Writing as the Language of Emotions with Lindz McLeod

[1:56] Well, hello, Lindz McLeod! Welcome to the Writing Your Resilience podcast. I am so happy to have you on today.

Lindz McLeod: Thank you so much for having me. I’ve been very excited about this.

Lisa Cooper Ellison: I’ve been excited about having you on the show for — oh my gosh — a year and a half. And since your wife Zebib was on the show back in early 2024, it’s one of those things where it feels like it needs to be the right time and the right topic so that everything fits together, and this just seemed to be the right moment. Everything coalesced in the way it needed to, and you have so many fabulous things happening that I’m excited to talk about.

[2:37] I’m going to hold up two of your books — you have another one just coming out. So, this is The Unlikely Pursuit of Mary Bennet, and we also have An Honor and a Privilege. And this is just, I’m going to say, a tiny smattering of the things you have published, and even a tiny fraction of all the things you’ve written. So, what would you like everyone to know today about you and your writing, and specifically about these books?

Lindz McLeod: That’s a tough question, because I immediately want to say everything — everything all at once. I think the takeaway, if I were to pitch myself, is that I do my best to write the stories that don’t exist yet, whatever that looks like. I’m always interested in a range of genres and characters, and I don’t like to stick to one particular genre, but I’m always trying to get to the core of something. I’ve described it as writing being like peeling an onion over and over until you get to the emotional heart of it.

[3:49] For me, it doesn’t matter if you set a story in a supermarket in the present day or a thousand years in the future on another planet. We might not understand the character’s job or the social rules of their world, but we understand and connect with emotions because that’s the universal language. In the same way that a single violin playing a mournful dirge sounds very different from an upbeat, summery pop song — writing is all about how we can learn to speak the language of emotions more effectively and tell stories better.

[4:14] Also, I teach writing — can you tell? I’m a huge dork. I like to learn all the rules and then sometimes break them, which I think I’ve done with some of the books we’re going to talk about today.

Lisa Cooper Ellison: Oh, you are a master at breaking the rules, and that’s one of the things I love about you. I’ve loved that since we met back in 2019 in New York City at the Writers Hotel Conference. It’s so hard to believe that much time has gone by. But your writing life has really exploded — I know a lot of productive people, but I don’t know anyone who’s written as many novels in one year as you have. So, just give us a sense of how productive you are. Let’s just talk about 2025.

[5:12] Lindz McLeod: Yes, the year in isolation! In 2025, I technically published three books, along with a few short stories and other pieces. I am a terrible workaholic — I’ll throw my hands up and say that straight away. You probably knew it when we first met, and it’s only become more concentrated since. I really love to write. I love to tell stories, and the more I teach and talk about it, the easier and more interesting it becomes. I’m always asking: how can this story be better than the ones I’ve already written? How can I say something more effectively, more cleanly? How can I touch someone else’s heart with just words?

[5:51] So that’s a nice, pretty blanket to throw over the fact that I’m just a terrible workaholic who loves to work. And whenever my wife is home and not traveling, I’m placed on a work curfew — I’m not supposed to work after 10:00 PM, because apparently that’s not okay. But when she’s gone, all bets are off.

Lisa Cooper Ellison: I think if you love what you’re doing, it’s really hard to stop. I sort of have a work curfew too — we have dinner at a certain time, and then we rest. It’s helpful to have that structure. But I’ll tell you, if I go on a writing retreat by myself, there is no curfew, because I’m in a space where I get to do what I love.

[6:35] And what I want to point out — something you touched on that applies to any genre — is the importance of touching someone else’s heart. The way we do that is by tapping into internal conflicts and internal struggles. In fiction, of course, you’re creating a whole world separate from yourself where those things get worked out. In memoir, it’s your own life, and you’re working through something personal and real. So, since you work across many genres and you’re also a writing coach, we’re going to talk about how writers can apply the concepts we’re discussing today, regardless of the genre they’re working in.

[7:19] The first one I want to talk about is The Unlikely Pursuit of Mary Bennet. This is a romance. People who understand how romance works — and how lucrative it is — respect it, even if they don’t read it. But for those who’ve dismissed it, there’s so much to learn. And I’ll admit, if you’re not watching me on YouTube, my hand is up — I don’t read a lot of romance. What would you like people to know about romance, and about this specific book?

[7:46] Lindz McLeod: Firstly, I love the way you rolled your Rs there — it should always be r-romance. It just sounds so much more passionate.

I didn’t write any romance before The Unlikely Pursuit of Mary Bennet. It was my fabulous agent, Laura Zats, who said to me, “I have really good ties with these editors — have you ever considered writing romance?” And I said, “Oh, Laura, I don’t write romance.” And she said, “You do, though. It’s in most of your work — there’s always some element of an interpersonal relationship that could be romantic.” I went, “Well, surely not that much of it.” Then I looked, and I was deeply annoyed to find she was right. So, I said, “Okay, I’ll give it a go. No promises, but I’ll try.”

