Kathleen Glasgow
Appearances
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
So I parted ways with that agent and everything was very amicable. And so I went I went on the Internet and I looked up literary agents based on the books that I liked because everyone thanks their agents in the acknowledgements. And I thought, well, if they like that book, they might like mine because it's similar.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
There's not, there is not a manual. There are manuals for parenting and there are not manuals for parenting. And like all kids, all kids are different is the thing. Do you know what I mean? Like your one kid is not the same as like your other kid, like at all. So you have to have like 12 different types of parenting just for like, you know, your kids. And it's like, oh my God.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And I got, you know, you send it to them and you send like a little excerpt and you describe your book. And I got mostly rejections. Some people never responded at all. Some people responded with, this book is a beautiful book. No one is going to publish this book. They're not going to think this is a suitable subject matter. I don't know where I would place this, like teen or adult. I can't.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Writing is beautiful. I'm sorry. I wish you the best of luck. And then I got this really great email from Julie Stevenson, who is my agent now. And it was really long. And she had notes in the email about small changes she wanted to make to the book. But she also wrote about the book and how she felt reading the book. And she got the book. She understood the book.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And we talked on the phone and we got along right away because I really like people who have kind of a dark sense of humor. And I thought, well, this is the person. And she was the champion for the book. And she had a plan and she knew who to send it to. And she had a timeline. And we worked on it for, I think, maybe two months. And then she sent it out.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And then a week later, we had multiple offers. And some of them were, they were from adult editors and some were from YA editors. And I ended up going with Krista Marino at Delacorte because, again, when I talked to her on the phone, she got the book. Right. Like other editors had said, we're going to, we would probably edit out some of these more graphic descriptions of self-harm.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And I was like, I think those have to be in there because I think that if anyone reads this book and this is happening to them, they need to see those parts. They need to know that like the person who's writing it understands and gets it. And then, you know, the rest is history.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And I'm still with Krista and Julie to this day because they they both like they get it and they understand the types of books that I write. Yeah, they're incredibly funny and encouraging. So, you know, my my story is kind of. I was very lucky. I was really I was really lucky with that first book. And I was I was very lucky when it came out.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
That so many people responded to it because I did not expect like that response at all that so many kids would be reading that book. And that, I mean, it was published in 2016 and we're in 2024 now. And the book has always done well and resonated with people. And it's really kind of amazing. Like, I can't believe it.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
It doesn't matter because they're all standalones. They're all separate stories, like characters don't appear in one book and then another one. And a lot of adults do. They read my books. And I think it's because they went through those same things when they were younger and they didn't have anyone to talk to about it. And they didn't have any books like that when they were teens.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And so the books resonate with them because they're working through their stuff. Like I said, you can work through stuff while you're reading a book. And I always hope that the story is good. I don't start any book with a message or anything. I just start a book because I'm interested in thinking about how that character would deal with that thing.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And people, you know, they're like, well, is Charlie Davis' story in Girl in Peace is your story? And it is not my story. I can start with a kernel of something real that happened to me, like with Girl in Peace's self-harm and depression. But, you know, I'm a writer, so other things take over. And I'm not interested in, like, putting my story on the page. I'd rather do it through fiction.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And so I tell people... I gave Charlie Davis my scars and I gave her my thoughts and feelings about self-harm and depression and what it's like to feel alone in the world.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
My after I turned in the draft of I signed a two book deal with Girl in Pieces. OK. My editor had said to me on the phone before the contract, she said, do you think you could write another book? And I was like, sure, I guess I'll give it a shot. I guess I'll try again. All right. I'll try to write another novel. And so I did have a two book contract.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And so the second book was actually How to Make Friends with the Dark.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And then You'd Be Home Now is after that.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
I know. It's Target's book of the year. And they gave it The Sprayed Edges and this ombre cover. And it's so pretty. It has this great stuff inside. It's so beautiful.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And I feel like I'm so excited that like Target named it a book of the year because I personally have spent a lot of time in Target, wandering the aisles, weeping softly, you know, drinking the Starbucks and enjoying myself and checking out the end cap specials. And I'm like, Target is finally recognizing my deep devotion to them. That's how I feel about that. So thank you, Target.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
I feel I feel seen.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Well, if we rewind a little, my mother and my sister have passed away. And my sister died five days after my son was born. And I didn't really have time to fully sit with that because I was trying to take care of this baby. And you know, like with your first child, I don't know how to take care of a baby.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And there are some like aspects of my life where no one told me, how do you take care of a baby or how do you be like a good, attentive, loving parent? So I was like, I had to do that. Right. And then You know, then my mother died and then I felt utterly alone. And I you don't like grief never leaves you. It's always there.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And so when it came time to write the second book, I thought I'm going to write about grief because I'm really thinking about it right now. And it's really, it's like, I miss these people and I miss like what our lives could have been like if we were all together again.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And I thought I'm going to write about that because even though I'm an adult now and I lost them both as adults, I have some tools that, to manage my grief as much as it can be managed. But what if that had happened to me when I was a teenager? Like, what if, like Tiger says in the book, the one person who could help me through this would be my mother? But she's dead. What then?
