Judith Turner-Yamamoto, an award-winning author hailing from a mill town in rural North Carolina, began her writing journey as an art historian, learning to appraise and describe what moved her. Her debut novel LOVING THE DEAD AND GONE, a Mariel Hemingway Book Club pick, is the 2023 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medalist in Southern Regional Fiction and was shortlisted for the 2023 Eric Hoffer Book Awards Grand Prize and awarded an honorable mention in General Fiction. Her writing assignments have taken her all over the world and include interviews with luminaries such as Frank Gehry, Annie Leibovitz, Marcel Wanders, and Mary Chapin Carpenter. Judith talks with me about the importance of deciding who to listen to, how nothing is ever wasted, how revisiting your work over a period of decades brings new perspective to it, and more—we may even have figured out why some people are predisposed to be plotters and some fly by the seat of their pants. There’s a lot of wisdom here for writers in particular, but it certainly applies in other fields as well.
Episode breakdown:
00:00 Introduction
04:10 Library books became salvation in my youth.
09:07 Analyzing art criticism and photography exhibition experiences.
10:48 Curated exhibitions, managed processes, positioned for director.
14:08 Psychic’s advice led to successful PR career.
20:09 Structured writing involves quoting experts, evoking places.
23:03 Discovery: Plotters focus on plot, pantsers on journey.
25:35 Friend writes crime mystery, minimal world-building, character depth.
30:12 Patience in revising manuscript based on feedback.
33:12 New York Times: essential for writing inspiration.
35:23 Grieving and death shape personal and literary journey.
38:38 Reading challenge due to overthinking and editing.
43:10 Being selective and positive to avoid negativity.
44:49 Editor resists removing crucial elements from book.
47:50 Endure publishing industry rejection, stay true. Successful.
50:34 Praise for a book with unresolved plot.
55:14 Striving for perfection in book pitching process.
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Transcript
Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:06]:
Welcome to Follow Your Curiosity. Ordinary people, extraordinary creativity. Here’s how to get unstuck. I’m your host, creativity coach, Nancy Norbeck. Let’s go. As you may know, I’ve been working on a new 1 on 1 course, and it’s here. Reignite Your Creative Spark is a private coaching program designed to help creative folks build momentum that lasts so they can turn their creative dreams into reality. In 6 private sessions, you’ll discover how to engage with your creative dreams with ease and joy, feeling both more confident in yourself and your work and more vibrant than you have in years.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:45]:
Wanna learn more? Use the link in the show notes to get in touch. Talk to you soon. My guest today is Judith Turner-Yamamoto, an award winning author hailing from a mill town in rural North Carolina who began her writing journey as an art historian, learning to appraise and describe what moved her. Her debut novel, Loving the Dead and Gone, a Mariel Hemingway book club pick, is the 2023 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medalist in Southern Regional Fiction and was shortlisted for the 2023 Eric Hoffer Book Awards grand prize and awarded an honorable mention in general fiction. Her writing assignments have taken her all over the world and include interviews with luminaries such as Frank Gehry, Annie Leibovitz, Marcel Wanders, and Mary Chapin Carpenter. Judith talks with me about the importance of deciding who to listen to, how nothing is ever wasted, how revisiting your work over a period of decades brings new perspective to it, and more. We may even have figured out why some people are predisposed to be plotters and some fly by the seat of their pants. There’s a lot of wisdom here for writers in particular, but it certainly applies in other fields as well.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:56]:
Here’s my conversation with Judith Turner-Yamamoto. Judith, welcome to follow your curiosity.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:02:04]:
Thank you for having me. I’m delighted to talk with you.
Nancy Norbeck [00:02:08]:
So I start everyone with the same question. Were you a creative kid or did you discover your creative side later on?
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:02:18]:
Well, I think it was there, but it was smothered. I was born into an insular rural mill town in Central North Carolina, and I don’t think that I ever heard the word creativity. You know, there was smart, but smart that’s sort of intoned clever. Right? But you couldn’t be too clever. I mean, do you know the, that Japanese expression, the tallest nail gets hammered down?
