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What did you learn about yourself in the pursuit of researching these characters and writing these boats?
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Well, it's a funny thing.
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So as a beginning novel, so a really important thing to do is to send your manuscript, your pages, whatever you have, out to others, right?
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Beta readers of our groups of friends and fellow writers and get feedback because you just don't know what's not coming across at the page, especially, you know, at first till you got a few books under your belt.
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And consistently, I was getting responses like, yeah, this is all good and everything, beautiful scenery, but where's the drama?
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Where's the conflict?
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You know, you need to it it's a novel, you need to have kind of, you know, constant every scene.
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It's got to have some kind of conflict.
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And what I learned about myself is I don't like conflict.
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You know, in my own personal life, I pretty much avoid it.
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I mean, I I tease one end of my my family, they're kind of like, you know, uh uh I just stereotype them, but they're like of Italian heritage, right?
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And they're just loud and voisterous, and when they have something, they talk it all out and they say terrible things to each other that just horrifies me.
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And then, you know, 10 minutes later, it's all gone and la la, you know, it's that's how they work it through.
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Where the other side of my family, more Irish American, we would rather just hold a grudge for 10 years.
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You know, we just don't say anything, we just eventually we'll we'll get over it.
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You know, I don't think that's the better way.
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Um, but that's what I learned.
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I I think I was avoiding conflict and drama in my own writing because I avoid it in my own life.
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So, but I did I did learn a workaround.
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Well, do you think that feels over?
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I mean, and and yeah, and I guess in terms of the person listening in the quiet corner of a room, this whole notion of avoiding conflict, do you think that's good or bad, or it just depends on the situation and circumstance?
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Because again, a lot of what what this podcast aims to fulfill is that self-awareness, that inner spirit, and conflict is something that is a part of everyday life.
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It is, it is.
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And I think actually my writing journey and realizing this avoidance of conflict, which is not always the best thing, I I think it's uh I think it's I've improved myself through through this knowledge and improved my writing through knowing uh that I'm avoiding this and and finding ways that I could resolve have drama and conflict.
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And it didn't have to be, you know, loud yelling at each other or swearing, which you know I really hate or physical.
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So much of the drama and the conflict, as in real life, is internal, right?
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It's the internal conflict that I think drives a story, and that is something that we need to be very aware of in our own life, how our own internal conflict affects how we deal with others, because they don't know, they're not in our head, right?
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And unl unless we share that and and understand it and know how to deal with it, I don't know that we can progress in a relationship.
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So I I think it's a pretty important thing.
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Yeah, I guess it reminds me of one of the uh previous uh guests, he was the personal priest of Grandka Chopra and Nick Jonas, and he said that 90% of our worries, struggles, challenges are self-created in our minds due to the wrong beliefs, due to the wrong knowledge, um, due to the wrong expectations.
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And so I certainly can understand that point, Tracy, that you just brought up.
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Inner awareness, very important.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Yep.
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And then did you ever live inside the characters of these uh ladies and women that you that you wrote about?
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I always I always do.
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I, you know, whoever might I have to really identify with a a protagonist, you know, and that's one of the reasons I I choose how I choose them, because I'm sort of living in their body.
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I'm seeing with their eyes and hearing with their ears and and feeling I'm I'm that's how I write.
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I write very sensory, you know.
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So I'm trying to to think how they would be thinking, you know, and and forget about me and put myself into the, I guess, you know, like a method actor.
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I've never been an actor.
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But I I think of myself as a writer, as sort of an actor taking on a part and really trying to to live the part and understand their motivations that they would have, the character would have, not myself.
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Yeah, and I think uh, you know, on that on that topic, uh, Tracy, in your book, Catherine the Right Sister, you write about the interaction between Catherine, Orvo, and Wilbur, where the brothers were having a difficult time with their flying machine at the time before their historical flight of Kitty Hawk.
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And Catherine states one day, boys, I need you excuse me, boys, what I need from you is a decision.
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Is this still your dream, or are you happy with the direction your lives have taken?
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If it is the latter, I should focus on my own happiness.
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I guess what do you make of that sentence from your own journey, or perhaps the journey of other women that sacrificed their well-being for others?
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Yeah, I think uh there does come a point where you make a conscious choice.
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You know, I I think it's it's fine to live for others, live for the family, but bottom line, uh, you have to have your own fulfillment, your own happiness too.
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And I think it's okay, I think in Catherine's case, she joined their journey because that in her mind was a more important journey than what she had originally set out to do, which would have been the traditional journey for a woman of the time, get married, raise children, and uh run a household.
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But frankly, she'd already done that because she'd run the household since her her mother, their mother had died, and when she was still in her mid-teens.
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So it's like kind of been there, done that.
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So, but she was perfectly willing and probably wanted to still have a bit of the traditional dream.
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But if it worked for everybody, she was also willing to, you know, to sacrifice some part of herself, not all of herself.
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And I think that's key, some part of herself because the greater picture for the entire family was more important than what would be her very first choice to do for herself.
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And I I think that's you know, true.
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Yeah, I think I think it is I I think it is a matter of of balance, you know.
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If if she did chose selfishly, how is that balancing everything in her life?
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So yeah, there's always a balance.
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I, you know, as Louis mentioned already, I was a military wife and I was happy to do it.
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Was that what I had set out to do when I went to college to be a nurse and and you know, thought I was gonna, you know, save the world that way, patient at a time?
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Um, but then falling in love uh kind of changes thing, and then you know the goal becomes more more global and and inclusive, and and uh yeah, you have to make a conscious decision.
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Where do you really wanna, where do you want to really want to go?
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Whose whose goals uh take take precedence, and can you do them both at the same time?
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Usually not.
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You know, you can't usually do them both at the same time.
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So there's you know, and in marriage, it's always give and take, right?
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So, you know, but now my husband is following me around uh on my book tour, so that that that's a that's a switch.
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And and And tell the citizens of Yognation the book tour that you were on board, that was um incredible with Queen Mary too, uh amazing.