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
What happens to you, especially when, as Tiger... As it happens to Tiger, her father, who she's never known, is in prison. Where does she go? What happens to you when you have like no one and you've lost the one person? And I really want to talk about grief from the aspect of a teenager who's like in it.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And so I, I wrote that book and it was very, it was, I would, for me, I would say that's the saddest book that I wrote because I like grief. We don't really talk about grief a lot. People tell you, or you'll heal and you'll get past this. But to a kid, that's absolutely the worst thing that could happen to you. Like you don't get over it. You can't get past it and you are not going to heal.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
You're just going to paper over your wound for a little bit and try to get through every day. But everything is going to be a reminder. Your first day is like junior year. Your mother's not there. Your first date, your mother's not there. If you go to college, your mother's not there. Those people will never be there. And so you can't get beyond that feeling of being without them forever.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And I wanted to talk especially about those emotional issues, but also feelings. Talk a little bit about what it's like for kids in the foster care system and what happens to them and how they can get bounced around. And I wanted those kids to have a voice. So I gave Tiger all these kids that she meets like Thaddeus and Leonard and all the other kids that she meets in foster care.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And I didn't realize until after I finished the book. in like the first few drafts that in the character of her half sister, I was really like trying to bring my own sister back because that character has some of the same, um, Beautiful, like kind, loving and freewheeling traits that my sister had.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Like I lived with my sister for a little bit when I was a teen when things were not going well for me. And it was very much like, you know, we're just having ho-hos for dinner tonight. And Tiger's like, wait, that's not a reel. That's not a dinner. It's like, yes, it is. And we're just going to watch TV. You know, and I gave her some of those things.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And then I did realize after I finished that, I'm like, am I trying to bring my sister Weezy back somehow? Am I trying to immortalize her? And I think that I did.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Oh, she was all... She was, like, great with that. There was a moment early on where I turned in this draft that... Because when Girl in Pieces came out, like, I was really kind of...
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
overwhelmed by the reaction to it and a lot of people loved it but everyone was saying oh my god this book is so sad and this book is so traumatic and it's like I lived with self-harm and I've lived with a lot of other things in my life that are really sad and traumatic They seem normal to me. Do you know what I mean? You just get used to them. You're like, this is how my life was.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And so I developed a self-defense mechanism, which a lot of people do. And this is why I love my recovery group, because everyone has a very dark sense of humor about the things that they've gone through. And you can joke about it with each other. So I was very... I was very overwhelmed by that. And I was like, people think this is so sad. Maybe I should not write such a sad book.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
So I had turned in this draft of How to Make Friends with the Dark to my editor. And she was like, OK, great. I'm going to read through this. And then she went on this like month long vacation. And while she was gone, I was like, you know, maybe I should rewrite this and I should make it funnier. Cause like grief can be really funny when you think about it. Like, Oh my God, you're dead.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
What happened? What is happening to me? And I rewrote it so that I thought it was like funnier. And then when she came back and read that draft, she said, Kathleen, what is going on? What happened? No, no, no, no, no. The other draft, that's the one. That's what you do. That's what I love about you. That's what people are going to love about this book is that you get to it. You're a dark writer.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
That's who you are. And I needed to hear that, that everything was going to be kind of dark and sad from that moment on, whatever book that I wrote. And I was like, okay.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
That's... I mean, because I think it's what we were talking about. They need somebody else to say it. That's what they're going to you for. Because then in that, they see some hope for themselves. Because then they look at you and they say, wait, you got...