Nancy Norbeck [00:02:56]:
I haven’t heard that variation, but I have heard it as tall poppies get get cut down, so sounds like the same thing.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:03:03]:
Yeah. So and and then you, you know, dilute that a little further and it’s who do you think you are? Yeah. So it was a very difficult environment to be a curious and and smart and a little outside of the norm kid. So I remember this is a little anecdote, but I maybe I was 4. And I said to my paternal grandmother, you know, their names, my grandmother’s name was Virgil, and my grandfather’s name was Vertis. I mean, how could that ever allow in that wild? But I could recite my family’s names and you would but, you know, I tour I said to her, I said, are you Hansel and Gretel? Right? But you see where it came from. Right? Right. Well, she never heard of Hansel and Groot, you know, but, I mean, I remember she was like, who told you to say that? Because a 4 year old couldn’t possibly have thought of this.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:04:10]:
Right? So that’s the kind of scenario that I was in and books and library and the library became my salvation. And, you know, I I had a set of world books at home, and I remember being just I can see there was a volume that was all about the visual arts, and I can see every single painting that was in that book. I looked at it repeatedly. I really didn’t know what I was looking at. Right? Mhmm. You know, that’s kind of akin to when I was in 6th grade and I would go to the library and would look, you know, I would look at Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, and I was just so drawn to this fictionalized world. Right. But, you know, it was a place where no one saw any of that kind of thing.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:05:05]:
If you were a woman, you know, the only potential career outlets at that point in time were teaching school. Mhmm. So or being a nurse. Right. Those were sort of the only options that were open to you. And, you know, I went off to college, and I was a Judith. I was a Spanish major by default just because I was a good mimic. It’s something that I have naturally.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:05:34]:
You know? I can throw my voice, as we say, in the south. But so I took an introduction to art history course, and the professor said to me, you write so beautifully about art. You should be an art critic. Oh. And I was like, you know, it was like, no one had ever said I could be anything. Mhmm. And there really weren’t active guidance counselors, you know, back in the seventies. So I latched onto this, you know, and it was like, I don’t know what it is, but by god, I’m going to become 1.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:06:07]:
And I charted this path to graduate school and, you know, I declared a double major, I think, that day. And, you know, the rest of the time I was at school, it was just our history in French
Nancy Norbeck [00:06:19]:
Mhmm.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:06:19]:
Because I needed another language. But, you know, that’s sort of the when you come from a marginalized place, these chance encounters in your life can be so incredibly important. You know? So, yeah, that’s that set me on that path to begin to find my voice. Mhmm. And, you know, going on to write art criticism, you know, I was I worked in art galleries. I was a project director at the Smithsonian. I curated exhibitions, and then I branched out and and did a lot of freelance journalism. I probably wrote over a 1,000 articles on travel and the arts and food and fashion and, you know, all these things that I was scraping for Mhmm.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:07:21]:
To get to, you know, as a child. So Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And then I started writing fiction. That was something I didn’t give myself permission to do until I was 32. And I started taking classes and workshops and attending conferences and, you you know, building that writer’s toolbox. But, you know, the really fascinating thing is that when I started writing fiction, I found myself right back just up the road from my maternal grandparents’ farm in this general store that was run by this little person.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:08:08]:
And and that, you know, it’s so I have become ironically, the chronicler of the people that I ran away from. Wow.
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:18]:
Yeah. That’s so interesting. I’ll bet that happens more often than we realize because, you know, that’s saying write what you know. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Wow. I’m I’m curious before we get too far into writing about, you know first of all, you mentioned the Smithsonian, which is kind of awesome.
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:40]:
And and I’m also you know, you were writing, but writing about art, and that, I imagine, has to have influenced how you how you switch to writing and how you write too, which is Oh. I realize, an enormous question, so we can break that down. But but I’m curious, you know, what you can tell us about working at the Smithsonian and then how the art writing turned into fiction writing.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:09:07]:
Well, you know, in when you when you write criticism, for starters, we’ll start with that, is you, you know, you’re looking at something and you’re analyzing it for lack of a better word, and you’re relating it to what you know about where this fits in in the grand scheme of things, meaning meaning the span of the history of art and and and, you know, bringing to bear what you know about all these things because your eye’s been trained. Right? You have a trained eye. I mean, you know, my job my first job at the Smithsonian, I as a project director for the traveling exhibition service, it was my job to develop exhibitions. My focus was photography because I had prior to coming there, I had worked for Harry Lunn who is was is the art dealer who put photography on the map and and drove up the auction prices for Ansel Adams. And by default, I met all those people. You know? I I met Robert Mapplethorpe. I worked with The X Files. I I handled the archives, you know, the the Berenice Abbott’s work in at Jay and, you know, just it was this immersion, incredible experience in, you know, in hindsight and.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:10:48]:
Yeah. But but that positioned me when I went sit there like, oh, you’re a photography expert. Right? So so, anyway, you know, my job was to vet exhibitions and develop exhibitions as well. You know, I curated some of them, and then I would work with curators who brought proposals and or I I was traveling all over the country looking at exhibitions decided deciding if it was something that we wanted to take on. So it was a wonderful job. And, you you know, you had, like, 4 exhibitions going at once, all of them at different stages, and I managed all of it from, you know, writing the exhibition description to the press release, to working with the education department and and publications and a you know, if after you left that place, you were positioned to be a director of a small museum because you had had your hand in all of it. Mhmm.
Nancy Norbeck [00:12:02]:
Yeah. But you decided not to do that?
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:12:06]:
Well, I did it for 4 years. And I at the same time, I had been writing, you know, on the arts and and breaking into bigger magazines, and I had my son, and I knew that I really wanted to focus on writing. And I wanted to be home with him or so I thought. So that’s when that opportunity you know, I’m so grateful to my son because, you know, he really opened the door to me having that window of time. I didn’t sit around in a housecoat. You know? I was writing you know? He went to nursery school in the mornings, and I wrote fiction in the morning. And then in the afternoon when he was napping, I worked on my articles or did interviews. So, it was this wonderful thing that went on for 12 years straight.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:13:01]:
And, you know, there were publications or awards. There were agents who were fellowships. And then there was this break where I went back to the Smithsonian about 12 years in and started working full time as the head of public affairs at the American Art Museum. So, you know, there was this really interesting essay in the New York Times yesterday just about the struggle between mothers, mothering and art and and life responsibilities and how women are we still continue to juggle all these things and how, if you look at women’s careers, you can see these hiatus that happened where they’re stepping away from something, not because they want to, because they have to, because of their obligations to family and finances and whatnot. And at the point when I made that move, I thought it was it was like a death.
