Shop Talk: Rachel Howzell Hall Writes Longhand, Loves Office Supplies, and Has One Magical Story About a Lost Manuscript

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Rachel Howzell Hall is the critically acclaimed author and Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist for And Now She’s Gone. A New York Times bestselling author of The Good Sister with James Patterson, Rachel is also an Anthony, International Thriller Writers and Left Award nominee.

There’s more, a whole lot more to Rachel’s amazing bio and her rise to the very tip top of the crime-writing scene. Take for example, the eleven-year gap between her first published book and her second, or the birth of her daughter and a breast cancer diagnosis. Through it all, Rachel held tight to a passion for writing unlike any I’ve ever encountered before.

Rachel’s process is truly inspiring. Her painstaking attention to detail, especially in the revision stages, is something to be admired and, quite frankly, studied. You’d have a tough time finding a harder-working author in the business. Rachel’s infatuation with crime stories goes all the way back to her devout childhood. I’ll let her take it from here . . .

Rachel Howzell Hall: I was that kid, like all of us, who just kind of wrote on everything. The back of church bulletins. My brother’s yearbook. I liked books. They were my safe place. Writing was my therapy. I was a religious kid. I was very afraid of hell.

Eli Cranor: What kind of religion?

RHH: Seventh Day Adventist. As someone who read a lot, and took things, sometimes, too literally, I was like, I don’t want to go to hell. I don’t want my guardian angel to leave me. And I think that was my first brush with crime and punishment. I wanted to know why people broke the rules. So, yeah, becoming a crime writer was a natural fit. But early on, I didn’t think I would be able to be a writer. There just weren’t many Black writers at that time. We had the greats. Toni Morrison. Alice Walker. James Baldwin. But who can be that? I read genre. I loved Stephen King. Jackie Collins. Sidney Sheldon. Tom Clancy. I just didn’t see any writers who looked like me. It wasn’t until Terri McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale, and Walter Mosely’s Devil In A Blue Dress that I saw contemporary Black life that seemed accessible to me as a creative. I was 32 when I published my first novel. It came out in 2002. September 11th, 2002.

EC: Oh, man.

RHH: Yeah, that sucked. That sucked. I had a great editor, agent, publisher—they all tried, but it just didn’t catch. And I couldn’t, for the life of me, get another book deal until 2013.

EC: An eleven year period between the first and the second book. Holy hell. Tell me what that was like. 

RHH: So, yeah. There was 9/11, which was not the best time for a book to come out. But 2002 was also an interesting time for Black literature. There was this whole rise in urban fiction. Gritty, east-coast, Chicago stuff. There was this certain Black voice that publishers wanted, and it wasn’t me. It wasn’t Los Angeles, where we’re kind of chill. I mean, we have our own struggles, but even our ghettos look nice because of the sunshine and the palm trees. My voice wasn’t Black enough. I got letters from agents and editors saying exactly that. So I just kept living and writing. I grew up a lot in my thirties. I was diagnosed with breast cancer while pregnant with my daughter, but I just kept writing. Like I said, writing was my therapy. I even self-published two novels on Amazon. Those stories got me closer to the work I wanted to do. I wanted to write crime novels in L.A. with Black female protagonists, and that’s just what I ended up doing. So, yeah, my thirties—while they sucked in so many different ways—they were like an in-depth writing course on pathos, fear, frustration and anxiety, all the stuff we write about as crime novelists.

EC: All that experience has led to some amazing books. How does a story start off for you. Right after you get that first idea, what do you?

RHH: I look for cases that are similar. Has this happened before, and if so, how did it end? I want to make sure there’s something there. It’s kind of like tracing. I want to see how it started and how it ended in real life. So, yeah, the first thing I do is Google the hell out of a story and take notes. I’m scribbling on everything. Gathering and thinking, that’s what I’m doing at this point. Here’s a thing I’ve noticed since the pandemic. I need liminal time to think about things. Being in traffic is perfect for that, and lucky for me, I live in Los Angeles. But now that I work from home mostly, I don’t have that traffic time to just sit and think. So it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to say for the book I’m working on now. It felt so immediate, sitting here at the desk, staring at my computer. It was like I had to have it. It had to come out now. And it wasn’t working. I noticed this on a long drive to take my car to get serviced. I’m driving along, and my brain just sort of opens up, and I’m like, “Oh my, I missed you! Where have you been?”

EC: How do you pick your ideas?

RHH: I’m very picky about the stories I tell. There has to be something that scares me, frustrates me, pisses me off. Something that will take me through ninety-thousand words.

EC: And how long does this “gathering and thinking” part of your process generally take?

RHH: I give myself two weeks. That’s the limit for all the preliminary things. All the research before I launch into a long synopsis. You know, we’re writers. We can always keep looking and clicking. Past a point, though, it just becomes procrastination. I’m on a schedule. I have to get going.

EC: You’ve researched, you’ve written that long synopsis—then what?