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
through this or you're working through it and i see you actively every day like on videos like working through these things that have happened to you and i want to do that and so i feel like that gives them some sense of like there is a light at the end of the tunnel and they're like they tell you like of course you're funny but um could you go back to that other thing and it's like okay i will do that i'm like no problem and i i think that's okay and and i needed to be told that by my editor
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
I really did. And it, that I, like for me, I'm very proud of having written that book. It, it, but it's, yeah, but it's, it's like, I have a very complicated relationship to it because I don't know that I could ever read that book like again, because it is, it is really sad. And it just makes, I mean, my mother didn't live to see me publish any books.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And, you know, people will always say, oh, she would be so proud of you. And my first thought is yes. And my second thought is because I know my mother, she would say, didn't have to be so sad.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So I'm just like, I'm playing out all my trauma in the fictional world. For everyone. And yeah, that's the way it works. And, you know, that's partly it probably comes from a little bit of like my background in poetry where I'm used to like talking about emotional things in a narrative way.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
No, I had jumped head on into the pool of novel writing, and I wasn't doing poetry. And after How to Make Friends with the Dark, I really missed writing poetry. So when I started writing You'd Be Home Now, I thought, I'm going to figure out how to put some poetry in this book. I'm going to, because I miss writing poetry.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
You'd Be Home Now was a really good opportunity to put that in because of the structure of the book, which was inspired by a play written by Thornton Wilder.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Yay. First of all, I want to say it's really great that you said that you read on planes because a lot of times now that's where I get like my uninterrupted reading time is on planes. And I like buy a book that I know absolutely that I'm going to savor it on the plane for like that entire plane ride. And you like you're sinking into a book.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
So You'd Be At Home Now is about Emmy, who's struggling to help her brother Joey after he returns home from rehab for addiction. And Emmy's always been the very good girl in the family, and her mother is very controlling. Very loving, but controlling.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And I wanted to write that book from Emmy's perspective because in the two previous books, the narrator is the one who's going through all the stuff. And I wanted to write a book from the perspective of someone who's watching someone go through that. Because a lot of times, like you know...
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
When someone else is going through that, and especially if they're in the family, you kind of become invisible. Because their struggles suck up all the energy in the room. And there's none left over for you. And I think that that...
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
There's so much collateral damage around addiction. Like, it touches everybody. Like, all of us have been touched by addiction in some way, shape, or form. And so Joey's addiction, it affects Emmy. It affects his parents. It affects his friends. It affects the school. Like, everyone.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And I don't think that we talk enough about the mental health of those people who are collateral damage of addiction. The people who are watching this happen, who are trying to help someone who can't help them, who desperately want, especially for Emmy, she desperately wants to figure out who she is and to have a life. But she feels guilty about it.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Because how can you have fun thinking about wanting to go to a dance when your brother...
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
is struggling so much and going through all this stuff and and we don't I don't think we talk enough about that guilt that people feel and it is really about like in the end figuring out what boundaries you're going to set like I love you and I can support you but also I have to go live a life and do these things that I want to do I can't make it all about you I can't
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
figure out where you are all the time i can't sit with you all the time i can't make sure you're safe all the time at some point all of that is it's up to you i'm just here for when you fall do you know and i and that's really hard for people to express because they feel they do they feel guilty but it really it ravages you like especially i think kids who are in families that that
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
have been ravaged by addiction, that is so difficult to grow up with. And it affects all the patterns of how you learn how to behave with other people and how you let other people treat you. And those are things that when you grow up later, if you do find a support system, you have to unravel and you have to start all over again and actually learn how to be a person without those other things.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And it's so difficult. I don't know if that makes sense or not.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Yes. And that's so, it's so hard. What, like going back to grief and how to make friends with the dark. When I went on tour for that, I met this student at a school and he pulled me aside afterwards. And he said, I read this book and I don't know. I think that what I'm feeling in this book is what I'm feeling in life, but I'm not really sure. And I was like, what's going on?
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And he said, so my dad has this traumatic brain injury.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
TBI and he's like it happened like two years ago and he just the only thing he can do now is like sit in a chair and watch TV and I miss that guy who would hang out with me and like play sports and like talk to me I don't know who he is and he's like I feel like he's dead but he's not he's alive and I said you are feeling grief you're feeling grief for someone who's alive your dad is a different person now and you have to get to know
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
that person and absolutely everything that you're feeling is grief and it is valid. And he told me that He was so he'd been so angry like the week before that he went outside with a baseball bat and bashed in the windshield of the car that his dad had loved and used to take him for drives in but couldn't anymore. And he's like, I feel so bad about that.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And I said, I'm glad you did it because at least you weren't hurting yourself. But you have something that you need to express. And that's OK.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And, like, you grieve people who are alive. You grieve the person that they used to be that you knew. And you grieve the person that they might never become. Yeah.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And I, you know, at this book, because I've been in recovery now for almost 18 years, and I really wanted people to read about the recovery process, that it's not linear.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
that you climb a little bit up the ladder and sometimes you slip down and when that person slips down it's not a failure it's a you start over and the people around them need to be safe say okay let's start again the road hasn't disappeared we're just going back to the beginning of the road and we're going to start walking again like together we you can this can happen
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Like, there's a lot of shame surrounding addictions. And like I said, people often don't ask, like, what happened to you? They're just like, why are you doing this? As though it's something that can be, like, fixed. And it's like, no, no, there's something that happened. There's something going on. And you need to get to the root of that first.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