Nancy Norbeck [00:14:08]:
Mhmm.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:14:08]:
And I remember I went to I saw this Welsh psychic who was incredible, and I was bemoaning the fact that, you know, I had this job and I, I, you know, I had to step away from my work, my creative work at this point when I was, you know, I had another new new in my 3rd New York agent and I thought this was gonna be it. And she’s like, no. No. You know, this job is a blessing and this is the thing that’s going to allow all the good things in your life to happen. And she was spot on because, you know, I worked as a publicist for 20 years. And after I was there for 2 years, I left, and I went off and set up my own PR firm working with art organizations and artists and designers and architects and and and luxury retail. And I learned that I could bring all of the storytelling skills that I had to shaping the narratives for my clients and their businesses. And I could fictionalize them, but if you will, Right? And dream bigger than they could a lot of the time.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:15:26]:
Yeah. But the tools that I learned through doing that work for 20 years turned out to be a godsend when I published my first novel in 2022 with a small press. So, yeah, it’s you just never you know, this is the thing about life. It’s nothing is ever wasted. Nothing needed. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:15:54]:
And I tell you, you know, the in the years since my book’s been out, it’s been the most incredible affirmation of that from every relation you know, these relationships I’ve reconnected with people that I haven’t seen in 20 years, 50 years. And to see all of that come full circle and and be assured, I think that, you know, that’s something that I would share with with young creatives is, you know, don’t bemoan the fact that you’re having to, you know, wait on tables. You know? I mean, at least they don’t have to get trussed up as Swedish milkmaids or or, you know, British winches. I mean, I’ve worn all that stuff in my so, yeah, it you know, it’s like you use everything. You end up using every single bit of it. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:16:52]:
Yeah. And each of us has a collection of experiences that no one else has had exactly those same experiences, so that gives us a unique perspective too.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:17:02]:
No. You know? And, I mean, to to watch the pendulum swing in in my own creative work, I mean, this first novel, loving the dead and gone, you know, is set in that first world that I come from, And it it really is, you know, a, well, it’s a, I don’t know, a tribute to that time and and people that really don’t have a voice in literature. Mhmm. And now the novel that I’m finishing up is set during the culture wars in the early 19 nineties in the art world and and looking at, you know, well, it’s something that I lived through. And I I wrote about a lot of these people’s work. So, you know, bringing that kind of thing to the page, it’s like now I’m drawing on a different chapter of my life and experience.
Nancy Norbeck [00:18:00]:
Right. Yeah. So when did you know that you wanted to focus on fiction? Was there a specific moment or did it just kind of organic?
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:18:11]:
I think I was no. I was going driving over. My first husband and I were we live, you know, we lived in DC and in Arlington, and we were driving across Keepbridge from the city. And I said, you know, I think I really want to take a creative writing course. And I remember him being really encouraging about that. So there you know, it was like the moment that I said it out loud and I and going back to that thing about giving yourself permission. Mhmm. Yeah.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:18:44]:
Because writing was always something that people somewhere else could do from some other place. Right? Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:18:56]:
Yeah. And yet you were writing the whole time. So was it a big shift?
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:19:00]:
You know, the fiction’s a dream or at least it is for me. Mhmm. You know, I go into my head and it’s it’s like I watch a film. Mhmm. And I just try and get it all down. That’s the the love you know, that’s the part we love. Right. And then comes, you know, later this grueling kind of going over it and over it and rewriting it and rewriting it.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:19:29]:
You know, I rewrote my first novel. I think I’ve rewrote it 5 times over 30 years. Yeah. And this one, ditto, this this is 5 over 20, the one I’m I’m working on now. And I just you know, it’s very different from writing an article. You know, there it’s like once you have your lead, the beginning, it’s like a road map. And you’ve established you’ve you’ve said right up front what it is you’re going to talk about, and then the rest of it is like a proof. Mhmm.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:20:09]:
Right? So there’s a structure there’s a real structure to how you write that, and then you have to have you have to quote a couple of experts other than yourself unless you’re just writing a a review. And that’s, you know, that’s that’s how it is developed. It follows you know, there’s a road map and, you know, in fiction, you’re lost in the woods. Right. So they’re they’re very different things. I think they draw on different parts of your brain. That’s not to say you know, I think a lot of my lyricism grows out of my ability to describe things because that’s what you do as an art historian and an arts writer. You have or if you’re writing an art, you know, it’s like you have to if you’re writing a travel article, you have to evoke the place.
Nancy Norbeck [00:21:04]:
Right.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:21:05]:
So all those skills come into play, but it’s it’s just a you’re using them, deploying them in a different arena.
Nancy Norbeck [00:21:16]:
Sure. Yeah. So does that mean that you don’t outline and you fly by the seat of your pants instead?
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:21:23]:
I’m a pantster. I’m a pantster. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:21:29]:
Yeah.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:21:30]:
I think I am. Yeah. And I that’s probably why I have to go through 5 rewrites. You know? But I I just I just can’t do it. My mind doesn’t it it just doesn’t work like that. I’m sometimes I’m shocked by what what my characters do or what comes out of the mouth. Just shocked. So
Nancy Norbeck [00:21:56]:
That to me is when it always becomes much more interesting. Like, oh, what’s that about?
