Fran Wilde: And I wish that our culture embraced iteration more because I feel like the iterative process is what gets us to the next level and it's, it's a lot, it's something I talk about in terms of novel writing because a lot of my students are really. Afraid to do things wrong or mess up and I'm like, well, you know what if you mess up you can fix it And once you fix it, you've learned something. So go ahead and embrace the mess and keep going. There's a museum in Sweden that is dedicated to failure There's a failure museum in Sweden and someday I'm gonna go visit it because I feel like we can learn So much from what doesn't work.

Nicole Huesman: Hey everyone. In this episode of She Lights the Way, I'm sitting down with award winning sci fi and fantasy author, teacher, and self proclaimed battle poet, Fran Wildeeeee. From her journey embracing failure, to the magic of making messes, Fran shares how curiosity fuels creativity and how storytelling transforms both its characters and its audience.

We also dive into her upcoming novel, A Philosophy of Thieves. And the unique questions it poses about humanity and technology. Join us for a bold and inspiring conversation that will leave you ready to embrace your own creative messes.

***

Nicole Huesman: Fran, thank you so, so much for spending time with us today. Can you, um, tell folks a little bit about you? 

Fran Wilde: Okay. Um, hi everyone. I'm Fran Wilde. I am mostly a science fiction and fantasy writer. I also write nonfiction. I teach. I do a little bit of programming, not as much as I used to. I'm a former Geek Mom, which is how I came to be on this podcast today because the Geek Moms kind of introduced me to the podcast. I'm super excited about that. My Instagram profile says I am a two-time Nebula winning, world fantasy, Nebula and Hugo finalist, battle poet. My pronouns are she/her, and I'm currently teaching at the College of St. Mary's, or St. Mary's College in Maryland. I write novels, poetry, short fiction, and occasional shenanigans.

Nicole Huesman: And not unlike the woman who introduced us, uh, Ruth Suehle, you do so much, Fran. Can you talk about some of the pivotal moments that landed you where you are today and, and all of what you're doing? 

Fran Wilde: I don't know that there was necessarily one pivotal moment. I pivot a lot and that word has picked up extra meaning since the pandemic. We were all pivoting, right? We were all trying to adjust to strange new directions. 

But for me, I had great teachers all through high school, including one or two who tried to convince me to do math. And I'm sorry, Mr. Moss, it's still not happening. But generally speaking, I loved art. I loved science. I loved writing. And I was the kid in high school who the principal walked by and be like, Hey! Fran, when's your book coming out? And I'd be like, I don't know, but I'm working on it. And I did work on it, but I never finished anything because nothing was ever good enough. I could finish stuff on deadline for. 

I wrote ad copy. I was a science writer for, um, a number of universities, Loyola College, the Whiting School of Engineering and Johns Hopkins. And I came by that honestly, ‘cause my, my family is all engineers. So I was the one who could spell and I wrote, uh, I sort of helped them edit their things. So when it came to writing articles about scientists, that was a nice fit for me.

But I was still sort of looking for what really was exciting and fun. And that turned out to be writing my own book and that took a long time. Especially because I wasn't finishing anything. It's amazing how little traction you get when you don't finish things because they're not good enough. 

So, around, I don't know, I guess I was 21 or 22, and I had just started my first master's program. I took an MFA in poetry at Warren Wilson College. I had fantastic teachers there. I loved it. And I left, I graduated, and started teaching. And loved that too. That was so much fun. I taught at a school for the arts. I taught poetry and the study of poetry. Sort of along the lines of the way that I had been taught at my MFA. 

And that wasn't quite as fulfilling as I thought it was going to be. It didn't fill everything. It didn't, it wasn't like all-encompassing. So I went back to school. And I got a Master's in Information Architecture and interaction design, which included a focus in typography and layout, but what I really loved, I discovered was programming and not, you know, I tried really hard to do the scientific coding that, but my, my jam was web design, interactive websites and which were really big and then like the last millennium. I know they're not cool anymore, but that's where I kind of cut my teeth and I picked up six or seven languages. It was, it was really fun. It was really interesting because suddenly I could make things do stuff and I thought that's cool. This is what is, is kind of where I want to go, but I still want to write. And I was trying to figure out how that all worked together. 

