︎
Rachel Schwartzmann: Welcome to Slow Stories. I’m Rachel Schwartzmann. I'm a writer, consultant, and the creator and host of this podcast. For those of you just tuning in, I interview artists, entrepreneurs, and innovators who share slow stories—and big ideas—about living, working, and creating in our digital age.
This episode begins with a story from Geoff Rickly, who shares sensorial musings on slowness and rituals. Here's more from Geoff.
Geoff Rickly: My name is Geoff Rickly. I'm a singer with the band Thursday, a producer known for My Chemical Romance, and a writer. Being a touring musician means continuous travel, not just vans and tour buses, but sleeper trains, ferry boats and barges, 24-hour intercontinental flights, puddle-jumping prop planes, and even the occasional black helicopter through a jungle. It can be a challenge to slow down when you're in constant motion. Your head fills with velocities and vectors, time zones, and delayed departures. Even in dreams, you find, you can be late for something. But I believe in simple rituals, small grounding gestures that reliably produce flow states. Where external stimuli cease to be distractions and time decompresses its physical dimension, revealing a vast inner space.
I start by making coffee. First, carefully weighing and grinding the beans. Then I put on my writing playlist, always instrumental and often ambient—drone artists like William Bazinsky, Tim Hacker, or Sarah Davachi, who make glacial, shimmering compositions. Then, I'm ready for the most important step: selecting a perfume from one of the dozens of samples that I always travel with. Do I want to be surrounded by giant prehistoric flowers or the fire of the comet that killed the dinosaurs? Each bottle holds a miniature world ready to burst forth from the atomizer with a single spray. For today, I've got just the thing.
[SOUND OF PERFUME SPRAYING]
One moment, I'm in my bunk, and the next, I'm in an old church. Plumes of incense are coming from the sacristy but do nothing to warm the cathedral's wet stones, worn as they are with age and covered in moss. But there are delicate lilies on the altar, a reminder of a recent wedding that keeps things from getting too austere.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Thank you so much again to Geoff for sharing this transporting story. You can follow him on social at @geoffrickly and read his debut novel, Someone Who Isn't Me, published by Rose Books. On that note, here's my conversation with Rose Books' own Chelsea Hodson.
︎
Rachel Schwartzmann: An essay, Chelsea Hodson tells me, should be an attempt at clarity. That may be true for the writer, but when reading Chelsea's words, clarity is actually the last thing on my mind. Instead, I'm swept away by her striking prose, her repetition, her digressions. Chelsea's words pulse with desire, fear, hope. I walk away from the page, not always knowing what to think but feeling something primal just the same.
The words I'm referring to in this case are from Chelsea's debut essay collection, Tonight I'm Someone Else, which was published in 2018 and received widespread praise. But aside from gifting us her own prose, Chelsea has made it her business to help others write their truth. Through endeavors like her Morning Writing Club and private coaching and editing services, community has slowly become a part of Chelsea's practice. This culminated in the launch of her latest literary endeavor. Enter Rose Books.
Founded and run by Chelsea in Sedona, Arizona, Rose Books believes "now is the time to take risks for the sake of beauty." In this way, slowness informs the press's ethos, as Chelsea only publishes two books per year. And for Chelsea, quality remains top of mind at every stage of the process, enabling her to continue championing writers from all walks of life. As she writes in Tonight I'm Someone Else: "Whenever I encounter genius in another person's work, I give myself over to it, hoping to forget myself, hoping to touch it for real for at least a moment. All the better if the writer or artist is still alive—that means geniuses aren't finished being born yet."
Our conversation was recorded much earlier this year. If you ask me, it’s a timeless gift to anyone who wants to write their life or tell their story, but I won't give too much more away. So, without further delay, here's Chelsea Hodson, writer and founder of Rose Books.
︎
So, outside of that, I like to go on hikes, which is a totally new thing for me. [Laughs] I'm very much a city person [for most of my life], and now I'm starting to appreciate nature in a different way. My husband and I also got a dog in 2020, so that's been kind of a new thing for us. That has also given me a new appreciation for not only animals but also nature and the importance of going outside. [Laughs] Because ... I've sometimes joked that I'm similar to an indoor cat—like when everything shut down in 2020, I was fine for a very long time because, ultimately, I just want to be left alone and curl up in comfortable positions and read and watch a dumb show or something. [Laughs]
I guess that's my answer to who I am outside of the things I do. But it's almost a difficult question to answer because I feel so bound to the things I do in a good way, not in an obligatory way, but just the things I write, the things I make, and the work that I do now is all bound to things I want to be doing and things I strive to make room for in my life. I have had many jobs throughout my life—especially in my twenties—and a lot of jobs I did not like; I've worked very hard to structure my life in a way where I make money from the things I really enjoy doing. And that creates a different need for downtime or leisure time. I work a lot, but it's not the same as working a lot for someone else. I'm working for myself ultimately. So, that creates a different texture outside of the things I do. But I do work a lot. [Laughs]
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah, I think we all do at this point.
Chelsea Hodson: Yeah.
Rachel Schwartzmann: But it's very clear that the work that you put out and champion is close to your heart. And I know it's a difficult question, I think, especially for creative people, to kind of discern the difference between profession and passion. But I'm curious to ask who you would like to become, too.
Chelsea Hodson: I think maybe a less anxious version of myself [Laughs]and maybe a less critical version. I am extremely hard on myself, and it's difficult because that is rewarded in our culture and society. You know, the extreme pressure I put on myself sometimes has really good results. So it's like how I can be a good editor to both myself and other people is by being very critical and overthinking things. So it's almost like the things that I'm always trying to work on—having less anxiety around what I do, less criticism—it's almost like I still can acknowledge that those things help me in a way. So it's hard to say I wish I didn't feel those things. It's kind of like I wish I had a better handle on them because sometimes I spiral. And you know, it's just like anything I do, I am drawn to risk in some ways. And having thoughts like, okay, I don't like how publishing is run, how about I start my own press and do my own thing?