RHH: I do a very concise outline. Part of that is because I’m a control freak. I need to have a map. I like to cross things off and feel like I’m making progress. I do let myself wander from the outline, if need be. I’m fine with that because I know I have a map.

EC: What does your outlining process look like?

RHH: I’m Gen X, so of course there are index cards involved. I’ve tried Scrivener, but it’s too much. I don’t have enough time to figure that out. But there’s this platform called Plottr that does exactly what I need it to do. I like looking at things linearly, and this program does that. Once I have everything lined out there, I start my first draft. That’s where I am in the process with the book I’m working on now.

EC: How do you schedule your drafting time? 

RHH: I get up at 4:40 AM every day to work on my writing. This isn’t just drafting time. I count researching, outlining, editing, all of it, as writing time. I will take Christmas, and sometimes Thanksgiving, off. But, yeah, I started getting up that early because I’m a mom. My husband was the morning parent, which meant he’d take our daughter to school. So I needed to be done with everything to pick her up in the afternoon. That’s where it started. But then I discovered that it’s so wonderfully quiet. It’s just me, my dog, and my coffee. I sit and write for two hours, and I get to give the best words to myself. I deserve the best words, the freshest brain, and that’s the only time I can get that. By nine at night, “Golden Girls” is on the TV and I’m in bed. I’m off until 4:40 the next morning.

EC: During these morning sessions, are you aiming for a specific word count? 

RHH: I am aiming for a chapter and a half. I say a half because it’s easier, for me at least, to stop right in the middle of something. That way I know where I’m going the next day. I don’t have any idea about the word count. I write my first drafts longhand. I’m just flipping pages.

EC: Yes! I’m a huge fan of longhand. Why did you choose to work this way? 

RHH: At my day job, I can just type directly into the computer, but for my novels, I need space. Space to be awful, write crap, cross things out. That’s what I need to get things moving in the beginning.

EC: Do you have a pen and a pad of choice? 

RHH: I like colored pens. Pilot gel pens. I will use one color per session so I can see my progress. For pads, I like college-ruled paper from Office Depot or Staples. Office supply stores are my happy places. I get excited about that stuff. I recently discovered graphing paper. My daughter had to have these big pads of graphing paper for her math class, and I started using them to write. It was kind of exciting. A nice change.

EC: Do you transcribe your longhand pages as you go?

RHH: Sometimes, yeah. When I’m not really feeling like “writing,” I will use that as an out. Like, if I’ve only written a chapter, but there’s still more time left in the morning, I’ll start transcribing. And that’s valid. When you’re transcribing, you’re still writing. You’re adding things to the story. It’s such a different thing, though. When you’re writing longhand, there’s no monitor saying, That’s not a sentence. Your grammar is off. It’s like jazz. That’s where jazz comes from. There are no rules; it just happens.

EC: How many of these pads does it usually take until the first draft is done?

RHH: Around four, generally. And when I go back to transcribe it all, I count that as my second draft. I’m still rewriting as I’m doing that. I’m adding things I didn’t know before.

EC: So you basically write your whole draft longhand, then go back and transcribe it into the computer as a second draft?

RHH: Exactly. And for the most part, it’s thoughtless. I can sit with my husband while he’s playing video games, and it doesn’t matter. I’m just getting it done. What matters most is that I get the first draft written.

EC: Here’s a question, the question, maybe. What do you do with these handwritten first drafts before you get them into the computer? Aren’t you afraid you’ll lose them? Or the dog might eat the last two pads?

RHH: Okay, I have a story. But, yeah, I keep them in a plastic Tupperware bin. I keep them close. I learned that the hard way. For Trail of Echoes, which was the third book in the Lou Norton series, I was on deadline. I had my four-hundred page, printed-out manuscript, which is also how I do edits. I have all this work done, and I put the manuscript in this eight-hundred-dollar designer bag my husband got me for Christmas. I’m going to pick up my daughter for a hair appointment. We get there, we’re running late, and I toss the bag in the trunk of my car. Thirty hours later—it takes a long time to do Black hair—we come out, and my hairdresser is like, “Did you just open your trunk?” My trunk is open. The bag—the fancy, designer bag with the manuscript inside—is gone.

EC: Oh, no . . .

RHH: Gone, baby, gone. I am crying. We call the police, and they’re like, “Yeah? This is L.A. You’re not getting that bag back.” I get home. I’m a wreck. So, I take the next day off from my day job, which I basically just spend crying. My husband goes out that day actually looking for the manuscript, thinking someone might have thrown it out the window or something, but it was trash day. All the bins in the neighborhood were already empty. So around four in the afternoon, after being upset and crying all day, I actually say a prayer, asking the Lord to just give it all back to me. I go downstairs. We’re watching “Hell’s Kitchen.” I’m self-medicating with red wine, and our doorbell rings. I’m drinking, so I’m not getting up. My husband goes to the door. He calls out for me. So I finally go, and our neighbor’s daughter is standing on the front porch, holding my bag. Inside, there’s the manuscript. My manuscript. Someone had placed the bag at her mom’s business. Which, I didn’t know, was three doors down from the hairdresser. I don’t know who put that bag outside that door. I don’t know what happened. In Los Angeles? Really? All of it came back to me? I mean, what? It had to be God. After that, if I happen to have my manuscript with me, I take it inside the store. I might look stupid, but I’m not letting that happen again.

