470. Sending a Hug Into the World: A Conversation with Becky Chambers

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome to episode number 470 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and my guest this week is Becky Chambers. She’s the author of the Wayfarers series and a new novella, A Song for the Wild-Built, which I absolutely loved. So we talk about the book itself, we talk about caregiving and comfort, I have some incredibly thoughtful questions from Patreon members, but mostly we are talking about the process of writing a book whose goal was to send a hug out into the world. I definitely think that goal was achieved.

Thank you, as always, to our Patreon community for making sure that every podcast has a transcript. I also have a compliment today! I love this.

To Lesle3 F.: Squirrels hide most of their winter storage near your home because you are the most trustworthy and kind human they know.

If you would like a compliment of your very own or you’d like to join our Patreon community, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. And hello to Becky and Eliza! Thank you for joining the Patreon community as well.

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I am so excited to bring you this interview. Let’s get started with my conversation with Becky Chambers.

[music]

Becky Chambers: My name is Becky Chambers. I am a science fiction author. I’m best known for my Wayfarers series, the, the most recent of which is The Galaxy, and the Ground Within. I’ve also just recently had a brand-new novella come out. It’s called A Psalm for the Wild-Built. It’s the first of my Monk & Robot books. I am based in Northern California, and I’m happy to be here!

Sarah: I have to tell you, first, congrats on the release of A Psalm for the Wild-Built. What will readers find in this book? And I ask because I tried to explain to my husband what, what I was reading; I had the hardest time just describing the completeness of this book. It is, first of all, it is wonderful; thank you so much for releasing it into the world. How do you describe this book? Because I am terrible at it.

Becky: You know, if it makes you feel any better, I do find this one to be a difficult one to sum up –

Sarah: ‘Kay, thank you! [Laughs]

Becky: – so let’s see how I do with my nutshell version real quick. So A Psalm for the Wild-Built is a solarpunk science fantasy that takes place on a secondary world. It’s a little moon called Panga, and in this world humans have achieved a, a harmonious existence with nature. We have built a thriving, sustainable society, and everything works pretty well. The, the catalyst for this was that a couple centuries ago, the factory robots of the world gained sentience en masse for reasons we still don’t understand, and we offered them a place in our society, but the robots very politely declined and said they would prefer to observe the world without us, and so they wandered off into the wilderness and have not been seen since. So they occupy this space that is very akin to urban legend: people know that they’re real, but, you know, nobody’s seen one in, in a few hundred years.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Becky: So we fast-forward to now. Our protagonist is a monk named Sibling Dex who travels from village to village offering tea and a friendly ear; there is more to their profession than that, but that is the very short version of it. And they cross paths with a robot named Mosscap, making the first contact between their kind in, in a very long time, and the two of them form an accidental friendship. They encounter each other at these very pivotal moments in both of their lives, and so they, they go on a cool road trip together and figure a lot of things out.

How did I do? Was that a de-, was it a decent – [laughs] –

Sarah: I think that was, I mean, there is no greater authority on this than you, possibly also your publicist, because they’ve probably written about nine drafts about how to describe this book to people, right?

Becky: Right, right. No, I think, I think my publicist can probably sum it up even neater than I can –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Becky: – but there we go.

Sarah: That was dead on. I mean, that was, that was brilliant. There is a wonderful theme of caregiving in this book, and I read some other interviews that you gave about this title, about how you wanted to release sort of a, a hug into the world. Which was an extremely generous and well done thing. And I also love how in the, in the book the theme of caregiving has different permutations. There’s different ways of caring, including letting go, and also trying not to pour from an empty vessel, which is something I definitely struggle with. You, first you made me cry. Did you cry writing this book?

Becky: I, I did. I –

Sarah: Okay.

Becky: – I cry, I mean, I cry at everything by, just –

Sarah: Yeah.

Becky: – by default, so –

Sarah: But, but the cry switch for me is a, is a, is a very short switch.

Becky: Right, right, same, same. But, you know, I def-, I often cry while I’m writing, and I did, I did tear up while writing this book.

Sarah: Yeah.

Becky: I will say, I will say without spoilers, for, you know, for those who haven’t read it yet, there, there’s a scene that takes place, it’s raining quite heavily in this scene, and that’s, that’s the bit where I got, I got a little, I got a little teary –

Sarah: Yeah.

Becky: – writing that, so yeah. No, I, I very much like to, to get into character, as it were, when I’m, when I’m writing, so I definitely, I, I feel it when I get into those spaces, so.

Sarah: I bet. So how, how did you explore caregiving with this, with this novella? Was that, was that a deliberate intention, or was that where you ended up?

Becky: That was very deliberate on my part. You know, Sibling Dex, their, their whole religion is based around this idea of comfort. So within the Pangan pantheon you have six different gods; Dex’s specific god is the God of Small Comforts, and so that can mean a lot of different things to different people, and, and that’s how care works, right? What is caring or necessary for one person may not be what someone else needs. Somebody may need to talk; somebody else may need to be left alone; somebody may need something material; someone may need something that is completely ephemeral that, you know, you can only give through interaction, that you can’t actually hand them, right. So I, I really wanted to underline in this book that care and love and friendship are things that take on just myriad different forms. You know, there, there is no – I don’t think this is approach to really everything, from the worldbuilding to the, the technology, to everything in the book: there is no one size fits all.

