A Conversation with Maddie Dawson on the Truest Thing About Writing

by Holly Robinson

Here’s the truest thing about writing: Writers need each other.

For instance, “Only another writer understands that sometimes you have no choice but to wake up in the middle of the night to write down three words,” says bestselling novelist Maddie Dawson, whose newest book, The Magic of Found Objects, will be published by Lake Union on August 1. “Our author friends sustain us.”

I first met Maddie twelve years ago, back when she was writing contemporary women’s fiction under the name Sandi Kahn Shelton. She had recently published a novel called Kissing Games of the World. I was about to launch my first book, The Gerbil Farmer’s Daughter: A Memoir. We had a mutual friend, so naturally, I was forced to do what all writers hate most: ask Sandi for a blurb.

“I didn’t want to do it because I was swamped,” admits Maddie, who was juggling fiction writing with teaching and her journalism job.

Yet, as she puts it, my book sat there on her desk, calling to her—and one day she picked it up, read it, and loved it. She wrote me a blurb. I was so floored by her generosity that, at the risk of having Maddie see me as a stalker, I drove to her town and invited her to lunch.

Note: we live four hours apart. Yes, stalkerish.

But that first meeting was magic, and as time went by, we became regular phone friends, critiquing each other’s work and meeting for lunch every few weeks at our favorite diner midway between our houses. The diner happened to be in a strip mall with a consignment store where we’d paw through the racks while continuing our conversations about children, husbands, agents, writing, and book marketing.

By now, I’ve published six novels in addition to the memoir, and Maddie has published eight, plus three nonfiction titles. Despite what looks to most people on the outside like successful careers, she’s one of the few people in my life who really understands that a career in writing means having to regularly wrangle with crises in confidence.

“Writers are always in this primitive state because our jobs are so scary,” Maddie says. “By the time you finish a book, you’re a little piece of dryer lint on the rug and your friends have to put you back together.”

The “business end” of writing is the worst kind of roller coaster,” she adds, “and that comes after you’ve already given everything you’ve got.”

Other people congratulate you when you’ve got a new book out, saying, “You must be so happy!” However, you know that, whether you’ve dashed it off in a matter of months, or sweated over that manuscript for years, market forces will largely determine your book’s fate.

“When you’re about to publish a book,” says Maddie, “only your writer friends will know that you’re a bedraggled cinder of a human being trying to walk upright. You’re supposed to be happy, but you’re a nervous wreck. Only another writer gets that.”

And only another writer can understand that, when the work is going well and the words are flowing, nothing else matters but that joy of being in the zone. “This is where it’s just the best thing to have an author friend to share those words with before showing them to the world,” Maddie says. “A friend who will be gentle and kind even when she’s reading your draft for the third time.”

Visit their websites to learn more about Maddie Dawson and Holly Robinson: https://maddiedawson.com/

http://authorhollyrobinson.com/

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FOLLY COVE, HOLLY ROBINSON

An emotionally rich novel about family and secrets from the acclaimed author of Chance Harbor.

The Bradford sisters are famous in Rockport, Massachusetts: for their beauty, their singing voices, their legendary ancestors, and their elegant mother, Sarah, who has run the historic Folly Cove Inn alone ever since her husband disappeared.

The two youngest sisters, Anne and Elly, fled Folly Cove as soon as they could to pursue their dreams and escape the Bradford name, while Laura stayed and created a seemingly picture perfect life. After a series of bad decisions, Anne has no choice but to come home and face her critical mother and eldest sister, reluctantly followed by Elly, another Bradford woman who’s hiding something.

As the three sisters plan a grand celebration for their mother’s birthday, they struggle to maintain the illusions about their lives that they’ve so carefully crafted. But when painful old wounds reopen and startling family secrets are revealed, they soon discover that even the seemingly unbreakable bonds of sisterhood can be tested…

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THE MAGIC OF FOUND OBJECTS

Maddie Dawson. The Magic Of Found Objects

From the bestselling author of Matchmaking for Beginners comes a feel-good story about becoming who you were meant to be all along.

Phronsie Linnelle was conceived at Woodstock in a serendipitous liaison between a free-spirited hippie and a farmer’s son and was born with magical wonder flickering in her DNA and rationality knit into her bones. All her life she’s been torn between the two. But now that she’s been betrayed by both love and the mother she once idolized, her rational side is winning.

So when her best friend from childhood proposes that they give up on romance and marry each other, Phronsie agrees. Who better to spend your life with than your best friend? Maybe the connection they already have is love. Maybe there’s no falling to be done. But immediately after they announce their engagement, she encounters someone who makes a very charming and compelling argument for revisiting romance.

While her even-keeled stepmother argues for the safety that comes with her new engagement and her mother relays messages from the universe to hold out for true love, Phronsie must look to her own heart to find the answers that have been there all along.