I think that's so like, I think that's a really profound thing that they said to you. I mean, and it, We don't really know our parents. You only know them as your parent and what they show you and maybe what they choose to tell you about their childhood or their experiences in life before you came along. You don't really know what their life was.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And like that kind of blows my mind now that I am a parent. If you don't know them, they're actually like people. They're not just this person. You know, I'm not just this person that tells you it's time to study for your quiz.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
You know. Like I've had this whole lifetime of experiences and maybe you feel this way, too. I think it's interesting because like you've been public about like your experiences, like you've been in the public eye since you were a teenager. So people think they know you and the things that happen to you and your kids can probably Google you. Right. Yeah.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And they'll be like, wait, that happened to my mom. Like what? What is going on? Right. Yeah. And my kids can do that to me, too. And they could see things that I've said in interviews that maybe I haven't yet, like, chatted with them about. Or because you have this public persona. Most parents don't have that.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
So the thing, like, I was always a big reader, but I had this, like, time in my, when I was a teen where I couldn't concentrate on reading a lot, and so I wasn't reading a lot. But then I found the books that sucked you in. And I always tell people, and they're like, well, I don't really like to read, whether they're a kid or an adult. And they're like, I just, I can't, I don't really like it.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
So anything that happened to them, like, can stay buried unless their kid actually says, I need to know what growing up was like for you. What happened to you? What happened to you?
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Oftentimes you just don't think about your parent in that way.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And I think it's really, it's difficult for people to like, who have had difficult relationships with their parents when they were children. And you still have a difficult relationship with them when you're adult, when you're an adult. And maybe that involves like no contact or like limited contact.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And then at some point though, if you have kids are going to be like, why, why don't we see grandma all that often? Cause when they see grandma, they don't, they're like, I love grandma. Grandma's great. But in your head, you're like, I could tell you stories, you know, but you feel like I don't want to do that because maybe they could have a fruitful relationship.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
But then also you're like, why are they being nicer to my child than they were to me?
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Cause then you're the kid, the little kid inside you comes back and you're like, why couldn't you do that with me? Like, wait, what about me?
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Like, it's very hard. Like, are you denying them something? Or are you protecting them? Right. And maybe both are true. I think that both I think that both are very, very true. Yeah, I would agree with you. And I'm sorry to hear that about your mother. I'm glad you're protecting yourself because I do think that is important once you're able to.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
If that's the thing that you need, you've got to protect yourself. You have to protect yourself.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And I tell them, keep trying, because... It doesn't matter. You can go through these times where you're like, I'm not reading. I don't know what to read or I don't like it. But you're going to find that book like you found books.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Sometimes you'll get pushback from like other family members who are like, I don't know why you're doing this to her. It's really awful. Or, you know, you're ruining it and you're like, I got to take care of me. Like that's the most important thing.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And then especially I got to take care of me and I'm taking care of kids and I can't take care of my kids if I'm not like good with myself and taking care of myself. Right. And that's also an important thing to pass on to your kids is that you can think of yourself.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And then you were in. Yeah. And you'll and now you'll keep trying. Even if you pick up a book and you say, but you're still going to go try to pick up another one, because once you find one that you really like, you can't stop. And so sometimes it takes years. And I tell other parents who's like, oh, my kids aren't readers. I don't know what to do. I'm like, they'll find it.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
You do whatever you want. And you, and you hope, and you hope for the best. And like I said, like each, like, and now you've discovered like each book is different and each book kind of, the more you work on it, it tells you how it wants to be written or like the voice or the structure and how you're going to do it. So I believe in you and you, and you, you'll figure, you'll figure it out.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
I think you've, cause you've already mastered the hardest part was actually just sitting down and starting. Maybe. That's the hardest part. Like you have to sit down and start it. But then once you started, like, especially with your first one, weren't you kind of excited to go back to it? Like every time you're like, I kind of just want to write today. Right.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Like that's the best part is you build like that muscle memory. A bunch of like mood writing for that. I'm all for vibes and mood writing.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
I don't operate that. I don't operate that, but you, you will, you will, you will figure it out and you'll figure out your own mood and vibe deadline. You know, I, Like, I'd like to write, like, a little bit every day. And it takes me a while to get started on a book. And it takes me maybe, like, two drafts to figure out, like, the voice of the character.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Like, I think about a book for, like, months before I start writing it. And, like, things happen. And I'll make, like, little notes. But once I start writing, I just, like, the first draft, I just write until I get to 300 pages. Mm-hmm. Because, you know, you can always go back and you will edit out the stuff. Things will jump out at you and you're like, that doesn't happen.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
But I'm very much like mood and vibes and intuition. And if I can get like those first 300 pages out, Then I know what the actual story is that I should be telling. And then I have like a little bit of structure when I start like the other drafts.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
We'll hold this up again. You know, my target book of the year. It'll be right here. Thank you, Tori. It's like right there. I have a sticker. I have a sticker. The Glass Girl is about a 15-year-old Bella who's been self-medicating with alcohol since she was 11.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And she is suffering from the effects of her parents' bitter divorce, the grief over the death of her grandmother, a bad breakup with her first boyfriend, and friendship group struggles. She's been self-medicating and no one has noticed. And one night she goes to a Thanksgiving party and she gets blackout drunk and her friends drop her off on her mom's doorstep.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Yeah, they will. Just keep encouraging them. Because I have one who's a big reader and one who's not. But when she finds a book, she's, like, in it. Yeah. You just have to, like, keep trying.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And after that, after a stay in the hospital for alcohol poisoning, she goes to a rehab in Tucson in the middle of the desert called Sonoran Sunrise, where she's going to have to confront everything that she's been trying to erase.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And I did want to, in this book, because I am in recovery, and because I started drinking really early, like Bella did, and I think about it every day because it's something that I have to manage and be on top of. I've, you know, like, why... Why do some things latch on to some people and not others?
