Ask the Author: Rae Meadows
Answered Questions (27)
Rae Meadows
Summer reading! I cannot wait. Some books on my list:
Hold Still by Sally Mann
Outline by Rachel Cusk
Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett
The Good Lord Bird by James McBride
I would also recommend The Other Side of Impossible by my sister Susannah Meadows, Wintering newly out in paperback by Peter Geye, The Unsettlers by Mark Sundeen, The Geography of Madness by Frank Bures, and Running by Cara Hoffman.
Hold Still by Sally Mann
Outline by Rachel Cusk
Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett
The Good Lord Bird by James McBride
I would also recommend The Other Side of Impossible by my sister Susannah Meadows, Wintering newly out in paperback by Peter Geye, The Unsettlers by Mark Sundeen, The Geography of Madness by Frank Bures, and Running by Cara Hoffman.
Rae Meadows
Hi Peter, for sure! Just send me a friend request. Looking forward to reading your reviews.
Best,
Rae
Best,
Rae
Rae Meadows
What a cool question. I've never thought about that! I will admit to having a weakness for dysfunction. Jake Barnes and Brett Ashley from The Sun Also Rises rank high up there for their modern ennui, two damaged souls who are in many ways unable to love to love each other but find something to keep them going. They are messy, anti-romantic, and frustrating, and such rich literary characters. (Certainly not a couple I would want to emulate.) Thank you for the question!
Rae Meadows
Hello! You can ask me all your questions at once (if you want them private, GR friend me and we can do it via message). I will also check the discussion and see if they posted there. Sorry about the migraine--hope you are feeling better.
Rae Meadows
Hi Rachel--Yes, next time! You know, I'm not sure about my mailing list and how it adds. Maybe send me (via message so it's private) your email and I'll add it to my Madison list. Hope to meet one day in person!
Rae Meadows
Hi Andrea! Thank you so much for reading the book--I so appreciate it. And thank you for your kind words. I did lean heavily on biblical references, which I felt fit the story. But no, I didn't add Kabbalistic or Pythaogorean allusions, at least not on purpose! I love that you felt those--I wish I could take the credit. I'm writing a modern novel next and I don't think there will be much pulling from the bible, but I do like weight those references can sometimes provide. Thanks for the question!
Rae Meadows
Rachel! I'm so sorry I'm just seeing this now. I would have loved to meet you in person. Ack. It was great. I love Madison--I lived here for five years--and have always been a fan of the WI book festival. I read, had a Q & A with the writer Michelle Wildgen, and a signing this morning, now heading back to NYC. Now I know you're close I'll let you know if I'm in the area again. Take care!
Rae Meadows
Great! Here's my email, to make it easier: raemeadowsbooks@gmail.com
Rae Meadows
I would love it, Adriana. I think Ariel from Henry Holt can set us up!
Rae Meadows
Hi Melanie,
It was really fun! Peter and I had a great discussion about the book and writing, and it was just great to be at Magers & Quinn. I'm sorry I didn't get to meet you, though! I hope you enjoy the book. Take care.
It was really fun! Peter and I had a great discussion about the book and writing, and it was just great to be at Magers & Quinn. I'm sorry I didn't get to meet you, though! I hope you enjoy the book. Take care.
Rae Meadows
Thank you so much, Adriana. I'm so glad you liked the book and thank you for your kinds words! I love your question. I think Annie has a lot of doubts about God, but that she can't turn her back on faith/religion all together--it is far too ingrained. And because of that, I do think there is an element of Annie feeling punished, even if intellectually she doesn't believe it, it's there deep down. I think that feeling fuels her choice to go with McGuiness. I hope this answers your question. Thank you!
Rae Meadows
Hi Melanie,
I'm so glad you're coming to Magers & Quinn and yes, for sure I'll be signing books! Make sure you introduce yourself. I'm so looking forward to Minneapolis.
I'm so glad you're coming to Magers & Quinn and yes, for sure I'll be signing books! Make sure you introduce yourself. I'm so looking forward to Minneapolis.
Rae Meadows
Hi Kristen. I was in the Creative Writing MFA program at the University of Utah for two years, which is what took me to Salt Lake City. I don't have any ties to Mormonism other than living in Utah where the LDS church is a large part of the culture. I was just in Salt Lake City last week actually, doing a reading at the King's English Bookshop. I love it there. I grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland and San Diego, and have lived many places since including San Francisco, Paris, Madison, Minneapolis and Brooklyn, where I now live. Or by background do you mean religious background? (I am not a religious person but I am very interested in faith, one of the themes of my new novel. I went to Presbyterian church growing up.)
Rae Meadows
Hi Shreya,
Thanks for the question! I don't know if I have any great advice about this, but I would say reading widely and writing make one a better writer. One of the things that's helpful is to really breakdown a piece of writing that you like. Pick a story or novel (or whatever form you want to work on) and diagram it. Don't read it as a reader. Isolate the opening and see what seeds the writer plants, how much is revealed, what is set in motion. If it's a story, I would actually cut out various sections and study them to see how different parts are working. For your own work I would also suggest always reading it out loud, particularly dialogue. It's amazing what the ear catches. And just read, read, read, write, write, write. Good luck!