I have this level of confidence when I start something, and that applies to writing as well. I'll think, oh, I have this great idea, and in my mind, it's perfect, and I know how to execute it. And then, in practice, it's very difficult to execute, and you kind of realize, okay, this is going to be harder than I thought. So I think I'm at this point where my work and my creative work—so my writing and my publishing work and anything else I do—it has the same kind of rise and fall, and I'm very aware of that where I must get this dopamine hit of starting something saying, okay, yeah, I'm on this ride, and I feel good about it. [Laughs]
Then, the doubt creeps in. And so I think for me, I am always battling that because it comes up when I least expect it. I'll be on a roll with something, and then I'll be just hit with this thought of what if I can't do it? And that is almost paralyzing for me. I have to work really hard to not just stop at that point and to say, you know, just because I feel afraid doesn't mean that I can't do it. [Laughs] It just means I'm feeling afraid. I'm feeling doubtful, and I'm feeling really critical of myself. But it's usually like no one else is being critical of it. I'm very gifted to be surrounded by people that are very supportive of me. And I have a lot of encouragement from a lot of different angles, especially with the announcement of Rose Books. And people are just so excited about that. And that has helped me get over myself in a lot of ways and be like, you know what? This is like a cool thing that has momentum. You have to just keep going. There's really no option at this point. But I never seriously consider stopping. It's just that kind of blip in my consciousness of: you can't do this. I think everyone has that, but maybe particularly artists who just think, why does anyone care what I have to write or say?
I was just thinking the other day I was having this memory of working at American Apparel [Laughs], and I had a blog at the time when I worked at American Apparel.
Rachel Schwartzmann: We all did! [Laughs]
Chelsea Hodson: This is obviously a really long time ago, but I had a blog, and I wrote about my life there. This was before [blogging] was a thing that people did on Instagram or anything else. This is like 2007 or 2008. And so I remember it was kind of weird to people that I had a blog, and I had this memory the other day of my manager at American Apparel saying to me, why would you think anyone would care about that? About your life in particular? Why do you think that that needs to be online? And I didn't really have an answer, and I guess I still don't. And that's why I still remember that ... I don't really think it's the artist's job to say, this is why this matters. It's just my obsession, and I have to put it somewhere. That's it.
When that happened at my job at American Apparel, it was almost like my self-critic came to life, and I think that really stuck with me because it's like her saying that was already what I was fighting every time I went to post a blog. I didn't think anyone cared, you know? But I wanted to do it anyway. [Laughs]
Rachel Schwartzmann: Do you feel like it was a way to be seen by yourself, or would you say you were shy? How did it feel to kind of have that space to be so honest?
Chelsea Hodson: I think it comes from an impulse to be seen as an artist and a writer and to be seen as legitimate, which is something I really struggled with a lot when I was starting out. And I was wondering what it meant to be a writer. Did it mean that I was published in ten different journals? Because I'd only been published in one. So, did that mean I was a writer yet? Or was a writer someone who had a book? Because I was really far away from having a book [published]. So what was a writer? I think I just loved writers so much and certain books so much that I really found myself drawn toward being a part of that world. And there was this kind of impulse in me to be seen as that. And I was under no impression that my Blogspot blog was making me be seen as a writer. [Laughs] I just thought, this is an extension of what I want to do someday, so I might as well start it now. And I did have this kind of fascination toward my own life in a way that I felt compelled to write about it and document it.
I had a blog called "Inventory" on Tumblr that started with about four readers, and every day, I would post a photo of myself holding an object that I owned. And then I wrote a little paragraph somehow related to the object, usually indirectly, it was kind of just an oblique style prompt—I'd hold up a lamp, and then I would write about light or something [Laughs] you know, something kind of stupid like that. But I did it every day without stopping for almost two years until I had cataloged every single item I owned and ended up kind of forming a readership.
By the end of the project, I had like 15,000 followers on Tumblr. And that was really organic. That was from me just doing it every day, and I would get a few new followers every day. So, I started to understand how the impulse to put myself out there did sometimes have results. It's like that led me to do certain things in a different way and think of myself as a writer. And I think that helped me kind of move to the next level and then move towards what became a chapbook and then that years later became a book. So I think that was my first realization that social media or the internet can really have this power ... I was in control of it. It didn't require approval by anyone else, which, at the time, I was submitting poems to literary journals and waiting for approvals or rejections. That was kind of torturous for me when I started because this constant assessment of whether I was good or not really ate at me because I was already really insecure about it—thinking, I don't even know if these are good. But there's something so appealing about having Tumblr and saying, I can publish myself every day, and if people don't want to read it, they don't have to read it. But a lot of people started following it, and that made me think, okay, what I'm doing is resonating. It's not just in my head. [Laughs]
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah, it's so interesting. Tumblr really set the stage for a lot of the agency that I think people have developed in terms of choosing how to show up creatively online or who to support.
Chelsea Hodson: Mm-hmm.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Did you ever think about your well-being during that time? I mean, this is one of the core elements explored on this podcast is how we do things with intention. But was that ever a consideration?
Chelsea Hodson: I totally agree with what you're saying, but at the time, no. [Laughs] I had a lot of self-destructive impulses, and I really loved artists that were extremely tortured or even violent towards themselves. Marina Abramovich was a huge influence on me, and I just thought, well, she wouldn't care about her well-being. [Laughs] It's not like what I was doing was that wild or anything, but there was really no intention for that project in particular beyond just the confines of essentially the rules of the performance slash project that I had set at the beginning, which was that every day I would post one photo of myself with one object, write a title, which started with the word "regarding"—so it would be like "Regarding light" or whatever it was—and then a paragraph of prose that was sometimes related, sometimes not.