[9:03] At that point I hadn’t read much romance either, so I didn’t know a lot of the tropes. One thing that had always interested me was Charlotte Lucas, who in the original Pride and Prejudice is — depending on which version you’re watching — 27 years old, described as a spinster who is a burden on her parents and will never find a man. She feels quite bad about this, especially compared to her friends Lizzie and Jane, who are seen as prettier, wittier, and brighter. Charlotte ends up marrying the Bennets’ cousin, Mr. Collins — who, depending on the version, is more or less odious, though I do think he’s sympathetic in some ways.

[9:42] Charlotte’s role in the original is essentially to show the reader what doesn’t often happen: the love match. It was more common for a woman to settle for someone she might not care for very much, because remaining unmarried carried a huge social stigma. I thought it might be interesting to explore why Charlotte is the way she is — and what might make her romantic. What, or who, might be able to open her heart in a different way?

[10:47] And because Mr. Collins is a man of the cloth living at the parsonage at Hunsford, near Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s estate, Rosings, he was looking for a respectable wife. There would have been an obvious Bennet sister for him: Mary, who is pious, a bit preachy, and socially awkward. As the middle sister of five, she’s caught between two camps — she doesn’t have strong relationships with her sisters in either direction, and she’s very much an odd one out. She would have been quite a good match for him, but Charlotte got there first.

[11:52] So I thought: what would happen if Mary grew up and was allowed to find her own way? What if she could get out from under her mother’s marriage-obsessed thumb and explore interests beyond catching a husband? In the early 1800s, science was blooming — people were attending literary and scientific salons, debating big ideas. All of that came together in Unlikely Pursuit.

[12:12] Charlotte’s husband, Mr. Collins, dies in the very first line of the book — which might be the best line I’ve ever written. I think I’ve peaked; I don’t know if I’ll ever do better. She writes to Lizzie asking her to come and comfort her, and Lizzie says, “I’m so sorry — my son is sick. But Mary happens to be passing by. I know you two aren’t close, but she can keep you company for a while.” And it just doesn’t go the way anyone expected.

[12:52] It turned into a genuinely romantic book. I wrote it for Zebib, who has exactly that kind of romantic nature. A lot of it is built around floriography — the language of flowers. We got married about seven weeks ago, and I was actually able to use some of that floriography in our wedding. I used it in our bouquets, in the jewelry I wore, and I also made everyone in my toast learn some flower facts. Fun and educational — that’s the best thing a book can be.

Lisa Cooper Ellison: You definitely pulled that off, and so much more. And for everyone listening — this book was a finalist for the Romance Novel of the Year Award, which is huge. But knowing you, Lindz McLeod, I know you haven’t peaked. That’s way down the road.

[13:54] This book nails so much so well. The emotional depth, the characterization — I felt like I was reading a genuine extension of the original series. And one of the things you’re touching on, especially for the memoirists who listen to this podcast, is that we can get so stuck in our own relationships that we don’t always understand how they work. Romance can teach us that — how relationships function and fail, and where motivation lives. Sometimes that’s easier to see from a distance, when you’re working in fiction and can play with it more freely.

[14:48] As you were developing this book, what role did motivation play in how you brought these characters together? And for listeners who might not be familiar with what I mean by “motivation” in storytelling — what would you want them to know?

Lindz McLeod: The first thing it makes me think of is this: although Unlikely Pursuit is a romance with a significant central relationship, the most important relationship Charlotte has in this book is with herself. The most important love she experiences is falling back in love with herself — if she ever truly did to begin with.

[15:30] I wanted it to be clear that regardless of what happens with Mary, Charlotte has arrived at a place where she understands and accepts herself in a way she never has before. The romance is real and it’s a huge part of the book — but the self-love is the larger arc. It’s like the big rainbow, and the romance is the smaller one underneath it. Not that we tell the publisher that, of course — it’s absolutely a romance. But that was the deeper structure.

RuPaul says, “If you don’t love yourself, how in the hell is anybody else gonna love you?” And I think that’s a lesson most of us could stand to learn.

[16:10] In terms of motivation for storytelling more broadly — and I work with both fiction and nonfiction clients, so I’m comfortable straddling that line — I do think there are transferable skills and ways of thinking that apply across genres in some quite unexpected ways. When we talk about motivation, we’re really asking: why does this character want what they want? Why do they act the way they do? And that question, I think, is where voice begins to emerge.

[16:32] Lindz McLeod: Okay, so that’s something people have said a lot when reading Unlikely Pursuit — and thank you for the compliment, by the way. I did my best to stick to Austen’s voice where possible. Not to completely mimic it, but to make sure it stayed relatively close to the original while being a little more accessible for a modern audience.

