The Writing Life with Gwenda Bond!

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We are back with the Inside the Block podcast with Gwenda Bond.
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How are you?
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I'm good.
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How are you?
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So you have a million titles, which is kind of a pun.
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And no titles.
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Actually, you have several titles because you're an author.
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So you're an author of some best-selling books.
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You're also head of the Lexington Writers Room, which is where we're filming right now.
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An incredible moment.
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Um, and you're also like Lex today.
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So you're the editor.
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The editor.
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That's probably the actual only official title.
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Well no, author counts.
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Well, that's true.
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And executive director.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Or board.
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I'm not the executive director.
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I'm the board chair.
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So see.
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Okay.
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That's way less formal.
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Yeah.
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We don't have an executive director right now.
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When did you start writing?
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Oh gosh.
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Um, I was that annoying kid who decided I wanted to be a writer before I could actually write.
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Um, I just always loved books, and and there were books around.
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And the story I tell that is the moment I think that everyone knew what they were dealing with.
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Um, so I would memorize picture books as my parents read them to me.
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And this was before there was pre-K children, so don't judge.
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But in kindergarten, we were learning how to write.
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And um, my kindergarten teacher, Mrs.
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Little, called me out for reading, pretending to read the story of like you got in trouble?
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She said, Gwenda, that's not what happens.
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You can't read.
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And I said, Maybe you can't read.
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And then she sent me to visit my father, who was the principal of the elementary school.
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And um, yeah.
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But anyway, yeah, I was making up stories really early, and so I always knew I wanted to write.
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Um, I kind of uh still took a circuitous route to writing books, though.
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Even though I loved books, I sort of got fascinated with screenplays in college, had a really good prof uh professor who taught screenwriting.
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So I did that for uh a minute and kind of got to that point where you sort of either have to move to California or stay where you are.
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And I didn't want to move.
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I love it here.
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So I started writing books, did what you should do, and um went to grad school and got a bunch of student loan debt immediately.
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Whatever working writer.
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My girl.
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That's the only way to do it.
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So wait, why do you have to move to California to be like a screenwriter?
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I don't think you necessarily do now as much, but I still feel like if you don't have industry connections, or at least back then, if you didn't, the conventional wisdom was to get in the room to meet people.
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You had to have um some way of doing that, and the best way was in person.
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I see.
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Um now I did meet a lot of screenwriters, like in an online writing workshop.
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Um, and uh I and I also thought, well, I'll just write books, and then once I've written enough books, if I still want to write screenplays, I can try doing that.
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So that's kind of like where I am now, like wanting to try dipping my toe back into screen, yeah.
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Yeah.
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So what's the biggest like difference between the?
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I mean, obviously, one's like a script for like a movie, so to speak.
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Well, the reason I went to grad school actually is the biggest difference.
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Uh, if you get good at screenwriting, it's it's external storytelling.
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Whereas the thing that novels do that no other art form does is show you the inside of a person or people.
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Yeah.
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So it's the interiority.
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And in film, you don't have that, or I mean, you might nod at it with voiceover or something, but in in general, you have to show everything visually, um, emotion, story, and you don't have that inner access in the same way.
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So it's almost it's like typical to like a or similar to like a play.
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So like while you're not showing like the inside of somebody's brain and what they're thinking, but you're still like having to deal with like, you know, the camera pans this way is to be able to show maybe what they like let the audience infer what they're thinking, or well, uh not even to the extent of like I I think there's like not to get too in the weeds.
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I think there's different schools of thought, like uh most screenwriters these days don't direct too much in their scripts because the that's for the other person, but what you want is the person reading it to visualize it in a way that they understand.
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And and the writing can have emotion in it, don't get me wrong.
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It's just that you have to be aware that you're writing in a medium where that is not going to be seen.
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So if you're relying too heavily on that and not on actually making it visually accessible, the story, what's happening, um, then it won't work if it does ever get filmed.
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So did you because you kind of missed seeing or being able to like describe or show the inside of like characters, brain, like is that what really pushed you into novels then?
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You know, I discovered young adult fiction and I uh which was having uh a really like a moment.
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Um, this was even pre-Harry Potter, like maybe a couple years before Harry Potter.
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And I just fell in love with the variety of voices and kind of the exciting work that was being done.
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And I also felt a little like less intimidated to write a coming of age story because that has a shape to it that feels more intuitive.
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Um, now it's funny because I think my time writing screenplays has made me much better at plot, and so I I think a lot more um I spend a lot more time getting into the all the rest of the the elements and the figuring out what happens is pretty pretty easy for me.
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How many books have you written?
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Oh god.
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Um you don't know off the top of your head?
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I do not.
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Oh, okay.
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Um I would be like six, like immediately.
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I think the next one that comes out is my 15th, and that's not counting some like scripted podcasts and things.
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Fifteen.
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That's insane.
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Or 14.
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I don't know.
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I I might be wrong.
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Maybe it's not.
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I I know I'm not gonna count here.
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Okay.
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You can you can look it up and you know what?
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She doesn't know, but I'll do that.
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I'm not good with numbers.
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No, I forget how old I am, like nor I.
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Yeah.
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So are do you like what is your writing process like though?
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Like to write 14 and be so young.
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I mean not that yes, you are.
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I didn't publish my first book until I was 37.
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Wow.
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Which means are you were you are you pumping out one or two a year?
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I was for yeah.
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Um, I've had a couple years without a release just because I was like moderately blocked, I would say, even though I didn't believe in that, but now I do.
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Um, but I'm back on track now.
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But yeah, I I was definitely some years even I would have yeah, two to three books.
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Like I was one of those overnight successes that took 20 years, and then um, yeah, I was publishing very, very rapidly once I broke in.
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Meaning like But I wrote four books before I sold one too.
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So I had like two.
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Wow.
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Is that typical for a writer?
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Like to have several in the works.
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I think it's just as typical as it is probably more typical for people not to sell their first book.
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Um, at least that's what I like to think.
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But I actually I actually am grateful for that now because I think I learned a lot in having to fail for a few years and like get rejected.
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Um and um it sucked at the time, but it was a good it was a good training because if you're an artist, your career's always gonna be peaks and valleys, like things are gonna go well, and then they're gonna feel like they're falling apart and sometimes from day to day.
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Um, yeah.
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Yeah.
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I mean, you and I had, I think, I still think about it, a really interesting conversation at a party recently, just about like what it what the publishing world is like now.
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Like and then bananas, bananas, and you're like, and I'll never forget it.
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You're like, it has changed exponentially just in the past like three or four years.
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Like, like AI is a part of all of this now.
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Talk about that.
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Well, so I don't rem know the exact numbers, but there was a it but just like just to to address the AI and the elephant of the room, you know, there's a couple different things there.
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One is that there's we're really lucky now, like my all my books have been traditionally published, although I do have one that I got the rights back to that I published myself.
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But I think like the the advent of being able to to do self-publishing, independent publishing on your own has been a huge boon for authors and has allowed a lot more people to make money.
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It has showed that what what publishing maybe thought the tastes were more narrow than they actually are.
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Um and so I think the first marketplace that's been really affected is are is those authors.
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Because if you look at the statistics, and this was in like the Harper's Index last month, it was like the month before um Chat GPT entered the chat, so to speak.
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Um there