Sarah: No.

Becky: You know, there is no solution that works for everybody. Self-care means different things to different people, compassion means different things to different people, and so the most important thing you can do, I think, is be open to that: to not come in in a prescriptive way and say, oh, I, I’m going to fix you based on what I think you need. The important thing is to go in and ask the question of what is it you need, and how can I help? Which is, like, Mosscap’s introductory line in the book, as well. You know, what do you need, and how can I help? That, that’s where care starts, ‘cause anything else is just, you know, you trying to slap a Band-aid on something without actually looking at what the problem –

Sarah: Yeah.

Becky: – really is.

Sarah: It’s, it’s talking without listening.

Becky: Exactly.

Sarah: One of the things I love is that Sibling Dex is not good at being a tea monk when they start, and their intention, it’s almost as if their intention is, I have to be good at this, I have to be good at this, I have to be good at this. Only later do they realize to be good at this, I have to put aside my desire to be good at this and receive what is coming at me, whether it’s go park yourself by yourself and be alone or, here, I have given you something to go, ‘cause clearly you cannot stay. Off you go! [Laughs]

Becky: Right. Exact- – oh, and, and that’s a big part of it too. I’m glad you brought this up, because yes, they, they come into it with this very strong desire to, to do this well, and it comes from a good place. Like, Dex is a genuinely compassionate person –

Sarah: Oh yeah!

Becky: – but compassion, the, the, the trait of compassion does not mean that you inherently know how to deliver it –

Sarah: No!

Becky: – if you know what I mean. So I, I wanted to make it clear that this, that, that care is something that takes work; it takes effort. You know, it, it’s not something that just, you know, just sort of bubbles up because you’re, you know, you’re naturally a generous person. It does require an exchange, and it does require focus and hard work.

Sarah: Oh yeah. And that caregiving is a skill. It is a skill that takes a lot of labor, and it’s, and it’s a skill that happens in a lot of ways with work that you don’t see.

Becky: Mm-hmm. Exactly. And I’m glad you mentioned the word labor, because that’s it exactly. You know, this is work for Dex and not just in the, the tangible way of, like, they have to set up the shrine; they have to –

Sarah: Right.

Becky: – make the tea. Like, you know, they’re doing very physical things, but it’s emotional labor for them as well. They’re often quite tired –

Sarah: Yeah.

Becky: – at the end of the day, even though they feel satisfied with their work. It is still exhausting, and it does require them to take a step back and sort of put this – you know, saying they put a mask on has this connotation of being dishonest, but that’s not it at all. They have to be this very public, neutral sort of figure –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Becky: – and, and it does, you know, have a cost, and I wanted to point that out as well, that even, you know, someone who is kind and gentle and who is doing this nice thing, it’s still tiring.

Sarah: Yeah.

Becky: You know, it’s still, it’s still something they are giving, and they have to be able to take.

Sarah: Yes, and it, and it is work. And –

Becky: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – one of the things that Dex comes to realize in the, in the book is that that work has a cost to them that they didn’t really measure as it was happening until it was two percent battery; charge immediately.

Becky: Right. Right.

Sarah: Things are bad. [Laughs]

Becky: Exactly. Exactly.

Sarah: Yeah. One of the themes early on in the book – again, trying not to spoil – is find the strength to do both. I loved this phrase and how it was reflected in so many ways in the story. How did you arrive at that phrase in this world? I know that’s a very broad question, but I just, I love the way that duality is reflected so many times in this book.

Becky: Absolutely. So find the strength to do both refers again to the Pangan religion, which has these various gods, so I’ll get ‘em as quick-, as quickly as I possibly can. So you have the God of Small Comforts; you have the God of Mysteries, which includes both arts and sciences; and you have the God of Constructs, which is everything we build, and that can be, you know, tools; that can be houses; that can also just be society itself. Anything that humanity has invented is a construct. I wanted to, with that phrase, or with that whole concept, really, look at what, what does comfort do for us? Like, what is the, what is the benefit of comfort and, and why is it that we need it? You know, we tend to look at comfort as a luxury, when I really think it’s a necessity. You know, things like, you know, what Dex does, they go out and make tea and listen. This sounds like this very fluffy thing, but it is actually this, this very needed thing in a lot of people’s lives. You know, and also, you know, this extends to other things within their, their religious tradition. Having gardens and places for people to rest, the fact that there’s a book that’s a treatise on beds and –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Becky: – you know, how to rest properly. These are things that here in the Western world we look at as optional or something that you have to earn, but really they’re, they’re what fill us up; they’re what bring you up from that two percent battery, right?

Sarah: Yeah!

Becky: So, so find the strength to do both refers to the fact that, you know, life is a pursuit of what the other two gods, you know, their two realms of you are chasing mysteries, you are trying to understand the world, and you’re building things to help you do that, so comfort is what allows you to do that. It allows you to invent; it allows you to learn; it allows you to build. You cannot sustain these activities, because they are, they are massively taxing things, you know, whether you’re, you know, a researcher in a lab or whether you’re a painter or whether you’re, you know, someone who, you know, a farmer, whatever. Whatever it is, you need comfort; you need rest; you will not have the strength to do either of these things unless you take care of yourself and unless you let others take care of you as well. I, I, I really, really wanted to, to double and triple down in this book this idea that physical comfort and emotional comfort are not optional. They are what enable us to do great things.

