In this episode of Strange Horizons at 25, editor Kat Kourbeti talks to Mary Robinette Kowal about the fractal nature of story structure, how writing is really kind of like cooking, and the joys of writing to please the teenaged version of you.

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Episode show notes:

• Read Mary Robinette's work in our archives.
• Listen to the audio of the Portland Strange Horizons 10th Anniversary Reading event on her website.
• Buy The Martian Contingency and pre-order Apprehension/Red Star Hustle (part of a Saga Double with Sam J Miller)
• Follow Mary Robinette on Instagram or visit her website to sign up for her monthly newsletter, The Mary Robinette Gazette. Both places abound with talking cat content!
• Find more links to her work and other things as you read the transcript below.

Transcript

Kat Kourbeti: Hello Strangers, and welcome to Strange Horizons at 25, a 25th anniversary celebration of Strange Horizons. I'm your host, Kat Kourbeti, and it's my privilege today to welcome you to another episode that looks back at the history and impact of Strange Horizons on the speculative genres.

Today's guest is Mary Robinette Kowal, whose first publication with us was in 2006. She's a celebrated author with multiple Hugo Awards, the Nebula and Locus Awards, the Astounding Award, as well as an audiobook narrator, and a puppeteer. She also has a rather famous talking cat, Elsie. It's great to have you here, Mary Robinette.

Mary Robinette Kowal: It is nice to be here.

Kat Kourbeti: So welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. You write in a lot of different genres, you work in a lot of different fields. I'm always really fascinated with writers and artists who do all the things. As I've said on this podcast before like, these sorts of careers fascinate me. So I'm super excited to talk to you today about your career, and how Strange Horizons came into it.

Mary Robinette Kowal: I was reviewing some of that, like prepping for this, because it's been a minute.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. That's why we're doing this podcast is that, we realized that it's been 25 years—

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: —and that really made me go, "a what now?" And going back through the archives has been just tremendous.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah, you doing that made me realize that I'm 20 years out from my first sale. That is math I had not done.

Kat Kourbeti: Well, you don't think about these things. You keep moving forward until such time as there is something that requires a flashback.

Let's talk about your work in general. What genres do you write in? Because it's so varied, what would you define it as?

Mary Robinette Kowal: I write all over the map. So I come out of puppet theater, and puppet theater tends towards the fantastical just because we can. I've read science fiction and fantasy growing up, so I tend to write in all the genres that I enjoy reading. I'll do hard science fiction, soft science fiction. Historical fantasy, contemporary fantasy, contemporary science fiction, weird slipstream stuff. I'll do all of that. I will very occasionally dip over into horror, but I don't do a lot of that because I'm not comfortable reading it. It's not a place that I enjoy putting my brain for a long period of time.

With puppets, when people ask me what style I do, I'm like, if it's a dolly, I will wiggle it. And with genre, I feel like if it's a story, I will tell it.

Kat Kourbeti: Which I appreciate immensely. Yeah. I relate to the whole horror thing, like I appreciate it and I can read it in short bursts, but not fully, which is very strange for me because a lot of my compatriots from Greece, like, folk horror is all they write. And I'm like, no, thank you.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah. And sometimes I'm okay with it, like you know, Dan Wells' "I'm Not a Serial Killer", totally fine. Sometimes there's a piece of short fiction, like when Ellen Datlow is editing something, she's one of those editors that I have always loved what she selects, but I have to be real careful even in short form with her.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. She has a knack for some great stories, but they won't all be in my wheelhouse personally as well. Yeah, definitely.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah. Live rent free in my head.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Not always in a good way either.

Mary Robinette Kowal: We had rats living in our attic rent free, and I didn't like that. So it's often like that with with horror.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Mary Robinette Kowal: But all of the other forms, like one of the reasons that I like puppetry and also gravitate towards science fiction and fantasy, is because they both feel like the theater of the possible. Looking at the what if. And I like looking at what's possible. Possible doesn't always have to be a bad outcome. Sometimes possibility is, what if we imagine a good outcome? And that's shocking, especially in today's age.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Nowadays, that's brave, for sure.

