Surviving a Social Media Witch Hunt and Threading a Theme Through Your Memoir with Natalie MacLean

Natalie [3:46]
It’s great to be here with you, Lisa. Thank you so much. As you know, I’m a fan of your courses. So, when you asked me to be here, I thought, yay, we get to talk again.

Lisa [3:56]
I was equally excited, because I was driving down the road, and I heard you on a very famous podcast. And I was like, I know that voice! And I know that story! So, I was very excited to invite you onto the show. I have your book here. So, anyone who’s watching the video, Wine Witch on Fire, what a great title. I want to begin by asking you what you would like us to know about the book and about you?

Natalie [4:21]
Sure. So, as you said, it is Wine Witch on Fire, and the subtitle is brought to you by all the dismal Ds: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Defamation, and Drinking Too Much. It is the story of how one woman resurrects her life and career in the glamorous but sexist wine industry. It starts with a shock. My husband of 20 years, a high-powered CEO, asks for a divorce. I felt blindsided, and then my year gets even worse when an online mob comes for my career. So, I am wavering between despair and determination. I have to fight for my son, my reputation, my self-worth. Along the way, I really do question my role in the slick marketing that encourages women to drink too much. I have to reconnect with the vineyards that once brought me joy, the friends who sustained me, my own belief in second chances. So that’s why I call Wine Witch on Fire a true coming-of-middle-age story about transforming your life and finding love along the way.

Lisa [5:26]
I love how you frame things. I think the way you frame things is a part of your voice. I mean, I think it’s the voice we see online. It’s the voice we see in this book. I imagine it’s also the voice we see in your other books, which are specifically about wine. So, let’s begin there. How did you develop this strong, specific, and engaging voice?

Natalie [5:53]
Thank you, Lisa. That means a lot coming from you. Growing up, my mother was a single parent, a schoolteacher, and we moved around about 14 times before I turned 10. We were always going to new small towns on the East Coast. Starting over again and again made me an outsider, as did my natural shyness and introversion. So, I was always listening, I didn’t talk a lot. I think I developed an ear for dialogue because I was always hyper paying attention to what people said, what they did, why. I was always trying to figure these things out in my mind. I remember when I was in grade six, we had a project. I forget if they gave us the topic or whatever. But I was talking about, I don’t know, an old man who was grumpy about a puppy who walked over his clean floor. I said something like, “You little whippersnapper, get over here.” Anyway, the teacher liked that because I was using real-life language and dialogue. So, I guess the voice comes from just being a close attentive listener, and then writing the way I talk and the way that I hear others talk.

Lisa [7:07]
I love that. We often think that we have to learn to be better writers by writing, and reading is, of course, a piece of it. But listening can play such an important role in the work that we do. I want to get a little bit deeper into this book because, girl, you got 2012’d! Here’s what I mean by that in case somebody is like, “What in the world are you talking about, Lisa?” Okay, so when I say somebody got 2012’d, I mean that they experienced the 2012 version of existential crisis that blew up their life and allowed them to reclaim who they are. In my case, I experienced Lyme disease. That’s when I got it and revolutionized my life. In your case, you experienced what, to me, has been my greatest fear: the online pile-up.

Natalie [8:01]
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, and for years, Lisa, I thought, oh, my gosh, I just walk away from this dumpster fire, forget about it. It was too painful to even look at my notes. I locked them away for five years. Then I thought, you know, if I write about this, I’m just going to be vandalizing my own privacy in a public forum. I’m going to start it all up again. The trolls will come back. But you know, the story just kept ricocheting around in my head for so long that finally I felt I had to get this out on paper, even if it’s just a private exercise in making sense of what happened because we’re writers, right? That’s how we make sense of things. Over the years, I mean, this was a decade ago that this happened, as you say, 2012’d. I love that expression. I’m going to use that one, if you don’t mind. I heard similar stories from other women, not just in the wine industry, but also in tech, sport, finance, and the military. It was all over. The situational specifics were different, but the themes and the feelings, the need for recovery, were very much the same. What I hope a good memoir does is that it takes people on a journey. Even though the situation may be different, they’re resonating with it. So, someone reading my book may not have gone through divorce or a bad breakup, but they probably felt loneliness or a longing for love. They may not have been online mobbed, hopefully, but they’ve probably felt fear of the future or some career disappointment or uncertainty of some sort. When someone can put those feelings into words, yes, I think it can be healing to know how someone else emerged from life’s dumpster fires because it’s going to get you one way or the other. How do you emerge from those fires singed, but not shattered? But I’ll add I definitely needed the years, the distance, the telescopic lens that could pull back and look at what happened, so that this memoir wasn’t just a misery dump—like an oh, you know, poor little me. I was inspired finally to publish it when I read, I believe Glennon Doyle’s the one who said it: write from a scar, not an open wound. Then my family asked, well, you know, why are you writing about this? All the healing’s done. Good for you, Nat, but why write about this? I love the poet, Sean Dougherty, who said, why bother? Because there’s someone out there right now who has a wound in the exact shape of your words.