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:22:01]:
Yeah. Well, you know, I’m also writing literary fiction and, you know, what I’m interested in is a psychological journey Mhmm. And an emotional journey. And a lot of my prose takes place inside somebody’s head. And, you know, I’m with Elizabeth Strout on that. She talks she talked about how that’s why she became a writer because she wanted to know what other people were thinking. And it’s fiction is really the only medium that medium that takes us inside someone else’s head.
Nancy Norbeck [00:22:43]:
Yeah.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:22:44]:
Right? And you can you’re experiencing the world from someone else’s point of view, and that to me is the value of it. It’s what I look for and what I read, and it’s what I want to share with my readers.
Nancy Norbeck [00:23:03]:
Yeah. I find myself just wondering as as we’re talking about this. I’ve never thought about it before. But, you know, people in the writing world talk about plotters versus pantsers, and it never occurred to me until you just mentioned, you know, wanting to go on that psychological, emotional journey, that maybe that’s why people who don’t plot and don’t outline don’t do that. Like, if I knew what was gonna happen, I couldn’t write the story, so I don’t do that. And yet maybe the answer is in the name. You know? Maybe if you’re more interested in the plot, you know, what happened next and then and then why does this happen next and, you know, maybe that just naturally predisposes you to be more of a plotter than a pantser.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:23:55]:
I don’t know. Well, probably. I mean, you know, I there have been many reviews that talk about the psychological depths of of my work, and I think I would have made a great therapist. And so I bring, you know, I bring that curiosity about people and their emotional states to to my work. Mhmm. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:24:24]:
It makes sense. Because there is sort of sort of a for one of a better metaphor, kind of like being in a chemistry lab. What happens if I take this person and this person and put them together? And what’s the reaction? You know? Like, how how do they interact? How you know, what happens because they happen to be in the same room?
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:24:45]:
Wow. I like that.
Nancy Norbeck [00:24:47]:
Yeah. I never thought about that before, but it kinda
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:24:49]:
makes sense. A nice analogy. Yeah. Yeah. Because it is chemistry, and and to see a character interact with, you know, different personalities within a book is interesting too. Right? To see what it brings out in them and be it their history together or these unnamable things that we can’t put our finger on.
Nancy Norbeck [00:25:19]:
Yeah. And if you’ve decided all of that ahead of time I have to think that people who plot still come across moments where characters wanna do different things, you know, and get kind of thrown off of that outline. I have to suspect that that happens, though. I don’t know because that’s my experience.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:25:35]:
But but You know, I have I have a friend, and she writes she writes crime mystery kind Mhmm. Types of things. And what I know from watching her work on the book she’s currently working on, and I don’t think I’m the best reader for her, but never mind. But they don’t get bogged down in too much description of the world they’re in. There’s not a lot of focus given to world making, and I’m all about evoking a place. You know, I until it’s so real, you can smell it. And characters, it’s like, you know some things, but you you don’t get deeply into their thoughts or because that is sort of pulling you away from this pull towards the resolution of whatever plot is. Right? Like determining who killed that person.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:26:43]:
I don’t know. I’ve never with the exception of my friend, I’ve never read a mystery in my life. So no mystery, no rose no romance. Right? So
Nancy Norbeck [00:26:53]:
It’s been a long time since I’ve read many mysteries, so I don’t remember well enough to
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:26:58]:
to be Well, I never even way or another. But I never even read Nancy Drew. I was reading Oh, wow. I was reading Anne of Green Gables. So that tells you everything you need to know.
Nancy Norbeck [00:27:11]:
Yeah. Maybe. But it’s it’s an interesting question that, you know, it’s it’s never occurred to me to for to wonder if that’s what makes one person a plotter and and one person a pancer. But it fascinates me because, you know, I’ve seen the people who are diehard plotters just insist that you can’t write a book if you haven’t done it that way. It’s like, yeah.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:27:34]:
You can’t write I don’t know.
Nancy Norbeck [00:27:35]:
I couldn’t write one the way you do it, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t do it the way I do it and vice versa.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:27:40]:
You know? Well, I heard who is it? This is interesting. I recently heard Lauren Groff. Get this. She writes all her books longhand. Okay? The first draft is longhand and she finishes the draft and she locks it away in a box, and then she rewrites the entire thing from memory. This is how she does it. Sever my arm. I mean right?