So, I had these rules I had set for the project, and I did that for almost 400 days in a row. That was really the only intention. Sometimes, I was doing it from my phone—it's like I'd forgotten to do it that day even. You know, it wasn't like, oh, every day at 8:00 AM, I light a candle, and write in my journal, and do inventory. [Laughs] I was doing it when I could, however, I could, because my life was not set up in a way that enabled a solid routine that nurtured me. I was just kind of throwing things together. And, only now, almost ten years after that project, do I have a different sense of intention and, I think, process around what I do. But when I started out, it really was just out of a hunger to express myself. It took a long time to develop any sort of intention, or I guess, element of steadiness around that.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Well, it's interesting to think about a project like that in terms of the volume. I mean, 400 days is no easy feat. And then you look at Rose Books, which I believe you're only publishing two books a year now, is that right?
Chelsea Hodson: Yeah, that's correct.
Rachel Schwartzmann: I want to talk about Rose Books, but before we do, I think it would be great to sort of reintroduce your writing, particularly your essay collection Tonight I'm Someone Else, and sort of give some backstory around the book and then maybe have you read a passage as well?
Chelsea Hodson: Yeah, definitely. It was published in 2018, and I worked on it for several years before publishing it. So, it was a very slow and methodical process in which I considered myself kind of floundering, essay by essay. I was learning and finding my way towards my voice with every essay. And with every essay, I felt like I got a little bit closer.
One of the essays, "Pity the Animal," came out as a chapbook, and that was the first essay where I felt like, yes, that is what I'm trying to do. So I felt like I found my voice with that, and then I could revise the essays I had written before with that in mind and think, how did I get to that level of clarity where I finally said exactly what I meant? So that sounds straightforward in theory, but anyone who's tried to write what they mean knows how hard in execution that is.
That was difficult in a lot of ways, and it took a lot of time. And so sometimes I would have an essay where I would write it and reach the end of what I felt was basically the extent of what I could do. I needed more time to make it better, but I didn't know what I needed or how to make it better. [Laughs] So, I would essentially just put it away and start a new essay and go on a different path. And after a couple of months, I would maybe return to the essay I'd put away, and I would suddenly have a new idea. And so, if I had tried to write a straightforward memoir from beginning to end, I think it would've been impossible for me. But because I could kind of start and stop in these different ways with different compartmentalized essays that were initially intended to be able to stand alone, I think when they're collected, I like how they read from beginning to end, and I did collect them in an intentional way where I want them to be read in a certain order, but also each one can work alone.
I think they're not necessarily linked in that way where you have to read one before the other. So, by approaching it in this compartmentalized way, I was able to redirect my focus in this way where I could gain more clarity with each draft, with each revision. And so some of the essays, I would do this start-and-stop-work-on-it-put-it-away pattern for up to five years, you know, reaching 0.5 drafts in and saying, I really don't know how to say what I'm trying to say. And I don't know why, but I guess I'll try again in six months, and I would do it again. [Laughs]
So it was kind of maddening, but I also trusted the process because it would get better every time. But it just took me a long time to get to that. And you see that in the book sometimes. There are phrases that say, "I wrote this before, but I wrote it wrong," you know? [Laughs] And so the reference to the writing process itself is in the book, which I like. I think that gives it this layer of messiness the way that I feel messy in a lot of ways. I like that human quality of writing. I want it to be really clean and as perfect as I can get it, but the flaws are always what I like in something. If you listen to a song and they're speaking at the end of the song, and they choose to leave that in, I'm always really interested in that. I like having some layer of that in literature.
Rachel Schwartzmann: I'm learning to love the not-so-neat endings. It's hard, though, when you want to make sure that, again, you're feeling seen or understood. But sometimes you can't please everybody.
Chelsea Hodson: Yeah. And I think there's also an impulse to want to hold the reader's hand to make sure that they know what you mean. And I think that resisting that is always good, essentially. I want the reader to be participating. I don't want them to just passively be watching the pages like it's a television show or something, you know? I want them to have their own experience. If they don't interpret it the same way I wrote it, then that's fine with me. The book is under my control until I publish it—then, it belongs to everyone else, and it's ultimately their problem.
Rachel Schwartzmann: [Laughs]
Chelsea Hodson: [Laughs] That's ultimately kind of how I feel, where I'm like, you deal with it.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Well, that makes it easier for those who like to reread or to go back to something. There isn't this finite way to engage with it.
Chelsea Hodson: Yeah.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Well, let's have you read from the book. I think the essay "Simple Woman" would be a good place to start.
Chelsea Hodson: Yeah, sure thing. This essay, "Simple Woman," is one of the last essays I wrote for the book, and it came out of a prompt by my editor to write about money. She said money is something that comes up in a lot of your essays, but you don't really write explicitly about it. And I thought, okay, I like that idea. But there is some impulse in me where I'll take a prompt, and it will help me begin, but then I'll always write about something else. It's like I'm on the road, and I take a left turn and go a different way that I may not be supposed to go. That's what's exciting to me. This gets me into trouble a lot when I'm doing professional writing or I'm on assignment for something, and I'll want to not do the assignment anymore, which happened to me recently. [Laughs]
But anyway, this essay is actually about love. So that's where it ends up. But it does start talking about money and talking about essentially being a member of Equinox, [Laughs] which was something I did because I worked in the Rose Reading Room in the Midtown Library a lot in New York. And Equinox was right across from there, and it seemed so exotic to me because it was so expensive. And when I sold my book, I thought, okay, now I'm going to join that dumb gym, which I later learned they don't let you call it a gym, it’s called a club, which is so funny.