Lisa [10:43]

That’s beautifully said. So, you took the time, which is really important for people to hear. We must have distance to write these stories because that gives us perspective. You thought about how you could do this in a way that doesn’t vandalize your experience, or as Roxane Gay says, “cannibalizing yourself” by using your experience and sharing it in so many ways that it takes away from you. Yet, even when you have done all that work, which you clearly have, when you’re writing about the toughest stuff, it is like you are reliving it. That is something you also talk about in this book. How did you take care of yourself when, even though you were trying to have that telescopic lens that helped you step back, the pages and the writing brought you right into it?

Natalie [11:37]
Yes. When I talk about what happened, I still slip into the present tense as though it is happening. We’ve done, I mentioned this in the book, that they’ve done MRI studies and brain scans of people being read a script of a car accident where they didn’t die, but they almost did. The same areas of the brain light up. We’re not remembering these things. We’re reliving them. So, first, I had lots of therapy that continues to this day. That’s one way in which I was taking care of myself. Of course, again, I had the distance to realize I didn’t get sued, I didn’t fall apart, I still have my career, and so on, which I couldn’t realize at the time. There is safety in writing about something with the separation of time. That really helps. Then for the reader, what helps is that you’re able to share those reflections and learnings. As Marion Roach Smith says, it’s not what happened to you, it’s what you did with it. That’s what you write. But the challenge for me was that as I was writing about this and reliving it, I had to make it through the arsenic of 5pm when there’s a natural dip of serotonin, and you want to take arsenic or administer it to those around you because you’re tired, you’re angry or frustrated or whatever. That was the time when I wanted to reach for a glass of wine to drown those feelings out. So, to take care of myself, I had to convince myself that chemical relaxation was not Natalie relaxation. Yes. Think about future Nat. Tomorrow morning, Nat. Just writing, we live in our heads. But I had been a dancer for years. What I had to do was try to get back down into my body literally and stop living in that icy attic of my mind. So, what I would do is a five-second circuit breaker. I put my hand on my heart and literally say, take a deep breath. What is it you need now? What was the thought just before the thought that said I need a drink? Was it about frustration or whatever? Could I take care of it in another way? Just go for a walk, have a bath, watch a show, anything to have that five-second circuit breaker. That really helped.

Lisa [13:57]
I love that. It pairs nicely with something that Nicole LePera says in her book, How to Be the Love You Seek, which is a book that just recently came out. She does a lot of work on Instagram. I’ll link to that in case anyone wants to see it. She writes about an exercise where you do that circuit breaking, where you pause and say, what is it that I need? What was happening directly before?  When you understand the antecedent—and that’s just fancy talk for the thing that happened before—you can begin to say, what is it that I really need and how can I cope in a different way? I want to get to some of the things you’ve just talked about. There’s the caretaking you did for yourself. We’re going to talk about how drinking has changed for you. That’s where we’ll go there next. But first, I want to get to the vessel for your book. I just wrote that down in case anyone heard the scribbling of my pen. One of the ways you may have cared for yourself that I’m curious about, and that also cared for the reader is in the structuring of the book. But before we get to that, let’s talk about drinking, because that is in the title, right? Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Defamation, and Drinking Too Much. How has your relationship with alcohol changed, especially since alcohol is your job?