Nancy Norbeck [00:28:13]:
I remember I took a a DH Lawrence seminar, like, my last year of undergrad, and I’m pretty sure that was basically the same thing he did. And I remember thinking, are you out of your mind? But, you know, because like you, there’s no way I could do that. But if that’s what works for somebody, I’m not gonna, you know, judge them for it. Absolutely not.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:28:34]:
Well, I’m not judging her. I mean,
Nancy Norbeck [00:28:35]:
I’m not Oh, I’m not saying you are. Right. Right. Just like, woah.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:28:40]:
Yeah. I you know, I the thing that came the memory that came to my mind was, I think it was, what, 19 87, 86 maybe. And I’m working on one of those first personal computers. Mhmm. I don’t know if you remember them, but they would crash. There was no controlling it. You had to be backing up to, you know, a floppy, like, constantly. Yeah.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:29:08]:
Right? And it crashed and and this novel that would, you know, eons later become loving the dead and gone was scattered into little bits of code. And one of my friend’s husband’s was a programmer and he sat there he sat there for hours and hours and found but found it all in fragments. And then I had to, like figure out what went where and that’s what I think of when I hear the Lord Braff story. Yeah. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:29:44]:
I mean, it kinda makes sense to me because you’ve gone through it once, and then if you are putting it away and you and you sit down and you write the whole thing again, I imagine, whether it’s intentional or not, you probably are tightening things up in the process, and that makes sense to me. But, boy, is it a level of patience and fortitude that I don’t think I’d ever have.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:30:12]:
No. I mean, you know, talking about patience, I this current manuscript, you know, it it I I worked I sent it to well, one of my author friends read it, and I reworked it based on her feedback, you know, what I accepted from what she had to say. Then it went to one of my friends who’s a developmental editor. And I digested what she said, and it went to, you know, like, 3 beta readers. One of whom this is she’s she’s brilliant. She’s a Jungian psychologist. And my god, her feedback. I got all kinds of talking points for book clubs going, you know what
Nancy Norbeck [00:30:52]:
I mean? That.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:30:53]:
Yes. But, you know, just sifting through all this feedback and sitting with it, and you have to give yourself some distance from it Mhmm. To be open to digesting it because it’s like, oh, no. I don’t wanna cut that first chapter. I really well, I ended up cutting 5 pages out of it. But it took me a month, you know, to work up to actually doing that. Right. You know? And now you get into the story much faster.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:31:28]:
And thanks to the beta readers and then the editor, Karen Ford, who is an incredible editor. You know? Thanks to them, you know, I I was sort of coerced into doing it because you hear you know you you know, what is that that Zen proverb when the message comes to your ears 3 times, you have to listen.
Nancy Norbeck [00:31:51]:
Yeah. Yeah. But you’re right. It can take time for you to kind of process it and figure out what does that mean in practical terms for you. Like, first, there’s the whole somebody made the suggestion. Do I agree with it? Do I not agree with it? Do I need to sit with it? And then there’s the, okay. So if that’s right, what does it mean? How do I do it? What’s it gonna look like? You know, and then make that happen.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:32:20]:
Oh, and then it becomes a game of chess. Yeah. Right? Because, you know, like, Karen Ford, my developmental letters, she’s like, oh, well, you know, you can cut some of these things and then it can you can pepper it through the rest of the book and it’s like, I don’t wanna pepper. But you know what? Guess what? I’m peppering now. I’m peppering.
Nancy Norbeck [00:32:44]:
Probably glad you are.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:32:46]:
Yes. I am. I can see it. I can see what she meant. Mhmm. But, you know, this stuff is slow. It’s painful. And, yeah, it’s no one would believe how long people labor like this.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:33:03]:
It’s just
Nancy Norbeck [00:33:04]:
yeah. Yeah. How much of it is, is internal before you ever touch a keyboard?
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:33:10]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:33:11]:
Yeah.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:33:12]:
Yeah. Or, you know, I I I don’t know if you can relate to this, but, you know, I just could not live without reading The New York Times each day because I can re rereading something totally unrelated, and there’ll be some kind of phrase that will, like, illuminate something for me. And I’ll just run-in and open the manuscript and modify it or add something or you know, it’s like I when I’m in that writing mode, it’s like I’m living for those characters in that world and taking whatever new that comes into me and and channeling it through that Yep. Yeah, sector there.
Nancy Norbeck [00:33:57]:
Yeah. And and you’re if you’re like me anyway, you’re having conversations with those characters about what do you what do you mean you wanna do this? I thought you were gonna do that. And you say this, and what does that mean? Tell me tell me more.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:34:10]:
Yeah. I I I keep these journals. You know, like, they’re this call I call it you know, I heard this Richard Ford say this, the book of the book. And you just write all these things down. And I was going back through the section, and I posted some of this on Facebook. The section where I was first starting to think about this book and, you know, there’s like a page of questions, you know, just questions that that I’m asking myself about the character and and what they’re going to do. And and, yeah, I’m constantly questioning myself and questioning them.
Nancy Norbeck [00:34:57]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I’m I’m also thinking, you know, you mentioned that, you you know, you started working on this first book basically 30 years ago, and, you know, you were a different person 30 years ago, and you’ve been how many different people in those 30 years. Do you have any sense of how that has changed how you interacted with the idea and with your draft?