And it wasn't until we moved from Baltimore, where I'd been living, to Philadelphia. And that's sort of when I met all of the Geek Moms, was around that time. And I realized if I wasn't going to write a story, or finish my work then, if I wasn't going to finish writing stories then, when was I ever going to do it? So I said, I just said, okay, I'm going to make my own little degree program and figure out how to teach myself how to finish stories and how to write stories based on what I've been, you know, learning for the past 15 20 years. 

I actually didn't finish my first story. I finished a lot of poems. I published a bunch of poems, which is hard. Poetry is hard. It's just shorter and a lot like programming for me. And it wasn't until I realized that flash fiction was a lot like programming and a lot like poetry and I could make a story out of it that I sort of started to finish things and I, and I grew my fiction from there. It's always been something that I wanted to do to finish a book, finish a novel, I wanted to sell a short story, I wanted to meet and work with other writers on projects, and so about 15 years ago, I really started focusing on that while working and raising a child. And that's, the Geek Moms kind of sustained me through all that.

I know I'm mentioning the Geek Moms a lot, but that was, that was a big deal to see a lot of professional, smart women with tons of different interests who were like, you want to try that? Go for it. Let's do that. So I did a lot of that. That was how I lived my life. 

Nicole Huesman: What strikes me is that you're continually connecting the dots, you know, across all of these different things that you're doing and creating a life that you love, that you're pursuing your passions. And I think that's so exciting that, you know, that's coming together for you. 

I think you're right. Yes. It's also, you know, it's not always perfect. Like, if, if you were to ask my husband, as people, his colleagues have done, you know, what's it like being married to a writer, his response is always kind of, there's a lot of crying, because there's a lot of failure, and I think, at the end of the day, what, because I, I love games, I love playing video games, I love playing board games, I love being part of a universe that just is like, well, you know, this disaster happened, what can I make of it?

I'm right now getting really into Dungeon Meshy, thanks to some of my writing colleagues, and that's sort of the same plan. It's like, yes, we have to go back into this dungeon, what can we eat? And it's a cooking show. It's a D& D cooking show. It's hilarious. And one of the characters’ faces is just basically permanently set in, I'm not going to eat that, which I love to. It's mostly just kind of embrace failure. Figure out how to keep going. And that works really well in the arts because there's a lot of No, in the arts. There's a lot of, You're not quite there. A lot of, you know, failure is not quite the word I want to use, but just sort of, you need to level up a little further in order to get to wherever you're going. And I kind of embraced that and just kept going. 

Nicole Huesman: Wow, you're, you're on this search for perfection. And, you know, if we always are on that search for perfection, you know, it hinders our progress. I would love to hear how you overcame that. Because I think many of us are in that same boat. How did you overcome it, you know, on your journey?

Fran Wilde: I had great teachers. And I try and pay that back by being a great teacher as well. Teachers who didn't tell me ever that there was only one answer. They always said, make a mess, see what happens. And, you know, try something new. If this isn't working, if you're not getting your message across this way, try it a different way.

And that I took with me through just about every job I've ever had and every class I've ever taught, making up my own curriculum. It becomes kind of a game. I'm like, well, what do I, what am I interested in? Because if I'm interested in it, the students will be and how can I bring as much knowledge and fun to it as possible?

It's also my strategy for, for tough times too, when I get hit with, you know, when I get walloped with something or things are going bonkers, I tend to figure out where, you know, where's the craft cart, where's the glue, where's, where's the computer motherboard, and just figure out what I can make that'll make things at least feel better in some way or another. 