Sarah: Yeah. It reminded me a lot of To Be Taught, If Fortunate. You go and learn; you go, you go to teach; and you are, if you’re fortunate, you also learn. You can’t just do one.

Becky: Right. I’m so glad you brought that into the – yes! That’s exactly it! That book too is very much about openness and not coming in with your own sort of agenda as to –

Sarah: Yeah.

Becky: – here’s what I’m going to impose upon you. You’re coming into a space that is not yours and saying what can you give me and what can I give back?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Becky: So yes, that, that, that book too is very much about that willingness of exchange and, and the humility to, to recognize that you don’t have all the answers, and that’s actually a good thing.

Sarah: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I also love that in this world technology and nature are very integrated! They’re not at odds with each other. They’re supportive of each other in a lot of ways, and I really like that because, you know, we are part of nature, and we made technology. It cannot be a separate thing! And I’m guessing –

Becky: Right.

Sarah: – that was a deliberate choice in the construction of this world.

Becky: Hugely intentional, yes.

Sarah: Yeah.

Becky: I, I have a bone to pick with the idea that nature and technology are inherently separate, and it ties in exactly to what you just said: we are part of nature.

Sarah: Yeah!

Becky: We are animals. Like, this, this, we have this concept, and it’s one that I’ve really struggled with. You know, I grew up in Los Angeles, like, born and raised there, you know, so my, my mental image of how the world works was skewed from the beginning, you know, and so it, it makes sense that a lot of us wrestle with this idea that the world exists without us –

Sarah: Yeah.

Becky: – and it’s, you know, cities are something we built. I mean, we know this intellectually, but this is not the default state of the world; this is something that we made, and it is part of nature. You know, even the most, you know, grubby concrete, like, devoid of trees environment is still part of nature, even though it doesn’t feel that way. It still exists on this planet –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Becky: – therefore it’s part of the ecosystem, you know?

Sarah: Yeah.

Becky: Yeah, both in genre fiction and in the real world, we wrestle with this. We, we present nature and technology as these opposing forces, and I don’t think that they have to be. They, they really don’t. You know, technology is just tools. You know, fire is technology if we know how to wield it. You know, cooking is a technology. You know, so this idea that we have to, you know, radically scale back or sort of, you know, we have to give up the, the benefits that technology has given us in order to, you know, preserve the ecosystem within it – I mean, there is something to be said about, like, getting rid of the idea of, you know, extractive resources and, like, unchecked growth. That’s a, that’s a whole completely different topic.

Sarah: Completely different topic, yeah!

Becky: Let’s go, let’s, let’s get rid of that, but technology in and of itself is not bad, and it is not opposed to nature. It is something that we as natural beings use and create, so –

Sarah: Yeah.

Becky: – we have the ability to make things, to construct things that work in tandem with and in, in harmony with –

Sarah: Absolutely.

Becky: – the world around us. That’s just a, a choice we make, right?

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely, and the things that we create in technology are still reflections of our humanity and different aspects of it –

Becky: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – and we are animals, so in effect, the things that we create may not end up being used for beneficial purposes, but we, they are still creations of us.

Becky: Right.

Sarah: I have a Patreon community, and I like to tell them in advance who I’m interviewing, and I had so many excited people. Malaraa wanted me to say:

I enjoyed all of the Wayfarer series. The fourth book’s small group of strangers come together in emergency isolation and try their best, including missteps, ‘cause we all screw up sometimes, is a favorite set-up of mine. Absolute favorite is still the first one. I love the way every single one of the characters was coping with different challenges around intimacy. How did you fit exploring all of these permutations of intimacy without it feeling overstuffed?

I mean, piece of cake, piece of cake question, right? Like, oh, well, there was, I had a spreadsheet is probably the answer, right? Is there a spreadsheet?

Becky: I did not have a spreadsheet.

Sarah: That’s fine.

Becky: What I had – okay, so here, here’s – we’ll have to get into process a little bit.

Sarah: Yeah, a little bit. That’s fine; let’s do it.

Becky: – get into the nitty-gritty. So I don’t outline, and I don’t write chronologically, and so when I was writing The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, I had literally a shoebox that was just filled with notes and scraps of paper and, like, notebooks and, you know, just all kinds of stuff from –

Sarah: Yeah.

Becky: – the years that I’d been working on it. But what it, the, the short answer to this, this very chewy question is that I threw a lot out is what it came down to.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Becky: I probably wrote a whole second book’s worth of stuff for what actually ended up on the shelf, you know. And that tends to be the case with a lot of stuff I write, is that I just throw characters together and see what happens, and I write things, and some of those scenes work and some of them don’t, and there reaches a point where I have a critical mass of stuff, and I go through and I cherry-pick: I’m going to use this, I’m going to use this, and I cobble them together, and I shuffle them around. I literally just get Post-its and put them up on the wall and switch them back and forth and figure out what the order of all this is going to be, and then I go through with a fine-tooth comb and polish it all together. So with The Long Way in particular, because you’ve got, you know, nine different point-of-view characters, which is a, I don’t know if I’ll ever do that again, but, but –

Sarah: Piece of cake!

