I thought it would be fun to do a Q&A for my novel, but didn’t want to write my own questions — I was worried I’d be too easy on myself. So, I asked ChatGPT to write them. I’ve trained it on my novel for the past three months and was pleasantly surprised with the results. All answers are from me, not AI.

What inspired you to write Still the Millers? Was there a particular image, character, or emotion that came to you first?

Still the Millers started as an assignment for a fiction writing certificate course at the University of Washington. Our prompt was to write the first page of a story that made the reader want to continue reading. I decided to write about a cowboy who goes to pick up a horse, and something unexpected happens.

I was watching a lot of Breaking Bad at the time — this was in 2009 — so the unexpected became a meth lab. To raise the stakes, it became a meth lab, plus a toddler, plus a passed out mother. Now, my cowboy had a real dicey situation on his hands.

What would he do? Why would he do it?

Writing that opening scene led to character and world building. Soon, my characters were demanding to have their story told.

Damon is a complex character — quiet, wounded, not always likable. What was the hardest part about writing from his point of view?

The most challenging thing about writing from Damon’s point of view was balancing his emotional constipation and more conservative viewpoints with the emergence of his personal growth. There’s a reason the phrase “Kill your darlings” is a great piece of advice. I had to make him endearing enough that you want him to succeed, but unlikeable enough to make him real. He’s well-intended, has a strong sense of right versus wrong, but he also has a fragile ego and cannot seem to see beyond his own selfish needs and desires.

Of course, his faults make him interesting, and drive his decisions which drive the plot. Viewing his faults from that lens really helped in the moments when I wanted to scream at him.

The novel is set in late 2001, during the 9/11 attacks. Why did you choose that specific time period, and how did it shape the story?

When I first started writing Still the Millers, I set it in 2001 because I was in my mid-twenties then: old enough to experience that time as an adult, and now to evaluate it with the benefit of temporal distance. As I was writing, though, 9/11 served as a forcing function for important plot points. Not only is Damon having an affair, his wife is too — and her lover dies in 9/11. The larger world changes, and with it, so does Damon’s.

Let’s talk about the wolves. What do they symbolize for you in the story? Are they purely literal, or something more?

The wolves serve an important purpose in the novel. They act as an additional threat to the ranch, and parallel the larger tensions and stresses in the novel. At some points, they act as a literary device to ratchet up that tension.

Most importantly, though, they show us that nobody is fully good or bad. Real people and situations are not black and white, and neither are the wolves. They are trying to survive, just like the human families in the novel.

You explore themes of infertility, infidelity, and found family with honesty and nuance. How did you navigate writing about emotionally heavy topics without tipping into melodrama?

I’m a big fan of telling a story plainly and thinking through how each character would genuinely react in the moment. Dramatic moments tend to happen without hyperbole or melodrama in real life, which to me, translates to showing and not telling in fiction. Besides the use of the wolves, you’ll notice that I lean on observing the world around Damon in certain ways to convey that emotion. From the sound of tree leaves to the blazing hot asphalt of a Walmart parking lot, it all works to tell the reader what Damon is feeling without relying on cheap adverbs or exclamation points.

The Millers run a cowboy camp for the ultra wealthy— an unusual and compelling backdrop. How did that setting come to be, and what were you hoping it would say about wealth, image, or masculinity?

The luxury Cowboy Camps came about first and foremost as a way to make Damon’s character uncomfortable on multiple fronts. He misses being a rodeo star. Misses Sharlene, his mistress. And from his point of view, he’s a real cowboy, a man’s man, doing honest work to make a living. The people who attend the camps are more influential and powerful in the world than he is for pushing paper and building ethereal technology — and they ride bikes or run marathons to “stay in shape.”

Damon looks down on them for those fake manmade accomplishments, while at the same time likes how they put him on a pedestal for being who he is. He’s conflicted. The very people he resents are keeping the family ranch alive.

This is a big piece of what Damon has to come to terms with in his life, and both finding Jude and 9/11 force him to pause and take stock.

Jude and Tina bring a kind of chaotic hope into the Millers’ lives. What role do they play in reshaping the family’s identity?