For me, voice is about character, location, and time. Who is the story about? Where are they — in terms of genre as well as physical location? Where are they situated in time — past, present, future, alternate timeline? All of that forms the foundational basis for the character. And even the way the prose itself is written — not just the dialogue — can tell you so much about that character.

[17:19] The second book in the series, which has just come out, is called The Miseducation of Caroline Bingley — and Caroline, of course, is a very different character. She’s haughty, vain, superior. She’s the original mean girl. If you asked people in the Pride and Prejudice universe who had been personally victimized by Caroline Bingley, everyone would raise their hand.

One of the thankfully few critiques I received about Unlikely Pursuit was that Charlotte isn’t quite as witty in certain respects, because she isn’t quite as socially sharp as Elizabeth Bennet. Caroline is — and that’s a direct result of who these women are. Caroline Bingley says things that you literally could not waterboard out of Charlotte Lucas, given a hundred years and great enthusiasm for the endeavor.

[18:06] That, to me, is how a character sees and interprets the world. The way you structure sentences, even your word choices — it tells us so much about a person. If one character describes a vase as a beautiful aquamarine color that reminds him of childhood beach holidays with his family, and another character says, “Oh yeah, there’s a vase in that room — sort of blue, sort of green, whatever” — neither is wrong. It’s a matter of perspective. How are these characters seeing things? What is driving them?

[18:47] I have a little trick I use to get to know characters quite quickly. I’m not sure I’ve mentioned this to you before. It’s called the coffee question.

Lisa Cooper Ellison: Ooh, I love this.

Lindz McLeod: It tells you something very quickly. A lot of the work I do is about breaking writing down into manageable, accessible chunks — making sure we’re not gatekeeping it. Anyone can write, and here’s how. It’s like watching a magician on stage where everything looks effortless and amazing, and then going backstage to find all the secret compartments and see how it’s really done.

[19:13] So the coffee question: if your character walked into a coffee shop — or whatever the equivalent is for their time period — and ordered something, and their order came out wrong, how do they respond? Because there’s a huge spectrum. Some characters are going to rant and rave: “My taxes pay your wages — you can’t even get my coffee right.” Other characters are going to say, “Oh, thank you,” walk outside, and quietly pour it out because they’re too embarrassed to make the barista feel bad. Others will calmly go back and ask for it to be remade. There’s a whole range of responses, but you instantly know quite a lot about a character by how they handle that moment.

Lisa Cooper Ellison: I love that, and I want everyone to try the coffee question with multiple characters. The more you understand how people respond, the more you can get inside their heads — which then translates into their voice on the page.

[20:27] And this connects to something Sue William Silverman talked about when she was on the show — she’s a well-known memoirist, if you’re not familiar with her. She talked about the idea that we’re all wearing a mask, and we write the story from behind that mask. That’s very similar to what this coffee question reveals. It tells us so much, and we don’t need to know a character’s entire backstory to understand who they are.

That’s really important, especially for memoirists. They want the reader to understand some unique or unusual behavior in the present moment, and then they hit the brakes to explain what happened in the past that caused it. Sometimes that’s useful, but often it’s unnecessary. Any time you go into flashback, you’ve essentially stalled the story — there’s no forward momentum. Learning how to limit that, and how to let a character’s backstory power the narrative without explicitly sharing it, is incredibly valuable.

[21:28] Lindz McLeod: I agree completely. The way we might interpret someone throwing a drink and screaming at a barista — there are so many possible explanations. They might just be a mean person who enjoys being rude. They might have had a terrible day or received devastating news. They might simply be at the end of their rope. We don’t know yet. We can only guess at the backstory. But as we watch them interact with other people and other situations, we start to understand: is this a pattern, or was that a one-off?

[22:03] One of the things I say very often is: your story starts too soon. Ask yourself, what is the last possible place my story can begin and still make sense? It’s so tempting to say, “Before I tell you the story, let me give you a lot of context.” But then we become that aged relative who says, “I met so-and-so at the supermarket today — well, actually it was a Tuesday, and I bought this thing, and then — no wait, actually I was at the post office first…” And you’re thinking, just tell me who you met and what happened, because by the time we circle back, I will no longer care. Just start at the supermarket with the shocking thing and go from there.

[22:42] We don’t actually need all of that context. It’s tempting to share it, but we don’t always need to. You can write it — but it doesn’t necessarily need to make it into the final draft. It must be an iceberg. There is a great deal going on underneath the surface that powers what we can see, and that’s what people mean when they say, “kill your darlings.” It’s not about murdering your prose — it’s about being intentional with what you choose to put on the page. Not everything is relevant. And if you’re attached to a particular story or piece of history, ask yourself: is it relevant? Does it matter? What does it add?