[Laughter]

Sarah: Point of view from nine people, let’s do it!

Becky: It was a matter of just making sure I had the balance right. Honestly, in the, in a really boring sort of way, it came down to color-coding. I had my Post-its; I had a different color for each character, and I would look at the wall and say, does this balance?

Sarah: Yeah.

Becky: Does this work? Is there too much of one color and too much of another? And granted, there are characters who naturally, because it’s how stories work, come to the forefront more, or we hear from them more than other characters in the story, but it really was just a lot of tinkering and fine-tuning to make sure that everybody’s story was being told adequately, that I wasn’t leaving anything crucial out. Part of that also came down to reading the book out loud, which I do with all my work as well. Reading out loud, I find, is, is an enormously helpful way for me to not only, you know, sort of clean up the prose and make sure that the conversations sound natural, but it also does give me a very good sense of, you know, what is this story actually about? [Laughs] Because you can get really lost in that when you’re in the thick of writing a book. So yeah, it was, it was a matter of just constantly taking the temperature, constantly taking the whole thing and putting it on a scale and saying, you know, who, who, who are we seeing too little of? Who are we seeing too much of? Am I hitting the right notes? And on and on and on.

Sarah: I get it! I also write out of order.

Becky: Nice! [Laughs]

Sarah: I, I mean, I can remember in college printing out a paper that I was writing, or writing it out, and then having to cut paragraphs apart and, like, rearrange them and then figure out what I’d just done. Even when I write now, if I’m writing a, a book review or if I’m writing something longer, like an essay, I write entirely out of order.

Becky: Yeah. And –

Sarah: And the ability to move little blocks around, even digitally, is such a lifesaver.

Becky: I, this is, this is why I’m a huge fan of Scrivener and –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Becky: Yeah, yeah. I love – I know it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but for me, just being able to, to drag things back and forth is, it makes my life so much easier, because, yeah, I have done the scissors thing as well –

Sarah: Yep.

Becky: – in the past, so I’m, I’m very glad to – [laughs] – to be able to leave my scissors on my desk and just –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Becky: – and then take a few pixels instead.

Sarah: And then you’re standing there with this one paragraph like, where, where was this? Where does it go?

Becky: Yeah! [Laughs]

Sarah: Does, do I – one of, one of my pandemic habits this year that I picked up was I taught myself how to quilt. ‘Cause you can learn anything on YouTube now! You can learn plumbing, advanced mechanics, quilting! But one of my favorite aspects of quilting is that when you’ve done all the blocks and you do lots of different blocks, you can hang something like a, like a picnic tablecloth on the wall with the felt side out, and you just slap the fabric on there, and the felt acts like Velcro; it’ll hold it on. So you can take all these little tiny squares and then put them in this big wall, and then step back and be like, oh, too much blue over here! Too much red over here. Let’s move the pattern all around, and I’m like, wow, this is the perfect hobby for me! It’s like writing, but with fabric! [Laughs]

Becky: See, and that’s, it’s, that’s the Post-its, exactly –

Sarah: Yep!

Becky: – so I’m just like, I’m brilliant! Yes, yes, it’s perfect.

Sarah: Yes. My brain works this way! Thank you!

[Laughter]

Sarah: When you find the tools – like we were saying earlier with technology, and technology’s a human invention – when you find the tool that works with your brain, it’s like, oh, whoever made this, you are the greatest person! Thank you!

Becky: Yep! Yeah!

[Laughter]

Becky: Thank you for understanding the way my neurons are wired.

Sarah: Yes!

Becky: I really appreciate it, yep.

Sarah: Yes, they’re, they wire in their own way. [Laughs]

Becky: They sure do.

Sarah: Molly from my Patreon asked:

My question would be, how do you create the different characters’ species and keep all of their physical and emotional traits and personalities organized? They are all marvels, all so different and complex, but unique.

Does this go back to the, to the Post-it notes? Is this part of your visual system?

Becky: This is different than Post-it notes. So there’s –

Sarah: Ohhh!

Becky: – so there, so, okay, there’s two answers to this. The first answer is so, you know, how do, how do I create the different species? For me, when working with aliens, it always starts in a place of biology?

Sarah: Right.

Becky: I take a specific physical trait, let’s say, for, okay, the Aeluons, who are the, one of the primary species in the Wayfarer series. They, they have these chromatophore patches on their cheeks, chromatophores being color-changing skin cells –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Becky: – like in cephalopods, so squid and octopus, etc. And they don’t have vocal cords, they don’t have, they don’t naturally have a sense of hearing. They communicate through color. And so that is something that was inspired, again, by real life critters that live in the sea that I am very into, and so I’ll take just something like that, just very simple thing: their skin changes color, and this is how they communicate. And I blow that up to a civilization level, and I just run thought experiments on that. If you communicate through color, how does that affect your art and your architecture? How does it affect your clothing, if you even do wear clothing? How does it affect the kind of everyday technology you have in your home? How does it affect the way that you record information? You know, all these sorts of things, and, you know, what sort of adaptive technology do you need to be able to communicate with other species who do use verbal speech? Or, or, you know, if they, they obviously would have a different emotional and cultural connection to color than you, so how do you interpret or misinterpret them and their spaces when you enter them? These are just the sort, you know, that’s one example; that’s just one thing, but you can get so much just out of they change color –

Sarah: Yeah.