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:35:23]:
Oh, well, life. Right? I’m you know, I you know, when I started that draft, my maternal grandmother was still alive. Right? And, you know, now, you know, by the time the book was published, both my parents are dead as well. So I experienced you know, I was writing about death only having experienced it at a a remove. You know? The book Loving the Dead Gone grows out of my first memory at 3 of the death tragic death of this uncle who was very young. I think he was 19, just like in the book. And I have this memory of his 17 year old widow. And that day that this whole thing happened and that is the event that’s the event that happens in the book that breaks everything open emotionally in this small community for the 4 characters.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:36:33]:
So, you know, it’s like weaving a tapestry. I think every time I came back to it, you’re enriching it. Because as you said, you’re a different person. You’ve experienced more things, more of life, and you just continue to lay down these additional threads. And it becomes richer. And I, you know, and I don’t think that’s the kind of thing I don’t know. I don’t think you would do that if you were just plotting. Right? I was at the arc stage when I decided to kill someone.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:37:12]:
And I owe it to my friend, you you know, the the the crime and mystery writer who said you really need to kill somebody. And but she was right because what happened was, you know, taking it from this person having just left and vaguely disappeared to, you know, the you know, his love interest, you know, killing him, you know, at at a moment of passion, you know, and then it’s the secret that she carries beyond the secret of having an affair with her husband’s brother. You know, that’s a huge difference. Right? Yes. It is. And his child. So yeah. Like I said, I I don’t know.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:37:57]:
You know? It’s like and if I was doing that at that point and, you know, I heard Terry McMillan say this once. You know, when she gets up to read, she’s rewriting as she reads it and she sees people, like, trying in the audience, trying to follow along. Right? Yeah. I can’t stop. You know, it’s it’s that’s what’s different from an article. It’s like, I know when I finished it. I’ll go back through it, you know, for grammar and flow and that kind of thing, but I know when I’m done. I am never done.
Nancy Norbeck [00:38:28]:
You’re never done.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:38:29]:
I’m never done, I guess. And I’ve totally proved it. Right? Because I just keep, you know, re reworking these things and, yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:38:38]:
I mean, I think that’s par for the course, you know, and and, again, this has never occurred to me before, and I haven’t done I guess I haven’t done a reading since the one I had to do to graduate with my MFA, but I think maybe that’s part of why I found that such a challenging experience. You know? It’s it’s 10 minutes, so it’s just a fragment of the whole thing, but it’s so hard to shut off that editor brain and and to look at it as just, I’m gonna get up and do, you know, a sort of dramatic reading of this thing for these people who hopefully will enjoy it, and then I will have met my requirements to graduate because you are. You’re always especially when you’re reading out loud. You know, I remember one of my advisors, and I think it was Rachel Pollock, but it might have been Reiko Rizzuto, saying, you know, read it out loud. You will find all the things that you need to change when
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:39:39]:
you read
Nancy Norbeck [00:39:39]:
it out loud. And so so that makes it even more of a challenge because you’re hearing it, which you don’t normally do, on top of I’m reading this. I’m trying to read it for an audience, but now I wanna change this word, but I can’t because that’s gonna throw me off. And I have to just keep going.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:39:55]:
It’s I’ve done it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:39:57]:
Challenging thing.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:39:59]:
Yeah. It
Nancy Norbeck [00:39:59]:
is. It sounds like it should be so easy.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:40:02]:
But, also, if you’re, you know, if you’re reading an excerpt, a lot of times, there’s something that you could leave out that would make that excerpt flow better for that audience, I definitely do that. You know? Because they don’t need that detail. It’s not gonna get paid off until Right. Way down the road. Yeah. So, yeah, to keep it in the moment, I do that. And I I do not read. When I do readings, I don’t read from the physical book.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:40:39]:
I have a notebook that has the entire book printed out and I have sections that I read from and I have edited them for being read aloud.
Nancy Norbeck [00:40:52]:
That’s smart.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:40:55]:
Yeah. Because when I started practicing and reading aloud, it’s like, I I well, you really don’t need that sentence here for this. You know Yeah. 5 minutes. It’s 5 minutes when you do a reading at a bookstore or something.
Nancy Norbeck [00:41:09]:
Yeah. And it’s smart to streamline it too just because if, you know, I at least am the type of person who gets really nervous about doing that stuff. So I don’t want anything in there that’s gonna trip me up or make it harder.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:41:22]:
Exactly. And that’s the thing. It’s like, if you read it out loud, where’d you trip? Right. Right? Where’d you trip? Maybe that’s not a good word for reading out loud, and I’ll black it out. Mhmm. So, yeah, that’s my handy tip.
Nancy Norbeck [00:41:37]:
Yeah. Super smart. Well and, you know, you had also mentioned to me, and you kind of have touched on this a little bit, that the best advice you ever got was to decide who you were gonna take advice from. Yes. And I wondered if you could talk about that a little because I think that’s really, really wise and important.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:41:57]:
Well, I was and this brings me to the dual threads that run through my work. I mean, yes, there’s that very southern voice, and then there’s work that’s not at all that and exist in a, you know, very different world. And I was a fellow, a Jenny McKeen Moore Fellow at George Washington University with the late Richard McCann, who was just is a brilliant was a brilliant writer. And I had read in class something that was very you know, it was very southern. It came out of my first world experience, and then I had read another short story story that was totally a 180 from that. And you know how those workshops work? You’d go around table and everybody’s got something to say. And and and one person said, well, if you can write like this, then why are you wasting your time writing that southern stuff? Wow. Yeah.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:43:10]:
That’s so old. Well, you know, if you’ve ever been in those environments, it can become a piranha pit. Yeah. Especially, you know, once the door is open to that, and I have to say, you know, I learned how to run a workshop from Richard because he would you know, usually, the teacher speaks at the end. Mhmm. But he would set the tone at the very beginning and say, you know, something positive about the work, you know, everybody’s work, and it it kept things from normally from, you know, going down this kind of path that we just talked about. But after class, I remember I went to him and I said I said, well, what do you think? What do you think about, you know, what he said? And, you know, am I wasting my time? And he looked at me and he said, Judah, you are gonna have to decide who you’re gonna listen to. You know, you cannot listen to everybody, you know, or you’ll end up, you know, writing pureed soup.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:44:17]:
You know, I I just yeah. And, you know, it was you just you have to believe in your voice. And I think, you know, here’s a a thing that is so whacked about writing compared to the other creative arts. You know, my husband is a visual artist. He works in all different mediums, and no one would ever dream of telling him he needs to change a a work of art, one of his works. Right?