I work in theater and I write about science fiction theater, and a lot of the time the art form lends itself to sci-fi and fantasy, especially because you invite the audience to imagine anyway, and so the shorthand is already established. The minute someone walks through the door, they're already imagining something that isn't on stage, really. And that always fascinates me, how well that works together with genre.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah. It's great.

Kat Kourbeti: So how has your approach to genre writing and to the various lengths and formats, how has that evolved during your writing journey?

Mary Robinette Kowal: When I first started off, I describe it as, I could write a really good beginning and a really good middle, and a really good ending to three completely different stories that happened to have the same set of characters. So structure was the thing that I had a really hard time with. I understood how to communicate with an audience, I understood character. Again, coming out of live theater, the structure is provided for you. So your job is to figure out the character and how that character inhabits the world. Your job is to communicate with the audience. And those things translated shockingly well to writing, but structure was like, whoa.

So I spent a lot of my early career trying to figure out structure. A lot of my early stories I outlined heavily because I was trying to figure it out, even in short form. And as I get deeper into my career, the thing that I'm enjoying is that I've internalized a lot of those lessons, and that frequently I can just write it without having to think about it.

I can just chase the emotion, which allows me, I think, to have an experience that is more comparable to what the reader is going to experience. 'Cause the reader's not thinking about structure, the reader's thinking about the emotion, the ride. And that's the way I wanna be able to write.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, that's awesome. And was that like, a very... structured way of learning that?

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah. Actually it was. When I was an intern at the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, Georgia, my mentor had me doing a style called tabletop puppetry, which is—you'll learn that the terms in puppetry are extremely complicated: a tabletop puppet is a puppet that is worked on a tabletop. I know, it's really confusing there. But it looks like an unstrung marionette, and so my job was to walk it around the table. And you're doing it by yourself, so you're doing this thing called a swing step, which again, very complicated: you swing the leg and you step, swing step.

What my mentor had me do was walk the puppet around the table for about 45 minutes while he talked to me. And what he was looking for was the moment when I was able to start carrying on a conversation with him, without watching the puppet, and have the puppet continue to walk smoothly, because that's the point when I have internalized how that motion works. And then he had me turn around and do it with the other hand.

And what I took from that is that you can practice techniques individually, and take time to internalize something because the goal is to not have to think about technique when you're on stage and acting. You just wanna think about the connection with the audience, you just wanna think about the emotions, you wanna think about the art, and not the technique. And so what I have been doing very consciously with my writing is, if I wanna try a new technique or if I want to push myself on something, I'll put everything else into easy setting, and then focus on that one area.

I will sometimes do exercises that are just to practice. Today's a day where I'm gonna think about sensory detail, so I'm gonna bank a bunch of sensory details. There's a exercise that I got from CL Polk, which is for anxiety—five things you see, four things you hear, three things you touch, two things you smell and one thing you taste. And I'll be like, I'm just gonna bank the details of this room.

And then sometimes I'll do things where I think, I just wanna practice dialogue today, and I will just write a back and forth between characters. Sometimes I think, I'm just gonna practice finding the story, and so I'll run myself through exercises for that. So I've been doing that, trying to internalize things, and when I sit down to write now I make a choice about, is this going to be a day where I'm going to outline and plan the structure ahead of time, or is this gonna be a day where I'm gonna see how much I have actually internalized and just try to free write?

Kat Kourbeti: Do you identify then as a plantser, best of both worlds?

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yes. I'm also an ambivert.

Kat Kourbeti: All the things, both the things, all the time.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah, I write science fiction and fantasy. I just—

Kat Kourbeti: Ooh, too complex Mary Robinette. Now, come on.

Mary Robinette Kowal: I know.

Kat Kourbeti: And you also write a lot of different lengths, or you have done in your career generally. I find that witchcraft, personally, and I would like you to tell us your ways, or rather, how did you find moving from one to the other? 'Cause you started in short fiction and then you gradually went longer, I think.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Well, this is a yes and a no. I actually started with novels, but I didn't publish any of those.

Kat Kourbeti: Uh-huh. Okay.

