Kerry Chaput, author of 'Chasing Eleanor' - Historical fiction writer discusses dealing with anxiety, returning to writing, and ditching 80,000 words
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 6 July 2023
⏱️ 51 minutes
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Summary
Kerry Chaput is an award-winning historical fiction author. Her 'Defying the Crown' series has had much success, and her new book is 'Chasing Eleanor'. Set in 1935, it's all about Magnolia Parker, who must protect her sick brothers who get put in an Orphanage. She sets out to find Eleanor Roosevelt, the most famous woman in America, to help bring them home.
We discuss how she researches novels set hundreds of years ago. Also, why she started writing again after putting her pen down, suffering from burnout. You can hear why she wants to be a plotter, but always ends up pantsing, and we chat about why she had to bin 80,000 words.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome along to a brand new episode of writer's routine. |
| 0:12.6 | This week we're chatting to Kerry Chaput. |
| 0:15.0 | Her new novel is Chasing Eleanor. |
| 0:17.3 | We discuss how she's very full on with her research. |
| 0:25.6 | Also, why she likes to get clinical around the edits. And you can hear how writing helps her deal with general life anxiety. |
| 0:29.6 | You're living sort of in this pretend world all the time because you're imagining what all the things that could happen, right? |
| 0:35.6 | What's going to come down and how would you |
| 0:37.7 | handle it? And so as I'm working on my day job, my brain is already doing all these things. So I've |
| 0:43.3 | sort of learned to channel that into my stories. And I find that for me, that emotional release of |
| 0:51.7 | writing stories to try to understand humans and humanity. And I find that |
| 0:58.2 | to be really a draw of writing to try to pick apart why we do what we do and to understand |
| 1:04.6 | the deeper meaning behind things. It's all on the way with Kerry Chappert in this week's |
| 1:08.2 | writer's routine. |
| 1:18.9 | Yes, welcome along to the show. |
| 1:20.3 | My name's Dan Simpson. |
| 1:24.5 | This is writer's routine, where we take a little look inside an author's working day. |
| 1:28.2 | And for just the next few weeks, you've got a little bit of time to make the most of a fantastic offer from Plotter. It's a writing software, and they are supporting the show. |
| 1:34.2 | It does what it says. It helps you plot and plan your books. The way that you think, really, |
| 1:39.9 | it helps you outline faster, organize smarter, and it really tries to turbocharge your productivity. |
| 1:46.5 | So often, as we've heard on this show, with almost 300 authors, we sit down, we start to write, |
| 1:51.7 | and we get a bit distracted with the back end, making sure our notes and our plans are in the right |
| 1:59.9 | order. Plotter really helps out with that. When you open |
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