Becky: – and that’s true for everything, be it they lay eggs; they can’t thermoregulate; they, you know, they don’t, they only eat once a day or they eat all day long. You know, like, all of these things affect how you build your spaces; how you conceive of family and society; how you, how you organize yourselves –

Sarah: Yeah.

Becky: – you know. So that’s, that’s where all my species start; that’s the genesis of my species, right.

In terms of keeping it organized, I have a, a locally hosted wiki that lives on my hard drive and is backed up elsewhere as well, and that’s where all the details of my species live. And, and it became really necessary once I got past one book and knew I was going to be writing several more. (A) Because, you know, I, there was just so much. [Laughs] I needed to keep it all straight, you know, ‘cause otherwise I would get letters, and, you know, that’s, that’s how these things, how these things go. But, yeah, I, I ended up with a lot more information and details than ever made it on the page. Like, you don’t need to know what the evolutionary history of Aeluons is; I know what it is. Does it do, does it affect the story? No, but it does help me write these characters and write these cultures to have all those bits and pieces, even if, even if they’re not something I share with anyone else.

Sarah: I love the idea of your own internal wiki? That’s brilliant!

Becky: Yeah –

Sarah: It’s brilliant! It’s like a story bible digitally, searchable, control-F-able, which is so important.

Becky: It, it’s control-F-able. It’s so, it’s so easy, and also, because, you know, let’s, when I was writing the fourth book, I had touched on some of these other species that were in there before, but, you know, it had been a minute since –

Sarah: Yeah!

[Laughter]

Becky: – yeah! – since I’d been with them, and so I could just write, say, Quelin, which is another species, I could just type that into the search bar, and everything I had about, you know, that I’d referenced here and there, and if I’m good – I don’t always do this; sometimes I’m lazy – but if I’m good I’ll put where in the previous books you can find these details, so I can just flip to that chapter and be like, oh, okay, that’s what I’ve got, and that’s –

Sarah: Yep.

Becky: – what I’ve got to work with, so. Yeah, it’s incredibly convenient. It’s a lot of work to put it in place, but once it’s there it’s –

Sarah: Yeah.

Becky: – it’s a fantastic tool.

Sarah: During your future self a big solid favor.

Becky: Yep. Yeah!

[Laughter]

Sarah: Do you have a wiki for Monk & Robot?

Becky: I do not! I have just a notebook for Monk & Robot, because it’s not, it’s not as expansive –

Sarah: Yeah.

Becky: – and especially because these are novellas; I am not delving quite as deeply? With every book I write or every setting I work in, you know, I’ll have separate notebooks for that, so this is just, just the Monk & Robot notebook, you know, and I’ve got tabs all through it so I can flip to, you know, different lists of technology or different cultures or, or what have you pretty quickly, so it’s, it’s the, the, the analog version –

Sarah: Right.

Becky: – of the wiki that, the, the very slimmed-down version of the wiki.

Sarah: Right. Eventually maybe, but right now it’s, it’s analog.

Becky: Right now it’s, it’s, right now it’s manageable, yeah. [Laughs]

Sarah: So with Monk & Robot, do you remember where this story started? What led you into this particular novella?

Becky: You know, this is a, this is a tricky question because it’s not one specific thing.

Sarah: Never just one thing, right.

Becky: Yeah, there’s a lot. I like the, the –

Sarah: [Laughs] I want to write Optimistic Nihilism, the book!

Becky: Right! [Laughs] Right, exactly! It was, it’s a hodgepodge of so many different things. You know, I, I, the metaphor I like to use for writing books in general is that it’s, it’s like making dinner out of all the leftovers you have in the fridge?

Sarah: Yes!

Becky: You know, and that’s exact-, Monk & Robot is that especially. You know, it’s everything from my lifelong love of robots to, I have a keen interest in solarpunk and also in, you know, regenerative technology and rewilding and all these sorts of ideas, and so it’s just this, this mis-, mishmash of, of things I’ve been, you know, hoarding like a magpie over the years, and eventually was like, I think this all, I think this all fits together.

I will say that, that one of the, one of the, sort of the, the ideas that, that pushed me into writing it was I really wanted to write something for an adult audience that, that felt like pure comfort, and, and the, the way that, the, the impetus for this idea was I was really looking at the way I’ve been consuming media and my friends have been consuming media over across the, the past like five years or so? Where we’re living in this age where there’s so much tremendously good TV and movies –

Sarah: So much!

Becky: – and everything out there, and all of us were gravitating towards, like, cartoons or kids’ shows, which is, there’s nothing wrong with adults watching –

Sarah: Nope!

Becky: – kids’ stuff at all, but, like, we’re, we’d watch kids’ shows or we’d watch, you know, stuff from like the ‘80s and ‘90s, you know, like revisiting old favorites, or we’d watch cooking shows, and we would say these things like, oh yeah, I’ve been meaning to watch this other thing; I’ve heard it’s really good; like, well, you know, whatever the, the critically acclaimed darling of the moment was, and then no one would watch it because we just wanted to go back to something soothing, because we were all so burned out and tired, right?

Sarah: Yep.