I did a lot of sewing during the pandemic. I made my own nebulas dress because we were locked down and all I wanted was a dress that had unicorns and spaceships on it. And I found some fabric on Spoonflower and I ordered it and I cut the thing out on my bed with no pattern and ended up with a pretty decent two piece ball gown. It was like halter back and it was nuts and I did make a mess, but it worked. 

Like, what do you want? What do you hope for and dream of because there is no time like the present to start trying for that, and you know, be prepared to fail and embrace the feeling because that means you're trying.

Nicole Huesman: Yeah, and I love the whole message around you know, the magic is in the messes, right?

Fran Wilde: The magic is in the messes. Definitely. Also, anybody that comes back with me the next time that I'm sad about some sort of failure and says, Embrace the fail, I will find you. I will be so mad. Um, kidding, I won't. But I, I just heard myself saying that and I'm like, yeah, it sounds really good when you're in a good mood, but it sounds awful when you've just been like, thank you for your submission. Please, you know, please move along. Um, but it's still, it, you know, just figuring out what the, you know, yeah, that sucks. That's terrible. What's the next thing I want to do? 

Nicole Huesman: It's how we respond in those moments, right? And what I've often found is that when I'm going through a tough time like that, whether it's failure or difficulty, what I've often found is that that's where my growth has happened. And then I can get to the other side of whatever it is, right, and look back and say, wow, what I, yes, it was really painful or it was really awkward or difficult or uncomfortable, but that's also where I've grown the most along the way. And so it's that appreciation really for, you know, looking back and going, Oh my gosh, look like that was really cool. I mean, I know it wasn't in the moment, but now it is now that I'm able to look back and see. I made it through, and I'm on the other side now, and how cool now is that to look back and, and see what I, whether I survived through it or now I'm thriving, right, but to, to have the appreciation for those messes.

Fran Wilde: Oh, definitely, definitely. And I feel like you mentioned perfectionism before and I wish that our culture embraced iteration more because I feel like the iterative process is what gets us to the next level and it's, it's a lot, it's something I talk about in terms of novel writing because a lot of my students are really afraid to do things wrong or mess up and I'm like, well, you know what, if you mess up, you can fix it. And once you fix it, you've learned something. So go ahead and embrace the mess and keep going. 

But also, you know, listen to yourself and listen to your peers. And if you are making a mess. Maybe, you know, check the edges a little bit and figure out how to, how to write, write it a bit. 

There is an amazing science fiction writer. She's got a new story in Lightspeed named Marissa Lingen. And she and I have talked a lot about iteration. And she brought up the fact that there's a museum in Sweden that is dedicated to failure. There's a failure museum in Sweden and someday I'm going to go visit it because I feel like we can learn so much from what doesn't work. I mean, that's, that's scientific method, right? Is you, you figure it out by figuring out what doesn't work. So maybe pitch perfectionism for iteration. 

Nicole Huesman: Yeah, I love that. It reminds me of a book that I used to read to my son when he was younger called The Beautiful Oops, and the beauty that happens in the mistakes that you make. It's a great book because it really is about iteration and not pummeling ourselves for the mistakes that we made, but seeing the beauty that came out of those mistakes. 

Fran Wilde: I think if we're constantly worried about doing things wrong, we're not allowing ourselves to grow and we're not allowing each other to grow. There is a really important moment of where we can grant ourselves and each other some grace and say, it's okay, I'm going to learn from that and move on. 

Nicole Huesman: So as an author, can you talk about, uh, your latest work and how you arrived at that and what the process was like? 

Fran Wilde: Oh gosh, um, yes. So I, I mentioned before that one of my goals was I really wanted to write a book. I wanted to finish a book and that, um, was a goal. I finished my first novel in 2013, so 11 years ago. And since then I've published nine books and about 85 professionally published short stories along with book reviews and lots and lots of blog posts. I've run a podcast. I've done all sorts of creative things. 

