Poured Over: Laura Warrell on Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm

By Miwa Messer / September 27, 2022 at 6:00 am

“I feel like very often when we have stories about womanizing characters, whether we piece those stories out, so we see each woman—individually or not, they don’t really have stories. They don’t really have lives except as they relate to that main character. So, it was always going to be each woman steps forward, each woman gets a chapter.” Laura Warrell takes us behind the scenes of her smart, sharp and deeply resonant debut novel Sweet, Soft Plenty Rhythm. She joins us on the show to talk about flipping the script, the women she writes about (and letting her characters be who they are), love and loneliness, her writing process and much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer. And we end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Becky.

Featured Books (Episode):
Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm by Laura Warrell
Gorilla, My Love by Toni Cade Bambara

Featured Books (TBR Topoff):
Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby
Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.

Complete transcript for this episode:

I’m Miwa Messer, I’m the producer and host of Poured Over and I am so excited to meet Laura Warrell today. This book Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm, you are going to be hearing so much about this book this fall. It is fabulous. And I’m going to ask Laura to set it up for us because this cast and these stories and there’s so much to talk about. Though we are staying spoiler free in this conversation.

Oh, good. Good to hear. Thank you so much. I am thrilled to be here really excited to be here. I’m so happy to share the book with you. So okay, Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm follows the women in a playboy jazz musician’s life. So his name is Circus Palmer. He refuses to be tied down. So when his most beloved, bed mate, Maggie tells him she’s pregnant, he abandons her and goes off back into his life. There in Miami so that he goes back to Boston, where he’s from and where the book takes place, to connect or reconnect with former lovers, possibly new lovers, women and females who had been in his life. So the idea here is that he’s sort of trying to avoid this responsibility and sort of sets off this chain of reactions with these women. But rather than focusing on him, we’re turning the tables, we’re focusing on the women. So each chapter is told from a different woman’s perspective. Like I said, he’s got some former lovers that he’s reconnecting with. He’s got an ex-wife, he’s got a daughter, and of course, the woman who’s pregnant. So the book kind of invites these women to potentially liberate themselves from a relationship that is challenging. So are they going to do it? Is circus going to meet his responsibilities? That’s the adventure you are embarking upon if you choose to read this book.

We need to start with the voices of all of these characters. Who showed up first for you?

You know, Circus, of course, showed up first. But the very first woman to show up was actually Josephine, who appears sporadically throughout the book, you’re going to see her she’s going to call him, she’s going to text him, and then she shows up near the end. And she came to me first because I was actually, and this might be one of your questions so I’m going to answer now, I was involved with a musician and he was not particularly committal to say the very least. And so, it got me thinking about these types of relationships that are so common, that are so often written about, we’ve got Dawn one, we’ve got Casanova, this story of the womanizer is as old as literature. And I wanted to take another look at it, because I feel very often when these stories are told, they’re told from his perspective, right? The womanizer’s perspective, why is he making these decisions and interacting with women this way? Will he evolve? I wanted to tell the women’s stories. And Josephine came to me and I should say, for the sake of my reputation, I am not Josephine. But, I was feeling some pretty intense emotions at the moment that I thought of writing this story, it started as just a story about her. As she’s kind of in an extreme way dealing with the frustration of being involved with someone who is not seeing her humanity. And so that’s where the story began. And then it really pulled out from there, all kinds of women started coming into my imagination, all kinds of women that I’ve known in my life, or that I see represented on television shows and books and stories that I wanted to give a voice. So Josephine was first, she was fun to write. She’s extreme, she’s intense, and she has been pushed to the brink. And so, she was very fun to write.

She’s also a great sort of introduction to the way you write about love and loneliness, and how powerful loneliness can be for anyone, at any point. And that includes circus. He doesn’t really know quite how lonely he is, but certainly the women and Josephine. Ooh, she’s in it. She is in it. And the loneliness is palpable. And it’s a great, it is a really satisfying riff. Pardon the musical pun.