Becky: And much as I love watching, you know, shows from my childhood or shows that are intended for someone’s childhood now, I did look at that, and I said, these aren’t, these aren’t speaking to me where I am in my life right now. They’re comforting and they’re fun and I love them, but they’re not about someone my age; they’re not about me; they’re not, they’re not speaking to me. And so I wanted to see, could I write something for an adult audience, for someone who is, you know, where they are at right now that still scratched the same itch as cartoons or cooking shows? That was the, I guess, the, the experiment I was running with this is, is how, how would I go about writing them? What would it look like?

Sarah: How do I write Comfort, the book? Let me check the, what I call the Crockpot in the back of your brain? Like –

Becky: Yeah!

Sarah: – all the ideas that you have, they just go in there and then like nine, ten hours later it’s like, I have an idea, and it is fully cooked and ready to serve.

Becky: Right, exactly! [Laughs]

Sarah: So what is next for Monk & Robot? I am so excited that this was a Monk & Robot story, implying that there will be more of them! Yes!

Becky: I’ve, I’ve just finished the second book. It hasn’t been –

Sarah: [Claps]

Becky: – formally announced yet, so I can’t talk in too much detail about it, but I did just finish the second one. So it is –

Sarah: Congrats!

Becky: – the continuing story, the continuing story of Dex and Mosscap, who, who will be leaving the wilds for this book and, and head-, heading on into, into human territory, so it’s, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll continue, continue going down the road with them.

Sarah: So we’re going to stay with them.

Becky: Yes.

Sarah: Now, I, I read an interview that you gave in 2016 with Cultured Vultures, which I will link to in the show notes, and you mentioned the cello analogy as advice for aspiring writers, which I just loved. How do you care for yourself, and would you, would you, would you be kind enough to explain your cello analogy? ‘Cause I’m certain –

Becky: Yes, I will.

Sarah: – you can do it much better than I can.

Becky: I will explain the cello analogy. So my wife’s cousin is a professional cellist. She travels the world and, and plays the cello; that’s what she does. And I struggled a lot when I first started writing with, with burnout and with taking care of myself. I, I think this is very common for, for folks in creative fields: we romanticize that. We romanticize the idea of, you know, you’re going to write this book fueled on coffee and angst, and, you know, if you’re not staying up until three in the morning because, you know, you’re, you’re so, you know, in love with this idea, then you’re not actually passionate about it; you’re not actually writing this book. We tend to measure the worth of a project by how much we bled into it –

Sarah: Yeah.

Becky: – and it’s this really damaging idea, and I think that it’s damaging for people who do it for a living, but I think it’s something that also prevents a lot of people from actually completing projects –

Sarah: Yeah.

Becky: – because it’s not sustainable at all, especially if you’re doing it alongside a job or raising kids or both. Like, you have this idea that you have to give your entire self to a project and you just have to keep carving pieces off of yourself in order to do it, and no one can or should work that way. Like, no piece of art is worth that kind of suffering! Like, it’s, it’s, it’s ludicrous, and I will, I will die on the hill that we need to just completely uproot this idea and throw it out, because it’s, it’s, it’s so dangerous.

My wife was actually the one who pointed this out to me, where I would get into these, you know, this sort of spin where I’m like, oh, I can’t, you know, I can’t go out; I can’t, like, take a break. I need to, you know, just work, work, work, work, work. Like, I would really just, you know, nose to the grindstone, and she’d mentioned her cousin, and she’s like, you know, she takes time to oil the wood and to restring her instrument. When she travels, you know, she buys a separate plane ticket for the cello because it can’t go down in the cargo hold. It has, you know, the, because the, the temperature affects the wood and the strings and all of that. Like, she spends hours every week just taking care of this cello, because if she doesn’t, she won’t be able to play it. Right, like, if she doesn’t do that, the strings are going to break, the wood’s going to get weird, she will not be able to do her job if she doesn’t take that time, and my wife was like, do you, do you think that’s an unnecessary thing for her to do? And I was like, well, no, but that’s different. She’s like, it’s no different at all. She’s like, you are your own instrument as a writer. You don’t have, like, this physical object that you have to take care of; you are the instrument, and if you don’t take care of yourself, you’re not going to be able to keep doing this. Your strings are going to break. You know, and it’s so – I mean, I’m not saying I’m perfect at this, but that was something that, that really hit home and that I work really hard on now, to, to, to make sure that I am making that time for myself, because it’s true: if we, you know, there, there’s nothing creatively good about burnout. If you burn out, that means you can’t work! You know, that means –

Sarah: Yeah!

Becky: – like, you can’t actually get the thing done, or maybe you did get that one thing done, but now you’re not going to be able to write another one because you’re just toast.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Becky: So things I do to take care of myself: I mean, a lot of this, some of these things are, you know, there are things that are just sort of normal, everyday stuff that I think anyone can do. Some of them are, I recognize, very much a privilege that I have as, from the fact that I can do this full-time. For example, I don’t set an alarm. I know that is not a reality for a lot of people, but I don’t set an alarm. I sleep as much as I need, and I just take naps through the day if I need to. I eat my vegetables, and I drink my water. I, you know, the, the, oh, we’re just going to do this on caffeine and sugar. You’re going to – yep, we’re both –

Sarah: Cheers! [Laughs]

Becky: – hydrating as we speak! You know, just these very, very basic human maintenance things that everyone –

Sarah: Yeah.