EC: Ah, the perils of the hard copy. 

RHH: Yeah, I learned my lesson that day. Take your stuff with you!

EC: Okay, so you have your first, handwritten draft. You have your second draft which you type into the computer. Then you print it all out, right? How do you go about revising from that point?

RHH: Third draft is my favorite. There’s this woman named Margie Lawson who came up with the “Edits System.” I don’t use the whole thing, but there’s this one portion about using highlighters that I really like. What you’re supposed to do is take a chapter and get different colored highlighters to mark the different parts of that chapter. Red means action, all the verbing. Green is description. Blue is dialogue. Yellow is exposition. Pink is visceral. What you do is take your chapter, and use one highlighter per read through. I start with green. All the description. I highlight it and edit that. I do that with each color. It makes the elephant easier to eat. You’re paying attention to just one element at a time. You also get to see what your weakness is. Technically, there should be all colors on the page. I noticed that I lacked pink. I didn’t do visceral very well. So now I’m very aware of that when I’m writing my first draft. So, yeah, that’s why the third, fourth, fifth drafts are always my favorite. It really appeals to the person who loves buying office supplies and crossing off lists systematically!

EC: That is quite the process. Once you’ve taken it through that multi-colored round of edits, is the manuscript ready to send off?

RHH: Not quite. Not until I’ve read the whole thing out loud to my husband. That’s where you hear the language, the music, that jazz we were talking about earlier. I’ll also figure out if something is boring during this time. My husband might point it out, or he’ll yawn, or pick up his phone. But I can feel it too, when the words fall flat. Feels like I’m cheating.

EC: How do you structure this reading? Is it all in one burst, or in chunks?

RHH: Chunks. I’ll read three or four chapters per night. My husband is very honest. Sometimes it pisses me off, but I know he wants this to work as much as I do. He is just as invested in my writing career as I am. We’ve been married for twenty-five years. He remembers being in my studio apartment, hearing me read bad prose. These days, he’s just as excited as I am. This writing stuff also helps our daughter, and she’s the most important thing in our lives. It’s a family thing. I get them involved in other ways too. Both of them. I like characters and dialogue, weird, funny things. So now, I have them listen for stuff. They’ll be out and send me a text with a picture. There’s nothing better than getting a text from one of them that says, “I think you’ll like this.” We’re all in this together. It’s a family endeavor.

EC: And then you’re done? 

RHH: Yeah. I send it off to my agent, and she has edits. Those usually take me about two weeks. Then I send it to my editor. That’s a whole different kind of editing experience. I have a developmental editor. He puts me through my paces. It’s a bloody, bloody battle. Not really, because I enjoy it. He’s so smart. He respects me. But it’s really like being edited within an inch of your life. And then, in the end, it’s the best story I can possibly tell.

EC: How long does this entire process take?

RHH: Nine months. I always try to schedule it so I send the book off and then go on vacation. I don’t want to think about it after that.

EC: Oh, that’s great. So you actually have some sort of “defrag” process.

RHH: Yes. I need a real vacation. Not like a stay-cation. I need to leave this house. I’m the type who has to always have a project. I just can’t sit and enjoy myself. My mother was from the South. We could never say the word bored. So I always had a project growing up. Even now, I just can’t sit still. So, yeah, getting away is part of the defrag process. But if I can’t do that, video games are my getaway.

EC: Video games?

RHH: Yeah, my husband lucked out. When we met, I had my own SEGA Genesis system. We have everything now. The Oculus. We even have a PS5, believe it or not. I’ll play the same freaking games over and over again. I’m now playing Fallout 4 for like the third time. I just love wandering the wasteland, building up my armor and weapons and discovering bottle caps in places. If I’m playing a video game, my family knows I’m really relaxing. Reading, not as much. Reading’s more like homework, especially when it’s for ARCs and blurbs and all that stuff. During vacation, I can read for fun, but that’s about it. I’m always looking for the trick. How did they say that? How did they do that?

EC: After hearing this beautiful process, all the work you put into this writing thing, why do you do it? Why do you write?

RHH: For one, I can’t add. So there’s that. But also, there’s so many stories to tell. So many things to figure out. I think writers, we have this gift of listening closely, paying attention to what’s said and not being said. We can be like John the Baptist and warn people of things to come, what they should look out for, how to live, what happens when you’re bad, what happens when you’re good, what to celebrate and what not. We get to clarify life for people, and help folks escape. That’s my talent. That’s why I do it, and it doesn’t require me to carry the one. All I need’s my pen and pad.

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