No, please bring it on. Well, and you know, I think that’s a major part of this book, and it really was one of the drivers to writing it. Not only do you experience loneliness when you are literally alone and not seeing anyone, but there’s a unique, particularly agonizing loneliness that comes when you are involved with somebody and you are emotionally attached, especially if you’re in love. And I think Josephine is, and that person comes and goes. It is excruciating when they are gone, and you’re longing for them and you don’t know where you stand, you don’t know what they’re doing, you don’t know who they’re doing it with, you don’t know how they feel about you. And you have this sort of back and forth, push and pull. Here are some drops of love, and intimacy, and touch, and then I’m gone. It’s a really particular type of loneliness that I think all of these women experience that I think a lot of women and anybody who has ever been involved, and unfortunately there are lots of us who have been involved with people who are just not showing up for us in the ways we would like them to. And in fact, that we’re showing up for them. So loneliness is definitely one of the many kind of tunes being played here. We’ll just go for all of these. As many as we can.

Yeah, let’s do it.

Let’s do it.

Pia, who is Circus’ ex-wife, she’s the perfect example of what you’re describing—of a woman who is lonely in her relationship. And I have to tell you, I had a lot of challenges with Pia. I understand the role she plays in the book not just as a character, not just as Circus’ ex and Koko’s mom, Koko is another character in the book. But wow, did you bring her to life because she was making me itch. There’s a lot. Pia makes some bad decisions. Pia has a mom who is a piece of work. Pia, I can’t tell if Pia… Well, I definitely have an opinion on this, I shouldn’t say I can’t tell. Pia is not a great mom but she is wildly in love with Circus and she can’t actually really let go. And this is a big piece of the story because Koko is one of the great teenage voices I think I’ve experienced on the page in a really long time.

That’s great. I’m glad to hear that.

Can we talk about this family unit for a second? Even if they’re not together and we’re going to let readers discover what happens when shall we say Circus brings a friend home?

Yeah. He’s a fun guy.

Oh, yeah. You had me barking. I was laughing so hard. I really… that moment I was like, wow.

Oh, I’m so glad.

You went there. But let’s talk about them as a unit, because the story does still swirl around them. They’re not actually the entire piece.

Right. So the first thing I’ll say about Pia, long, long ago, more than a decade, maybe even 20 years ago, I was reading a film review, I don’t remember the film, I don’t remember the actor or the character, but the reviewer said, this is a character who was smart enough to know that she should want more out of life, but not smart enough to know what it is. Now I’m not talking about Pia’s intelligence, but I like the idea of a character who has a sense that my life should be more than this, but I don’t know myself well enough to know what that life would look like, let alone how to go about getting that. So that’s where she falls for me. And you can extend that to her love life. Right? She knows that she should be experiencing more than she is or has been in her life with Circus. But she doesn’t know how to get it. And she doesn’t know probably what it feels like. So her story too, in my mind, is that she was a very young woman, he’s a few years older than her when they met. He’s a sexy, charismatic jazz musician. Totally out of her experience, right. Of life. And he gravitates toward her because same idea. These are two people who don’t fall on each other’s radar often. I think that in the beginning, he saw her as out of his league, right? He’s one of those, and I was like this, I knew a lot of people like this, we’re young, awkward kids, we find an art. That’s where we identify ourselves and express ourselves. And for some of us, or at least for Circus, wow, I started getting sexy playing this trumpet, right? So he sort of grew up thinking I don’t have access to women like Pia and then he gets a woman like Pia. But as I said, for her, I don’t think she really knew who she was. And I think she enamored of him. And the way a lot of people are enamored by the more dynamic, potentially more creative, more exciting partners that they’re involved with. And so once that person starts pulling away, and you’re in this, you know, you’re no longer in their orbit, you’re just in the cold. Again, that’s lonely. Again. And this is what Pia is invited to do. What I wanted to invite her to do is start looking inward. Who are you? What are you going to do without this guy? And she goes through a journey to figure that out. A lot of people, my mom, for example, do not like Pia. People don’t like Pia. And I understand that. I also feel like it was my responsibility and my pleasure to try to figure out what’s going on with her. And she makes decisions throughout the novel, that are not good. She makes decisions that people will be very offended by. But I wanted to make sure I found a way that it made sense for her. I hope it did. But again, actually with all of these women, I sort of subscribe to the idea as a writer that you chase your characters up a tree, and you put wolves and coyotes and dogs and thunderstorms, everything you possibly can, until they can find a way to get down that tree. And yeah, I put Pia through the wringer. Again, one of the things I want to do with these characters is invite them to liberate themselves from these situations, they don’t all do. But that’s what I wanted to invite her to do.