Nancy Norbeck [00:44:49]:
Mhmm.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:44:49]:
But, you know, everyone has a field day with writing. I you know, it it’s just you know, I’ve made the mistake. You know, I I worked with a very respected agent at one point, and she had me she wanted me to do you know, she she took me on because of this work, but she wanted me to rewrite the work. And she wanted me to strip all the repressed memory and sexual abuse out of it, and it totally gutted the book. And, you know, why why is this protagonist you know, why is her head like this? Why is she doing this? Turner mind her choices didn’t make any sense. Mhmm. Right? Well, you know, the book didn’t go anywhere. But, you know, it’s just if someone asked me to do that again, I would say no.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:45:44]:
I’m not doing that. Obviously, we’re not a good fit. I would be strong enough and believe enough in myself to find another way. Right? Yeah. So, yeah, you gotta be careful who you listen to.
Nancy Norbeck [00:46:01]:
You do. And I think what you just said is so important too because so many people, when they’re trying to find an agent in whatever field, you know, or a publication record contract, whatever it is, think that they have to turn themselves into whatever that person wants them to be because they’re, you know, a sort of authority figure, and that’s not really what they should necessarily be. They can be like a guide or a mentor, but they shouldn’t be turning you into somebody you’re not, and you shouldn’t be willing to do that just to get what you think you’re supposed to get in terms of, you know, that kind of agent or or
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:46:43]:
No. And, you know, it goes even, you know, like, with loving the dead and gone. Let me think. About 20 years earlier, you know, I had the book was optioned by a very reputable small press who shall remain nameless, and they paid me. And but they wanted the editor wanted me to change the 2 voice. There are 4 voice, a coral novel. There are 4 voices in the novel, 4 narrators. And she wanted 2 of them are in first person.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:47:18]:
She wanted me to take them out of 3rd person and and no. Take them out of first and put them into 3rd.
Nancy Norbeck [00:47:24]:
Mhmm.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:47:25]:
So the whole book would be in 3rd person. Well, you know, I did that, and those two characters just died. Just the pros felt so flat because you know what? That’s not what I heard in my head. That’s not how those voices were speaking to me. And guess what? They didn’t they decided not to publish the book.
Nancy Norbeck [00:47:49]:
Imagine that.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:47:50]:
Yes. Imagine that. I mean, I’ve seen you know, it’s like, at this point, I have seen every kind of scenario in this publishing world that you can see. And I think it the end of it all, you you know, you just have to be true to yourself. I could paper the walls of my house with all the times that I heard from either agents or editors that the agents were pitching. This work is so beautifully written, but it’s too quiet to succeed in the literary marketplace. Right? Well, guess what? That book came out and it did amazingly well Yeah. For a small press, and it got all kinds of incredible reviews.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:48:40]:
So, you know, they don’t know. They’re playing a guessing game. They really don’t know. And they’re trying to they’re trying to bet on a winner.
Nancy Norbeck [00:48:50]:
Right. You
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:48:51]:
know, they didn’t I understand that. It’s a business. Mhmm. But, you know, if what you’re writing is coming from your heart and who you are, you have to remain true to that. Yes. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:49:05]:
And I think that’s that’s an interesting tension, you know, between you have to decide who you’re gonna listen to, which you do, and you have to stay true to yourself. So, you know, it’s a it’s a learning process to figure out which advice to listen to from the people you’ve decided to listen to and which advice of your own, you know, when you need to stick to your guns.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:49:30]:
Right.
Nancy Norbeck [00:49:30]:
And when it’s worth saying, maybe there’s something in that. And that’s it’s not obvious, and it’s not always easy.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:49:37]:
No. No. And but I would say, you know, stay hue is true to yourself as you can Yeah. Throughout it all.
Nancy Norbeck [00:49:50]:
Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. You don’t know everything, but you know a lot.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:49:57]:
Yeah. And, yeah, as I said, if you’re writing from your gut and yeah. You know, it’s it’s what you’re writing may not be for everyone. Nothing is for everyone. Right. And, yeah, what kind of book are you writing?
Nancy Norbeck [00:50:13]:
Yeah. And do you want to write the book that pleases everybody else, which it can’t ever do, or do you want to
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:50:18]:
write the book that pleases you? Oh my god. Yeah. It’s really interesting. I mean, you put a book out to betas and you get this range of reactions. It’s really interesting. It’s a really interesting process.