Thanks for the question! I don't know if I have any great advice about this, but I would say reading widely and writing make one a better writer. One of the things that's helpful is to really breakdown a piece of writing that you like. Pick a story or novel (or whatever form you want to work on) and diagram it. Don't read it as a reader. Isolate the opening and see what seeds the writer plants, how much is revealed, what is set in motion. If it's a story, I would actually cut out various sections and study them to see how different parts are working. For your own work I would also suggest always reading it out loud, particularly dialogue. It's amazing what the ear catches. And just read, read, read, write, write, write. Good luck!
Rae Meadows
Hi Jay, thanks for the question! I think I'm somewhere in between but lean toward the pantser side. I've never been an outliner. I always know the ending, and usually some points I want to hit along the way. But for this latest novel in particular, I just went along. The ending stayed the same, but the shape of the middle changed a lot during the editing process. I'm always intimidated by writers who work it all out ahead of time. For me there is something that happens organically in the writing that changes during the process so I wouldn't want to be beholden to what I thought at the onset. And you? Do you write? And which camp do you fall in?
Rae Meadows
Hi, Haley, thanks so much for the question. I admit that I am not actively sitting down to write these weeks leading up to the book launch (and caring for two kids on summer break), but I am writing, in a sense that I am working out an idea in my head. After I finished writing this current novel, I went to the town in the Oklahoma Panhandle that I fictionalized. I was really taken by it for all its beauty, starkness, loneliness, and anger. I plan on writing my next book about a modern-day "Mulehead", and I may have Birdie--who is a teenager in I Will Send Rain--return as an old woman. I like the idea of linking the books without the second being a true sequel. I wrote a non-fiction piece about my visit to the Panhandle--I went with a photographer--and that will appear on the website Lit Hub on 8/22.
Thanks for taking the time to write!
Thanks for taking the time to write!
Rae Meadows
Hi Heather,
Thanks for the question! It's hard, isn't it, to stay motivated? Sometimes I feel much more energized at the beginning of something, before all the problems arise. I am not someone who writes every day. I write in spurts. But when I am working on something, and I'm feeling the motivation lag, usually I do something like take a walk or take a shower. Your brain is still working on the writing even when you're not thinking about it. I think as long as you pick something to do with a time limit, and then make yourself sit back down at your writing for a bit, it can help. It's also okay to have a pretty short writing window, and when it's over, it's over. You may already do this, but I also read over work from the previous day before writing new stuff. It's not a race! And really, what better feeling than having written, right?
Thanks for the question! It's hard, isn't it, to stay motivated? Sometimes I feel much more energized at the beginning of something, before all the problems arise. I am not someone who writes every day. I write in spurts. But when I am working on something, and I'm feeling the motivation lag, usually I do something like take a walk or take a shower. Your brain is still working on the writing even when you're not thinking about it. I think as long as you pick something to do with a time limit, and then make yourself sit back down at your writing for a bit, it can help. It's also okay to have a pretty short writing window, and when it's over, it's over. You may already do this, but I also read over work from the previous day before writing new stuff. It's not a race! And really, what better feeling than having written, right?
Rae Meadows
If you judge by my novels, pretty much everything! The first was about an escort service in Utah, the second about a murder, the third about three generations of women and the orphan trains, and I Will Send Rain is about a family in the Dust Bowl. I write about whatever happens to spark my curiosity, but that's usually coupled with relationships within a family. Sometimes I think I have found some fascinating thing to write about--in one instance 15th century Florence--but once I get going it fizzles. There is some alchemy involved for sure.
Rae Meadows
My last two books have been historical fiction, so for my next, I am returning the modern age! I Will Send Rain is set in a fictionalized town in the Oklahoma Panhandle called Mulehead. My current project is about Mulehead as it might be now, the descendants, if you will, of its Dust Bowl inhabitants. One character is a lonely teenage girl who gets drawn into radicalism online. Another is Birdie (a teenager in I Will Send Rain), who returns to the town as an old woman.
Rae Meadows
Each of my novels began with an obsession that wouldn't leave me alone. For me to pursue an idea, it has to be something that I find myself thinking about, or more accurately, wondering or wanting to know more about. With I Will Send Rain, it was a Dorothea Lange photograph that grabbed me, and then I became rabidly curious about the Dust Bowl.
The biggest change in my writing process from my first two books to the second two was having children. I no longer had long stretches of my own time and really had to learn to operate--and focus--in very short bursts. It was a struggle at first, but now I feel like it might actually work better for me to have defined blocks of time. And, if I'm being honest, writing is often a struggle, so sometimes the shorter the increment, the better!
The biggest change in my writing process from my first two books to the second two was having children. I no longer had long stretches of my own time and really had to learn to operate--and focus--in very short bursts. It was a struggle at first, but now I feel like it might actually work better for me to have defined blocks of time. And, if I'm being honest, writing is often a struggle, so sometimes the shorter the increment, the better!
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