Becky: – should do, regardless of whether or not you’re trying to write a book. I make time for things that have nothing to do with writing –

Sarah: Yes.

Becky: – whatsoever. I don’t write every day, and I know that’s not the case for everybody, but there is also that thing of, like, to be a writer, you must write every day. No! You need to have, you need to be disciplined, and you need to have a good work ethic, and you need to be able to write even when it’s not fun –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Becky: – or you need to be able to not chase an idea just because it’s new and shiny; you need to finish this thing you started. That does not mean you have to write every day. That does not mean you need to treat this like, like a corporate job or something you punch into. If you sit down to write and it’s just not happening, that means you’re tired and it means you need a break or some food or some sleep or both. So making sure that I am first and foremost taking care of myself, that that’s my priority, and then the work comes after. That’s, that’s really key –

Sarah: It is key.

Becky: – for me, and I think it should be for, for everyone, regardless of what you’re making or what you’re doing. You have to take care of yourself first.

Sarah: Yeah. And it’s, it can be hard for me, because my, my website and my podcast are also my, my full-time job, and it can be really hard for me to not work, one, because I live in my workplace and I have always lived in my workplace, but I also realized, I love what I do! I love what I do so much, it completely knocks my socks off every morning where I wake up and go, holy crap, this is my job! I love it! It’s so great! Oh my gosh! I adore what I do, but I also know I can’t do it all the time. Inasmuch as I love –

Becky: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – what I do, I can’t do it all day, nonstop, ten hours a day, seven days a week or more. I like sleep! I really like sleep; it’s like my favorite thing!

Becky: Sleep’s amazing, and we all should –

Sarah: Sleep is the best!

Becky: – do more of it.

Sarah: Yes!

Becky: The other thing, too, about making sure that you’re not doing it every day, ‘cause I’m the same, I, I do this because I love it and I love to write, and if, if, if I let myself go unchecked, I will very easily, like if I’m on a tear or something, I’ll forget to eat –

Sarah: Oh yeah!

Becky: – I’ll stay up all night –

Sarah: What time is it? What? Huh?

Becky: – like, I –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Becky: – work – and sometimes that’s great. Like, I also don’t, I’m not going to punish myself for doing that. Like, if I stay up until three because I was on a tear, like, and I’m going to sleep, you know, and then I’ll sleep till noon to –

Sarah: Yeah!

Becky: – to make up for it, fine! Like, that’s okay. But brains are weird?

Sarah: Oh gosh! [Laughs]

Becky: Like, brains do this thing where they, they figure things out when you’re not working on them. If I’m stuck on something in a book, it usually means I need to go do something else –

Sarah: Crockpot.

Becky: – and, like, that, I don’t know what it is about doing things that are completely unrelated that unlock possibilities or ideas or concepts that you didn’t think about, but something about just stepping away from it and making sure you don’t get fatigued, but also letting yourself cross-pollinate –

Sarah: Yeah!

Becky: – with different ideas and different activities that have nothing to do with your writing at all make you a better writer!

Sarah: Oh yeah!

Becky: You know? Like, and that, that goes for everything from just don’t read your genre, read other stuff –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Becky: – make sure you have hobbies that don’t touch this at all; make sure you go see other people who have different jobs. You know, like, a lot of my, my friends, you know, are in the book world or the creative world or the writing world, but I really value the friendships that I have outside of that, because it reminds me that not everything is this, you know?

Sarah: No.

Becky: It’s, again, leaving yourself open to possibilities and making sure that this is not your one thing will actually make that one thing a lot better.

Sarah: Oh, for sure! And I find that for me especially, creating something in a completely different venue helps me reinvigorate the joy that I find in creating what’s my job.

Becky: Mm-hmm, exactly.

Sarah: It helps refuel that – ‘cause the creativity, the, the urge to create, the urge to make something, the urge to play is located in all of the things that I do for, for fun and enjoyment and replenishment, but when it’s your job it’s a slightly different thing. The play comes with a sense of awareness, whereas if I’m playing –

Becky: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – in another area where I’m not as aware of what, what the final product will look like, I’m not, it’s not for monetization, and I’m not worried about its, you know, metrics. I don’t care about the search engine optimization of the quilt that I am making; the quilt does not care. The only thing that I have to do is make sure that I have a secondary fake project for the cat to sit on. Like, that’s my obligation right there.

Becky: [Laughs]

Sarah: Did you know there’s a whole Subreddit called Cats on Quilts? It is nothing but pictures!

Becky: No, I did not, but it does not surprise me. [Laughs]

Sarah: It’s nothing but pictures of people’s cats on their quilts, and I’m like, this is my favorite place in the whole world! [Laughs]

But placing that creativity in another venue replenishes the creativity that I need to, you know, do my job! And learning that, learning that my brain has a, a primary and a secondary, almost drive? Like, the part where I’m doing something else replenishes the, the larger thing that I’m working on. That’s why I call it the Crockpot in the back of my brain; it just, stuff goes in there, and, like, ten hours later, something great comes out.

Becky: Exactly. Exactly, and I, even on something so important, too, which is do things that you’re not going to sell.

Sarah: Yes!

Becky: Do things for the joy of it.

Sarah: Yes!