Mary Robinette Kowal: In fact, my first Strange Horizons story is a scene from my first novel. There's a couple of sentences in there that I'm pretty confident I wrote when I was 16, 'cause it took 10 years to write that first novel, which no one will ever read.

Kat Kourbeti: But I guess we've all read a bit of it.

Mary Robinette Kowal: You've read a bit of it, yes. You have read the bit that is not starring my D&D character in a plot that is the combination of A-Team and Battlestar Galactica from the eighties, but not the good parts.

Kat Kourbeti: Gotcha. That's fair.

Mary Robinette Kowal: I hadn't learnt structure yet. Yeah.

So for me, I think that story is story, and that writing techniques are fractal, that techniques that work on a sentence level, work on a scenic level, work on a chapter level, novel level, series level.

Again, coming out of puppetry, one of the things that you're taught is that there are principles of puppetry, and once you know those principles, you can pick up any puppet and at that point, it's just learning the technical tricks of that specific figure. What I find with writing is that it's the same thing. Once you understand kind of the principles, the sort of underlying science of it—for people who are not puppeteers, it's like the book Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. Once you understand, "oh, this is how these things interact", then it's just a matter of adjusting. So using cooking as an example: if you've ever looked at a recipe and it's "oh, but that's gonna make too much food", so you cut it down, the proportions remain the same. It's just the amount of ingredients; you don't need as much flour.

So when I see people moving from novel to short story and having problems, or from short story to novel, what I see happen is that they keep the amount of ingredients, but they don't keep the amount of proportion. This is why you'll read a short story that is really the opening chapter of a novel. It's got novel pacing, but if they were keeping the same proportions—let's say for ease of math, a hundred thousand word novel, and your first chapter is like 4,000 words. That's, what, 4% of that novel? So when you go to short fiction, you can't write 4,000 words of opening. But that's what people will do. What you need to do is you need to write "4% is that opening". And that's where people start to have problems.

So if you've got—again, for the ease of math, because I'm a writer and not a mathematician: if you've got a 10,000 word story, that means that your opening is about 400 words, which is about two pages.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Little over two pages. And that's not what you see when you watch people make that transition. The same thing goes the other direction, and this was where I had a lot of problems when I started publishing novels is that, I would stick the landing and I would get out, because I was writing a short story ending and I wasn't adjusting the amount of ingredients that I was putting in. And so all of my endings felt rushed, and it took me a while to figure out why that was happening.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I find a lot of the time people are used to the opposite thing where it's like, they think in long form kind of pacing and everything else, and then it's the condensing that they find trouble with. So it's interesting that it also works the other way around.

Mary Robinette Kowal: I know people who can write short and cannot go longer, but it's both directions.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Mary Robinette Kowal: But when you get into the heart of what it is, both of them work. And the other thing is, you can be often a lot more adventurous with short fiction because you don't have to sustain it, because it's not something you're gonna experience for a long time. Continuing in the vein of cooking, if you go to a restaurant, there are times when the appetizers are so interesting and then the entree is like, meh. And I honestly think it's just because with the appetizer there's a little more room to take risk, because you aren't going to be eating that flavor for an entire meal. So you can do something a little bit bolder, you can spend a little more money on ingredients that are a little pricier. And that's, I think, similar to what happens in a short story. It's like, yeah, I can do this thing where I'm gonna really play with form, I'm gonna write the entire thing in second person, plural, future tense. And it's great for short fiction. If you've tried to read a novel that was written that way...

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I don't think I could. Yeah.

Mary Robinette Kowal: You have to be really on top of your game to start doing that kind of thing. And so that's the sort of things that I think about when you're moving between short fiction and long fiction. It's like, what are the tools you get to play with? In long fiction you get to have all of the ingredients, it doesn't matter. I am making a savory dish, but am I gonna put in a little bit of vanilla and sugar? Indeed, I am.

Kat Kourbeti: Play around with it. See what happens. Yeah. Adjust the flavors. I love that metaphor.

Mary Robinette Kowal: A little bit of vanilla and sugar, by the way, will really make your spaghetti sauce sing.

