it is an intention, too. You know, the way I'm working. Yeah.
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Alison Nissen: Yeah.
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Alison Nissen: Well, Lily, I owna, Mackenzie, how can people find out more about you? How can they find out about the books you have.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Well, I have a blog, and every Monday I post something new about
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: it usually has to do with reading or writing.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and and so it's Lily. I owna mackenzie.com just LILY
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: IONA MACK ENZI e.com.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and you'll probably learn more than you want to.
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Alison Nissen: Alright, Lily, are you ready to switch to our rapid fire questions.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Sure.
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Alison Nissen: Do you participate in any extracurricular activities.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: You know I love I love tennis.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and I played tennis
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: aggressively, until I could no longer do it because of bad knee
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: but I still am. I'm really loves the tennis world, and I watch tennis when I'm biking on my stationary bike, or whatever cooking in the kitchen.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Does that count? Is that extracurricular.
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Alison Nissen: Absolutely absolutely. I might myself have enjoyed a game or 2, and watching the masters and.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: The.
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Alison Nissen: The different opens that are out there.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I know.
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Alison Nissen: Do you have a favorite accessory.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Well, I have a favorite accessory.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Huh?
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Have a favorite accessory.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I think. Yeah.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: You know, I can't think of anything.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I mean, when you are thinking about accessories. Are you thinking like clothing? Or
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Alison Nissen: It's an open, ended question.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Well, you've got me. You've stumped me.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: don't I guess I don't have a favorite accessory. And now I'm worried that I don't have a favorite accessory.
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Alison Nissen: Yeah.
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Alison Nissen: how about? How about a favorite pillow in your house?
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Favorite pillow.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Oh.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: well, yeah, I mean, I can get lower back pain. And so I make sure I have this special lumbar pillow that I put
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: behind my back when I'm sitting for long periods of time to keep.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: I'm getting back pain. So I that's my favorite pillow, not very sexy.
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Alison Nissen: And final question, if you could paint a room in your house, what color would you paint it.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Well, you know, I've been so conservative in the colors I've chosen
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: in our host.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: and and I thought often, well, wouldn't it? Wouldn't it be fun just to really do something dramatic? And and have.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: you know, ruby red
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: wall against a black wall, or something? I don't know, but just to do something unusual
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: So I would like I would like to. I would like to try something like that completely. I turn upside down. My ideas about color, and what should be appropriate in in a house.
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Alison Nissen: Lily, Iona Mackenzie. Thank you so much for stopping by.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Thanks for the interview, Alison, and good luck with your podcast.
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Alison Nissen: You have been listening to another edition of the Florida writer, podcast with your host, Alison, Nissen.
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Alison Nissen: Alison out.
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Alison Nissen: we're all done.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Okay, thanks, my dear. Good luck with your own memoir and getting it finished.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Are you writing other things too?
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Alison Nissen: I am. Yes, yeah, of course.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: Larry!
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Alison Nissen: Part of the problem.
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Lily Iona MacKenzie: You're thinking, writing, too.
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Alison Nissen: Lily, Iona Mackenzie has published poetry, essays, and short stories in over 170 venues.
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Alison Nissen: She's also published 4 novels.
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Alison Nissen: She blogs
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Alison Nissen: at Lily, Iona, mackenzie.com, and teaches creative writing at the University of San Francisco's Prom Institute for lifelong learning
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Alison Nissen: for more information about Lily, visit her blog
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Alison Nissen: at Lily Mackenzie, Nope.
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Alison Nissen: Visit her blog at Lily, Iona mackenzie.com
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Alison Nissen: for more information about the Florida Writers Association. Visit us@floridawriters.org until next time.