And one of the funnier things about publishing is sometimes a project that you, that was just a, like you loved working on it and it was great, doesn't work right when you're working on it. It sometimes is going to come back around later. And A Philosophy of Thieves is an idea that I've been working with since a very early short story class that I took in Philadelphia in 2012. I wrote a short story that is a nugget of the third chapter of A Philosophy of Thieves now. And I had to work with it and work with it and let it sit and go back and rework with it and learn how to write all of my other books before I was ready to write this book. And I finally figured out how I wanted to tell the story. And my agent, Andrea Somburg, she's amazing, sat down with me and we looked at how to go about the next part of the process. 

And this is the first time that I've ever put a story out as a partial to send out to editors saying, this is, this is the concept, this is where I want to go with that. And I was so happy that my editor at Erewhon, Sarah Guan, just came down and looked at it and said, Yep, this is the thing. And she got it immediately So we've been working on it together. It is coming out next September. There's no pre-order link yet no cover yet, but if you follow me on the socials or if you go to either my website or I sort of mashed my blog and my Patreon together so you can get free content on my Patreon, like things that I love every month and stuff like that. And occasionally I'll say, Hey, I've got a new thing coming out. You should look at it. Or here's a link. And that is basically how I'm going to tell everybody that the pre-order links are up. Because we've got, we've still got about a year and a half. But it's starting to feel more real. Definitely. 

I know, I know that my publicity team over at Erewhon, (Hi Marty, you're amazing!), is just, like, they've got all these great ideas for what you can do with performance heists. Like, heists and thieving that is meant, that is part of the entertainment. And that's sort of the theme in this world that I'm looking at, where the outside of the world is very much post-apocalyptic, post-event, the stuff has happened. And there are people who haven't really had that much terrible things happen to them, and they're very, very well off. And I feel like almost all aspects of science fiction, even if it's cast well into the future, tend to address what it means to be human with technology and all of the ways in which we improve our lives through technology, what it means to be human in those terms. And that's one of the questions that I'm asking is, you know, how do you maintain your humanity in the face of wealth that basically allows you to build a fantasy world inside this other world that's not so fantastical? 

Nicole Huesman: Wow, you know, that's actually a question that I think in some ways or another, I've been asking myself, how do we maintain our humanity? How do we get back to that almost, you know, me coming from the tech industry, right?

Fran Wilde: All of us are looking at tech now and going, Oh, gosh, we helped build this monster. What have we done? 

Nicole Huesman: Yes. What have we done? Oh my goodness. I, I can't tell you how many times I talked to my husband. We're both in the tech industry and how many times, you know, on a weekly basis, really, it's become because we have two 13 year olds, a son and a daughter, and we look at how they communicate with each other, right?

I've watched this movie called The Social Dilemma and where you actually, you know, it's sort of a, a cross between fiction, there's a story that threads its way through the movie, but then they're also interviewing all of these designers of these interfaces. And what you ultimately come to find out is that very few, if any of them, let their kids even near technology, right?

Fran Wilde: If you make a barrier to entry like that, your kids are smart enough to climb right over it, and then they're not going to tell you. So, why do it that way? Why not just say, look, this is You know, this is like a lot of other things. There are good places and bad places, and if you hit a place that makes you feel uncomfortable, come find me and we'll talk about it.

I'm not saying that my approach to social media is in any way perfect, by the way, it's just, You have to continually evaluate it, and if you say absolutely not no to a kid, I mean, how does that, how does that go for you? That doesn't work very well for me, so it's better to have like some little bits of conversation along the way, I guess. Sorry, you hit, you hit something and my, uh, my collapsible soapbox came right out. 

Nicole Huesman: No, I love it. I love, yeah, yeah. I mean, how do we, right? It's, we're all trying to approach this. How do we engage with technology and not lose our humanity? And how do we teach our children to engage with it in a way that it doesn't overtake the way that they are relating to each other, the way that they form friendships, the way that they, you know, so that it's in a responsible way that they're engaging with it without them being overtaken by it.