Natalie [15:18]
I used to say, I drink for a living. But now I tell my online course students the difference between tasting and drinking is spitting and thinking. So, we spit the samples for tasting. But, you know, in terms of how it’s changed, I mean, I wrote about wine for 14 years before I got 2012’d. I could always separate personal and professional wine. But because of everything that was happening, the divorce, the mobbing, and the easy access, I lived in an oenophile’s paradise. Wine was coming to the door every day. Samples from wineries, agencies, and so on. I had the cloak of professional respectability. If I had a glass of wine in my hand at lunch, no one questioned that. She’s working. But she’s also swallowing and doing too much of it. So, I really had to reevaluate that relationship. So first, back to therapy. A lot of these therapy sessions are in the book. I didn’t mean for this to be a self-help book, but the response from readers seems to indicate that they really love the tips and the things that my therapist and I explored as a wine professional trying to cut down our consumption, because a lot of people are on that journey. So first and foremost, I had to deal with the underlying depression from the divorce and anxiety from the mobbing. Then it was like 50% of that need, or more, dropped away for that glass of wine. Dealing with the underlying issues—that was first. Then we had to develop a lot of tactical strategies. If I opened a full bottle of wine for personal consumption, I poured half of it into an empty bottle to save that for another day. It made me more mindful of how much I was consuming, and it kept it fresh for another day, so I didn’t get into this mentality of eat all the peas off your plate, may as well drink it, because it’s open sort of thing. So, there’s a whole lot of those kinds of tips. But you know, my relationship to alcohol just required a lot of thought. Like, why did I get into this business of wine? I was first drawn to the sensory pleasures of it. I had to get back to that, so I could move away from the anesthetic, if you will, and back to the aesthetic, the joy, not the buzz. The buzz is a bonus, but it’s not what I’m trying to aim for now. It’s to appreciate that wine slowly and mindfully.

Lisa 17:50

I love that answer. I want to take this a little deeper. What I always tell people is speak from “I” statements, because we can’t speak for anyone else but ourselves. But I think one thing people really struggle with is understanding the difference between problem drinking and addiction. Some of the characteristics of addiction, which I will add in the show notes so people can see them, are the following: When we’re struggling with addiction, we might have tolerance. It takes more to have the same effect. We have cravings. We want it, and we think about it, maybe when we shouldn’t be thinking about it, or it seems weird that we’re thinking about it. Then we have problems in various aspects of our lives, usually two or more places. That is part of it. We can’t stop. So those are some of the characteristics of addiction. The way you write about this does not suggest addiction. But I’m curious, given your family history, which is something that you share in the book, how did you think about this? What told you that this kind of drinking is not serving me, versus this kind of drinking is addiction? And how did that change your relationship to wine?

Natalie 19:00

I asked my therapist point blank if I should quit. Should I go sober? Because alcoholism, or as we call it now, alcohol use disorder runs in both sides of my family. My Celtic relatives always sort of smile and say, the moth likes to fly close to the flame, because I’m writing about alcohol. But she said in her experience that quitting doesn’t always work. In my situation, it would be punitive. I’d have to give up my career. So, she said, let’s focus on strategies to get you from overdrinking to moderation. Now, for some people, that’s not the answer. Quitting is the answer. Moderation isn’t for everybody. But in terms of trying to evaluate whether I was sliding into addiction? I think it is on a spectrum. I’m not a health expert, nor am I a doctor. I say that in the book, so my advice is just to, as you say, offer my personal perspective. But there were nights when I was clearly blacking out, and not remembering sections of the night. Being embarrassed in the morning and waking up and asking my partner, Did I say anything stupid? Did I do anything stupid? I had that loss of control, and that fear and anxiety of I actually don’t remember everything. So those are all part of the package for full on addiction. I had to say, okay, who am I and who do I want to be? How does wine fit into that? Once we confronted those rather blunt questions in therapy, and started working on harm reduction, I got to a place where I was comfortable, and where my therapist thought I had made a lot of progress. That’s where I remain. I love wine. I want to continue working in it. I love it personally, that sort of thing. But I’ve got to say, like, you were very astute when you picked up on the fact that perhaps this whole resolution of problem drinker or addict is the least resolved thing in the book. That’s because I am still very much a work in progress. I am still in therapy. I would love to tie a red bow on this and say, you know, all done, but it’s just not the case. The struggle has become a lot less on a daily basis, because you do form habits, you do break habits and the emotional pull of them and the grip they have on you. But every day, I have to make a conscious decision about who I want to be and how was wine a part of that.