The thing that I love, too, is as much as she drove me sort of around the bend with a couple of choices that she made. At the same time, I loved the fact that I was having such a response to her because that tells me the characters three dimensional and that tells me that the character is living and breathing and doing a thing or doesn’t Maggie, who we’re going to come to in a second, I love those women. I hands down love those women. Peach I think is terrific, terrific character. But Pia because she was sort of picking up my last nerve a little bit. That’s when I knew I was in it hard. Because I mean, you could have gone a couple of different ways with her, and you were just like, nope, this is who she is. She is not a saint. She’s not a sinner. She’s Pia. And I think that’s really important because women aren’t always even in 2022, yes, and we’re going to have a version of this conversation because this conversation doesn’t seem to stop, is that women are still likable or not likable. Really, we’re still having this conversation? Yes, we are. And I can see a lot of people saying, including your mom, ooh. I don’t need to like a character should be in their orbit. I need to be in their orbit because it’s in service of the story.

Yes, I feel exactly the same way. And when I teach creative writing, when I teach fiction, especially at the college level, students are often afraid to present characters who are unlikable, who are unrelatable. And I always tell them, that doesn’t matter, at least not in my class. What matters is that the characters are compelling. That your reader wants to know what happens to them next. That they are emotionally invested. Might mean that they love the character, that they have a crush on the character, that they relate. It could also mean that they’re being driven up a wall by the character. And to me, I felt like it would be dishonest and uninteresting if all of these women were great, and kind, and honest, and making pure decisions and that Circus was just a jerk. That’s not how things work. There’s a reason that any human being continues to engage in any kind of involvement or situation that hurts them. Right. And it is dishonest to put any of these women into that situation, and not demonstrate in some way. Here’s where they’re complicated. Here’s where they’re dark. Here’s where they’re a little messy. Of course, there’s got to be a little bit of that, right? To hang out with a guy who, like I said, is not loving you, maybe even liking you, definitely not respecting you in the way that you want.

Yeah, it’s funny that you mentioned that Josephine was sort of the first character to show up after Circus because the first line on my set of notes here for our conversation starts with a line from Josephine. And it’s, the longer Circus stayed away the deeper love dug in. And it’s clear that you drove her up a tree with this man. But then the note I have right after it is a line from Circus that actually comes up a little earlier in the book, but he says, you can blame me but you must like how it feels. And those two lines for me, regardless of who the women are, or the circumstance because each set of circumstances is obviously different. Hmm, wow, I mean, even his kid, even Koko, 14 year old, 15 year old, Koko and wow, anyone who remembers being 14 and 15 knows. You’re figuring out how to be separate from your parents and you really want your parents and that’s that whole dance between being a kid, being a teenager, and wow, it’s messy. And right. Here she is with a dad who really doesn’t know how to be a dad, who’s actually completely freaked out that he’s about to have another child. All of it. And yet, it comes back to needing love, wanting love, not knowing how to give love, and not knowing how to receive it. And that’s part of the conversation we don’t have enough of is not knowing how to receive love.

That’s how I feel. And I love that you picked up those two lines, I think those are the two lines to pick out. That’s the call and the response, right? You’re hurting me, but my love is getting deeper each time. And the other person saying, well, you must like it, because you’re still here. Right? And I imagine, you know, just like with the women, I had to make sure that Circus is a compelling character. I mean, for sure, there will be people who read this and say, I don’t know why they’re sticking around this guy. I would have walked away as soon as he approached, right? For sure that’s the case. But I wanted to also make sure that it made sense why he was so attractive to these women. But I also to my mind thought, because a lot of people who are like Circus do this. To his mind, I’m telling you who I am. I’ve told you what you can expect. I’m showing you who I am. And if you’re going to keep showing up, you’re going to have to recognize that this is what you’re going to get. So I’m not saying, I’m not justifying that. But I’m saying this is how he justifies it to himself. And so I feel like, you know, getting into to Koko, Koko was actually sort of a later arrival to the overall story. And it was so wonderful when she came. I was the most excited when she when she emerged.

I did not expect you to say that because she feels like she’s absolutely a driver. Especially, if you contrast Pia and Maggie, who is going to be the mother of the second child. Wow. Talk about two separate women orbiting the same guy, yes, but Maggie is kind of like, eh. But Koko though, I mean, this is the kid where Circus says to Maggie, I have a kid she doesn’t talk to me.