Lisa Cooper Ellison: Yes — always asking what it adds to the story. And what I often tell writers is, tell me where your story comes to life. That’s incredibly revealing. If someone says, “page one,” that tells you everything — but not everyone can say that in a first draft, and that’s okay. So, ask yourself: where does my story come alive? And if you have beta readers or a writing group, ask them the same question. Their answers can help you figure out how late you can start, what you might cut, and where to strategically place the backstory your story genuinely needs — rather than front-loading it the way we do when we stop at the post office, the nursing home, and four other places before we ever get to the grocery store.

[24:15] Well, I’m wondering if you could read from The Unlikely Pursuit of Mary Bennet — just a paragraph or so — to give us a sense of that voice and sensibility. I’m going to call it a series now, because you have another one coming out, and I know people will be hungry for more.

Lindz McLeod: There are actually two covers — the US cover, which I think is the one you’re holding, and a UK cover that’s a bit different, because we had two separate publishers. Caroline Bingley doesn’t have that problem — same publisher on both sides. I’d like to start with the very first sentence, and then maybe skip ahead to something else as well.

[24:54] So: “After procuring several fervent assurances that his wife would apologize sincerely and deeply for his absence from Rosings that evening, Mr. Collins reluctantly died.”

I really love that line. One of the things I also love about this book are the letters that open many of the chapters, written by other characters. There’s one from Mrs. Bennet that was my favorite — she is just such a spectacularly oblivious person. Writing someone being completely insufferable in letter form was perhaps the most fun I’ve ever had.

[25:36] This is the opening of Chapter 10, a letter from Mrs. Bennet:

“Dear Mrs. Collins, Mr. Collins’ death quite disturbed me, for one generally considers the clergy closer to God, and therefore less likely to be called away to aid him. But I suppose in the end, they are simply men like the rest. Nevertheless, sorrows and prayers for your loss. While you spend time with our Mary, I hoped you could elaborate on the great felicity of marriage. She may well listen to you; the Lord knows she does not listen to me. Having four girls out of five settled is very agreeable, but having one left over like a spare jar of jam rather ruins the effect. To be a mama to willful young ladies is to be constantly vexed. Really, no one understands how I suffer. Sincerely, Mrs. Bennet.”

[26:12] That just deeply amuses me. She is writing to offer condolences for someone else’s dead husband, and she still manages to make it entirely about how much she personally suffers. She is so blissfully un-self-aware, and I just love getting to write a character like that.

Lisa Cooper Ellison: Just a touch of narcissism. Just a shade.

Lindz McLeod: Just a little. The faintest whisper.

Lisa Cooper Ellison: So how did you go about nailing these voices? When we talk about voice, there’s what you’re thinking about as you write, but there’s also the tone, the specific word choices, the sentence structure, the rhythm of it all — and that one word you just used, felicity. “The great felicity of marriage.” Nobody in the 21st century says that. And yet it’s a perfect line for the time period. How did you do that?

[27:18] Lindz McLeod: One of the things I always liked to do — as a bit of a joke, really — was trying to imitate other writers. My friends and I would email each other during the workday, and sometimes I’d write as Hemingway, or Melville, or someone else entirely. You start to notice: how does it look on the page? Are they using very long sentences or very short ones? Are they favoring simple words the way Hemingway did, or complex ones? Think about Jeffrey Archer versus Jack London — very different worlds. Jeffrey Archer isn’t going to describe the Yukon trees as frowning spruces. He’s going to focus on the way characters are reading each other across a room, because something is happening.

[28:20] It’s really about getting into someone else’s head, the same way you would with anyone you know. Imagine seeing a room through your friend’s eyes. What are they drawn to? Do they have a hobby that shapes what they notice? If five friends came over after you’d redecorated, do you know which one would immediately spot the new curtains? And how much could you change before the less observant ones finally noticed?

[28:54] And if you’re struggling with a character’s perspective, try doing the opposite of what you would do. If you’re unobservant, write a character who catches everything. If you’re meticulous about color and would never wear black and brown together, write a character who hasn’t noticed their socks don’t match and whose watch clashes with their belt. Everyone sees the world differently, and that difference is the voice.

Lisa Cooper Ellison: I love that. And this brings us back to something you said at the very beginning — that we write in order to open people’s hearts. There’s so much research showing that fiction, and nonfiction like memoir, builds empathy. One of the ways we build empathy is by inhabiting someone else’s perspective. The more you can do that — whether for a fictional character or a real person in your own story — the more empathy you develop, and from empathy comes compassion. There is so much we can learn just from paying close attention to voice.

[30:05] And I love what you said about the iceberg, because I think that’s a perfect segue to your other book — An Honor and a Privilege — which I’m going to hold up again. And I’ll just say, before you even describe it: I bow to you. Because when you told me what this book was, I thought, holy cow — that is so ambitious. And you pull it off beautifully. So, tell us about it.

Lindz McLeod: I have to admit that my bravery isn’t quite as impressive as it might seem. If I had known at the start just how much work this would be — just how ambitious it actually was — I might have faltered. I only realized halfway through, and by that point it was too late. I was already speeding down the mountain with no way to stop. Sometimes it’s better to go through than to stop.