Jude and his young aunt, Tina, do bring chaotic hope to Damon’s life and marriage — with an emphasis on chaotic! He and his wife can’t have kids, which has partly fueled his affair. When he rescues Jude, he’s also rescuing himself. He has to communicate with his wife and entire family, is forced to stop sneaking around with Sharlene and instead finds himself sneaking around with Jude and his wife. Then Tina arrives. She’s both a direct threat to the ranch and someone who needs saving, just like her nephew, throwing more challenges Damon’s way.

At the highest level, the kids serve as a way to keep the family ranch in the family, something Damon and his parents desperately want. They help heal that gaping wound.

What authors or books influenced your writing style or the tone of this novel? Did you have literary touchstones as you wrote?

I didn’t have a direct literary touchstone for the tone or writing style of this novel, but I did follow Damon’s voice the entire time. He has a distinct way of thinking that is reflected in the writing. That said, I’m a fan of Kent Haruf and William Kent Krueger, which undoubtedly had unconscious influence.

Did the story or characters surprise you as you wrote them? Were there any moments where the book took a turn you hadn’t planned?

Damon’s affair surprised me — but his wife’s affair surprised me even more! It surprised Damon too :-) I realized that I was writing his wife, Linda, as a character without obvious flaws. She needed to make bad choices, just like Damon did, and when it hit me that she’s having an affair with a rich client…well, that was perfect.

What do you hope readers carry with them after finishing Still the Millers? Is there a message or feeling you most want to leave behind?

My main goal is to entertain, to create a world readers want to hang out for a while. I want readers to feel like they’ve been on a satisfying journey, that they’ve lived on this beautiful guest ranch with Damon and Linda and have witnessed one man’s wild ride to redemption and peace.

Writing fiction and creative nonfiction isn’t easy. It’s a learned craft that takes practice, like any other art, despite those acquaintances who say things like: “I’d write a novel if I had time!” In 2015, I won the Pacific Northwest Writers Association’s mainstream and literary fiction category for my novel manuscript, which happily teed me up to judge in 2016 and 2017.

Each judge was sent the first chapter of 10 manuscripts to review and score. I always took the time to provide feedback on why I scored each one the way I did. As writers, knowing the “why” is the only way to understand how to improve — and quite frankly, I wanted the contestants to understand why someone else scored better. We writers are sensitive humans who believe in our work. There’s nothing worse than getting a lower than hoped for score and not knowing why.

Below is a summary of the top three trouble spots I saw writers encounter. I also made — and still make — all of these mistakes over and over and over again, both in my fiction and creative nonfiction. Now I just know how to edit more efficiently.

Make your characters get into sticky situations (aka have a strong plot.)

There are two main reasons most writers chicken out when it comes to the plot. First, putting your characters into sticky situations isn’t pleasant. You’ve lived with your protagonist for weeks, months, or years, and your instinct can be to protect them — you know them, and you think they would make good choices. They are your friends.

But they’re not. Your character is there to support the larger narrative and to make a point, whatever the point of your novel is, so rip off that friend bandage right now. Put them in a compromising position. Get them fired. Put the whiskey flask in front of them to drink away their woes. Have them accidentally back over the family dog with the new Suburban.

The other reason for chickening out is that a strong plot is much harder to write. It requires forethought, character motivation, and frequently, a lot of research. You need to have pretty clear view of what happens to your characters, why it happens, and why it matters.

Here are a few questions that will help you figure out the real meat of your plot:

1. What’s at stake for your character?

2. Why does it matter to them?

3. What is the alternative, if they don’t get what they want?

4. Who or what is in their way?

Once you’ve answered these questions for all of your characters — yes, all of them — you can start writing. Ideally, you’ll have a lot more questions answered but these are the basics of what will drive an interesting plot.

Dialogue is not literal.

Writing as we really talk is so incredibly painful to read. I mean, listen to us! Just one person’s real speech patterns can be maddening when accurately captured. Here’s part of an actual conversation I overheard this week: “Yeah, I mean, I think I’d rather go somewhere warm but not like, too warm, instead of going to Canada next winter. I’m just not really feeling it, you know? I mean, I like going to Whistler but it’s just so expensive and I’d rather hit a beach or something, you know, warm.”

So how do you write zippy dialogue? Practice. Pick up your favorite book and find a section where three characters are in a room together. How many times does the writer actually have a character speak, as indicated by quote marks? Probably a lot less than you’d think. Study how your favorite authors manage dialogue and, for fun, copy their style. Do this for an entire week, then re-read what you’ve written. I bet you’ll find that you’ve written unique dialogue that still fits your writing style (and does not, in fact, mimic that of your favorite writer), and that flows nicely.