So I basically joined as a bit and because of the location, because I was genuinely in this area all the time, and I thought if I had more money, I would join that gym to just go work out there after I sat in one place for eight hours basically because if you get up to go to the bathroom, you lose your spot. I would just sit there for hours and hours working. And I liked the idea of joining a gym. So essentially, I wrote about my impulse to join this gym and what that meant, and that ultimately, I joined and agreed to pay a certain amount of money because I was trying to turn into someone else. So it's like, what does that mean? And that line and that idea came before the title did that Tonight I'm Someone Else, the title of the book. I think that it helped inform the title, but this idea was there before the title. And this idea of: what does it mean to be drawn towards transformation, and how does love participate in that ultimately?
So that's a lot of what this is about, and it kind of jumps around. So it is a little bit strange sometimes to just listen to it, I think. I don't usually read from this essay in public because I think it's meant to be read on the page to absorb it because there's just white space between the paragraphs, at least. So I'll read from the middle of it, and I'll just pause when it's a paragraph break, line break. Some sections are italicized. So it's a little bit of a strange essay, but I don't think it's impossible to follow by any means. [Laughs] But it's a mysterious one to me. It's one that came out very intuitively. So this one—the process I was talking about where I would spend years on it—I spent months on, and I think in some ways it's stronger than the ones I spent years on. So, I'll begin here.Rachel Schwartzmann: How was it to read it out loud?
Chelsea Hodson: It's interesting. I slipped over a few lines because I haven't read it in a long time, actually. I haven't done a lot of interviews. I haven't done readings in years. I just don't have the opportunity. I'm working on a different book now, but it's like I'm kind of brought right back to what I was feeling when I wrote it. So it has a kind of time machine quality for me to read it.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Well, you mentioned when you put certain pieces away, are you still sort of turning over sentences or lines in your mind? Sometimes—if I'm very stressed out and I'm thinking about something—mid-conversation, what I'm thinking about will come out. Did you have that sort of mind-body experience where even if you weren't working on the piece at your computer, it was still working itself out in other areas of your life?
Chelsea Hodson: Yes, definitely.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Was that annoying? [Laughs]
Chelsea Hodson: [Laughs] Well, I'm actually reading from a PDF of my book because my copy of my book is actually marked up and edited. [Laughs] So when I read from this book, or when I did—when I was on tour in 2018/2019, I would figure out based on what time amount I had to read. So sometimes it'd be seven minutes, sometimes it'd be twelve minutes. I would kind of get the right excerpt in order, and I would mix it up. So, I would read from different areas of the book, and then I would edit for performance, which I think is different than reading from the page.
As I prefaced the piece, this is kind of a strange one to read out loud. And if I were to read from my writing copy, there are certain lines that are crossed out because I don't think they read well. [Laughs] It's fine for the sake of this and for the sake of documenting it and reading it—I don't care in that sense—but I actually have to read from the way that it's printed, not the copy that I have that is marked up for performance purposes.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Interesting. Well, I know that a lot has happened between the time the book came out and now, and I do want to make sure we talk about Rose Books, but hearing a little bit about your process, I'm curious [about] what you had to leave behind in your writing practice from that time in order to be here and to launch Rose Books.
Chelsea Hodson: Yeah, I think publishing my book was really clarifying. I had a generally really good experience, but I don't like a lot of what happens in mainstream Big Five publishing. And I had a lot of friends that do their own presses, so it felt kind of possible to me. And so I think starting my own press before publishing my own book wouldn't have been possible because I didn't understand there was a need for that. I thought it was just something that people did. And now, with more time, I think it's become clear to me that I think that indie presses are actually the future. I think there is a way to publish books in a way that doesn't operate in the traditional structures of power, essentially.
Technology exists to the point where I can publish a book myself from the middle of nowhere. [Laughs] That's really cool, and that's such a gift, and that's not a path that I put myself on intentionally. And so I guess that's how I'm trying to answer this is: I think a lot of this just comes from my attitude towards things and my experience with things where I see a need, and I try to meet it. I've had a lot of great opportunities for jobs in academia and stuff, and I actually chose to leave them because I want to do my own thing. So, with time, my impulses have become more clarified in terms of: What do I actually want? What do I actually need from my life? And I think I need to create. I need to not be slowed down by other people and administrative structures. It's very frustrating to me. It's almost intolerable.
That doesn't exist if I'm my own boss. And that certainly has downfalls because I'm always working. I'm never off the clock. There's always something I should be doing, honestly. So that's in some ways worse than just having a job with a certain amount of demands, and I complete them, and then I'm off the clock. I think that's actually just super rare now, anyway. I think you're always expected to work more in any field. I'm not just talking about the field I was in. But I think being outside of New York and moving away in 2021; suddenly because I was removed from the scene and the world that I was previously in, I was able to have different ideas. And so I was very aware of that.
And a lot of things in my life ended in 2020 to 2021. I used to run a workshop in Italy with the publisher of a small press called Tyrant Books. He died in 2021. And so the press is no longer either. And I certainly don't see myself as an extension of Tyrant Books because what he did is irreplaceable, and it's not something that I can replicate in any way. But I think the ethos behind it is something that really stuck with me. And when he died, I wanted to—I don't know if honor [that] is the right word—but I found myself thinking about him and his impact and his legacy in a different way. I found myself remembering having a chapbook published by a small press, and it changing my life. And I thought I might have an opportunity here to make an impact in a different way than just continuing to write. I think this could be something that I do, and I push forward.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Is it fair to say that, to some degree, Rose Books was born out of grief?
Chelsea Hodson: Yeah, for sure. That is accurate. I lost my friend, which is the only thing that really matters, but on a logistical level, the workshop we had created also died. We did a workshop in Italy together that was this totally amazing thing that was kind of three years in, and it was only growing and thriving. And when that was gone, again, a lot of space in my life was opened up. So I don't think I could have started Rose Books if that workshop was still going because it was so demanding of my time—all the planning leading up to the workshops and everything just took up a lot of space. So when that was gone, and I was no longer in New York, by disrupting my regular routines and my way of life, other things started to kind of percolate and appear to me. What if I just did my own press? That could be interesting.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah. Well, it's very symbolic in a way. The name "Rose" [is] something that's growing and can mean so many different things depending on the context in which it's given. And I thought it was interesting—on the site, you say, "We believe now is the time to take risks for the sake of beauty." And I was wondering if you could talk about that a little bit more and if you think there is a relationship between risk and beauty and what that looks like for you right now.