[31:08] One of the things I noticed while coaching writers of both fiction and nonfiction is that they always asked which craft books they should read. In some cases, I did have recommendations — books I thought were genuinely good for building confidence or developing specific techniques. But there wasn’t really any single book that did everything I wanted it to do. I kept recommending multiple books, and I started thinking: that’s a lot to ask, especially of someone writing their first or second book, or someone who is quite new to the process. Giving people a reading list as homework isn’t always the most welcoming entry point.

[31:36] Lindz McLeod: Which, by the way, those books also recommend other books.

Lisa Cooper Ellison: Yes — and before you know it, the whole thing snowballs and you’re thinking, “I’ve spent this entire year reading about writing, and now how do I actually apply any of it?”

Lindz McLeod: Exactly. And one of the frustrations I kept seeing was this: if you’re a craft book and you want to illustrate a technique, you can quote a passage from an author who does it well — but you can’t paste in their entire novel. That would be completely insane, a million pages long. But it’s also genuinely frustrating to see a technique demonstrated in such a small, isolated fragment. It felt to me like teaching someone to paint landscapes by showing them individual trees, one at a time. They were learning the techniques, but they didn’t know how to apply them in context.

[32:22] So what I wanted to create was a book that was simultaneously a strong — perhaps even great — anthology of fiction across genres, doing excellent things on a technical level, while also providing a behind-the-scenes look at how those things were accomplished. Where we succeeded, where we fell short, and an in-depth examination of the techniques used — so that readers could look at a complete short story, read it from beginning to end, and see the technique in action. Not in isolation. Right there on the page, start to finish.

[33:01] And a short story doesn’t take nearly as long to read as a novel. This was my attempt at gathering everything I’ve been teaching for several years and saying: here it all is. Every single story will show you how to do something. Hopefully, you’ll be able to see the most accessible way to start applying these techniques yourself. I don’t want to gatekeep. If anything, I want everybody at the party, having fun with the rest of us.

Lisa Cooper Ellison: And I can tell you had fun with this — even though I can also imagine it was enormously daunting to pull together.

Lindz McLeod: It was. Very much so.

Lisa Cooper Ellison: And what I’d say about the tone and feel of these stories is that they’re very different from your romance work. I personally felt haunted by them — in the best possible way. When I was reading The Unlikely Pursuit, I’d find myself thinking about the characters during the day, wondering how it was all going to unfold, staying up too late because I couldn’t put it down.

[34:15] But An Honor and a Privilege is a lot darker. And part of what made it so dark, at least for me, is how much is left unsaid. That’s what haunted me — and that brings us back to the iceberg. I think fiction writers tend to feel more freedom around that concept. Memoirists, in particular, often feel like they have to give the reader everything. I tell people all the time: act as if your character has a backstory, and don’t tell us any of it. Just let them behave as if it’s there.

[35:07] And you do this so beautifully in this book. One of the stories that really exemplifies it, for me, is “The Son Ablaze and the Son Buried.” Can you tell us a bit about what it’s about — at a high level? Because I want people to read it. I love the story, and I love the way you take it apart afterward. That is really how we learn — by analyzing something in real time. And once you’ve done that with someone else’s work, you can turn around and apply it to your own. Which was your whole point.

Lindz McLeod: Completely agree. I’m quite a visual and kinetic learner — I need to be able to look at something, touch it, take it apart. If you tried to describe to me over audio how to disassemble a clock, I’d be completely lost. But if you showed me, and then let me do it myself, I could replicate it. So, the shortest way to describe this story is: Icarus on a farm.

[36:01] One of the first things I asked each of the writers who had agreed to contribute — generously, and somewhat blindly, I should say — was: what moves you? What drives you? What do you love to write about? I often already knew the answer, but I wanted to hear it from them. And E.A. Petricone, who I co-wrote this story with, kept coming back to family. Secrets. Lies. Betrayal. And then more family. So, I said, I have this idea I’ve been sitting on for a long time — it’s not developed at all, just a note I’d written to myself: Icarus on a farm.

[36:57] And she said, “Oh, I have a lot of feelings about that myth.” She’s Greek American, and she just went off — and I thought, right, we’re doing this. Most people vaguely know the story of Icarus: he and his father Daedalus are escaping a labyrinth by flying out on wings Daedalus built from feathers and wax. Daedalus warns Icarus not to fly too close to the sun or the wings will melt. Icarus does. He falls into the sea and drowns.

[37:36] But I was never entirely convinced that Daedalus didn’t know it would happen — that there wasn’t something slightly resentful or bitter underneath the warning. He certainly told his son. But did he watch him? In many versions of the myth, Daedalus is so absorbed in the triumph of his own invention that he only realizes what’s happened when he looks back and Icarus is already gone. He doesn’t notice while it’s happening. Icarus is calling out, and Daedalus either doesn’t hear — or maybe he hears and simply doesn’t turn.