Becky: You know, I mean, this, we, we, especially, especially here in America, right, like, this whole idea of, you need to have your side gig, you need to hustle, like –

Sarah: Grind, grind; grind, grind.

Becky: – you know, turning your passion into your job. No! You don’t have to.

Sarah: No!

Becky: Like, this is something I often say to, to aspiring writers who are like, you know, how do I get published? I said, the first thing you need to ask yourself is why? Why do you want to get published?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Becky: Like, do you, do you actually want to do this as a job? Because if you do, great. But you need to recognize that you’re pursuing a career. If you just want to write for fun, that’s valid and that’s good, and you don’t have to sell it if you don’t want to!

Sarah: Nope.

Becky: If you want this to be your job, cool. But, like, otherwise, feel free to just write. I write a ton of stuff that no one sees. I write things that are just for fun. I write things for my tabletop role-playing group that no one will ever see. It is for four people, and yet I’m writing like a spare book every six months for these folks.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Becky: You know, just be-, because it’s fun! Because there’s no pressure –

Sarah: Yep!

Becky: – because, you know, there’s, I don’t have to worry about all the things that, that, you know, that come along with selling something, with doing something publicly. Allow yourself to have joys that are private –

Sarah: Yes!

Becky: – and that are just for fun and that aren’t perfect. You know, do it just ‘cause it feels good. Don’t worry about whether or not you can sell it. If you want to, great, but, like, you don’t, not everything has to generate capital! Not everything has to, you know, be something you can slap a price tag on. It is enough to just enjoy it.

Sarah: Yeah.

Becky: It is enough to just enjoy the process and the joy that comes along with making something. You know, that’s, that’s enough.

Sarah: Yeah!

Becky: That’s enough as it is. That, that has value.

Sarah: Yeah. And, and the whole concept of flow, the idea that you –

Becky: Yes.

Sarah: – get into the flow and that you get into this wonderful state of, of existence the moment you’re creating: that is, that is just existing in that state of creativity. That’s enough. That’s more than enough –

Becky: Yeah.

Sarah: – that’s frigging awesome! I love that!

Becky: No, that’s, that’s, I mean, that’s, I mean, honestly, that’s the whole reason I, I did want this as a job, because that’s all I want to do is flow – [laughs] –

Sarah: Yeah.

Becky: – right, and I just wanted to be able to set up my day where that’s what I, that’s what I do.

Sarah: Yep!

Becky: It is the most satisfying feeling there is –

Sarah: It’s so great.

Becky: – to, to just lose yourself in a thing –

Sarah: It’s so great.

Becky: – for a while, even if that thing turns out to not be good, even if it’s something, you throw it in the trash the next day.

Sarah: Yep.

Becky: Being in that headspace is what makes it worth it.

Sarah: Yep. So what books are you reading that you wish to tell people about?

Becky: So I am currently reading Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey, speaking of make sure you read things outside of your own genre.

Sarah: Bit outside.

Becky: It’s fantastic! It’s so good I cannot shut up about this – [laughs] – book. Like, anyone who, who lives with me or, you know, who I interact with often, I can’t stop talking about The Odyssey, of all things, right. I would highly recommend this. She’s done an incredible job of making this ancient, very well trod story feel fresh and new and contemporary, and stripping away so much of, you know, the Victorian nonsense that’s gotten accumulated on top of it. It’s a, it’s a stunning piece of work, both in terms of, of translation and just as poetry. It’s, it’s a story I know really well, but it’s making me see it in a whole new light. It’s really beautiful.

Sarah: I love when a new translation does that. I love watching linguistics people flip out about the translation of Beowulf?

Becky: Yes! [Laughs]

Sarah: And how the first word was “Bro.”

[Laughter]

Becky: Beowulf is next on my list. It’s, it’s also on my shelf, and my wife has her, her background in historical linguistics, so this has actually been –

Sarah: Oh!

Becky: – a really, a really fun thing to have in the house, ‘cause we’ve been, you know, I’m going ham about the poetry, and she’s talking to me about ancient Greek stuff.

Sarah: Yeah.

Becky: You know, it’s a good time. [Laughs]

Sarah: That is, that is a good mix.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you to Becky Chambers for hanging out with me and answering all of my questions. Thank you to Malaraa and Molly for questions from the Patreon community. Thank you to the Patreon community for making the transcript possible. Thank you to garlicknitter for the transcript itself. [You’re most welcome! – gk]

I wanted to share one of my favorite quotes from this book, because I really, really enjoyed it. I will link to my review in the show notes so that you can find more about this book, and also where to buy it. But at one point, one of the characters – I won’t give a spoiler – says:

Why do you have to have a purpose in order to feel content? You’re an animal, and nothing has a purpose. The world simply is. It is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that or earn it.

So if that kind of message is something you might find as comforting as I did, I definitely recommend you go find this book.

As always, I end with a silly, terrible joke, and this week is no different. I am ready; are you ready? Okay. [Clears throat]

Why do bees stay in their hives in the winter?

Why do bees stay in their hives in the winter?

‘Swarm.

[Laughs] Swarm! That joke is from /808gecko. I love wonderfully terrible jokes. You know you can send them to me at [email protected], and I love when you do!

On behalf of everyone here in my office, including Wilbur, who insisted on snacking on and off during that whole interview – thanks, buddy – we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, and we will see you back here next week.

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.

[end of music]