Chelsea Hodson: Yeah, I think there's definitely a relationship between those things always, basically. But part of what I mean is that, well, I don't know, I guess a big part of Rose Books is I want to make a beautiful object. And I think some publishers are forgetting that that is a priority for some readers. I want to hold something that feels really good and looks really good. And I'm essentially kind of disgusted at the notion that a book should just be made as cheaply as possible and have no kind of heart behind it. I'm not saying that always happens, but it happens sometimes. And you know, these are companies that have a lot of money. Once I started researching more, I was like, it's a huge financial risk for me to start a publishing house.
I don't have a stack of money that I'm just pulling from with ease. I fund the press and the printing of everything with my Patreon, which is the Morning Writing Club, and the workshops I do. I don't have a backing partner, really. So that's what I mean logistically: I'm willing to take a risk for the sake of making a beautiful object by publishing books that I think need to be published. It is not a book that I think could be published; it's that I think it needs to exist, and I think there's a demand for it.
So I have, I think, an artist sensibility that I then have to pair with a business mind of printing the right amount of copies. For instance, you know, I don't want to end up with 5,000 copies that I can't sell, but I think there's a way to approach this that makes it actually possible for one person to do it, to fund it, to make it happen, to put a book into the world.
I have other people that help me. So I don't mean to talk about this like no one works with me or helps me, but I hire other people to assist on certain elements of this, but it is my own risk and my own endeavor. So, if things go wrong, it's just on me. And that's a really scary thing, especially if you're someone who doubts themselves a lot and is critical. You're not doing this right. You don't know how to do this. Because starting a new business and starting a publishing house is something I basically have no experience in. So I had to learn everything day by day. I am someone who, since being really young, has always really liked doing things that I already know how to do. [Laughs] I don't naturally seek out novel experiences that are foreign to me.
And so it's a totally different world, and it's not one that has really come that easy, even. There have been surprises and many challenges along the way, but again, that's a risk I take for the sake of having something beautiful potentially be born into the world. And I think that that is something that is maybe getting lost—or maybe has always been lost in our culture—where it's like, what's the profit on this book? And it's like, well, books don't make that much profit anyway, so why are you placing everything on that? And forgetting to actually market [and] publicize the book? I used to work for a literary publicist, Lauren Cerand, and I can pull on these different skills that I had experience with to help [publish] two books a year. If I start doing twelve books a year, then I'll start doing a really bad job, which I think happens on a larger scale. People try to build up too quickly. But I think by doing a limited amount of books a year. I think most people would be surprised at how much work is involved with two books a year. I work on it every single day for several hours. [Laughs]
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah. And you start your days at 5. a.m.?
Chelsea Hodson: I do, I do. Yeah.
Rachel Schwartzmann: It's pretty wild to me. But you know, I'm all for anyone who's bringing something beautiful that you can hold in a world where everything is dependent on screen size or resolution. It almost makes me think that your inventory project was sort of foreshadowing your return to books as objects—or really taking stock of the things that add beauty to your life, you know?
Chelsea Hodson: Yeah ... Inventory was ultimately a way of forcing myself to face my fears about writing and sharing because I'm so controlling about what I do that I will—unless I press on that impulse— happily write in total privacy for the rest of my life. It's not a natural thing for me to send work to my agent and say, okay, what can we do with this? I really just want to keep it for myself. That's my impulse. So, to step outside of that is important. And with inventory, I just thought, well, let me try to just write more, even if I don't have enough time to write several pages a day, I could write one paragraph a day, and that would be a habit, and that could be something I do every day, and then it's published, and that could be cool. And that did help me a lot. Every day, I had to face that fear of saying: What if people think this is stupid? What if people don't like it? What if this is bad? And just put it up anyway. It was almost like exposure therapy in a way, doing a little bit of the thing you fear every single day. That really helped me.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah. Well, I think it's only going to get harder with the business, but at least it won't be boring, right?
Chelsea Hodson: [Laughs] Yeah, exactly. Well, I don't expect things to be easy or even that profitable. I'm trying to just make it sustainable. I'm not money-motivated, so I'm actually an ideal publisher, I would say. [Laughs] I want every book to succeed to the highest degree, but if it doesn't, that's not going to stop me. So, I think my ambitions are in the right place. I think I am genuinely just excited about creating things.
I've been working as an independent freelance manuscript editor for a couple of years, and I enjoy the process of helping someone else find their vision, their clearest voice, and their intentions with the book and helping with structure and things like that. I think I have a pretty good eye for it—that brings me a lot of joy to be able to help people see their projects through. I would say, almost more joy and happiness than it brings me to finish my own. There's something in me where it's like it feels better to help other people do it than work on my own stuff. Although, I need to have a balance. I still need to work on my stuff. But in terms of putting it into the world, I love it when other people do that, and I had some hand in that. It like makes me feel really excited.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Absolutely. And I want to talk more about the roster you're building and the artistic community you're cultivating through Rose, but in the spirit of sort of celebrating your work, maybe we can have you read another excerpt from Tonight I'm Someone Else.
Chelsea Hodson: Yeah, sure. So this essay is "The New Love." It's framed with section breaks that are formatted in the same way where they say, "I went to blank, and I didn't tell anyone." So it's kind of just about the impulse to keep things to myself—like I mentioned—and what that means, and just kind of observing memories from different places. So I'll start kind of near the end here.Rachel Schwartzmann: I feel like you have such a knack for endings.
Chelsea Hodson: Thanks. Thank you.