[38:18] So I thought: how do we transpose that into something realistic? I grew up in a small rural town — fewer than ten thousand people — and Elena’s grandparents had owned and worked a farm. It all started coming together from there. What we really wanted to dig into was the relationship between Ike and his father. Ike has come home because his older brother Joe — the one who stayed on the farm, who never left for college — has died. And Ike is trying to figure out how to be on the farm without Joe. How to be with his father, a truculent and difficult man. What really happened. And how to reckon with the feeling that his father has never quite liked him — and maybe he’s never quite liked his father either. And whether that’s because they’re too similar. And what that says about him.

[39:02] There’s a great deal running underneath the surface — all of it bound up with masculinity, with inheritance, with how a young man proves himself. It’s only a matter of when the antlers are going to clash, not if.

Lisa Cooper Ellison: One of the things you do so well is establish that Joe is gone — but you never tell us what happened. It just sits there in the story like a ghost. As a reader, I’m completely absorbed in the relationship between Ike and his father, but there’s always this undercurrent: what really happened? And how is that going to matter?

[39:51] Lindz McLeod: Yes. And I think that’s such a clear example of how you don’t have to tell the reader everything — and how sometimes withholding is actually what makes a story more powerful. More haunting.

Lisa Cooper Ellison: It creates what I call the chew factor. There’s a mystery that’s never quite resolved, and so you keep turning the story over in your mind long after you’ve finished it. I ask writers all the time: what do you want people to chew on? Do you want them in their heads, or in their hearts? What do you want to leave them with?

[40:08] Lindz McLeod: And with this story, it really does come back to what I said at the very beginning — that writing is the language of emotions. It is a rare person who can honestly say they have never, in any way, felt they have disappointed their parents. That they have never felt the weight of familial expectation pressing down on them or harbored some quiet resentment of it.

[40:34] Lindz McLeod: I mean, if you haven’t felt that way — good for you. Well done. That’s amazing, and I’m genuinely glad you’ve escaped that particular trap. But it is quite common. Most people know exactly how that feels. So even if you’ve never been on a farm or found yourself in this specific situation, you recognize it: the feeling of failing a test you didn’t even know was happening. The sense that maybe someone else in the family is preferred. The feeling of being an outsider, of not quite belonging — and yet still wanting to make your father proud. Still wanting that validation, even while fighting yourself over whether you should need it at all.

[41:15] Lisa Cooper Ellison: Yes — and it speaks to those universal motivations that fuel what we do in real life and on the page. And speaking of motivation, there’s one more I want to ask you about in relation to who you chose to include in this book. The last story is one you wrote with your wife, Zebib — and I know that working creatively with a partner doesn’t always go smoothly. Since I’m a fan of both of your work, I’m going to link to my earlier episode with Zebib in the show notes. But how did you navigate that? Because your voices are so different.

Lindz McLeod: They are, and that was one of the hardest things about this entire book. What I hadn’t realized — and I genuinely don’t know why I didn’t see it coming — was that not only did I have to hold my own alongside these writers, all of whom I’d chosen specifically because they were better than me at something, often many things. I was thinking, I’m going to learn from them. What I hadn’t accounted for was that I would also have to inhabit their voices.

[42:40] Because you don’t want it to read like two people wrote the story — that is my absolute pet peeve. If a story is told from one perspective, it should read as one voice. So, it felt, while I was writing, like learning to speak a language by simultaneously translating it. Maddening, but a wonderful challenge. There was actually a moment in “The Son Ablaze and the Son Buried” where E.A. left a comment asking, “Did you write this line or did I?” And I thought I knew the answer — but even I wasn’t entirely certain. We had started to meld together that completely.

[43:21] With Zebib, of course, it’s a different thing entirely. We write in very different ways, think in very different ways, and we’re concerned with different things in our stories. She is always my first reader, and I am always hers. People ask all the time what it’s like to live with another writer — and honestly? Quiet. Very quiet. A lot of work. Schedules built entirely around books.

Incidentally, she has a book coming out next year that is going to be absolutely incredible — it’s called My Darling Clementine — so watch for that.

[43:49] A lot of what I admire in her writing is different from what she admires in mine, and some of the things that — to use a Scottish phrase — really rip my knitting are things she does naturally, and vice versa. One of our earliest semi-arguments about writing was me saying, “Good God, your characters are always standing in hallways and corridors — this isn’t The West Wing.” And she said, “They need to have a conversation.” I said, “They can have it in the car. Get in the car.” She had a character in a previous book burst into someone’s house and announce, “The government’s coming for us — we need to leave.” And then they put the kettle on. And I thought: I don’t believe it. Jason Bourne would never put the kettle on. He would already be out the door.