Kat Kourbeti: I've never put vanilla in mine. I think I might try. I've definitely done cinnamon before, 'cause where I'm from in Greece, it's commonly like, a little pinch will really zing things up. So yeah. Vanilla next time.

Mary Robinette Kowal: I'm gonna try cinnamon. Cultural exchange.

Kat Kourbeti: I love that!

Mary Robinette Kowal: While we're talking about writing.

Kat Kourbeti: And I'm learning about writing. This is kind of a little masterclass all in itself.

And so would you say you have a favorite format or something you're drawn to more nowadays?

Mary Robinette Kowal: No.

Kat Kourbeti: Fair.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah, it's very much the, what am I not doing right now?

Kat Kourbeti: I think that's completely fair. And if anything, I really appreciate the modular nature of your approach to writing, because that then makes any format approachable. It's not like you're confined or trapped by anything. You're just kind of like, yep, that works, what do I wanna tell today? So that's fascinating.

So now let's talk a little bit about your Strange Horizons story, which—

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Was this your first pro sale? Or almost? Maybe, almost.

Mary Robinette Kowal: It's almost. I think my first pro sale was actually to an anthology.

Kat Kourbeti: Okay.

Mary Robinette Kowal: So I think this would've been my second pro sale.

Kat Kourbeti: Alright. Still early days though, yeah.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah, it's very early days. The thing that I like about Strange Horizons... So first of all, let me set the stage.

Kat Kourbeti: Yes, please.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Kids these days. When I started writing and started submitting things, it was still, you had to send paper manuscripts in the mail. And if you wanted to publish online, all the established professionals were telling you not to do it, that no one took it seriously. But I'm like reading this stuff out of Strange Horizons and it's amazing fiction. It was also a very simple submission process, and I was like, they're doing interesting things. Like the fiction is interesting, it's challenging, it is often approaching genres in different ways than I had been seeing.

So I was extremely interested in Strange Horizons, and sent in a story. That is not the first one I submitted to Strange Horizons, but it is the first thing that was accepted there. Oh, actually that is my first— sorry, I just looked at my, that's my first pro publication. It may not be my actual first pro sale, but it's my first pro publication.

Kat Kourbeti: Ooh. That's awesome.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: I have a list of authors on my spreadsheet for this podcast for "First Pub Club", so you're a member of that, which is neat. It's so cool.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah. So I was very fortunate when I was starting that the places I was selling to, everybody was kind, which is not always the case. But it was such an easy process. And I had been a little intimidated.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. As a new writer as well, I'm sure.

Mary Robinette Kowal: But yeah. Just being able to do everything electronically, I cannot stress how exciting that was. In fact one of the side effects of Strange Horizons existing and doing such good work— there was a magazine, Shimmer Zine, that ran for a while, and Beth Wodzinski and myself and a couple of other people put that together, and people were telling us not to do an online component and we were able to point to Strange Horizons.

And so because there was so much pressure to have print, we wound up doing a hybrid approach, where it was print and an online magazine, but it was because Strange Horizons existed that we felt brave enough to venture into that space.

Kat Kourbeti: Wow. Yeah, it's interesting how the tables have turned.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: 'Cause now people start zines all over the shop, and thinking about print is unthinkable for a lot of people, 'cause it's just, it's expensive, it's difficult. Where do you sell it? How do you distribute? It just becomes this whole big thing.

And just the evolution of the field has just completely upended that expectation.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah. Because if you can't—like now when I'm looking to go sell something, I still love Asimov's and F&SF because I grew up reading them, but I really think twice before I send them a story, no matter how much I love them, because they don't have an online presence that is in any way accessible.

Occasionally they will cross post something, but I'm like, this story goes to a very small, like, I can't point anyone to it. 'Cause once it's published, once that print thing is off the newstands, that story just doesn't exist essentially.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. And it's such a shame that like, that has to be a consideration for you as a writer. You have to think about "how many people will be able to even read my story". That's wild.

Mary Robinette Kowal: It's so different from where it was.

Kat Kourbeti: My goodness. And so what was your experience like with the submission? So you sell a story, and then what happened? Did you have to edit it down quite a bit or was it more or less what you sent?