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Like, why when I was 11 and I had that first drink, was I like, oh my God, I feel like I'm home now. Like, this is my thing. But other people, you know, teenagers, some of them are like, oh, I went to a party last weekend and I got drunk. They don't drink again for like three months. But then there's like some of us where it's like, oh, that's my thing. Like, that's where I feel good.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
You know, like what is addiction and how does it latch on to some people and not others? And what are those reasons behind it? And like I said, it's that thing inside you, like what happened to you? And she's stuck in this awful place with like parents who are fighting with each other. She's been parentified because she has to take care of her little sister and try to protect her.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And she's her grandmother, who's the person who gave her her first drink, you know, playing Scrabble at her house, like here, just have a little bit of this. But her grandmother was also the only person that really accepted her and was unconditionally loving. And it is sort of a COVID book because...
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Like, especially if you're writing fiction now, you kind of, even if it's not on the page, you have to understand that each and every one of your characters, if it's contemporary, went through the pandemic. And they probably lost people. Or if they were kids, they had to stay home and do remote learning. And that's like a whole other thing. And that affected like their social development.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
It really affected like a lot of kids' anxiety levels. And like Bella is struggling through that because they worked really hard to keep her grandmother safe through that whole thing. And then suddenly her grandmother like goes to the curb to get a newspaper and drops that. Like, what was that all for? Do you know what I mean? And so, but she's 15. She doesn't know how to articulate this.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And it is very much a book about, um,
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
severe anxiety and self-medication because we don't really talk enough about why kids might be drinking or doing drugs in the first place and I think for some of them a lot of it has to do with anxiety and depression because you feel better that's the thing we don't talk about you're like don't do drugs and it's also like but sometimes they make you feel better and And they chill you out.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And maybe that's something that could be helped with like a medication that's prescribed and some therapy. But, you know, sometimes you don't have access to those things, especially as kids. But you have access to alcohol.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
with alcohol she's like i only realize that now but it's a little too late and i was like oh that's really interesting that you even made that connection i think in particular like girls and women do because it's acceptable yeah i like for me i stopped self-harming like physically but i i moved to alcohol like hardcore in my late teens and twenties and thirties. Right. Because that's acceptable.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
It's another form. It's another form of self-harm. You're just switching to one that people are like, Oh, she just likes to party. Right. Not she likes to cut herself. She just likes to party. Right. But Oh my gosh, if you like cut yourself or burn yourself, that's, Oh, that's, you know, but like when you drink to excess like that, that's another form of self-harm.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
I knew that I was I was doing that to like to feel better, to cope with my anxiety.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
especially like as a teenager and also i was trying to escape just i didn't want to think about the things that were causing me to feel the way that i felt in the world because of the way that you know i was raised in the way that i grew up and i had and i still struggle with like all of those things i like to say that i'm just like living life um completely raw now like i have no I have no skin.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
I don't have a protective covering of like alcohol or drugs anymore. And I just have to go like all my characters into the world, like an open wound and hope for the best. And I feel proud of myself for taking that on and like, making it. So The Glass Girl is about that. But it is also about divorce.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Because I haven't read a lot of YA books where maybe the parents are divorced, but they get along just fine, right? It's like a TV show. Everything's cool. They're co-parenting. What if they aren't? And also, your kids, it is really hard for them to go back and forth from one house to another. It's like going to stay at a different hotel every week.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
You have to pack your bag, and I hope that you remembered your charger. And I hope you remember your favorite pair of pants because those are the ones that make you feel better when you're at school because you have the right kind of pants.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And I wanted to talk about what is that like when your parents don't get along and you're in the middle and they use you like they text you to tell your mother something. You know, that's like that shouldn't happen. And they need to get their shit together.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Yeah. And sometimes the rules are different at each house. That's just the way it is. A lot of times the parents are not on the same page. And so you go to one house and it's like, okay, you have to do your homework. And then you can look at your phone and then you have to go to bed. And at the other house, it's like... That's not the case at all.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And I think in terms of rehab and recovery, when you get out of rehab, everything is not perfect. There's no fixing it. It's a disease and you have to manage it every day. But oftentimes, like Bella, you go back to a family where maybe one person is supportive and the other one isn't.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Like Bella's dad, she's supposed to go stay with him, but he never thought that she needed to be in rehab in the first place. So he's still drinking beer when it's time for her to go stay with him for a week. And there will be people like that in your family who are like, well, that's your problem. and not mine. Right.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And, and yeah, and Bella has to figure that out and be brave enough to say, I can't stay with you when you're drinking.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