Use what your character notices to indicate mood.

If you’re walking down the street and you’re in a bad mood, you might think a piece of graffiti is ugly and that the low clouds are hemming you in. But if you’re in a good mood, that graffiti might be cool and the clouds, instead of smothering you, are comforting.

When you’re writing fiction, have your character notice these kinds of details instead of directly stating: “Jane was depressed.” Have her notice a three-legged dog hobbling down the street with its tail between its legs; have her feel overwhelmingly saddened by it. These kinds of cues are incredibly powerful and will make your writing and scenes rich with meaningful details.

Be sure to write these details in an active voice. “A three-legged dog slumps down the alleyway” versus “Jane notices a three-legged dog in the alleyway.” If you’re observing your character observing something (or yourself when writing memoir or creative nonfiction), you’re pulling your readers out of the story.

If you want a deep dive on these elements, two of my favorite books for working on them are: The Scene Book by Sandra Scofield and Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee. While the last one is technically about screenwriting, the principles he highlights also apply to the craft of fiction.

Happy storytelling!

If you liked this story, you can support my writing by buying me a coffee :-)

So you’ve always wanted to write a novel but haven’t tackled it yet. It’s on your list.

Here’s one way you might go about writing one. Your details and life events will undoubtedly be both different and eerily similar.

Hopefully less drama. Smaller fires.

Let’s go. And bring your fire extinguisher, just in case.

Take an extension course in the craft of fiction writing

You decide not to leave your first husband, at least not yet, and you want to do something that is entirely your own. Your baby is two. She is the easiest child ever, thank God. If she were difficult, you wouldn’t be able to leave her alone with your partner.

He cannot cope. Cannot understand that babies cry. But now she can communicate, for the most part.

You sign up for a fiction writing certificate course at the University of Washington. You minored in creative writing in college but set it aside for years. At first, you are skeptical that this course will be of any value. You’ve studied with some great writers including Bill Roorbach, a published author of some renown.

But you go anyway. You decide you’re probably being a bit snobby. You are in fact being snobby.

There’s a surprising amount of reading. You’ve had advanced literature courses with less reading. Isn’t this a writing course?

But the instructor, Scott Driscoll, teaches a piece of craft with every assignment. Read this. Write that. Read that. Write this.

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Your favorite course books are How Fiction Works by James Wood, and Story, by Robert McKee.

In How Fiction Works, you are entranced by the examples Mr. Wood pulls forward. In the chapter titled “Details,” he shares how Virginia Wolf’s husband kept a daily diary with meal menus and car mileage.

“Apparently, nothing was different on the day his wife committed suicide: he entered the mileage for his car. But on this day the paper is obscured by a smudge, writes his biographer, Victorian Glendinning, ‘a brownish-yellow stain which has been wiped or rubbed. It could be tea or coffee or tears. The smudge is unique in all his years of neat diary-keeping.’”

One single smudge to convey so much.

In Story, you learn how to take the reader into and out a scene, like a camera going from wide-angle to focusing on one object. You learn how to use what the character observes to portray their mood and foreshadow plot. The book is for screenwriters. You love it anyway.

In the second quarter of the course, you need to turn in a complete short story. You struggle for ideas. Then you decide to write about a man who goes to pick up a horse and something unexpected happens.

You think about that one college professor who was trying to write a novel where nothing happens. Her character changes by thinking about their issue during the span of a cross-county flight. Do humans change by thinking alone?

No. Certainly not in fiction. Something has to happen.

And it has to happen on the first page. You learned this from Scott.

So you write about this modern cowboy who goes to pick up a horse for his brother-in-law and ends up taking both the horse and a toddler with him. It was a bad place. Someone was making meth in the garage.

Why a toddler? Why meth? It surprised you too when it showed up on the page.

You think it’s because you’d read an article that Montana was one of many states struggling with the drug. You are raising a toddler. And you rode horses for years.

A good combination of research, direct experience, and expertise.

Eventually you will realize the origins of this novel go much deeper, but that comes much later.

It’s a wild, fun ride of a story. Your cowboy, a former National Rodeo Finals champ, is having an affair. He’s emotionally constipated. His wife has levity and business sense. She’s turning the family cattle ranch into a fancy guest ranch. They can’t have kids. Now the cowboy wants to keep this kid.

