Elena Taylor: Allowed in the Room
Elena Taylor spent twenty years in the theater as a playwright, director, and designer before she wrote her first novel in 2007. It took until 2016 to see a book in print, and by then she had learned the thing nobody tells you: there is no game plan. No book you can buy that lays out a…
▶ Listen to this episode · 1h 0m
Elena Taylor spent twenty years in the theater as a playwright, director, and designer before she wrote her first novel in 2007. It took until 2016 to see a book in print, and by then she had learned the thing nobody tells you: there is no game plan. No book you can buy that lays out a novelist's career, because everybody's is different, and most of what happens is out of your hands.
Elena talks about the mistake she considers the largest of her career, and what it cost her to get out of it. She talks about the difference between being autonomous and being lonely, and locates loneliness somewhere unexpected. And she talks about her father, a law professor, who heard her say she was thinking about law school and told her the world does not need more attorneys.
Topics & Timestamps
(00:00) Where loneliness actually comes from
(01:01) Writing since she could hold a pencil
(02:20) Twenty years in the theater, a first book in 2016
(03:30) What she thought publication would be: a straight line up
(04:04) A book released in April 2020
(04:33) No game plan, and none of it in your control
(05:30) What she didn't know about being published
(06:11) The largest mistake of her career: no agent
(07:00) A disagreement over book three
(07:51) Getting the rights back, changing publishers
(08:42) A second agent, and what that did for her
(09:37) Awards, nominations, and Blood at number one
(10:07) "I'm not sure I'm allowed in the room"
(10:37) No boss's office, no performance review
(12:02) Why one reader saying "I want to read your book" is a win
(12:35) Tenacity over skill
(14:46) Autonomous versus lonely
(16:06) How loneliness changed as she got older
(17:06) A time she wasn't understood: "always"
(17:34) A book club, and two lines read aloud
(19:31) Social commentary nobody comments on
(21:17) Why forcing readers to understand turns them off
(22:41) What the reader brings to the book
(23:36) Gen X, benign neglect, and the Troubadour at fifteen
(25:30) What stays off social media
(27:28) "X class": esteem your income doesn't explain
(29:38) The romance of the writing life versus the day job
(30:49) The hardest conversation — as an editor, not a writer
(31:22) What the writer hears versus what you said
(33:15) "I can't care more than the writer"
(34:17) The hardest thing to hear: flat characters
(35:00) Two rejections in one day, exactly opposite
(37:03) "If it really hurts, it's probably true"
(38:37) Reading criticism for what's usable
(39:07) Twenty-four hours to let a bad review sting
(39:27) How much has been luck: "everything and nothing"
(41:18) The publisher who'd just signed a similar book
(42:04) Where luck was on her side: the drive itself
(43:27) What the life taught her about herself
(44:04) Bestselling friends in a permanent panic
(45:08) The Hartwell family motto
(46:11) What she still wants: an Edgar nomination
(47:38) Still to prove? Every single book
(49:10) Norman Maclean, and beauty outsiders never see
(50:12) First draft to finished shelf
(51:53) Her father: "the world needs more playwrights"
(53:16) Her mother, dementia, and a shelf of her books
(54:50) Anything that would make her walk away
(55:50) The biggest thing on her plate right now
(57:09) Why promoting a book is harder than writing one
(58:12) Have the books compensated for loss?
(59:11) The three legs of a life