Lisa 21:44

This is such a great answer. I also want to say you are in great company because I am also in therapy. I have been in therapy for many years, and I will probably be in therapy for many, many more years. Because, for many of us, there is no endpoint in our growth process. Having support is a great thing. There’s nothing wrong with that. And if you are in therapy—I think a lot of people need to hear this–it is not a deficit. Right? It is a privilege because not everyone has access to therapy. I worked at a mental health counseling center that specifically offered therapy to people who wouldn’t otherwise have it. Allowing yourself to have support is so important, because good health and good mental health is a moving target, because life is constantly happening around us. We have to figure out how are we going to handle our stressors. How are we going to navigate new situations? Just like any other thing that we have a habit around—whether it is sitting on the couch or drinking too much alcohol or eating too much cake—it is very easy to slip back into old behaviors, especially when stresses happen in our lives.

Natalie 23:02

Yeah, it is. It’s a constant, but it’s also part of the thrill of being human. You don’t just get to check off certain things as oh, yeah, done. Whatever. It’s, the struggle, that’s what also counts. It also gives us lots more to write about. So, it can be a good thing too.

Lisa 23:20

I think it definitely is. If we think about that version of heaven where you never are hungry, and there’s always everything you need—that can sound good, but it also sounds really boring. So yeah, the struggle is where the juice lies. If you are a writer, it is also where you gather your material. You gathered a lot of material for this book. In it, you talk about Brené Brown, and she has this great quote from Theodore Roosevelt about being in the arena. You are definitely in the arena in this book! And yet, you talked before about how you cared for yourself and how therapy and distance and all these things helped you have a container around the work that you did. But I feel like there’s a vessel for this book. There’s your story, and then there are these other things that you wrap into the book that also care for the reader and create some delight. For instance, for me, you taught me a lot about wine. I’ll be honest with you. Before— I can’t drink alcohol now because I had Lyme disease—but I loved wine before. Yet, I was pretty wine ignorant. I was the person who saw an interesting label and thought I will buy that. You taught me so many things about wine that were interesting. You took me deep into the history of winemaking and the deep misogyny that exists within this field and how that plays out in some powerful and ugly ways when that online pile-on happens. What told you in the book writing process that you needed to gather up these other elements and infuse them into the book?

Natalie 25:14
I think they add a layer of richness and detail that I hope makes the book more interesting. Because again, there might be a small audience who wants to know exactly what happened to me. It’s probably my mother, my cousins and so on. But more people want to know what I learned. What did you do? How did you recover? Maybe a behind-the-scenes or an insider peek into an industry that they have certain perceptions of but have no idea what really goes on. The wine industry, I think, is one of those. It’s sort of glamorous. You think of leafy vineyards and sun-dappled verandas and everybody’s just drinking wine and eating bonbons all day. It does have a gritty reality that shares many parallels with other industries where there is rampant sexism—tech, sports, the military, and so on. It’s a very, very hierarchical industry, because it’s based on hundreds, sometimes 1000s of years of tradition, from the rules of winemaking to the scores. We don’t give ratings to lettuce and orange juice, but in wine everything is scored. There are medals. The top echelon in the industry is still pretty much stale, pale, male, and the worker bees are women. It’s sort of a country club, power mentality that fosters a lot of control in silence. You do not go against the grain. Pun intended or not, it has a very fast social grapevine. You can easily be D-listed out of a career. That’s another reason I wrote the book and included all of this, because there are a lot of young women trying to make their way in the wine industry, but also in other industries that share so many parallels that cannot afford to tell the story I told. I hear from them behind the scenes, of course. I told my partner, well, you can’t kill me twice—at least I think you can’t. But I have so much less to lose now, having been writing about wine for 25 years. I feel like I’m in a safe place to tell the story. But that is why I wove in so much about the wine industry, both for those outside who are curious, and those who are inside of it, who feel that they can’t talk about these things.