By the end of the draft, he is getting a bit tiresome to inhabit every day. But he comes through in the end.

You finish the certificate course. You learned more about the craft of writing than you’d learned your entire writing career.

You invite two classmates to form a weekly writer’s group. This group is how you’ll write your modern cowboy novel.

Start a writing group and unrelatedly meet Patrick Dempsey

For the next four years, your writing group meets at the same pub. You always have a new or heavily revised chapter that you share in advance. Your readers are fantastic. You speak a common language and style of critique thanks to Scott Driscoll.

During those four years, you get a divorce. You have incredibly stressful jobs, including a stint at Tully’s Coffee where you help take the company through Chapter 11. It’s bought by Patrick Dempsey. But not really. Things go from bad to worse. You write about it later for Medium.

Some days, you write one sentence. That’s enough.

You move a couple of times. You start sharing your queen sized bed with your daughter, because she wants to snuggle and you don’t have the energy to say no. And honestly, you want to snuggle too.

You date a couple of toads before you realize you need to focus on yourself. Parent. Climb. Write. Work. Maybe just have fun with some non-toads. And yes, you do have fun. Why not?

Then you get mysteriously ill. You hurt so badly that your friend takes you to the ER. They validate that your lymph nodes are the size of golf balls and give you a diluadid drip. This goes on for months. You are tested for mono four times, are sent to an infectious disease specialist, and finally to a surgeon to see if your swollen lymph nodes are cancers.

You get no answers.

But slowly, you seem to have more good days than bad. So you keep writing.

Enter a writing contest while your neighbor commits crimes

One evening, you are at the pub with your writing buddies. You see your apartment complex on the TV above the bar. Someone made a credible bomb threat. There is a SWAT team and helicopters. Nobody in the management office answers the phone. You learn from the news anchor that every tenant has been bussed to a location a mile away. Your daughter, thankfully, is with her dad.

A good friend invites you to stay with her. You need to stop at a store to buy underwear and toiletries. The management office calls while you’re driving so you pull over. Your neighbor made the bomb threat. Then he tried to set a bunch of paperwork on fire. SWAT busted through his front and back doors. Your apartment is a flood zone from his sprinklers.

You are the only tenant who cannot go home.

You cry for a few minutes. You never cry. And then you go buy clean underwear.

The next day, you go to check out your apartment. Detectives are next door. They tell you that a warrant was being served and things had escalated. Your neighbor had stolen credit card information from medical offices and was trying to destroy the evidence.

He also made meth in his microwave. You didn’t know that was even possible, but apparently with a certain chemical, it is.

So now you know why you have been so sick. Or you think you do. You are grateful your daughter is only with you for half the week.

Also, the inciting incident in your story involves a meth lab. Are you manifesting events into reality? God, you hope not. Or if you are, you should write about winning a Powerball lottery.

You finish your novel. It’s a good distraction from your own messy life. Your writing buddies scour it in a final read.

It’s solid.

You submit it to the 2015 Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association contest for Mainstream Fiction. Months later, your writing buddy congratulates you. You have no idea what he’s talking about; you haven’t checked your mailbox for a while. You are a finalist in the contest. You might win the whole thing.

So you go to the conference. You do win! It’s shocking and delightful. You go onstage to say thank you. You thank your writing buddies who saw you through everything, including the meth lab and SWAT team incident. The crowd gasps and laughs uncertainly and you think maybe that was too much information.

You meet the agent who read your manuscript for the contest. She is very young. She isn’t interested in your genre. You pitch to three other agents that day and they all want to read the first chapter.

You email it the next week. Then you pitch 20 more agents.

You collect supportive rejections. Supportive is okay.

Today life is calm

You’re now happily remarried. The family has been to Thailand and New York City. You bought a townhouse. Your kid is a teenager.

And you still don’t have an agent. You should be pitching it. Maybe you will soon? You’re not sure. Cowboys are so popular right now. Yellowstone. Longmire.

But you do have a finished, prize-winning manuscript. And that’s not nothing. It’s definitely something.

Maybe you need someone to light a fire under you.

Anyone got a match?

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I wrote this almost a year ago! Since then, I have self-published my novel, Still the Millers: https://a.co/d/9BYdndy