Mary Robinette Kowal: Please remember that we were talking about things that were 20 years ago.

Kat Kourbeti: Absolutely.

Mary Robinette Kowal: What I remember about it is that I was surprised at how few editorial notes there were.

The ones that I got—I think Jed Hartman was the one who was editing me—that they were mostly questions. Which I have now learned that the best editors just ask you questions, and give you room to figure things out. It was, as I said, very gentle, super easy process. I should have gone and looked in my email archive, to really be able to answer this. I think that we just did one round, that he sent me some questions, I answered them, I sent them back. And then, there's the copy edit stuff later.

But yeah, it was very easy.

Kat Kourbeti: That's really nice to hear. I think not much has changed in that department in 25 years. I think that's the general approach we still have, which is let the story work for itself, and if we can prod it a little bit, then great. But otherwise, I don't think our editors are in the business of fully changing a story, or really guiding it with a heavy hand, if that makes sense.

Mary Robinette Kowal: If you're buying a story because you like the story and the author's voice, the more you insert yourself, the less it becomes the thing that you bought.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Tell me a little bit about the background. We touched upon it a little bit that this may or may not have been part of your first novel.

Mary Robinette Kowal: It was definitely part of my first novel.

Kat Kourbeti: So tell us a little bit about that. However much you want to share, without retreating into yourself again.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Into the past!

So I was an art major in college and Portrait of Ari—in hindsight, I think one of the reasons that it sold was that the piece that I pulled out of the novel was a piece that pulled the most on my own personal experience. That was not the only thing I submitted to Strange Horizons, because I did submit things after that too, but I think that what was going on with that one—it begins very late at night in an art studio, and Ari and her boyfriend, whose name I can't remember, are in the studio, and he cuts himself with an X-Acto knife, which is a thing that actually happened a lot when I was an art major, and every now and then, like a friend of mine got really bad cut. I never got a really bad cut, but I had some that frightened me, because what you're doing is you're drawing the knife towards you when you're cutting a mat, and if it slips, you can go right into your thumb, where all of the connectors are.

And so I had a couple that were—this is the thing that's happening, this is the catalyst. I did not know at the time that was "the breaking of the normal", I didn't know that was an event story, I didn't know any of that stuff. This was one of the stories that I accidentally backed into and I'm like, "wait, what happened? That's a good story. All three pieces match, huh!" But it is an exploration of trust, what happens when someone mucks about with your memory, and you don't remember it, but you just, there's something that is no longer comfortable.

I know, but in the version that is on Strange Horizons, it is up in the air exactly what's going on with Ari. It's pretty clear that she's probably not exactly human. I know, because she comes out of my novel, that she is an alien who can... I was 16—because this makes so much sense—she's an alien who can shapeshift to be either a cougar with the option of adding wings, so a winged cougar, no wings, human with wings, human with no wings, halfway in between, with or without wings.

Because that's exactly how biology works.

Kat Kourbeti: Yes.

Mary Robinette Kowal: And that's also exactly how convergent evolution works on different planets. It's very real that way. And of course also, she could heal things with her mind, and you can really see that in the way I approach the healing aspects of this scene.

So yeah, there's a lot of my teenager in that story. You can tell what I was reading, you can tell what television I was watching, But you can also see this is my experience as an art major. And I think that was the thing that actually made it.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. There's a real lived-in approach to how you deal with the injury and the art stuff, you buy into it very easily as a reader, because you can tell that it comes from like a real place of knowledge and experience.

The alien cougar wing thing... frankly, even (with) that being in the background, what's on the page is so delightfully vague. She could be anything. On my first read I was like, "oh, maybe like an angel or like some kind of being that has these healing powers, or a fairy or like any sort of thing like that."

But that vagueness does leave that room to really wander. 'Cause yeah, the boyfriend, I think his name is Tom. You don't remember it 'cause it's very like, "eh, his name is Tom."

Mary Robinette Kowal: No, no, no. You don't understand. She is a cat, his name is Tom...

Kat Kourbeti: Oh no. I see.

Mary Robinette Kowal: I am a hundred percent certain that's why I did that. 'Cause I was being so clever, 'cause I was 16.