Lisa 27:45

There were two ways that this showed up that were heart punches for me. That’s probably the best way to talk about it. One, the descriptions of the wines and talking about the flavors. There’s so much sexism in the way that some of these descriptions play out. I could see it all over the place. Then there were the awful things people said specifically about you, which you share in the book. You really show the ways misogyny shows up within this industry. It made me think about all the different ways that these things show up in other industries as well. So, you opened my eyes to that. Then this other interesting thread shows up throughout, which was a fun thread. So, you talk about the misogyny, you have all this information about the wine, which was also fun, but then you had this witch thread. This theme of the witch. You had a mob coming after you with the pitchforks, which is virtually what happened. What told you this theme or this thread would work in the book? When did you figure out that this was the one?

Natalie 29:04

When you hear the title, Wine Witch on Fire, you think this is about an angry woman who drinks a lot of wine and owns a lot of cats. It’s just all bitter. But it’s not. There is humor. But the witch theme really resonated with me. It has resonated with me since I was a child. My favorite childhood stories were always about witches. Wizard of Oz, with the good, the bad witches. I even love that badass White Witch of Narnia and the way she froze out Christmas. For Goodie Miss Two Shoes that was very, very satisfying. As I was drafting the manuscript, I went back and forth with my editor on this theme. She said, lean into it, or don’t use it, otherwise, it might come off either as superficial and unsatisfying or as disrespectful to the women who were persecuted and killed in the 19th century. Leaning into this metaphor became a more fruitful way of looking back on the situation, because I decided to go all in and of showing, not telling. So, for example, when the online mobbing was happening, if I responded to any of the commenters, I got flaming responses. If I didn’t post, they accused me of running away from the issue. So, that reminded me of back in colonial Salem, one of the ways to tell if a woman was a witch, was to strip her down to her undergarments, bind her, and throw her in a lake. If she was innocent, she would sink to the bottom and drown. But if she floated, then she was a witch, and she was dragged to the stake and burned. So, it’s like social media. Damned if you, damned if you don’t, right? It captured it for me without wanting to equate exactly what was happening with what was happening to them. So, it allows me to share more satisfying reflections, as well as vulnerability and surprise. But you know, just to wrap this up, I do realize how damaging stereotypes of women can be. I do think it’s time to reclaim that word. A witch is a wise woman who has been through the fire of life, and has come out the other end stronger, fiercer, wiser.

Lisa 31:31

That definitely shows up in the book. What I liked about this example you had around how do you tell if someone’s a witch is that they will die either way. Not a lot has changed. That was one of the powerful takeaways I had. Yes, things have changed in certain ways. Women have more rights than, say, the 18^th or 19th centuries, and even the 1970s. And yet, perceptions of women have not necessarily changed regarding how we respond. One thing I was picking up on as you described the title, is that people will think this is angry and bitter, because we are not allowed to be angry or bitter, which we can. We can. I’m just going to say that out loud. But this book certainly isn’t angry and bitter. There is lots of humor. There is a lot of vulnerability, and there’s a lot of just great storytelling. And yet, that is something that you confront in this book. It’s like, okay, there’s this whole legacy around how the witch who’s being chased out of town and toward the water is treated. What I noticed in this book toward the end, is that there were a lot of ways that your livelihood was deeply affected. There were presentations that you had. There were columns that you had, that you lost, and it took, I think, five years to get some of that back. Even though when people read this, they’re going to be like, oh, this mistake is not that big. I mean, that was my perception of it. Any of us could do this. I don’t want to give it away, because I want people to read your book, but the reaction really does speak to how women are treated. I think you do a great job of sharing that. So, the writing of the book is wonderful. You are just a master titler. So, I’m going to just say the titles of your other books, because so many people struggle with that. I don’t know if you struggled or not, but it doesn’t look like you do. So, we have Red, White, and Drunk All Over, and then there’s your podcast Unreserved Wine Talk. And so, we have these great titles. And you were also a great marketer of your book, right? You have this wonderful podcast that you host, and you have this great addendum document—this additional thing that you have created. Many listeners of this podcast are writers. Some of them are just writing for themselves and trying to figure out how to make sense of their experiences? Your book will help them do that. But also, people want to get their work published, and they’re thinking, how do I get my work out in a unique way? So, I have a two-part question. First, let’s talk about this document you have created that goes along with your book, this companion guide. How has that helped you market your book? How has it enhanced that?