I don’t know how to do this. Why are you expecting me to do something I’ve already failed miserably at? And that’s not the only reason, right? That’s a wonderful excuse, right? I can’t be a father to your child. I’m doing a bad job with this other one. This book has been through, you know, bringing it to the craft level, it evolved a lot. In the beginning, I wasn’t really thinking about him having a child. Pia actually arrived before Koko did. And then I thought, you know, I think he needs a child. I think that that would add dimension to his character, I think would add dimension to the story. And at first I thought that he had a son. But that felt cliche, it felt like there are too many directions to go that are obvious and maybe not particularly interesting. And then what actually happened, and this is not spoiling anything, is the Boston Marathon bombing. I was living in Boston when that happened. There were girls who got a crush on that bomber, the younger bomber, the one actually who’s still in prison. And I thought, oh my gosh, he’s got a daughter. Circus has a daughter. She came alive. I wrote that chapter. The first.

Oh wow. Okay.

That was my first. I don’t know how much we want to talk about it because it sort of happens near the end. It’s a pivotal moment for Koko. It was the first chapter and it came quickly. I was visiting a friend in San Diego. She had to work during the day. I think I wrote it in like two days while she was at work. And you’re absolutely right, by the end of my journey with this book, I feel like maybe this is Koko’s book. You know? I mean, I think it’s definitely the book for all of the women, but the driving force behind it might just be Koko. I mean, writing her and writing her story was very emotional for me. I was so invested in her because I felt like she’s a kid. And even though she doesn’t exist, you know, it’s hard as a fiction writer to remind yourself these are not real people. I felt like I had to be careful with her. But I also had to serve the story. And I also had to bring her on a journey.

I just want to talk about structuring this, and the work that goes into figuring out how you need to step forward, step back, step forward, step back. I’m sure there’s some sort of musical metaphor that I am missing completely, because guess what, hi, I’m the tone deaf one of my family.

I am actually, well we’re all tone deaf. In my family, it’s a sad thing. We love music, but none of us can sing or play very well. The idea was always to let each woman kind of step forward, and tell her story, tell her story of Circus and that relationship. And tell her story of whatever is going on in her life as he’s passing through. And that was one of the motivations for writing it. When I was involved with the musician that I was involved with, and when I talked to friends who are involved with people who they’re having similar relationships with, there’s always that feeling. Don’t you understand who I am? Don’t you see the fullness of me? Don’t you see I’ve got things going on, too. I’ve got concerns, I’ve got worries, I’ve got a job. I’ve got goals, I’ve got problems. And so I wanted to reflect that. Because going back to what we were talking about earlier, I feel like very often when we have stories about womanizing characters, whether we piece those stories out, so we see each woman individually or not, they don’t really have stories. They don’t really have lives except as they relate to that main character. So it was always going to be each woman steps forward, each woman gets a chapter. As the story evolved, I realized two things, one, I really need it to cohere. You know, more solidly, and that means really sort of, you know, threading everyone in a way through everyone else’s story, some more than others, but for sure, making sure that that’s happening. And then also recognizing how would this play out? In some ways, I knew that the focus was on the women, but one of the chords tying it all together was Circus’ evolution, right? So in the first chapter we find out, he finds out, Maggie is pregnant. His most beloved, you can decide dear reader how much you think he cares for her or loves her. But it’s pretty clear that she’s kind of closest to his heart. Tells him that she’s pregnant. And then as I said, he leaves. And he’s going to think about it, right, he’s going to make a decision about what he’s going to do. Who he is in the context of this new situation. We also have, which we haven’t really talked about, he’s just turned 40. He feels like his time, the window is closing, if he’s going to make it big. He lives in Boston. New York is sort of… he’s got an opportunity in New York that’s happening right around his 40th birthday. So not only do we have his resistance to commitment, we also have what he sees as the clock ticking on his dream. And this isn’t really working with a new baby, right? And so his journey toward the decision he’s going to make around all of these factors was what I use is the cord. So when I decided where to place which woman, part of it was, where is each individual woman in her romantic life, her life story, and how does it relate and connect to where Circus is, so where can I plug her in on his sort of timeline. And again, not prioritizing his story or his timeline, but they have to sort of work in tandem, right? He’s evolving, and their evolution sort of pops in, right. So there’s a little there’s a cord connecting their journeys. So that’s how the structure kind of came together. So maybe it isn’t as magical as I thought. That’s fairly concrete. Hopefully.