Nancy Norbeck [00:50:32]:
Yeah. And And
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:50:34]:
you know, a lot of time what you know, one thing, you know, it this was interesting. Like, my developmental editor, Karen Ford, she praised this book for, you know, it’s it’s there is a who done it element to it, this book that’s that I’m finishing up now, The Drawing of Angels. But you don’t ever have a clear answer to that question. And she said, you know, that I was satisfied with not knowing, you know, who the perpetrator was at the end that I’m just confident in the this woman’s ability to put her life and her children’s lives back together. You know, that’s an incredible couf, you know, that you pulled off. And but I heard from Betas. It’s like, well, you know, are are these peep you know, are these men not going to be brought to justice? Or, you know, it’s like people want things to wrap. They want to wrap like a, and life’s not like that.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:51:35]:
It’s messy. It’s chaotic, and we don’t get answers a lot of the times, or we don’t get them for 30 years. Mhmm. So yeah. And I I I, you know, I tried to stay on the side of life. You know? It’s I don’t know. Did you see Jen the she’s a playwright and then, a novelist. Jen Silverman had an essay in The Times on Sunday about, you know, art’s not supposed to make you comfortable.
Nancy Norbeck [00:52:11]:
Amen to that. I have not seen that, but I’ll go look for it.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:52:14]:
Well, look for it. I mean, I was I read it and it was just like she was speaking to me. I I had to write I wrote her immediately thanking her because she so crystallized this whole thing and she draws eyes to this thing about this curious American tick that we equate art and moral morality and moral teaching as being 1 in the same. Oh. It’s deep, and it’s a problem. If you think of you know, like, here I am writing about the culture wars. You know, when when people are moralizing about art, don’t know anything about art, and all the trouble that that happens from that. Yeah.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:53:05]:
It’s a very interesting piece. So, yeah. You get a little bit of that. I get that. You know, I see some of that from from beta readers too. So you just gotta be brave and write about what you wanna write about.
Nancy Norbeck [00:53:20]:
You do. And as I have talked about recently with another guest, you know, you gotta you gotta write something that pleases you first. Mhmm. You know? Nobody wants to read something that was written to appeal to everybody, and it never will appeal to anybody. But even if it could, no nobody wants to read that. They wanna read the thing that’s unique to you.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:53:39]:
Yes. Yep.
Nancy Norbeck [00:53:41]:
So so, yeah. So it is really that tension between who do you listen to and which pieces of their advice do you take and and where do you take your own? And I think the only way to figure that out is just to through trial and error, you know, you just have to do it enough that you start to get the sense.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:53:57]:
Right. And I feel, you know, it’s interesting at this point in my writing life. I think it, if I had had all this feedback coming at me when I was earlier in my career. I think it would have been overwhelming. Mhmm. But at that time, I, you know, I had a a a writer that I trusted. I trusted her totally, and she and I exchanged work over a period of, like, 30 years. Yeah.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:54:30]:
Fortunately, she lived to be 97. Go over. Oh, yes. She was at Barbara Shiber. She was interviewed on NPR when when she was 95, when her this book that she had worked on all these decades that I was privileged to, you know, to read as as she was developing it and give her feedback. And she was, yeah, she was interviewed on NPR. But, you know, I I could trust Barbara. Right? And but I didn’t have, you know, this whole notion of beta readers and and, you know, that I think it’s become we’re a little bit frozen now, I think, because we struggle as writers with this.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:55:14]:
It’s like, oh my god. This has got to be the absolute best that it can be before I start pitching agents, before I start reaching out to pub independent publishers, whatever. It’s so there are, like, all these additional steps that we’re putting ourselves through. And I think a lot of this work probably used to fall on the editorial the publicing house, the editorial departments, and they’re probably not there and as muscular as they were in the past to you know? Because it’s it’s they didn’t require things to be, like, to the umpteenth polish or whatever. Right. And that’s where I I’m at now, and it’s like, you know, I thought I would have this book, like, ready to pitch and everything around this time, and it’s like, oh god. You know, it’s probably gonna be the fall, I think, before it’s it’s all is said and done and it’s out there. So, yeah, it’s it’s become something else.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:56:20]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:56:22]:
Well, I think that’s probably a good place for us to stop, but I’ve really enjoyed this conversation. And I think especially people who are, you know, aspiring writers, much as I don’t always like that phrase, will find a lot in here that’s really valuable. So I will thank you on their behalf
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:56:41]:
for joining. Thank you. Let’s hope that they don’t just take a gun to their heads.
Nancy Norbeck [00:56:47]:
Don’t don’t do that. There are better ways. There are better ways to keep going and keep learning. Yeah. But thank you. This has been really fun.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:56:57]:
Oh, thank you. It was pleasure. Yeah. Great conversation.
Nancy Norbeck [00:57:02]:
That’s this week’s episode. Thanks so much to Judith Turner-Yamamoto for joining me and to you for listening. Please leave a review for this episode. There’s a link in your podcast app, so it’s really easy and will only take a minute. If you enjoyed our conversation, I hope you’ll share it with a friend. Thank you so
Judith Turner-Yamamoto [00:57:20]:
much.
Nancy Norbeck [00:57:21]:
If this episode resonated with you or if you’re feeling a little bit less than confident in your creative process right now, join me at the spark on Substack as we form a community that supports and celebrates each other’s creative courage. It’s free and it’s also where I’ll be adding programs for subscribers and listeners. The link is in your podcast app, so sign up today. See you there and see you next week. Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade. If you like follow your curiosity, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to tell your friends. It really helps me reach new listeners.