Natalie 34:43

The companion document that you’re referring to is a reader guide, or book-club guide. Two things were happening with the book as I wrote it. First, it was getting a little long. So, what’s in this reader guide, it goes chapter-by-chapter, and gives you wines to enjoy as you’re reading the book and discussion questions for your book club or for, you know, sometimes spouses will often read this book together and dig into the layers more deeply, because it’s not just what did you feel about what happened here, it’s how do you feel about your own relationship with alcohol? What do you think about the way wine is marketed to men versus women? Deeper issues. These wine things and questions were at the end of each chapter. There was kind of a tonal problem that was happening in that if you’re in trouble, or you’re down, here’s a wine. I recommend Moroni with a bitter finish. It was trivializing the actual sentiment and what was happening. If you’re happy, here’s a joyful wine. So, I’m not advocating dealing with emotions or life situations with wine. So, we separated it out for length and tonality. It is a substantial document, I think it’s about 10,000 words, and it’s free. But it’s also a great marketing vehicle, as you said. So, in the book, I mentioned it, but I was also promoting it on social media, through my email list, and all other channels. I included the reader guide, a mention of it in the book, and I also promoted it on social media, so that those who may not have read the book can download it for free at nataliemaclean.com/guide, or just winewitchonfire.com. I also got the book title, which I recommend to writers. Get your book title, especially if your name is easy to misspell. People will remember the title, winewitchonfire.com more than the spelling of your name anyway. So, they can download the guide there. I’m hoping that it gets them more involved and curious about the book, because there’s also tips on organizing your own informal wine tasting, whether that’s with friends or your book club, and so on. So that’s really helped as a marketing vehicle. The other thing I did, Lisa, was put bonuses on my website. So, if you buy the book, at any point, you can get a free online tasting with me. I give away all kinds of things. The lost chapters, which is just another fancy way of saying what ended up on the cutting room floor. And you know, various things. So, if listeners and writers want to go and either get the bonuses, or just look at how I structured the bonuses for buying the book, it really helped with pre-orders, which are so important. But it helps ongoing book sales as well. They continue to trot along at a really good pace.

Lisa

37:47 I’m going to invite people to sign up for your newsletter so they can get this. That’s one thing that I also want to point out that is very clever, and also great marketing. Because writers must be marketers whether we like it or not. Your email list is one of the most important things that you can build. That is something that happens automatically if you sign up for this. This document is clever, it’s well done. The graphics are nice. It’s very clean. It’s engaging. It’s got a strong sense of voice. There’s a lot of things you can see that Natalie has done to help people deepen their engagement with her book, because one of the things we want is not just for people to buy the book and enjoy it, but to talk about the book later with their friends. This gives you a lot of ways to do that. So, I highly recommend writers do that, even if you’re not interested in wine, for the very purpose of seeing a strong marketing document. It will help you with your book launch.

Natalie 38:54

I just want to add one thing. My two favorite reviews, I can’t quote them verbatim, came from teetotalers for this book, people who don’t drink wine at all, which meant so much to me. So, you know, you’re saying even if you don’t enjoy wine, like, there are several people reading this, who don’t drink at all.

Lisa 39:13

I happen to be one of them at this point in my life. And yet, I still appreciated that—I think it was Chardonnay you had in there—and you were talking about how it cuts through the butter and fat. Did I get the wine, right?

Natalie.

Yes, exactly.

Lisa: 

I was like, ah, that’s why they’re paired together. It’s not all about the labels. You taught me something really helpful. So, if you’re having a dinner party, even if you are a person who doesn’t drink or maybe you want to get a nonalcoholic wine, you could think about these things and how it enhances the taste, and how it’s about the experience. So, you have this great marketing document with a strong sense of voice, and you have this podcast that you also host. Then, of course, there is social media, and social media happened to be the place where the big bad thing happened in your life. What is your relationship like with social media now? How has that been influenced by your past experience? And just anything that you’re reading or learning about?