collaborate with you we'll do that we'll finish that book for you i'll come in i'll be your ghost writer perfect and then you me and liz we can write like this whole mystery together oh i'm down i'm you don't even have to ask me twice sign me up like our kids can play in the other room while we're sitting around a dining room table like hashing out a mystery oh i would love that that would be so fun it'd be perfect
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
So is the podcast fictional or real? Fictional. Fictional. I would say that the perfect book to turn into a podcast would actually be You'd Be Home Now. Because it has all these different elements to it and you could bring in all these different topics like addiction and then parentification.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
But also it has some poetry and it has those great moments with the character Miss Educated who does those Instagram posts. And I would say that has like enough multimedia that that would be like a perfect podcast. Oh, I agree. Actually, that's a really good idea. What is at the top of your to be read list? At the top of my to be read list is this book that I need to read through and finish.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Yeah. You just, you just keep trying, like, don't shame your kids for not being big readers or not being interested. Just keep like putting things in front of them or see what they're interested in. And, you know, just say one day you're going to find that book. Mm-hmm. And then you're going to be in it. Hook, line, and ticker. Yeah, hook, line, and ticker. So, Girl in Pieces.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Actually, it's a new book. Did you ever read the book All the Right Places? No. By Jennifer Niven. It's another YA novel. It's really great. They made it into a Netflix movie.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Yeah. So she has a book coming out and I'm reading her new book right now before it comes out. And it's it's really it's it's totally different for her. And it's kind of a dark academia mystery. And I'm I'm really enjoying it. So that's I have started that. I have to finish it. But first, I have to finish my book.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
I think a lot of people.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
like think that and I mean I don't know I read all the books that I blurb because you can't you can't just slap something on there because what if there's something in that book that like you're like oh no no like that's highly objectionable do you know what I mean like you're like oh you know and so no no also I mean I don't maybe some people do I don't know who are they that should be the mystery that we should try to solve in our book that we're going to write with Liz is like the mystery of are blurbs real or not
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Now that you're an author, you know, don't go to Goodreads. You don't want to know what they're saying. Like someone for, I think it was Girl in Pieces, when I made the mistake of going over there, and their review was just one line, and it was like, this is the stupidest book that I have ever read in my life. Which is fine because once your book is out, people have their own opinions.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Like some people like a book, some people don't, whatever. But whenever I'm teaching writing workshops for teenagers, I'm like, how many of you think that what you write is stupid? And they all raise their hands. And I'm like, so I actually wrote the stupidest book that's ever been written. So you can't. I win.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Whatever you write, it's going to be great because I wrote the stupidest book ever written.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
No, it's fine. Yeah.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
I don't I don't like offer them. I do it when I do school visits because like I have like so much like social anxiety and like anxiety about speaking in public that when I do a school visitor, I have like a public event. I will usually say I don't want to come to your school.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
school and stand up in front of 500 teenagers because i didn't i that's like no no i don't want to do that um but i i will do smaller breakout sessions with like 20 to 25 students and we will do a writing workshop and i will teach them how to draft a novel in 30 minutes
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
I started out as a poet. And I was very happy doing that and being alone with my fingerless gloves and whatnot, like typing out my little poems and sending them off to literary magazines. And I liked the isolation that, to me, came with being a poet where you'd be quiet and really... you know, not too many people are going to read your poem. And that's great.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And that is actually the funnest exercise for me to do because everyone starts participating because it's like when you co-write a book like I did with Liz, the pressure's off you alone and you're not by yourself. And everyone has ideas and we can come up with this whole draft of the book in 30 minutes.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And usually in like six months, two of the kids from the class will email me and say, I wrote 100 pages based on what we did. And I'm like, you're yay. You're off and running. You did it. I gave you a little structure and ideas. You're doing it. I want to see your book on a bookshelf someday. And so I will do I do things like that. I love that so much.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
It's like it's fun because. Once you get started and you're thinking about a book, ideas, they will just happen. Everyone is creative. I think that when you're younger, sometimes it starts being graded in school and then you say, oh, I got a C on my story. And you say, I'm not a good writer. And you give up. And that's one way to kill creativity in a kid. Definitely. Don't do that.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
That should be in more schools. You should be writing. You should be painting. There should be no grades for those
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
class every day gets an A you know they just want you to be like producing your work because it's good and you feel good when you do it like when you were writing your books and you were in the zone didn't that feel great yes and actually that's a really good point that you made I follow a book talker and she says that she doesn't
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
you know, I'm not any good. And I'm like, well, what have you written? They're like, well, nothing. And I'm like, well, I didn't tell you that. Who told you that? You just have to try. Somebody out there is probably really going to like that story. You just have to start. And then...