Fran Wilde: And it comes down to, and what I, what I loved, what fascinated me when I was working on the Internet was findability. I just loved, how do you find what you're looking for? And in any situation, I don't know if you know Erin McKeon, who started the online dictionary a long time ago, and she's got a great TED Talk called Redefining the Dictionary. She's brilliant. It's findability and sort of happenstance in the same idea because it's not just going directly to the thing you're looking for, but also bumping into things that you're also interested in because you didn't know they existed or what you're looking for is almost impossible to find. That fascinated me. 

But it turns out that the real, you know, finding things that are real, finding people that are, that are real, and that you can connect with and form a community is just as hard. And I don't think it was easy before the Internet. I think it was difficult to do. I mean, if you look back to the movies of the 80s, it was really hard to find community. But now with everything being focused on perfection, it really does feel like if we, if we're trying to project our perfect selves all the time, and then somebody's coming along and monetizing, not just the projection of the perfect self, but the development of the perfect self, then we've got a barrier to finding community that we're actively building at the same time

Nicole Huesman: The same time the technology is making things easier and and improving our lives, tt's also bringing, uh, real issues that, you know, that we're, I feel like we're all working through together to, to get to this, How do we responsibly engage with it without, I guess, the downsides of it?

Fran Wilde: One of the things that I love about telling stories through art, through fiction, through podcasts, different things like that, is that it really does help people problem-solve in different ways. It helps people figure out how to exist in the current situation, or how they might want to exist in the current situation, which is, is really important, because I'm trying to figure that out, too. 

Nicole Huesman: You bring up such a great point. The role and the importance of storytelling, you know, whether it's bringing forth possibilities and opportunities for all of us, or it's exploring together, really, how we deal with and grapple with some of these real issues that we're confronting today.

Fran Wilde: Yeah. 

Nicole Huesman: Yeah, storytelling has such an important role in exploring things and discussing things, in, you know, whether it's through a reading group or reading questions or just exploring different ways to approach a problem. 

Fran Wilde: Absolutely. I love, I mean, it also, it's a memory aid. It helps us remember because there's a narrative thread to it. It's got connections and we can see things transform over time. I love asking students, Why do you tell stories? Why would you want to put yourself out there with a new story that people can, you know, give you feedback on and things like that? And their answers are always so interesting. I love asking that question.

And then I wait for a little while, usually a day, and then I come back and say, Okay, so I know now why you want to tell stories. Why do you read them? Why do you, why do you participate in stories? And their answers are often quite different. Why, why they would be an audience for a story versus a creator of a story.

And that question, that, that two-question side gets them thinking about the fact that they are both creator and audience in a lot of their lives. And it just generates some really interesting questions. I love it. 

It changed my writing when I realized that I wasn't just writing a story that someone else would pick up and go, Ah, this is wonderful. This is genius. I was, I needed to be writing a story that was really engaging for the audience, that transformed and transported them as much as it did the characters. And that changed a lot in my creative process. 

Nicole Huesman: We're not inactive participants, are we? It's also the way that we engage and interact and think about the stories.

Fran Wilde: Absolutely. 

Nicole Huesman: In different ways. 

Fran Wilde: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And that's sort of, that's, that's what I took from years of studying poetry because there's a lot of expectation in poetry, of the reader being participant in the building of the poem and the hearing of the poem and how you develop. It's not, you know, you're not just reading the poem, hopefully, so that you can pass a test in English. You're listening to the way the words go together and you're watching how the metaphors impact each other. And for readers of fiction, think of the last movie that you went to where you went in one person, and you left the theater a completely different person. Good stories don't just transform the characters, they transform the audience as well.

Nicole Huesman: So when you think about it, you've done so many different things, you know, whether it's writing or coding or teaching and so many other things. What do you think have been some of the biggest lessons that you've learned along the way? 

Fran Wilde: I think it's very frustrating when you've, you know, anything from you forgot the semicolon on the 110th line of your code to your stories are not getting the traction that you want, or you're having trouble finding your readers.