Rachel Schwartzmann: So, as you read these pieces and then think about the books you're working on, what are you learning about yourself as a writer?
Chelsea Hodson: I really like work or writing that—I guess this is coming to mind because I'm just having read that part of that essay—you can hear how desperate the voice is. And I like that in prose a lot. I like when it feels like someone might die if they don't write what they're writing. It's like someone is coming from such a desperate—
Rachel Schwartzmann: There's an urgency.
Chelsea Hodson: Yeah, there's such a desperate state of mind that you're getting a glimpse into. It feels voyeuristic to me.
The first Rose Books title is called Someone Who Isn't Me by Geoff Rickly. It's a novel based on his real-life experience, recovering from a heroin addiction by using a hallucinogenic called ibogaine, which caused him to confront aspects of himself that he would not particularly want to reconcile or face. And you can feel that through the book—you have to do that in order to change or in order to gain any clarity. You have to take the good and the bad. It's much more complex than what I'm describing. But there is a kind of desperation to that book where it's like he's not going to survive, literally.
In the essay I just read from, I'm not talking about being addicted to drugs, but maybe I'm addicted to love. These things that we are drawn towards can be really harmful and just cause a lot of trouble. And so I think there's a desperation in trying to get control over that, and that can come through, or just desperation to gain clarity or some sense of one's life. So that can be really broad and general. And I mean that the sense that it can take a number of different paths. It doesn't have to be about certain topics that bring out this self-destructive impulse or something.
But I always say to my students—if I'm like teaching a non-fiction workshop—if you end an essay exactly where you expected to end, it's probably not done. You need to create some sense of working out a problem in the writing. I like that no matter, what the genre is, but I think it works particularly well with essays ... I would usually just start an essay with a question or a quote.
So this essay, "The New Love," is named after this [Arthur] Rimbaud poem "To a "Reason" where he says:
"You look away: the new love!
You look back,—the new love!"
So it's all about perspective and what is gained from both focusing on something and looking away from it and that kind of tension between the two. Ideally an essay feels like a desperate attempt to solve a problem or to answer a question that we cannot get out of our minds.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Do you think it’s harder to explore that question alone? Or what have you learned about doing that in a group setting as a teacher? What have you learned from your students?
Chelsea Hodson: I think I have clarified my own aesthetic, but from teaching, I will respond in a certain way, positive or negative, and wonder, well, why is that? And then I never seek to edit to make something the way that I would do it. I’m always like, how can they see this through in a clearer way?
When I started writing, I got into it because it’s so solitary. I ultimately really like being alone and being left alone. Again, that’s why I started my own business, not why I did it with anyone else or why I don’t like working in certain settings. [Laughs] And so I would almost turn my nose down on this idea of a community around writing because I just thought, well, a real writer wouldn’t need a community; they would just be writing.
I think that was pretty arrogant of an attitude because over time and through being in workshops and kind of working against that impulse and being like, okay, what would it be like to have people critiquing my work? I think it really elevated my sense of revision towards my own work. And it’s funny reading that excerpt I just did, you can hear a lot of the metaphors, and you know, for anyone that’s listening, those metaphors are kind of out of nowhere. You’re not really missing context by being like, what’s the apple pie cooling on the sill? There are certain things in my essays—and that one in particular—that are just there for the sake of being there because I want the texture or the image of a theater with its birth year carved in stone above the entrance. I think that adds a layer of atmosphere, and it doesn’t necessarily have to do with maybe the content of the essay. It’s like setting up the ending.
I say this because I remember being in workshops where people would absolutely tell me to cut these things and say, this has nothing to do with the rest of the essay. It’s too flowery. It just doesn’t mean anything. And I don’t necessarily disagree with that [Laughs], but I don’t think every line has to be in service of the greater ending or purpose of the essay. I think some things can be there just for beauty’s sake or atmosphere’s sake, and that’s kind of how I write.
So in workshop, I would sometimes—frankly—get obliterated because people would say, this doesn’t make sense; it’s too voicey. I would get critiqued in a lot of ways, and I would change some things and be like, does that still feel like me? And then, other things I would just completely double down on. So I never went into a workshop thinking, oh, I know better than everyone else, and I’m not going to change anything. I would go in with a sincere hope of making something better. And some things that get said in workshop are going to resonate with you, and some things are not. But even the things that seem wrong intuitively to me have helped me double down on that decision and say, now that I’ve heard this feedback a couple of times, I realize that that is just part of what I do. And not everyone is going to like that, and that’s okay because I don’t want to create an essay that, when it gets workshopped, everyone loves it. I want it to actually be kind of polarizing because that’s the kind of work I like. So, it gives me permission to be that way.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah, the voicey comment is especially interesting. It’s almost like, well, how am I supposed to sound if not like myself?
Chelsea Hodson: Yeah. And it’s important to remember in a workshop setting that sometimes people just say stuff. It’s not even really based on any fact. They’ll just say stuff to sound smart. [Laughs]... if you’re accusing me of not having meaning, then what are you trying to say? I don’t really get it. You know? So it’s a totally subjective experience, but the element of a group setting can be really helpful for having a small audience, but kind of a safe audience, so to say, where it’s like you’re there to essentially support each other and make something better. I ultimately have become, over the years, a real fan of workshop settings and anything that just helps people feel like, okay, I’m a writer. I’m doing this. I can do this.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Do you think your love for and approach to editing would be entirely different without having had the experience in academics and teaching? Because I imagine you’re constantly going back and forth between managing expectations and also following intuition. So how do you find the balance of support[ing] but also growing a writer?
Chelsea Hodson: I always try to basically have some sort of balance with my response. So if I’m working with a writer—and there’s always something I like about it, or there’s always something that is its biggest potential. So that’s never a hard thing for me to see, even if I wouldn’t necessarily pick it up if it was on the shelf. I can edit things that are not in line with my aesthetic at all, and I can still find really good things in them. And then, I just find ways to question areas of potential revision. I’ll usually do it in a kind of compartmentalized way where I’ll say, is the structure serving this piece or this book? Are there sentence-level habits that this person is relying on that they should actually do a revision for? Things like that.