It is concrete, but also I’m just thinking as you were talking, I was thinking about Peach, bartender. And sort of where she goes from, oh, wow, stars in her eyes to, huh. And I’m going let people discover where she goes, but it’s really, she’s a pretty cool cat. I’m quite glad I got to meet her. And there’s a little bit of comic relief, obviously, in what happens with her as well. But she does ultimately say, you know, I’m going to make a choice. And I really respect that. And, you know, we’ve all sort of met people at different points in our lives where they come swanning in and swanning out and maybe sometimes we were that person for someone else.

Sure. Of course. Yes. I’m really happy with the response people have to Peach. Because I’m going to be sort of honest about where she came from. I was watching a TV show, maybe I won’t mention it. There was a character who was, well, the bimbo, right? We’ve seen the bimbo everywhere in our culture. Everywhere. And she comes in, she’s wearing skimpy clothes, and she’s presented as not very intelligent, and therefore disposable. And I was angry when I saw that character. And I wanted to put her into this book. But, I didn’t want to suggest no, actually, she’s brilliant and that’s why she deserves respect. I wanted to say no, she’s very pretty, she definitely fits the standards of, you know, what we in this culture consider beautiful and sexy. She doesn’t necessarily have, you know, highfalutin goals, but she definitely still deserves respect. She’s definitely still a human being she definitely has a story and a voice and she should have agency. I wanted to give her some humanity because I got pretty sick of seeing her being robbed of it consistently.

And I mean, honestly, as much as you and I roll our eyes at the board and bimbo I mean, it’s just one more example of how culturally we have all of these words to describe women and not so many for men.

Right. And they’re always degrading. And that’s one of the pieces with I mean, now that we’re talking about it, I’m realizing there are two pieces with Peach, right? She’s the bimbo and she’s also the slut. Because she likes to have sex and she likes, you know, being with men. So not only is she, because of her physicality, disposable, which is ridiculous, right? You desire it, yet, what’s wrong with you that you desire it so much yet you want to discard it so easily. But because she inhabits her body, right? She’s not using it to appeal to men, she likes being in her body. And it’s tragic that women, when women, enjoy being in their bodies and enjoy being sexual in their bodies, that their sluts, and they’re easily discarded, and we’ve got lots of bad names for them. But when men do the exact same thing, we just, oh, boys. Roll our eyes or think it’s cute and sexy. And that’s a little inevitable.

A little notch. It’s a little checkmark. And the other thing is too I mean, women, you know, we’re so emotional. Right? The thing is, your women are emotional, because they understand what they’re putting themselves through. Yes. And some would like to stop and some would like him to change his behavior. But the reality is that they are much more connected to how they’re feeling or how they would prefer to be feeling than he is. I mean, let’s face it Circus drinks a little too much. He’s messy. His career is not quite going the way he thought it was going to, because here he is, I’m doing the thing I love and, you know, the stories we tell ourselves about where we’re supposed to be at certain points in our lives. And, you know, here’s Maggie with a big career. And she’s like, you know, I, I’m pregnant. I wasn’t planning it. But here we go. I’m pregnant. And that changes her narrative a little bit. And, Pia, though, comes into the world with this narrative that’s kind of pre-installed. I mean, we meet her mother. You know, she ends up making some different choices, like we meet all of these women. And they all are just figuring it out. And it takes a lot of gumption to figure out what’s going on and admit that stuff isn’t right or its messy, I mean, there’s so many pieces. And Circus, I think he’s picking up a little bit. I mean, I want to give the guy some credit, he does have a very genuine evolution in this novel. I’ll give him his props. But yes, wow, dude is messy. Messy.