[44:39] And on her end, she’s always saying, “Why is everyone always going somewhere? Why are your scene transitions so abrupt? They never just linger.” And I say, “I hate a corridor.” So, it was quite funny to map out the things we each love that happen to be complete opposites — and then find the things we genuinely share.

The story we wrote together grew out of some very specific things happening racially in America at the time. The premise is that a woman wakes up in her own grave and thinks, Oh God, they buried me alive. My family are absolute idiots. She crawls out and gradually realizes that significant time has passed, and something has called her back — she has to go and help one of her descendants who’s been caught up in a racially motivated riot. And she’s reckoning with the fact that some things have changed enormously, and some things haven’t changed at all. It felt like a genuinely angry howl of a story. I think it would make a remarkable film someday.

[45:35] We got very granular with every detail — even something like the light glinting off tombstones in the graveyard. Should it come from the moon or from streetlights? Something natural or something manmade — something that would feel unnatural to her? There are arguments to be made either way, and that level of attention is part of why these stories work.

Lisa Cooper Ellison: And that attention shows. I can never tell it’s two people — it always reads as one voice. I also want to say: my husband is not a writer, but if he were, I am very confident we could not write a story together. So, I deeply admire that you pulled it off.

[46:32] Now I have to ask — long paragraphs: frightening or exciting?

Lindz McLeod: Oh, I love a long paragraph.

Lisa Cooper Ellison: Really?

Lindz McLeod: Absolutely.

Lisa Cooper Ellison: We can’t be friends anymore.

Lindz McLeod: You’ve caught it on video — the exact moment the great friendship ended. I will send you a chapter from my PhD novel and prove to you that not only can a long paragraph be a wonderful and exciting thing when used well, but so can a long sentence. How long do you think the longest sentence in that chapter is? It’s the longest sentence I’ve ever written in my life.

Lisa Cooper Ellison: I feel like it might be the entire paragraph. My instinct is around 1,200 words — which sounds ridiculous, but maybe I’m not far off?

Lindz McLeod: You’re actually not that far off. It’s somewhere around 800 words — and it works. It absolutely works, because of how this particular character thinks, and because of what is happening in that moment: everything is rushing together for her at once.

[47:35] That said, I would never suggest anyone start writing 800-word sentences as a general practice, unless that is genuinely your character. It gets very tiring very quickly. I’m a great believer in varying it. Language has rhythm, and eyes get tired. Something I’m noticing a lot at the moment — and I’m not sure if it’s the influence of AI, or just the way formatting has shifted — is that people are writing paragraphs of one or two sentences, then starting a new paragraph of one or two sentences, and the whole book is just short, short, short.

[48:09] It starts to look like bullet points. It’s visually monotonous — like a drumbeat or a hi-hat. All rhythm, no melody. The eye starts to gloss over it. You need variation on the page.

Lisa Cooper Ellison: And I wonder if it’s also the effect of newsletters — which are designed to be skimmed, so they default to very short paragraphs. Two sentences isn’t really a paragraph. I’ve actually found myself re-paragraphing entire manuscripts with clients because of exactly this.

Lindz McLeod: Yes. And rhythm matters so much. You have to earn the long paragraph, but you also have to earn the very short one.

[48:53] Lisa Cooper Ellison: You haven’t quite convinced me on the long paragraph yet — but I am willing to be convinced, and I genuinely look forward to reading yours. And listeners, if you have strong feelings about the long paragraph, please share them in the comments, because I want to hear from you.

What I’ll say for myself is: it’s not the long paragraph on its own that gets me — it’s when there are many of them, page after page, and I start flipping ahead wondering if it ever breaks. One long paragraph with a strong payoff, executed well? You can get away with that.

Lindz McLeod: I would say, just for the record, don’t read Ducks, Newburyport — it’s essentially one sentence, and it’s about 1,200 pages long.

Lisa Cooper Ellison: That is my personal nightmare.

Lindz McLeod: It has to earn its place. If you’ve been building tension, if things are starting to accelerate, and then suddenly a character is describing something — something terrifying or overwhelmingly joyful — all rushing together in one breathless stream, it can be devastatingly effective. But only once. It’s like jumping out and shouting boo. It works brilliantly the first time. After that, they’re already waiting for it.

[50:46] Lisa Cooper Ellison: You have to keep the reader off-balance. Some of that is visual, and some of it is the content itself. Always asking: what am I doing here, and why, and how does it all come together?

As we begin to wrap up, I want to ask you something I haven’t warned you about — which I may have done once or twice before. You have been producing so much work. The momentum is building, the awards are coming, multiple books in the same genre landing at once. It’s an exciting time. And yet excitement is often edged with fear. So, what scares you about the writing life right now? What are you navigating that’s a little difficult?

[51:30] Lindz McLeod: I think what worries me is the way the publishing industry sometimes chases trends rather than merit. You might write an excellent book — a genuinely excellent book — and it might simply not fit someone’s current vision of what’s selling right now. That doesn’t mean it will never be published. But not knowing is stressful.