I love to overuse em-dashes like crazy, and I think I always will, but I’d always do a revision where I search them and make sure. Do I need all of these, or can I work around some of them? So I think I help other people maybe find those places of interrogation because when I’m responding to someone, I’m never ever saying, you have to do this to make it better. No one’s going to read it. Or that kind of hard-line response. I’ll say, what about this? What would this do? Do you agree with this? What if we started here? Would that be interesting to you as well?
Rachel Schwartzmann: Do you ever not have the answers? Do you ever have to just sit in uncertainty?
Chelsea Hodson: I’m trying. [Laughs] I think I’m so bossy in certain ways. I think the answer is I do always have an answer. I don’t know if I have the answer. ... I generally get really good feedback from people I work with, but I’m sure there’s been times where they’re like, that was not helpful. [Laughs] But I try to really, really inhabit what I think they’re trying to do. In that way, I’m able to come up with an answer. If I was limited in my edits to saying, what would I do, then I might not have an answer because there’s a disconnect. It’s not about what I would do and what I would read. It’s about what would clarify what they’re already doing.
Sometimes that’s as simple as like, there’s a character that you introduce here, I think they should be cut. And other times, it’s like, I think your ending is actually the beginning. [Laughs] What about that? So I actually can’t think of a time when I’ve been fully stumped. With enough time, I might read something once and not have an answer, but I’ll always have something to say after the second read.
Rachel Schwartzmann: I’m trying to imagine the pace of your day, given all the things that you’re doing. If you had to look back at the entire duration of your creative life, what are some of the biggest changes in your relationship with pace that have happened? What areas have you slowed down and where have you had to speed up and how do you kind of reset when need be?
Chelsea Hodson: Well, I’m working on a novel now and I found that it was a real lesson for me. Just because I felt like I learned how to write the first book, it became really clear to me that I did not know how to write the second book. I was like, oh, well this is going to be easier because I’ve already kind of gone through this. I have a sense of how I edit so I can apply that to something different. This is a totally different endeavor and approach and revision process. So I’ve almost had to relearn how I write. It’s so, so different from my first book. That really has slowed me down in a way that sometimes frustrates me because I want to be efficient. I want to produce. [Laughs] So it frustrates me to be in a state of not stalling, although I have stalled at times, but just to feel like I’m maybe taking too long.
But then it’s like, well, why do I think that? Because other people publish faster than me? Well that’s kind of irrelevant because they’re not writing the book that I’m writing. And as I mentioned, I mean 2020 was difficult for many of us, but there’s just been a lot of life changes since I’ve been writing that book. I lost my friend, I lost the workshop, and I moved across the country and started a totally different kind of life. So all of those things are huge transitional states for me that require a settling-in period. I mean, I was really close to a revision being complete of my novel, which I have several revisions of. But I was close to finishing one of them and my friend died and I thought, I don't know if I can finish it the way that I thought I could. Maybe I need to just start over.
The whole thing was put into question. Ultimately I just didn’t feel ready to finish it. There’s also a matter of that it is sad to actually finish something and send it off because like I said, it feels totally compartmentalized to me where I think there is one stage in which I am in total control and the book is essentially my companion. It is always with me whether or not I’m looking at it or it’s in the back of my mind. When I really sign off on a book, it’s done. You sign off and you have to finalize all the edits and you let it go. [Laughs] I know that probably sounds dramatic to a lot of people, but there is this kind of shipping it off to sea that happens mentally for me that’s extremely sad, where I’m like, I don’t want it to leave me. I liked having that with me all the time. So I think there’s also that sense too, where I do resist letting it go in a way.
When I started this draft, it was totally different, where I was working really quickly, and that was helpful for getting certain elements in place. But then again, if there’s a curve ball kind of thrown in my life, I find myself very, very still and very, very slow. And I think that’s just how I cope with things. I feel myself starting to speed up when I’m kind of emerging from that hibernation element.
Rachel Schwartzmann: All of that resonates. Maybe that’s the root of what I was saying before we started recording—of wanting or needing more time. Maybe it’s just me not ready to let this go yet.
Chelsea Hodson: Yeah, it’s real and it’s good to acknowledge it. Because if you realize it’s just about the fear and the pain of letting it go, it’s not about your ability to not finish it. I think those are two different things.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah. It’s kind of amazing that this can be a way to spend your life. Making a book.
Chelsea Hodson: Yeah.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Before this, my relationship with work was very much dependent on external validation. I think that’s because a lot of what I was doing was very brand-oriented—I kind of came up in the Girlboss era—and all of that messaging sort of warped how I moved in this part of my life. But starting this book—talk about transformation—it’s been a total recalibration of my values and pace, and I almost have to remind myself every day that it’s real and that I can work this way and make things. It’s such a gift, but I don’t think I believe it yet. Does that make sense? [Laughs]
Chelsea Hodson: Yeah, I totally know what you mean about growing up in the Girlboss era. [Laughs] And that’s what I mean, too, about feeling like I’m taking too long. I’m like, okay, well, it says who? Social media is subconsciously telling me I’m taking too long. Well, if that’s the case, then that’s not true. That’s based on what I’m speculating essentially, that other people might think about me. It’s like it’s a different thing than how long the book is actually taking.
I think there is always going to be this compulsion in certain people that I think grew up in a certain era to produce, to be efficient, to work all the time. I talk about working all the time. I’m not saying that that is the way to do things. [Laughs] I wish I worked less, but I do have this kind of compulsion to be working harder, to be working longer. And I guess that might be coupled with this feeling that I’m taking too long on certain things.
