Links Mentioned in This Episode:

At the Seams (Novel)

And Then You Apply Ice (Stories)

How to reach Pamela

• Website
• Instagram

The Resilient Writers Radio Show: Interview with Pamela Gwyn Kripke – Full Episode Transcript

Intro:

Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome to The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm your host, Rhonda Douglas. And this is the podcast for writers who want to create and sustain a writing life they love. 

Because let's face it, the writing life has its ups and downs, and we want to not just write, but also to be able to enjoy the process so that we'll spend more time with our butt-in-chair getting those words on the page. 

This podcast is for writers who love books and everything that goes into the making of them. For writers who want to learn and grow in their craft and improve their writing skills. Writers who want to finish their books and get them out into the world so their ideal readers can enjoy them. Writers who want to spend more time in that flow state. 

Writers who want to connect with other writers to celebrate and be in community, in this crazy roller coaster ride, we call the writing life. We are resilient writers. We're writing for the rest of our lives and we're having a good time doing it. So welcome, Writer. I'm so glad you're here. Let's jump right into today's show.

Rhonda:

Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome back to another episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. So today I'm really excited because we're going to talk about short stories and we don't talk about short stories enough. So with me today, I have Pamela Gwyn Kripke. Pamela is an award winning writer whose features, stories and essays have run in newspapers, magazines and online news pubs such as The New York Times, The New York Post, The Chicago Tribune. As well as in magazines, you know, Elle, Seventeen, New York Magazine, Newsweek, Martha Stewart Living, so on, so on, so on. 

She's also the author of a debut novel At The Seams, which was first published by the small press Open Books in May 2023. And it won the Arch Street Press First Chapter Award and was excerpted in several literary mags. Right now, her short story collection, And Then You Apply Ice, is also out from Open Books. Her fiction has been published  in literary magazines all over the United States, and her work has been submitted for a Pulitzer Prize. 

She has a background in training in journalism and news reporting and yeah, I wanted just to welcome you. She lives in the Philadelphia area. And I just wanted to say welcome, Pamela. I'm so glad we could do this. 

Pamela:

It's nice to be here. Thanks so much for having me. 

Rhonda:

So when did you start writing short stories? How long have you been writing short stories? 

Pamela:

Yeah, I started writing short stories not that long ago, maybe four years ago, right? Kind of before the pandemic. Yeah.

Rhonda:

Wow. And what drew you to short stories after having, you know cause you'd written a novel, you'd been doing news reporting for so long. What drew you to short stories? 

Pamela:

Well, I had written, I've written a lot of essays and, and every time I write an essay, some reader will tell me that it sounds like a short story. So, so I, um, I, I guess I was just feeling experimental and, and, a lot of the short stories started with something true, something real, something I had witnessed or seen or experienced. 

And I really enjoyed the short form coming from journalism so that 2,500 word length felt comfortable. And I started writing a bunch of them. And during the pandemic with all that extra time, sent them around, had a bunch published, then wrote the novel, then came back and put those together and added more for a collection. 

Rhonda:

Wow. So I'm always fascinated in the process of curating the collection. How did you go about pulling the stories into a book so that they work as a book? 

Pamela:

Right. Yeah. So I had about five or six stories that had or six or seven stories that have been published. And I looked at them all. I kind of laid them out. And I said to myself, what are they, how are they similar thematically? How are they similar in terms of character? What are they trying to say? Was there any through line? because I wanted to collect them all and arrange them by some overarching theme or idea purpose. And it struck me that there was a lot of transgression going on with these eight characters and managing transgression of others or the world. 

Rhonda:

Okay.

Pamela:

So once I kind of hit on that with the original core, I added stories along that line with new characters and then some of them and some of the characters recur to so. 

Rhonda:

Oh, okay. So are some of the stories linked then? 

Pamela:

They're kind of linked in terms of that.They're the same people at different points  in their lives. So they're about four recurring girls, women who encounter different sorts of things, but at different stages and then handle them based on, guess, their maturity and their life experience. 

Rhonda:

Right. Is there a particular reason you're drawn to writing, you know, sort of the lives of girls and women? 

Pamela:

Yeah, I have two daughters. I've written so many essays and I've always written about family, relationships among family members, and all of those issues that women face. I've gone through the death of a parent, father, divorce, boys, work issues, being a woman in the workforce at different periods of time and different eras, different stages, years, decades. So,  you know, a lot of those affect women in a way that is, I  think, kind of compelling. 

Rhonda:

And now that the book is out, I mean, I think for anyone who doesn't, you know, hasn't had a book out, the process of getting published is just full of mystery and mystique. Now, you've been published a lot because you've worked as a journalist, so it's maybe not new to you. But  in terms of getting both the novel and the collection published, how did you approach that and you know, why did you decide, for example, to go with traditional publishing instead of self publishing? Like, how were you thinking about it? 

Pamela:

Right. Yeah. Well, it's very different from placing pieces in newspapers and magazines, which I've done my whole life. I've worked a lot as a freelancer. And so that was a tried and true practice up until when the magazine business imploded. Before then, it was reliable.