Natalie 41:51
At the time, this was happening. Friends and family would say, “Just turn it off, turn the internet off, don’t look,” and I thought, “Well, I make my living online. I can no more walk away from this than a surgeon can operate outside of the hospital. I mean, I can’t.” So, day after day, I drank that venom. The difference today, though, is that I tell myself, “block and walk.” So, if there are any jerks, I just block them. Goodbye, stop. Stop trying to monitor what your naysayers are saying, because you’ll always have detractors. If you’re saying something of worth, it’s going to always have detractors. Hopefully, they’re the minority, but it’s a reality. And as a pleaser, as many of us tend to be, will never, ever please all the people all the time, just as with a book. If you’re trying to appeal to everybody, you know, you’re going to appeal to no one as they say. So, with social media, I’m a lot more confident now. I don’t fearfully step among the tweets and so on. There actually aren’t a lot of jerks out there, or maybe I’ve just blocked them all. But I also keep my personal life off. I always did. I always kept social media just professional. I’m lucky that my profession is very lifestyle, very seemingly personal, but it’s not. I don’t talk about my family on social media. I don’t reveal personal things, generally, only as they relate to wine. So that’s my relationship now with social media.

Lisa 43:41
I love that you have good boundaries. You’re clear about your online persona. Some people will think, like, “Oh, if you have an online persona, well, then that’s fake, right? That’s like the fake version of you.” It’s not the fake version of you. It is the version of you that is for public consumption. It is perfectly fine to have a version of yourself that is for private consumption only, like talking about your family. I was reading an article this morning about Instagram, and parents who had created these Instagram accounts for their children, so that their children could become influencers. It goes down this very dark path. If I can find the article, I will add it, in case anyone wants to read it. But the point is that there was no separation between personal and private. That is one of the things that creates a lot of the darkness in terms of how some of the stuff can play out. It’s important for us to have boundaries. I will often tell people, “If I won’t shout it to my friend in Walmart, it doesn’t belong online.” For me, that is my value. Of course, everyone can create their own values. But I love that you have that, and that you have a certain kind of relationship with social media. You figured out these other inventive and clever ways to market your work, so that you can get your books in the hands of readers. I think Jane Friedman had this on The Hot Sheet, which is her paid newsletter that I read. In one of them she said, the main way that books are sold is by word of mouth. Your book guide helps people do that. They can engage in a way that creates those word-of-mouth recommendations.

Natalie 44:18
I can see sometimes how it spreads, like the emails and direct messages I get back. There will be this thread about how so and so told me about your book, especially post-launch. But I love seeing that kind of genealogy you trace back to and you can see how it spreads, especially for people enjoying your book. Unless you’re John Grisham, none of us are going to get an advertising campaign or whatever. You’ve got to reach people one person at a time. There’s no silver bullet that I’ve discovered. It’s just one person at a time to tell them about your book.

Lisa 45:16
Absolutely. You also have a podcast, and that gives you a nice platform where you can talk about things and build an audience as you talk about wine, which plays a big role in this book, but then you are also on other podcasts like this one, which also helps spread the word and help people get to know you. Those relationships that you build and those connections you make are so meaningful.

Natalie 45:45
They are because I think people have such busy lives. They want more than just a good book. I hope my book is a good one, but they want to know more about the person. It’s kind of why People Magazine and all the rest of them continue to sustain large circulations even with the decline of print. People are so curious about other people. So, beyond the book, who is this person and why should I invest several hours reading this book? It’s that connection as well. Absolutely.

Lisa 46:16
So, I’m going to end with three lightning round questions. The first one is, what is the best piece of writing advice that you have been given?

Natalie 46:28
I think it’s a myth, but Hemingway said, “Write drunk, edit sober.” My advice would be, write and edit sober. I think a lot of people are under the mistaken misconception that drinking loosens all your inhibitions and gets you to say things you wouldn’t say normally. That might happen at a dinner party, but on the page, I think you need all your faculties, and to focus. But how do you get rid of your inhibitions without drink or something else? To me, it’s like, driving. Don’t drive with your foot on the brake. So don’t try to edit at the same time as you’re writing. It just won’t work. I really had to put all of it on the page, the shameful bits, the stuff that I thought, no, that paragraph is not very good. Keep going, keep going, keep going. I think, Annie Lamott says the vomit draft or whatever. But yes, just get it all out, because I think for many of us, certainly, for me, it is far easier to edit, than to write in the first place. So let it all out.

