Jet Boss Interview

Recently the author of Jet Boss, Laura Savino, and I met on Zoom to talk about writing. When we got going, we couldn’t stop and talked for over an hour. Here are highlights from that interview.

AUD: What was your writing process? Did you use an outline?

LAURA: No. I had log books and a lot of stuff that triggered memories, but I definitely was navigating without my rudder.

AUD: How long did it take you to write the whole thing?

LAURA: I started writing it twenty years ago. The first chapter I wrote was on 9/11, which is now in the middle of the book. When 9/11 hit, I was at a flight training center. It was a devastating period for us. We couldn’t go home because there were no flights. We couldn’t do much studying or training either because of what was going on. So I started journaling. That was the first time I got my feelings out by writing. It was cathartic to put on paper what was happening. After that, when different things happened at work, I would write about them. Over time, I ended up with a collection of stories. Even though everything I described was true, I wanted my book to read like a novel. I had to pick a theme, and I needed an arc, then I pulled out anything that didn’t fall in line with that message.

AUD: That’s what I liked about your book. You had so many good messages.

LAURA: Thanks. The review you wrote on my book was so amazing. Thank you so much.

AUD: Well, ya know what? If it was a crappy book, I wouldn’t have reviewed it. But tell me more about your writing process.

LAURA: As a pilot, pretty much everything I do is linear, logical, and methodical, just like the way I think. But writing used a different part of my brain. To get my stories out, I had to be in the mood to write. I’ve seen the advice about scheduling a time to write or setting a minimum number of words a day. I’m sure that’s motivational for a lot of people. For me, I couldn’t write on demand. When I was feeling those feelings, I could put them down on paper. I couldn’t force myself.

AUD: I feel the same way when I’m working on a first draft sometimes.

LAURA: My book was probably twice as long with all those miscellaneous stories. I could have picked a different thread, but I started to realize that the purpose of my story was my journey as a female pilot. I never had any women ahead of me to ask questions to. I wrote about what I would have wanted someone to tell me when I was a young girl entering the aviation industry. That’s the genesis of the book.

AUD: The way you wrote it reminded me of what they teach at Toastmasters International. When you give a speech, you have to stay on point. You did that through writing.

LAURA: You know it’s interesting, thank you for saying that, but I remember I had one editor who read my manuscript and said just the opposite. She said, “You totally went in every direction, and you lost the reader.”

AUD: No.

LAURA: She said some nasty things, and I thought, well, that was unnecessary. You could’ve just said, “No thank you.” But everyone’s got their opinion. Right?

AUD: They do, but still.

LAURA: Yeah, I think she just wasn’t interested in the topic.

AUD: Were you in a critiquing group or anything?

LAURA: I wrote the whole book without the benefit of a writing group. When my chapters were done, and I had more or less put everything together, I found a local writing group that met at the library. We’d read each other’s chapters and share our opinions about our writing. The group showed me how different people perceived my stories. I took a few things out of the book based on some of their comments.

Social Media

AUD: Let’s do a quick jump to social media. I remember when we were at the Pennwriters Conference this past May, you had said that some publishers didn’t want to take on your book because nobody knew you. It made me think, if I were a publisher, I wouldn’t care if I didn’t know you. You have an amazing message!

LAURA: I had an agent who loved my book and didn’t think I needed a big platform, but as my book moved up the “food chain” in the publishing houses, the marketing people kiboshed it every time. I realized that it doesn’t even matter how good your book is. It’s a matter of marketing, and since I was an unknown name, they only cared about the numbers. I learned that the business aspect of it takes precedence in these publishing houses. That’s the brick wall that I kept hitting.

AUD: And that’s the part that bothers me too. They say it at all the writing conferences. If you don’t have a platform, forget it. But if writers are spending so much time on this platform, when do they have time to write great books? It almost seems like mediocre writing could get all the publicity, while good writing, without that platform, doesn’t. That makes zero sense to me.

LAURA: This is just my opinion, but I found over and over again that even when the editors loved the writing, they didn’t have the authority to override the marketing department. While I was with my agent, I ended up saying, “Okay, I’m going to do what the publishers ask.” I ended up going with Twitter. I’d never been on social media. I had no interest.

AUD: Same here!