It was a reliable method for publishing work. With the books, I had  actually  worked with three different agents, three different times, I'd say, I guess in the last 10, 12 years on projects that didn't make it, that were accepted by agents, but for some reason they couldn't sell.  And so, you know, that of course is a frustrating situation that requires a lot of resilience.

Rhonda:

Yeah, that’s true.

Pamela:

Yeah, when it got to be, when it came to the novel, I, it just struck me as a kind of a book that a small press would like. And I did my research and I looked them all up and saw what they published and decided to hone in on a few that published similar things that was contemporary. It's sort of contemporary literary fiction, but it has a contemporary feel to it. So I kind of honed in on those publishers and sent out queries. And my attitude was, know, whoever asks for it first wins. So that's what happened.

Rhonda:

Great. So did you end up in a situation where open books said, you know, often a contract will have first read of refusal on the next book. Did you have that and that's why you use them for the short stories as well? 

Pamela:

Well, I mentioned at the time, you know, that I also had a short short story collection. So I kind of pitched them both at the same time. And they said they were interested in both, wanted to do the novel first.

And then after the novel was out, maybe six months into it, I said to them, well, you know, I'm working on finishing the collection. Are you  still interested? And they said, yes, they'd be interested. So when I had it all together, I sent it to them and they confirmed that they were interested and sent me a new contract for that. 

Rhonda:

Okay, great. And how long did it take you to find the, you know, the list of press and send out your packages, you know, that kind of thing, because it can take some time. 

Pamela:

Yeah, it's a lot of work. You know, there are a lot of places where you can find lists online or you can research no end. I mean, there are hundreds of small presses out there. And it's not as if you have an agent who does all that for you. So it's time consuming. And you want to target where you send the pitch and not waste your time sending it to you know, if you're writing literary fiction, you don't want to send it to a publisher that does speculative work. So you want to send it to the right place. 

And you want to craft a letter that may be tweaked from one to the next. You might want to read a book that they've published in the past or look up the authors. There's no end to what you can find out. And so it's time consuming, but you just plod along and send one out. They take a long time. 

Rhonda:

How many publishers, as a guess, how many were on your list when you started? 

Pamela:

I guess they were about 20, 25.

Rhonda:

Okay. Okay. And as you say, you could have, you know if you hadn't gotten anywhere with those, could have done another 25 easily. 

Pamela:

Yes, easily. Easily.

Rhonda:

Great. So I personally love having and I just went to a friend's book launch last night. She's got a short story collection out by the same press that did mine. They did such a good job.  What do you think the advantages are for going with like a small traditional press instead of like the agent and the big four or five? 

Pamela:

Yeah, you know, I can't I have never worked with an you know, a larger publishers, my first efforts. So I can't say what that would be like, but I can tell you that it's just more, it's smaller and you're working with a few people and it's, there are not many layers. 

So there's, if you have a question, you know, it's very easy to get answers. It's, you know, they don't, they're not working on hundreds of books they're working on maybe 15 a year to put out. But of course they have less money to publicize. I would say the biggest drawback is the publicity. It's really all on you. I know it's on all our authors regardless, but they don't really set up anything for you publicity-wise.

Rhonda:

You can be with one of the big four or five and just not be, you know, they take on so many books and they put their marketing muscle only behind a few. Right? So you can still be with them and still basically be left on your own to do a lot of your marketing. 

Pamela:

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. 

Rhonda:

So you've got a gorgeous cover. I think it's really beautiful, very attractive, you know, obviously would lead people to pick up the book in a bookstore. Did you get input on that cover working with the Open Books? 

Pamela:

It's an interesting question. So basically, no. I am, I was in charge of the editorial and they were pretty much in charge of the design. We discussed and I sort of put out there how I viewed it, what I saw in my head. But they made the ultimate decision. 

And it's interesting because they sent it to me when they had chosen and I actually sent along ideas that I thought would work. Because you write something, you have an image, you have a picture in your head and you see it, you know? And so what they sent was similar, but at my first blush, I remember I was out somewhere, I had my phone, I looked at it on my phone and it was tiny. 

And I remember blowing it up and it struck me as if it was a little bit too strong. I mean, the look was a little too haunting. I was thinking something a little bit more playful in my head. And the publisher said, just trust us, trust us on this. And he was right, but it's gotten great response. 

Rhonda:

Yeah, feel like they really do know. At the point they've done so many books, book marketing that is the distribution and the look of the book and what causes people to order a book or pick it up, they absolutely do know.

Yeah. And that's the thing with a traditional publisher over of any size, really, think, over indie publishing is, you know, they make those decisions based on what they know to work. And you don't I mean, we don't know, right? We're not visual people. So we don't know. 

Pamela:

Yeah. It's nice to be able to rely on that expertise. 

Rhonda:

So what's your current writing routine and your current writing process, Pamela?