Kat Kourbeti: I see what you did there.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Just to be clear for people, because I don't want anyone to think that I published this when I was like 18—I started writing this when I was 16, and worked on it for 10 years. Finished the novel version when I was 26, and then somewhere in there stopped writing for about a decade. So I published this in my thirties.

Kat Kourbeti: Wow.

Mary Robinette Kowal: And was willing to let people...

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Okay, so here's a couple thoughts I have though, based on this information: first of all, I love that this comes from teenage Mary Robinette, with everything that means. 'Cause there is something unfiltered when you write as a teenager, you just write what you love. And I think a lot of the time we tamp that down as writers in order to write what sells or what people might wanna read, whatever your impression of that is. And my mission, for example, as a writer, is to return to that kind of joy that I had as a teenager.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yes.

Kat Kourbeti: To write for her, not for 35-year-old me who's like, "but what should my first novel be? Is it significant? Is it doing something? Is it saying something about the world?" And I'm like, I just wanna write a story that's fun, that's got all the feelings and the themes and the stuff that I loved engaging with back then. And if other people love it, great. And if they don't, whatever. It's a difficult thing to achieve.

Mary Robinette Kowal: So, I think it is because we have been trained, especially people who grew up in Western education, that there's either a right or a wrong. Test answers, essays, even classes that aren't pass/fail, it's like there's a right answer. And when you get into theatre and storytelling and communication, there's not always one way to do things. That's actually a thing we say: there's not a single way to hold a puppet. You're constantly shifting your grip. And I feel that way: whoever is writing something, that they have different ways of approaching it because their brain is different, their background experience is different.

But the other piece of that is that I think that the storyteller is only half of the story. I think the reader is supplying the other half. We are dependent on the reader to build the worlds in their head. We describe stuff, we can't describe everything that's in the room. So we are dependent on those readers, they're our collaborators.

So I think the thing that again, I accidentally did with 'Portrait of Ari' was because I left the right amount of vagueness, and because Tom is my POV character, he doesn't know. And so the reader is in the same spot, but the reader is left with their memories while he is divorced from his. So I think that what happens there is that I am leaving room for the reader to put more of themself into the story.

This is one of the things with live puppet theater in particular, is that the puppet only exists because of an agreement between the performer and the audience member. The audience member agrees that for the duration of the show, they're going to believe that puppet is alive. And so one of the things that puppets do better than actors do is die. Because when you put the puppet down and you step away from it, it has gone back to being an inanimate object, and you've also killed a tiny piece of the audience because they've inserted themselves into that. So I think that also happens in the story, and I think that was the thing that I did accidentally in those early days.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I totally agree. You definitely do in this, and I love that there's a through line with the puppetry in the writing. And a hundred percent on when the puppets die, the lifelessness, it's so much more than a human could achieve by staying still. The effect is super felt. Love that.

Mary Robinette Kowal: I'll talk about puppets at any opportunity. So I just insert it into everything I'm talking about basically. That and cooking.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I think cooking is a fantastic metaphor that a lot of people can more or less relate to, even if they don't do a lot of cooking, because you've (probably) done a little bit. With puppetry, you've probably watched something, so there's definitely an experience as an audience member.

But it's very interesting to hear it from someone who's done the puppetry and those techniques and what that can teach you, because it's just an aspect that most of us don't really get to do. That's really cool.

So that's then 'Portrait of Ari', which is only two and a half thousand words, but it packs a punch. And I will say that has brought me back to something you have become a really big proponent of, which is the MICE Quotient. And you mentioned a little bit earlier that "oh, this is an event story".

So how big a part is it now, when you sit down and you write? Do you think about that sort of thing consciously, as you're sitting down and saying— (MRK nods) Okay, yeah?

Mary Robinette Kowal: I do tend to think of it often. It depends on if I'm on a planning or pantsing day.

Kat Kourbeti: Sure.

Mary Robinette Kowal: On a planning day I think about it at the beginning.

Often what I'll do is I will throw some ideas at the page and then I'll ask a series of questions like, is the character navigating or trying to get someplace? Then I probably have a milieu story. Do they have questions? It's an inquiry story. Are they uncomfortable with themselves or trying to change some aspect of themself? That's a character story. Is something wrong with the world? Did normal break in some way?