Lisa 47:28
Natalie Goldberg, in Writing Down the Bones, has this great way of putting it. She says, “Just sit down and write and do not cross anything out.” In that case, sometimes writing in a notebook can be better, because I don’t know about you, but at least for me, when I’m typing on the page, and I can type much faster than I can write in my notebook, the little squiggly line that signals this word’s misspelled or oh, you missed a comma,” it puts the editor in my mind. Then I want to go back and cross it out and make things sound better. Whereas if I’m writing in my notebook, I can write with abandon. I think that’s the point of that Hemingway quote. Write with abandon, write without feeling the need to edit yourself. And so those are some of the strategies I use. Are there any specific strategies you use, when you’re actually sitting down to write that help you do that?

Natalie 48:22
The only thing I try to do is also compartmentalize. So, I try to say, okay, let’s just focus on this scene. Write it like a movie script. Let’s just deal with this scene. It doesn’t matter if they’re in order or not. You can move them around easily in Word or Scrivener or whatever you use. But just get the scenes down. Because often even for an article for a magazine, it comes to me first, from one little piece of dialogue or something, I always say if I’m a painter, I’d start with one seagull in the corner, and then paint it from there. But it’s whatever is captured by your imagination. Just go with that little, tiny nugget, and then build a scene around it, and then build another scene. Some of them you’ll ax out later, but just try it like that. Then it doesn’t seem so overwhelming.

Lisa 49:07
I love that. That’s beautiful. It reminds me of what Anne Lamott says in her book, Bird by Bird, about the two-inch picture frame. Write the scene that fits in the two-inch picture frame. When you do that, you narrow in on one specific moment. That’s how you create cinematic writing. So beautifully done. What is one thing you do to nurture your resilience?

Natalie 49:30
Get a good night’s sleep, and not over drink. That might be obvious, but in terms of my own consumption, I share this openly. We’re talking about my personal consumption, I only consume alcohol, and only wine, three nights a week, four nights, no alcohol. On those nights, they’re usually when I’m out to dinner with my partner, or we’re making dinner as a family, and it’s a communal thing. I strive to have one to two glasses, sometimes I’ll dip to three, it’s still within the bounds of moderation. But for me, it makes me feel good. I get up the next day feeling good, and it keeps my health on a level where I want it.

Lisa 50:09
I love that, and I love the specificity of it. Yeah, it helps us sort of wrap our minds around what does this look like for Natalie, and then how could I think about what it might look like for me if I’m the listener. Final thing: You have this beautiful book; I’m going to show it again for people who might be seeing the video. How can people find you online and where would you like them to buy your book?

Natalie 50:31
Thank you, Lisa. It’s available through all online retailers all around the world. All your biggies. You can always go to winewitchonefire.com. if you want the bonuses, even if you’ve already bought the book. You can still get the bonuses. There are bonuses if you buy, I think it’s like three or four copies or more for your book club. There’s more. You can find me on social media, but I’d rather you come to my website, get the guide, get the bonuses, that sort of thing. Then we can connect from there on various channels. My podcast, of course, because this is a podcast, so you have listeners so Unreserved Wine Talk, please join me. It’s a lot of fun. I interview lots of people in the wine world, storytellers, mostly writers.

Lisa 51:12
That’s what I noticed about how you approach your work with wine. It’s through storytelling, right? Yeah. Even when you’re talking about different aspects of the wine industry it’s always story driven. You’re not just handing me the facts. I think that’s one of the things that made me fall in love with your work. I was so excited to have you on the podcast, so thank you so much for being here today. It has been an honor and a pleasure.

Natalie 51:37
Thank you, Lisa. So good to reconnect with you. I was going to say raise my glass to. It’s just got tea right now. But tonight, I will raise a proper glass of wine to you and your podcast, and to your health. I really loved this conversation. Thank you.

Lisa 51:51
Well, thank you. And here is my glass of tea.

Natalie 51:54
Here’s a virtual clink.