Pamela:

Well, I get up early, walk my dog, come back inside and I pick up wherever I am from the day before. I do some teaching as well. So that's structured in sort of the early afternoon hours. I spend the morning kind of  just seeing, know, getting organized and then jumping in with whatever I, wherever I left off.

And oftentimes I'll return to it later in the afternoon. Kind of, you know, over time you kind of figure out when you're the most creative, when you're the most administrative, when you're the most logistical and you kind of, you work around that. I  have been a working writer all my life, so I don't waste time. It's my job. I don't wait for the muse to strike me. You know, there's no such thing.

Rhonda:

Sit down, and get into it.

Pamela:

Yeah. And I'll often, if I'm in the middle of like, I'm working on an essay now and I will leave off in a place at a sentence that sort of begins the next section of work so that I don't have to restart or think how do I begin this new section? It's already started. So it's easy to pick up the next day. 

Rhonda:

Okay.

Pamela:

So if I'm working with the book, with the novel, I would finish a chapter, start the next one, and then stop for the day. So I would pick up with something that had been started already, which kind of made it easier for me to get going. 

Rhonda:

Yeah, that's a great tip, actually, to not leave yourself just sitting there wondering what am I going to do next? Yeah, absolutely. 

So you work across genres, right? You've done a novel, you're doing short stories, essays, you're still doing a bit of journalism. What, do you have a preference? And how do you handle the switch back and forth between them? 

Pamela:

Yeah, well, there's some there's, I love writing essays, you know, I had early success with them. I really felt that  when I was reporting stories where you could not, you could not  include any part of yourself, obviously. It was always fun to be working on an essay to which satisfies that need to share what you think about something rather than report something that's happening. 

And then, you know, the essays were a natural segue into fiction. So, and there's a lot of overlap. There's a lot of overlap. I know there are many writers who dream something up from nothing in their heads. I usually start with something I've seen or experienced and then take off from there.

It's kind of a hard, a little bit of a hard transition because you know, you're trained for so long to adhere to only the facts and you have to yourself, I could, I could change this, you know.

Rhonda:

I could imagine anything. 

Pamela:

Yead.

Rhonda:

Okay. So you don't find it hard to switch between them then? 

Pamela:

No, no. I really, I really don't. To me, you know, the writing is the writing. It's this, you're doing the same thing. You know, I'm all about the sentence. I'm very tuned into this sentence level structure of and sound of the words and the, you know,  so I'm doing the same thing. 

I kind of like to switch back and forth. I'm always working on an essay and it just keeps it interesting. And, you know, I've always written about my own experiences. So I like to, you know, it's something I've always enjoyed doing. 

Rhonda:

Do you think you'll come back to the short story again?

Pamela:

I think maybe, I think they're harder to sell. I think they're harder to sell. I enjoy writing them.  I have an idea for another novel  and I have an idea for a memoir and I'm trying to determine which to do next. 

Rhonda:

How do you think you'll end up making that decision of what to do next? 

Pamela:

Yeah, I think I'm gonna talk to a bunch of people actually this time. Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty pretty I don't want to say introverted, but I'm pretty isolated and how I work, I don't really commute too much with people. So I think I'm going to sort of reach out this time and see. 

Rhonda:

Okay.

Pamela:

I'm not sure. So I'm going to consult the experts out there. 

Rhonda:

Yeah. So Pamela, as you know, this is The Resilient Writers Radio Show. So if I asked you what it means to be a resilient writer, what does that bring up for you? 

Pamela:

Oh gosh, everything, everything. It's very hard. It's a hard career. So I think that you go into it knowing that it's tough. And I think that you go into knowing that you can, you can do it, whatever you decide. I had a friend a long time ago who told me, he's a musician, a composer, and he said, when you get an acceptance, this was when I was first started freelancing and pitching pieces to newspapers, magazines.

He said, when you get an acceptance, don't be too excited. And when you get a rejection, don't be too upset. You want to maintain an equilibrium of emotions. And just know that when you send the workout, you know, it's your best. And otherwise, it's too up and down and it's it takes too much of a toll. 

Rhonda:

Wow, that's good advice. 

Pamela:

And it's good advice. Yeah.

Rhonda:

Wow. Good stuff. Well, thanks so much for being with me today, Pamela. And good luck with the book. I know it's just fresh out, right? So yeah. So we'll put a link in the show notes and  hopefully people can find the short stories, but also the novel as well. I think what's great is when you find a writer whose work you really love, it's nice to know that you've got options, know, a couple of different things you can dive into. So I'll put both of those in the show notes. Thanks so much for being with me today. 

Pamela:

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Outro:

Thanks so much for hanging out with me today and for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. While you're here, I would really appreciate it if you'd consider leaving a rating and review of the show. You can do that in whatever app you're using to listen to the show right now, and it just takes a few minutes. 

Your ratings and reviews tell the podcast algorithm gods that yes, this is a great show, definitely recommend it to other writers. And that will help us reach new listeners who might need a boost in their writing lives today as well. So please take a moment and leave a review. I'd really appreciate it. And I promise to read every single one. Thank you so much.