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Take your steps, whether you want to self-publish or traditionally publish, but somebody out there is going to love it. And that's the person that you're writing towards. Right. Not the other people who are going to give you like one star, no stars or say awful things about you and hold up your book. You're writing to the other people.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
They can buy my books anywhere books are sold. They're everywhere. The Target edition is the exclusive edition with the beautiful ombre cover. But they're available everywhere. And the Target one has that book of the year, which I will carry proudly to the end of my days.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And then I just want to say thank you to you for having me on and giving me the space to chat with you, one of my favorite people ever. It's interesting to me to think that you have been in my life since my early 20s, and I literally watched you grow up. That is so cool. And I'm amazed and proud of you for your journey and everything that you have done.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And now I got to meet you, so I have a bucket list item.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
I did my makeup today. It's just so, I mean, like, whatever you thought that you would achieve in your life, like, you have done it and so much more. And that was through hard work and, like, drive and, like, never...
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And then one day when I was on a bus in my late 20s going to my job at the University of Minnesota, this girl sat down next to me and her sleeves were pushed up and she was about 15 and she had fresh scars on her arm. And like that, did you ever have like those moments in life where you You see someone younger, and it, like, kind of blows you apart because you're like, wait, that was me. Mm-hmm.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
giving up like I when I do go to high schools I tell don't cry you'll make me cry I tell the students there I'm like first of all I want you to know that like I was kicked out of high school at 16 and I have a GED like I didn't go back I just got my GED and then I went to college like much later but I screwed screwed all of that up as well sometimes your life journey it's not what people tell you it should be or what order it should tell you sometimes you're dealing with all this stuff
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
That was not your fault at all. And sometimes it takes us longer. But the important thing is not that I wrote books that a lot of people read. The important thing is that I'm still standing and I'm here. And that's all of you here. That's the important thing.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
I'm really sorry I made you cry. Your makeup, your makeup still looks perfect though. So you're all good. I made you cry. Everyone's gonna be like, you make him cry. I'm like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Thank you for coming on Barely Famous. Thank you. You can find me anywhere. Thank you so much. This was like the best part of my day.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And you really wish you could just tell them, if you hold on, it's going to be okay. Yes. Right? Mm-hmm. And that girl was me. I was like, that is what I was like at 15, like harming, in depression, drinking, doing drugs, doing anything I could to make myself disappear. And when she saw me looking, she pushed down like the sleeves of her jacket. shirt. And then she got off at the next stop.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And I should have said something to her. Like I told you, I should have said, it's going to be okay. Like, that's me. You and I are the same. We're in it together. We're a little army.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
No, not at all. Yeah. And I couldn't stop thinking about her. And I thought about her for like weeks and weeks. And I kept like, like all the things that I had pushed down in myself in order to get to where I was like at that moment in my life. Seeing that girl made it all bubble to the surface.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Thank you for making time for me. I'm so excited. You're like my teen mom OG, my favorite one, like forever. And I can't tell you how happy I am for you that you are doing all this stuff and you're making it work. And also, I only have two kids and I feel like I don't know what I'm doing. And whenever I see you with your kids, I'm like, she's really got this together.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And for years, like in my writing classes and my friends, you know, they would see my scars and they're like, you should write about that. And I was like, oh, no, no, no. No one wants to hear about that. But I couldn't stop thinking about her. And I thought, you know, I'll write about it because that's what I do. And what I've always done when something is like difficult, like I write about it.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
I'm a big journaler. But it felt like it was really too big for like one poem. Or even like three. And I thought, well, no one's going to read this anyway. And I don't know how to write a novel. But when you're a writer, it shouldn't really matter. If you don't know how to do something, you just try. Like who really knows how to write a novel? Like, I've learned now that every novel is different.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And every time I start writing a book, I don't know how to write that book until it tells me how to write it. And I just started writing. And I wrote for nine years. And there were 13... Because no one was going to read it. It was just for me. Like, who was going to read a story about this girl who self-harms? Right? So you didn't have intentions to publish the book? No. No. It was only for me.