He’s very messy. And for sure, he doesn’t realize that, you know. The older I get, it’s interesting, I mean, I’m still thinking about relationships, I’m still evolving in my understanding of relationships. I feel like I regularly talk to people about their relationships, whether they’re married or single. I have a friend, a male friend, who recently ended a relationship and sort of talked about how he feels. That he feels bad and he feels guilty. And I said, want to say to him, I might actually say it, it’d be really great if you expressed that to her. I bet you she’d like to hear that. You know, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to stay in the relationship but knowing it means something is huge. You know? And I think that Circus, and Maggie says this to him at some point, you know, he does have trauma. He does have reasons why he’s behaving the way he is. Not only with women, but in his career. There are reasons he’s not successful at this point, or successful as much as he would like to be. And it’s not only because of talent, right? And so I think that tragedy for a character like Circus is that he has no self-awareness, and doesn’t realize that he doesn’t have self-awareness yet. There’s something in there, right, there is a person in there, there is a sensitive soul in there who feels something, it’s in his gut, it’s in his mind, he hears what he says to people and feels something inside of him kind of pushing back. But he’s not strong enough, he’s not wise enough, he’s not caring, you could argue, enough to really recognize that. But part of my goal, as I said, in giving these women an opportunity to liberate themselves, or to at least reconfigure their relationships to him, reconfigure their relationships to love and relationships, I also wanted to give him an opportunity to grow up. To meet his responsibilities, to face life, to face who he is. And I think that’s what all of these characters need to do. And all of us need to do in our lives, really, face the reality of who we are and what we want and what we’re getting and what we’re not getting, and make choices.

And speaking of choices, can we talk about some of the literary influences that you’ve had over the years? Because I mean, you also teach and I want to come to that as well, but who helped make you the person who wrote Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm?

I feel like my answers are going to be… no one is going to be surprised. But obviously, I love Toni Morrison. She’s my favorite writer, and probably will always be. I love the way that she uses language. I love her ability. I actually tried to study it when I was a student, of how she tells these incredibly compelling stories that have forceful momentum, yet it also feels like she’s lingering, right? There’s an intense amount of movement, yet at the same time, it feels very, sort of soft and like your lulled along. So she’s definitely been an influence. And then there are other women writers, Marguerite Duras was somebody that I came to very early, I even tried to write like, I’m going to write an 80 page novella that’s very sparse, and there’s like one sentence… I’m not good at that. I guess I’m a blabber mouth on the page. There’s also a woman named Annie Ernaux, I like European literature as well. So those two, you know, sort of really getting into the dirt of being a woman relating to men, especially when it’s challenging. So they were influences. Toni Cade Bambara is actually somebody who I really love. Part of it is something that I can’t figure out that she’s able to do, that I sort of tried to do in some of these chapters where, you know, you’re reading a story, and you’re really compelled by the character and the and what’s happening to them, and then there’s just something magic that happens at the end that just flows over you. And you have this understanding, and you’re not even sure what of, but your life has been changed. That’s what she did to me.

I know exactly what you’re talking about.

And I don’t know what it is. I don’t think I will ever figure it out.

Gorilla, My Love.

Yes, exactly.

You also teach though.

I do.

And you’ve taught for a really long time. And I’m wondering what you’ve learned from your students, because you tend to work with the younger set.

So I have taught adults, I mean, college students are adults, but like professionals who’ve done other things with their lives and come back to fiction, but for the most part, yes, I’ve taught students or college students. That’s a really good question and one that I haven’t really thought about. So I’m going to get into it and hope that the an answer comes. Because what I find myself saying to them a lot is you know, write what you know, that little chestnut. And I think that we all, anybody who writes, especially students who are not actually English majors are intending to write, a lot of the students that I have taught, are taking a class because they have to. They’re looking for a credit, right? They don’t necessarily want to be writers. Every so often, there’s well, I shouldn’t say it that way. There’s always a handful of students like no, I actually really like to read, I really like poetry and I’d like to write. I might even be an English minor. But anyway, what I find myself saying to them a lot is, it’s natural to write about yourself, because it’s the most interesting subject to you, right? It’s your experiences. But I think what’s more interesting and challenging is to try to divorce yourself from those experiences, and your place in them. Because probably, that’s where the really juicy stuff is. And I think that’s true not only for writing, or people who are interested in writing, but I feel like, even when you’re not writing about yourself, there’s something to that, you’ve really got to look for it. And what I really appreciate about this conversation I’m having with you, is how much you’re talking about the intensity, right? How dire things get for these women, right? And to me, how necessary that is when you write. That doesn’t mean that it’s always life or death, right? Peach, for example, is not in a life or death situation at all. Her journey, even though it’s exciting, as you said, hopefully funny, her chapter, I mean she shows up several times, but in her chapter that’s mostly devoted to her, there are lots of other characters and lots of other things happening. And her evolution is really internal. But it is incredibly important. And the stakes are high. You know, that’s kind of writing 101, writing workshop 101. But part of it to me is really find what it is in the gut of your characters that needs evolution, that needs to be stirred, that really is going to be dynamic, once you poke at it. And then just keep poking at it. Sounds cruel to say that it’s fun, but it’s a really wonderful, creative experience. And you help your characters hopefully, right, you’re giving them an opportunity to evolve. And hopefully, for the reader, to really, at the very least be entertained and engage fully, and hopefully, you know, evolve in some way themselves.