[51:48] And so the only thing you ever truly control is writing the best book you possibly can, for yourself. I’m always writing for myself first — and maybe that’s why I write so much. There’s a story splinter in me that has to come out, or it will create an infection. That’s a horrible analogy. But it’s true. If I woke up tomorrow and everyone on Earth was gone, I would still write books. I would still tell stories. Because I am always telling them to myself first.

[52:27] And as I said at the start — I write stories that don’t exist yet, because I go looking for them and find they’re missing. If I could get someone else to write them for me, that would honestly be wonderful. I am constantly, very subtly, farming out ideas to friends. They don’t always know. If I have writers nearby, I’ll say, “Oh, have you ever thought about doing something like this?” and when they take it up, I’m delighted. Like being a chef who sometimes just wants to go to a restaurant.

[52:55] But yes — that’s what frightens me. It isn’t always a meritocracy. Sometimes it’s trend-chasing, and you never quite know which way the wind is going to blow.

Lisa Cooper Ellison: There is very much a shiny object problem out there. And I love what you said: write the best book you can. Own the story. Do it for the love of it and then decide how you want to get it into the world — whether that’s traditional publishing, self-publishing, or something in between. And I think that’s one of the things that gives me genuine hope right now. Self-publishing, which was once dismissed as vanity publishing, has real reach and real legitimacy when you’re willing to do the work.

[54:11] Lindz McLeod: It’s worth it. It really is. There is nothing quite as satisfying — or as revelatory — as writing a book. It shows you something about the universe and about yourself that nothing else quite manages.

Lisa Cooper Ellison: A hundred percent. This is how humans have connected with each other for millennia. We are made of stories. And when you share yours, you become part of that lineage. You are bringing people together, and there is something genuinely wonderful about that.

[54:51] So, if people want to learn more about you, buy your books, and find your podcast — tell us where to find you.

Lindz McLeod: I’m on Instagram at @lindzmcleod and on Bluesky at @lindzmcleod. If you like cat pictures, there are many cat pictures. My younger furry son is actually more famous than I am — I was once approached at a convention with the words, “Oh my God, you’re Fitzwilliam’s mom,” and I realized it was entirely about the cat.

[55:38] Our podcast is called Cinema Worms, and we review the latest films spoiler-free so you can decide what’s actually worth your time. I recently sat through the Michael Jackson film entirely alone — someone refused to accompany me — and I did eviscerate it rather thoroughly afterward, which I’m told is quite funny. And you can find me at my website: lindzmcleod.co.uk.

Lisa Cooper Ellison: And if you’ve heard any of this conversation and you’re not yet convinced — just imagine Lindz McLeod with the whole stage to herself. I already know I’m going to love that episode. We’ll link everything in the show notes: her website, Instagram, the Cinema Worms episode, all of it. Please do connect with Lindz McLeod, because she is exactly as wonderful as she sounds.

Lindz McLeod: Thank you. If I can leave the world even a little better than I found it, my life’s purpose is complete. And thank you, my friend, for being such a calm beacon of light.

Lisa Cooper Ellison: Oh — thank you. And thank you so much for being on the show. It has been an absolute delight.

[56:53] Thank you so much for listening. If you’d like to learn more about Lindz McLeod, and more importantly buy copies of The Unlikely Pursuit of Mary Bennet, The Miseducation of Caroline Bingley, An Honor and a Privilege, or any of her other books, please see the show notes for this episode.

[57:18] And if you want to take this content a little deeper, grab your journal and think about a relationship in your life — real or fictional — where something important was never said. Maybe it was a parent who showed love through actions but never words. A friendship that ended without explanation. A moment when silence said everything. Write a scene in which your character exists inside that relationship and let them behave as though the unspoken thing is always present — without ever naming it directly.

[57:53] You can make my day by sharing your insights, questions, or ideas for future episodes in the YouTube comments. And I want to offer a sincere thank you to Wendy Knarr and YvetteMasoodi2224 for your kind comments on my episodes about debunking author platform myths and author platform strategies. It was so wonderful to hear from you. And if you haven’t reached out to the show yet, I would genuinely love to hear from you too.

[58:34] That’s it for today’s episode. Thank you so much for listening — I couldn’t do this podcast without your support. If you loved this episode, here are three simple ways to keep the show thriving. One: subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. Two: leave a five-star review so others can find the show. Three: join the community by signing up for the Writing Your Resilience newsletter. As a thank you, you’ll receive a free copy of Ditch Your Inner Critic: 5 Tools to Transform Self-Doubt into Self-Support.

[59:00] Until next time, remember: your story matters. As you write and connect with the truest, most authentic version of yourself, you become not just the writer — but the person you were always meant to be. And that, my friends, is the real freedom writing can offer.