I think that it’s okay, really, to have that kind of anxiety because that ultimately does push me forward and makes it so I do produce after a certain amount of time. So I think [it's] balancing external expectations and basically a comfort level with your own work and how you operate, which can take a lot of time, I think that that balance is where some really good things can happen.
Rachel Schwartzmann: They certainly are. I mean, I’m so excited about your debut books. I know Geoff’s book comes out in July and then you’re publishing the next one this fall.
Chelsea Hodson: Yes. In October is another novel, and it’s by Christopher Norris. It’s called The Holy Day. And then, next year—in 2024—is a book of short poetry and prose by Ashleah Gonzales. We’re still working on the title.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Amazing. So obviously there’s a lot at play in your life and your work right now. I’d love to know about the questions you’re thinking about and also if there is a particular question that you hope people start asking you more often, whether it’s about Rose Books, writing, [or] reading?
Chelsea Hodson: I just started thinking about what I want people to ask me more. I don’t know if I have an answer to that because ... I mean, I’m in this stage right now where I feel so lucky that anyone cares about Rose Books and that there is actually a huge response to the announcement of Geoff's book—so much huger and more enthusiastic than I could have hoped for. I just feel really lucky that anyone is asking me any questions at all—including you! I just feel very, very lucky. There are so many people trying to make things and it’s so hard to make an impact at all. And so I don’t know for sure that Rose Books will make an impact, but I think the excitement around it tells me that I’m in the right space, I’m heading in the right direction.
That feels really exciting to me. There is a demand and excitement for these things, and for there to be... for instance, a hardcover version on a small press is almost unheard of now. And I just thought, I love hardcovers and I love clothbound hardcovers, and what if they had foil stamping? I kind of just started dreaming up what I really liked about expensive books. Even the reaction to that has been so positive. All the work that I’ve done behind the scenes in private for the past year has essentially been validated a lot in the past month. And people being like, this is so cool. Or by people buying those things. [Laughs] That’s very validating because you never really know what’s going to happen when you put something up for sale.
So I don’t think that there’s any question that comes to mind that I wish people would ask me, but I think the questions that are on my mind are just how can I keep moving forward with everything in a way that feels balanced? Because I think that’s always something that’s on my mind and I’m very aware when things fall out of balance. So that’s part of what my Patreon—the Morning Writing Club—is about, because that actually was born out of me fighting for my own writing time. It’s very easy for me to get caught up in other people’s projects because like I said, in some ways I enjoy it more. But I really want to still be a writer. I don’t want to just stop, but I have to kind of fight for that time.
Sometimes I feel like maybe getting older, I have to make it more of a priority than when I was younger. I would just kind of be writing here and there—like on the subway—I would just be writing when I could. But now I feel like I need more deliberate, set aside writing time. So I do that in the morning and then I start on everything else.
I think I’ve resolved a lot in the past couple of years in terms of that and that kind of balance. But I think that’s a question that’s always on my mind: Is my life in balance? For instance, did I sit at the computer all day or did I get up and take a walk? [Laughs] Or do something else or move my body in some way? It’s really easy for me to get tunnel vision and just fall into doing the same thing. And I think over time that becomes not healthy and things just feel out of whack.
I think I’m always just trying to find out like: Okay, every week is a little bit different for me, but on Sunday I’ll look ahead and say, okay, how could I fit in a phone call with a friend this week? How could I go have coffee with someone? How could I go on a hike and fit in these things that I don’t naturally fight for? I’m not like, okay, I have to do my hike today no matter what. I’ll gladly just let it go by and work instead unless I actually pay attention to it. So I’m always thinking about things like that.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Attention is key. Just maintaining a strong relationship with the world outside of your mind. And maybe this is your sign after we’re finished here, to go outside, [Laughs] step away... I would love that for you.
Chelsea Hodson: Perhaps it is. Yes. [Laughs]
Rachel Schwartzmann: But before I let you go, maybe we can close things out with a final reading from Tonight I'm Someone Else?
Chelsea Hodson: Yeah, sure. This essay, “Artist Statement,” which was born out of... I don’t know if you Rachel or anyone else listening has written an artist statement or a project description for a residency, a fellowship, an MFA program, whatever. You have to reduce yourself and your work to a kind of appealing description. I really always had trouble with that because it takes so long to figure out what you’re even writing about. Before I had the back cover copy of my book that someone else wrote—where they’re like describing my book—I’m like, oh yeah, that is what I’m writing about. It’s hard to know. And so this essay "Artist Statement" came out of a fantasy of like, what if I just didn’t follow the format at all? What if I just wrote what I’m trying to do?
An essay is trying in a lot of ways to me, and so I just have this essay where every paragraph starts with the words "I’m trying." It kind of devolves from there. But it came out of that impulse to say, what am I actually trying to do? And this goes back to what I was saying, where an essay should be an attempt at clarity: This is my desperate attempt to figure out what I’m actually doing. At the time I did not really know. I was just writing what felt true to me.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Maybe that’s the question people should ask you: What are you trying to do?
Chelsea Hodson: Yeah. And I think the only way for me to even answer that, though, is by writing. It isn't something I can essentially summarize, I don't think. But anyway, this essay is an attempt at that answer, I guess.
PASSAGE READ BY CHELSEA HODSON ︎ PURCHASE TONIGHT I’M SOMEONE ELSE︎︎︎
︎
Rachel Schwartzmann: That was my conversation with Chelsea Hodson, author of Tonight I'm Someone Else and founder of Rose Books. You can purchase Chelsea's essay collection anywhere books are sold—though we recommend supporting local and independent bookstores if you can. You can also follow Chelsea on social at @chelseahodson_, and you can learn more about Rose Books online at https://www.rosebooks.co/, and follow them on social @rosebooks.co. I'm Rachel Schwartzmann, and you've been listening to Slow Stories. Thank you so much for tuning in.