And what I realized very late, but I've been trying to embody it more and more is it's: Curiosity is the most important thing. Constantly being curious, constantly seeing what can I learn, what can I take notes on, even if it's, you know, something that is super frustrating and you feel like you're banging your head against the wall. What does the wall look like? It doesn't have a texture. Is there a picture on it? Is there, you know, how would you tell the story of your life? And what is interesting about it? 

I guess this was given to me around after I wrote, I wrote one really difficult book that's kind of pulled me apart to write it. And I went back and found a great therapist and was like, I am just losing it. How do I move forward? And she's like, well, you know what? You've got one big tool that you're not using, and it's curiosity. And the thing that I can give you, which, this is what she said to me, is just a phrase. And even when things are going wrong, Why don't you just say, I wonder what's going to happen next.

Nicole Huesman: I love that. I love that. I'm reminded again of when my son was younger and we've, it was really important to me. Reading has always been important to me and it's always been one of his big loves is reading. And we were reading biographies together. And one of the biographies that we read was of Albert Einstein. And the big thing, you know, one of the big, uh, quotes from him was never stop asking why. That was kind of the lesson, right, that came out of that book that we read together was, Never stop asking why. 

And it's so true, you know, I've I've asked myself, even, what's, what's attractive to me about storytelling, or bringing these stories forth, or, you know, any of this, and why was I attracted to biographies as, as a young girl, right? And I think it was always that question, right, that curiosity, that you become this continuous lifelong learner of, you know, continually expanding your, your boundaries. That's also one of the, one of the reasons that I love travel, right, is always being curious about the world around you. 

Fran Wilde: Absolutely. 

Nicole Huesman: In talking about your inspirations, uh, you know, and what you've learned over the years, I, I would love to ask you, what does She Lights the Way mean to you?

Fran Wilde: I think it means, and this is, this is non-gendered. I mean, this is just, we all, like, that we all connect each other. We're all the net that holds community together, and just moving forward and, and, you know, sending the ladder down is so important. Bringing, you know, people into the conversation and into the room that might not otherwise have access. Just opening doors, opening windows, blowing the roof off, doing all those things, is really important and making as much of an effort to allow for as many voices as you can possibly bring into the room. Not through your own story, don't like, you know, I'm going to speak for everybody because that's not what I mean. I mean, like, create space in your life for listening to others, and I think that's part of how creating light, creating, bringing light into the world, and lighting the path forward.

My path has been all over the place, and sometimes it gets very, very dark in there, and people have been like, Hey, I've got an idea, have you tried this, and they're lighting the way for me, so I think it's a group project. 

Nicole Huesman: It's absolutely, it's a group project. It's a community project. And I love that you said it's non-gendered because one of the things that I have been thinking about is, I've had so many different mentors and allies, advocates and sponsors along the way. And many of them have been men, including my husband and so many other men who have lit my way that, you know, I'm, I'm really thinking about how do we bring them into the fold, you know, and into this community. 

Fran Wilde: Well, and I think that, you know, broadening it even further and saying it's not just a binary. There are so many different kinds of people that we can allow into our world. And I think that allowing as much breadth and depth of conversation and community and not limiting things is really important to me. 

Nicole Huesman: Yeah, me as well. I cannot thank you enough for being here today and for just spending time with us and sharing your insights with us. Thank you. 

Fran Wilde: Well, thank you for having me. This was a delightful conversation. I have really enjoyed going back into your backlist and reading and watching some of the other interviews that I hope, if you're watching today, you will go and listen to what Nicole and her guests have to say elsewhere as well.

***

Nicole Huesman: Thanks for joining me for this insightful conversation with award-winning author, poet, and teacher, Fran Wilde. I especially loved our exchanges about the importance of embracing failure and iteration, how curiosity can be a tool for growth, and the magic of making messes to unlock new possibilities. 

I'd love to hear what resonated with you. Share your feedback on any of the social handles for the project, or drop me a note at nicole@shelightstheway.com.

To learn more about Fran's work and her upcoming novel, A Philosophy of Thieves, visit her website or follow her on social. All of those links are in the show notes. Until next time!