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And I was in a really... I was in a really great bubble writing it because it was really bringing out all these thoughts and feelings that I hadn't wanted to think about for a very long time. And during that process of drafting the book, which ended up having like 13 drafts total. First, my sister died, which was five days after my first child was born, which is like a whole other thing.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And then my mother died. And I didn't write for a year. After my mother died. Like I just could not, like I could not. And then one morning I went back to the draft and I realized that what was wrong with the book, which was called at that point, The Tender Kit, was that I still wasn't talking about what I should be talking about.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And I had given Charlie in those drafts a supportive family and a supportive best friend. And everything that happened with Riley had happened before the events that started the draft. And in that moment with, like, my mother gone and my sister gone, I was an open wound. And I felt orphaned and alone in the world.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And I realized that was how I felt when I was 15, even though my mother had been, like, really helpful and supportive and loving to me when I was going through it.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
these things and i realized i needed to make charlie that orphaned and alone and i needed to make her an open wound because if anyone did read it any kids if they ever read this book that was how they felt right they had no one yeah especially at that age i feel like
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Yeah, you can. You just feel utterly alone. Even if you have people who are saying, I want to help you. Let's get you some therapy. What's going on? And for kids especially, it's very hard to articulate.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
what is happening inside them that i think especially is causing them to self-harm they don't know how to say it and they don't want to tell their parents because then they're a disappointment to their parents because then their parents are worried about them so now they've caused a problem or some parents truthfully are not going to be supportive and what they're going to say is
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
What are you doing to yourself? What is going on? They're not going to say, why are you doing this? And the most important thing is when someone is struggling with something, you need to ask them, not like, why are you doing this? What's wrong with you? You have to ask them, what happened to you? That's the thing. You have to get to the very core, like, what happened to you?
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
Because something happened. And you have to give kids and people, especially, the place to say what happened without judgment. And sometimes, like, a book is that thing. And then it gives you a language because you see yourself in that experience in the book and you say, oh, my God, someone understands. And sometimes that gives you the language to tell someone, like...
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
this is me this is me and that can be the thing that helps you hold on and so with girl in pieces when i finally i that's how the book that you're reading today like when i started that draft a year after my mother died and i took everything away from charlie and i made her utterly alone that's the book that you're reading today
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
So I had a really fun and supportive boss, Julie Schumacher, who's also a novelist. And you should read her books because she's the funniest person I know. They're just hysterical. And she said, what are you doing? You've been like, you're working on this thing. And what is happening? Nothing is happening. What's going on? Can I read it? And I was like, OK, here's like 20 pages.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And she's like, you know, OK. you should go to a writing conference and you should like take a workshop and you should get some feedback. And I was like, well, okay, well. All right. So I went to a writing workshop, the Taos Writers Workshop in New Mexico. And I had this great workshop with these people and the teacher there, Antonia Nelson, was really, they were supportive.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
But while I was there, I paid the $50 or whatever so you could have a 20-minute conference with a literary agent. And the agent would have read like your 20 pages and then said, oh, I think this is really great or this is what you need to work on and whatnot. But I ended up getting signed by that agent.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And I didn't know anything about like what it means to sign with a literary agent for a novel because I was a poet and no one cares about us.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
It got carried into the next step. Okay. And it was emails. And I was with that agent for three years, and I was continuing to revise the book. And this sometimes happens. Like, the agent was really supportive and nice, but also wanted, I think, to move the book in a different direction that I wasn't comfortable with, like more of,
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
an adult book and maybe sort of a thriller type of book and to amp up some aspects of the book that I was not comfortable with, like the sexual aspects. And we eventually, you know, my boss again, Julie said, wait, you've been with this agent for three years. What is going on? Is your book being sent out? What is happening? And I was like, no. And she's like, I think it's okay.
Barely Famous
Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow
And I didn't know this at the time. And I would tell writers this now. So you don't have to stay with an agent for your entire career. Like some people, they move to different agents because maybe you want to write fantasy, but your current agent is like, I don't, I don't do fantasy. Right. Right. It just happens like you evolve and your relationship with your agent evolves.