And so I will use it often as a diagnostic tool to help me decide what to leave out, because that is often the harder thing, and it helps me move the story in a kind of consistent direction without bogging me down in necessarily needing to answer all of the things right at the top when I'm starting.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Mary Robinette Kowal: And sometimes when I write myself into a corner and have to go back and fix it, the MICE Quotient is very useful because I can say, okay, wait a minute. What's happening in this scene? Alright, so originally the scene was a milieu scene, but it doesn't work, because plot hole. So what other milieu, what other environmental hazard navigational things can I bring in, or solutions can I find here? And that will often help me find solutions that don't make me like, have to toss the entire thing out. I can just (make) ingredient substitutions.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Back to the cooking.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah. Back to the cooking. It's like "ah!"

Kat Kourbeti: There you go. Yeah. You have to bring in some acid to cancel out the too much salt, et cetera, et cetera.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Exactly. I think, again using the cooking metaphor, when I started figuring structure out, I really wanted someone to just give me a recipe. And then as I've gotten more comfortable, first it was, oh, now I'm comfortable with this recipe, and so I can swap my ingredients. And then, now I can start doing more adventurous recipes. And now it's like, I can go into a kitchen and cook improvisationally.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Someday I'll get to molecular gastronomy, but for writing.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, anything that just plays with complex things in really small scales. Would love to see that from you.

A big thing that you're famous for on the internet is all of your writing advice and the MICE Quotient stuff, and you also are a seasoned podcaster with Writing Excuses, where you talk about this stuff at length. What part has that played in your writing journey, would you say?

Mary Robinette Kowal: First of all, I love doing Writing Excuses. We are in our 20th season.

Kat Kourbeti: Ooh.

Mary Robinette Kowal: I joined in season six, so this season is me, Howard Tayler, Dan Wells, DongWon Song, and Erin Roberts. And what I love about it is that when we are talking about writing, it means that I have to sit down and go, "okay, no, wait, how do I actually do that?"

The really exciting things are when we're talking about a form that I'm not familiar with, and I have to sit down and do a little bit of homework and think, okay well, how does that work? And then I come into the room and I'm like, okay, great, ready to podcast! And one of the others will come up with something that is so brilliant, that my brain will just blip outta the podcast for a second and I will go solve a problem that I've been banging my head against with in my own fiction. And I'll come back, I'm like, oh, I haven't talked for a while. Which is why I still listen to the podcast sometimes 'cause I'm like, I zoned out there 'cause I got excited.

That's the thing for me, that it's given me a lot more conscious tools that I can use. One of the ways I think about it is that doing the podcast, talking about it, teaching on my Patreon—means that I have to have my kitchen in order. Because I need to be able to reach for something immediately so that I can show it to someone. I'm inviting somebody in. And left to my own devices, that stuff would be scattered everywhere. And I'd be like, wait, what do you do in the middle of a story? Eh, I'll fix it later.

And now I can be like, what do you do in the middle of the story? Oh, I just had my hand on that. So that's I think one of the biggest things, is it keeps the tools closer to hand. I also think that one of the fastest ways to internalize something in any field is to teach someone else.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, definitely. And it applies to, yeah, every field generally. So a hundred percent.

Mary Robinette Kowal: If I can explain it to someone else, chances are that I am beginning to understand it myself.

Kat Kourbeti: So that's a big part of your presence online for sure, and probably career in general, is the teaching. And it's been really cool to see people join your cohorts or your Patreon or whatever, and then come out with their own books and their stories and things like that. Like actually seeing it work, is really cool.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah. In the Writing Excuses newsletter, we do Success Stories.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Mary Robinette Kowal: I knew that people listened to the podcast, and I'd had people tell me, "oh, thank you so much, it really made a difference". But the success stories, like the one that we just published, she was like, "yeah I knew that I wanted to write and then I stumbled across Writing Excuses", and now her debut novel is coming out from like one of the Big Six. I'm like, we helped. Wow.