LAURA: I tried a little bit of everything and chose Twitter. It seemed to be the most fun. You know, if you have fun doing something, it’s easier to put the time into it. I actually see the merit in it now. I can reach all sorts of people all around the world that I couldn’t before. In fact, I’ve made real friends on social media. I went to the Women in Aviation convention this spring and met other female pilots that I’m friends with on Twitter. It’s become real people, real friends, real connections.

AUD: That’s so amazing. I’m glad you’re saying there’s worth in Twitter.

LAURA: For me, I had never been on Twitter in my life. I just joined it and started observing what it was. Then I realized that people like to interact, and of course, you have to make posts interesting for them. So I started posting questions, and people would answer them. They would respond to other people’s answers, and it would take off in different directions.

AUD: What’s an example of a question you might have asked?

LAURA: One question was, what could you talk about for thirty minutes without any preparation? A simple question. But, you know what? Everybody has an answer for that. I stay away from politics and keep my Twitter feed positive.

AUD: Do you ever mention your book on Twitter?

LAURA: I’ve put a smattering of that out there, and I’ve had people buy my book from Twitter. A number of followers have come to my book signings, and what surprised the heck out of me, some of them were female pilots.

AUD: That’s awesome!

LAURA: I started it to please the big publishing houses and then ended up going with a small print press that had no interest in what my platform was. Now, my Twitter feed has very little to do with the book. It’s just something I have fun doing.

Loss

Note: During the interview, it came out that we both experienced unfortunate incidences relating to our manuscripts.

AUD: I lost my Frama-12 manuscript in a fire along with everything else in the apartment. I lost all my notes, all my manuscripts.

LAURA: That’s devastating.

AUD: Yeah. I couldn’t help thinking, how will I ever reproduce everything? Thankfully, I had mailed some of my manuscripts to friends and family, and they mailed them back.

LAURA: Wow. I had lost my whole book on my computer. The motherboard melted down, and I had to start over again.

AUD: Whoa.

LAURA: It was hard, so I know that loss. And you do go through that period where it’s like, “Oh well, I guess it wasn’t meant to be to write a book.” But time heals everything and you move forward.

AUD: Wait. You had to start from scratch? Or did you still have notes and stuff?

LAURA: Everything I had written was gone. I still had the original log books, but I had to rewrite all the stories. I don’t know how different they are from the originals. After I’d rewritten one of the stories, I found I had a printed copy of it. When I compared the rewritten story with the original it was surprisingly different.

AUD: Would you say better?

LAURA: Yes and no. There were parts in the revision that went deeper. But then there were sarcasm and quips and clever observations in the first version that I just forgot. When I write, for me, it’s like I’m talking to somebody. That’s my writing style. Of course, when you tell a story, it’s a little different each time. Who knows what my book would be like if I hadn’t lost everything?

AUD: I can’t even imagine rewriting a whole book like that.

Judging a Book by its Cover

AUD: Before I let you go, I have to tell you one more thing. I showed that picture of us from the conference to the kids at school, and I said, “Okay, look at this lady. What do you think her job is?” One of them guessed, “Foot doctor.”

LAURA: [Laughter] Foot doctor. That’s not bad.

AUD: I think I might’ve asked them to think of an unusual job. Someone else thought you were a funeral director. [Laughter]. Another said, eye doctor. Then a girl announced, “She’s a skydiver.” I told her, “Well, that’s close.”

LAURA: I’ve done that, yeah.

AUD: Before we had the students guess, the teacher I work with said, “Not that we’re judging a book by its cover…,” which we sort of were.

LAURA: That’s funny, and kind of the gist of my book is that I never looked like a pilot.

AUD: When I told the students you were a pilot, they thought that was the coolest thing. And on that note, we’ll say, “there we go.” Thank you so much, Laura. This was so much fun.

LAURA: Thanks. It was great talking to you.

AUD: I always have so much fun talking to authors and hearing about their experiences.

One Final Thought

LAURA: It’s interesting, Aud because I’m the exact same person I was before I wrote the book. I had the same experiences, the same message, but when you have a book, people start finding you and wanting to hear what you have to say. Now I’m getting out there and talking to different groups and sharing my message.

And isn’t that what we all want as writers?