Oh, you definitely do that. Oh, this happened. All of that happens in Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm. What were you listening to while you worked on these pieces? Ultimately it became this beautiful book.

So we’re going to put together a Spotify list, so look for that. So, the answer is all over the place. And I will try to condense it. The first is just kind of what I listen to when I write, I usually listen to music. As you noted, I used to teach at the Berklee College of Music. And my students told me what kind of music I like. Because I didn’t know. I would give them the names of bands and they would be like, oh, that’s downtempo. So I often listen to downtempo, acid jazz, that kind of thing. And I imagine this is true for most writers, or maybe not, I don’t know. My characters have sounds. They sound like something to me. circus has a sound. Pia has a sound. So songs would come up that sounded like Circus, that sounded like Maggie, in that sort of down tempo, chill out acid jazz. Then there were songs that I knew they liked. And these are the things that are going to show up on the Spotify list that we’re putting together. So for example, Pia, and I mentioned this in the book, she likes The Cranberries, and Jewel, and the sort of 90s, you know, soft, that’s the music that she likes. And so I would listen to that when I was working with her. Josephine likes Beyonce, that’s probably not a shock when you get to her chapter. And so sometimes I had playlists or at least just a few songs, sometimes just one song that really put me into the spirit of that character. And then of course, I listened to jazz. There are musicians that I think are Circus’ favorite. People like Lee Morgan and all of the brass players. But then there were also just, I really could see him. And it’s kind of funny, because he’s a man, but he was the character that became the easiest to write. The clearest to see. I always knew what he was going to say. A character would say something, I knew exactly what he’d respond, but I would have to think about what the other character would say back. But I could always see him on the stage. And so I would often play records, you know, songs that I could imagine him playing on a stage in Boston. The Usual, Miles Davis and Mingus and Thelonious Monk and for anybody who’s interested in jazz or gets curious about it, because that’s one of the things that’s been really interesting is people are very surprised, like, why does he play jazz? Why? Why jazz? And they often say, oh, when does it take place? So I think, you know, everybody thinks, oh, jazz, that was music in the 20s, or the 50s. And for anybody who’s interested, the greats are a great place to start. And I listened to a lot of them, because those are the things you’re going to hear when you’re in those dingy clubs in Boston listening to jazz.

Which I’ve done.

Yes, me too. Me too.

Yeah, it’s, it’s been a minute, but I’ve done it. What’s next for you?

I am working on another book. It’s right now it only has two points of view. And they are women. And it is a love triangle. So that’s what I can tell you so far, there’s a lot more to it. I’m hoping that I am layering it in the ways that I did with Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm somatically. I had a mentor when I was doing my program who said, you’re a little weird, in a good way. And, I kind of liked that. I think, you know, I think that everything that happens in Sweet, Soft Plenty Rhythm is, you know, believable, is relatable. But I think there’s a little twistiness to a lot of those stories. And I’m finding well, maybe, I do that without even thinking about it. So that’s going to be similar here. So totally different types of characters. Totally different world. This takes place in Los Angeles. These are very, very different types of people. Love Triangle. Focusing on the two women involved in it, and they’re not going to make the best choices either. I just love it when people don’t make great choices.

That’s when we get great books.

Yes. Hopefully, yes.

I am so happy to hear about that new project. But you know, before I let you go, because I knew this was going to fly. I knew this was.

I know, I’m just noticing.

I think Koko’s okay. I’m pretty sure Circus in a better place. Maggie is just fine. Maggie and Odessa are fine. And some other characters are fine too, don’t misunderstand me. But do we think Pia is okay now?

I actually know where everybody is right now. I know how all of their lives are. And it depends on how you define okay. But I will say that she made the choice that was right for her. That’s what I’ll say.

I absolutely get that.

Yeah. I think that’s true for all of the characters. Some choices are easier to stomach than others. But I think that she’s in a place where she needs to be. I think she’s okay. Yeah, I think she’s okay.

Good. Good.

Laura Warrell, thank you so much. Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm is out now. And I’m so excited for people to meet these folks. Thank you again.

This was so much fun. So much fun. Thank you so much.