But it's very cool, and also the philosophy that I have as a teacher, and all of us actually at the podcast have, is that our job is not to make someone a brilliant writer. Our job is to help them be the writer that they were always going to be, but to try to remove as many of the obstacles and hopefully help them level up faster and with fewer tears. Can't promise no tears.

But I've taken writing workshops where what the instructor wanted to do was to make you into a version of them, that there was one way to write. And I don't think that's true. I don't think there's one way to write, I don't think there's one type of story to tell, and that's again, like one of the reasons I like Strange Horizons, because that is the kind of fiction you all do. It's not one kind of story, it's not one way to tell it, it's not one sort of voice. It's all of it.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Mary Robinette Kowal: And that's just, it's just beautiful.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. It is what we do. Very well put, yeah.

Mary Robinette Kowal: I was trying to remind myself of things about Strange Horizons, I checked my website 'cause I was like, when did I publish what?

Did you know what we did for the 10th anniversary of Strange Horizons?

Kat Kourbeti: There was an ebook, I think? [Editor's note: Actually that was for our 15th anniversary!]

Mary Robinette Kowal: The 10th anniversary, there was a nationwide celebration where different authors would do readings. We organized a reading in Portland, where we had six Pacific Northwest authors who came to a coffee shop, and we would have two people read and then coffee and conversation, and then two people read. And the audio of it is still up on my website.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh my goodness. That's amazing. Oh wow. I'm sure that people would love to listen to that, so we'll link it in the show notes. Thank you for that. Thank you for keeping it.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah. It was Ken Brady, Tina Connolly, Brenda Cooper, me, Jennifer Linnaea, and Tamela Viglione.

Kat Kourbeti: It's a great lineup. Wow.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah. So I just ran across that, I'm like, holy cow. The things that I find.

Kat Kourbeti: When you're such a good archivist though, you just gotta keep the things and put them somewhere and that's it. So thank you so much for holding onto that, cause that's the sort of thing that would absolutely go lost if somebody hadn't recorded it and put it on a website.

So thank you so much for your wisdom, your knowledge, your beautiful cooking and puppetry metaphors and analogies, and for spending your time with us. Is there anything forthcoming or recent that you'd like to plug or promote?

Mary Robinette Kowal: As we are recording this, I am about a month out from The Martian Contingency, just came out. That's the fourth book in the Lady Astronaut series. So if you would like hopeful fiction set on Mars in 1970 that's available for you. And it will work as a standalone even though it's book five.

And then in October, I'm very excited, I have a novella coming out from Saga, and I dunno if you remember the old Ace Doubles, but they were books, it had one novel on one side and another one on the other side, and you flipped them over. So Sam J Miller and I have a Saga Double coming out: I have a novella called Apprehension; Sam's is called Red Star Hustle. They're both exploring the idea of noir in science fiction, but in different directions. Mine is like, Hitchcock in space!, and his is like, Chandler in space!

Kat Kourbeti: That works!

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah. I'm excited about that. That comes out October 21st.

Kat Kourbeti: That's fantastic. Thank you. Yeah, we'll look forward to that, and we can find you on social media as well. And where can we find your beautiful talking cat? Except for behind you over there, napping.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Besides that, Elsie does actually have her own Instagram account, and YouTube— no, her YouTube is mine, and I cross post everything onto my Instagram, because I know what people want.

Kat Kourbeti: Listen, we're here for the cat stuff.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Look, I know where I stand in this. So Elsie is on Instagram as ElsieWants, which is constant. If you can't remember that, the easiest thing to do is to head to my website and sign up for my newsletter, because every month when I send it out, it's got classes, what I'm reading, what I'm crocheting, but it also has Elsie's Corner.

Kat Kourbeti: Thank you so much, Mary Robinette, and have a lovely rest of your day.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Thank you. And happy 25th Anniversary to Strange Horizons.

Kat Kourbeti: Thank you so much!

Strange Horizons at 25 is a project helmed by Kat Kourbeti and Michael Ireland, in collaboration with the Strange Horizons Editorial Collective. The credit music was composed by Michael Ireland and Andrew Gorman.

Until next time, stay strange!