Category: Clients Crushin’ It

Madison Utley speaks to Vibha Akkaraju following the completion of her memoir, Like Ketchup on Roti. The two discuss the importance of getting out of your own way as a writer, how to sustain motivation over a years-long writing process, and the importance of finding the right people to be part of your support crew.

Q:​ To start, can you give me a high-level overview of your writing history? 

A: ​I did a bachelor’s and a master’s in English literature. I liked writing, and dabbled in journalism for a bit, but I never wrote with any consistency. Right out of school, I had to get a job that could make a living. For me that was technical writing, but I didn’t find any satisfaction in my career. Luckily, I was able to quit my job after our first kid was born.

It was in 2016 that I walked into a prompt-based writing workshop led by Beth Dunnington. I was terrified. All my writing in college had been super structured, but this workshop was the opposite, designed to eliminate fear and hesitancy. You’re given a bunch of prompts. You write, write, write–by hand. It’s timed, like a sprint, and the focus is on moving forward. The editor in you has to take a back seat. I found that approach blew open the world of writing for me. All of the second guessing we can slip into when we’re writing, the perfecting the first sentence before moving onto the second, is counterproductive. Allowing my thoughts to flow instead was transformative. I didn’t know I was writing a book. Beth was the one who saw a theme in my work and asked me about it. I was like, “A book? That’s a four letter word. No!” I held that stance for a couple more years. 

Q: ​When and why did that change? 

A: ​The stories I was drawn to were stories about my family–stories of immigration and shifting identities and our varying responses to our move from India to the US. Eventually I realized maybe Beth was right and there was a book here. But I was completely lost in the woods. I had all these stories but I couldn’t really see the arc. People gave me feedback on individual, small pieces but I needed somebody to look at the whole thing, the big overview. I didn’t have the confidence or, frankly, the expertise to self diagnose the problem or the solution. 

While I was conflicted and doubtful about sharing my story at times, I believed it was important to tell an immigration story that wasn’t necessarily born of major trauma in the classic sense. Our story was not one of migrants who come across a border and really suffer. We were quite blessed actually. Yet still, changing countries at a preadolescent age when you’re very tender and vulnerable was hard. That was something I wanted to write about. I thought about Chimamanda Adichie’s talk about the importance of many stories. She says each kind of story–an immigrant story, a love story, a coming of age story–should be told from many different angles. No one point of view is enough. 

Q: ​It sounds like in order to finish the memoir, you had to do some real soul searching to put words to how you understand your own narrative in your heart and mind? 

 A:​ Yeah, as an immigrant, in the beginning, you’re just in survival mode. I was sent to school here four days after we landed knowing maybe 50 words of English. So the first few years, you’re just trying to learn the spoken language, the body language, the culture, the music, the clothing, the food. Only later do you realize that this first level of assimilation has gotten relatively easy. I moved here in 1982, and 40 plus years later, I’m still grappling with what it means to be an Indian-American parent and what it means for my kids to be Indian-American. How do we navigate this bicultural identity? What do we hold onto? What do we let go of? Questions of identity can be complicated–but writing clarifies, right? And luckily, I found these big questions interesting. Interesting enough to sustain my motivation for many years. 

Q: ​Other than that internal drive to answer the big questions pressing on you, what else sustained your motivation over the course of so many years? 

A: ​I was very fortunate to be surrounded by people who really believed in the project; my husband and my family urged me onward when I started to falter. I also write with a group of talented writers under a gifted teacher named Eanlai Cronin. It’s a weekly dose of inspiration and support. A book is such a long-haul project, I felt I needed to work in community with others. Still, it wasn’t always a smooth road. I would sometimes get overwhelmed and despirited. I realize now looking back that the periods of doubt and low-motivation for this project were directly tied to a lack of direction.  

When I saw Stuart give a talk at CWC here in Redwood City, I connected with his very clear method. At that point, I knew I needed to overlay a method onto the madness of my writing process. I gave him my first 10 pages and I loved what he had to say. He was super smart and understood what I was trying to do. His feedback was thoughtful. He helped keep my focus on only the one step in front of me. That was it. Even now, he’s encouraging me to just submit the manuscript to agents and stop worrying about which publisher may or may not pick it up. This focus on the work helped quiet the overthinking and self doubt and spiraling I could fall into. Having a combination of somebody who really knew a structured path forward, somebody whose judgment I trusted, and who kept me focused on the work was invaluable. Once you get the momentum going, wonderful things happen. 

Q:​ What advice do you have for other writers who are in that first stage of feeling like they do have a book but feeling incredibly far from its finished state, unsure of how to bridge that gap?

A:​ Don’t be afraid of getting help. Whether it’s a book coach or a committed writing companion, an editor, whatever you need. I knew that if I didn’t finish this book, I would regret it for the rest of my life. I needed accountability. I needed a guiding hand. But I was afraid of getting help initially because I wanted to be able to claim this as 100% my own writing. It turns out that worry was completely misplaced. Stuart guided me in coming up with my own answers.  And I realized that everyone needs guidance, no matter what they are pursuing–be it sports, medicine, law, visual arts, whatever. It is wonderful to have somebody who becomes your partner in this incredible journey, somebody who’s done this trip many times before. 

​More than anything, though, have faith in yourself. When other people tell you that you’re a good writer, believe them. And make the investment in yourself that you’d encourage your kids or your best friend to make in themselves, whether that’s dedicated time or professional assistance. I read a book that really helped me, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. He personifies internal resistance. The author says that when you declare, say, that you’re going to be working from 9 to 12 in the morning, initially people will push back. “What, no, I wanted to get a coffee with you then.” But soon they’ll learn this is sacred time. I actually did that and my loved ones really respected it and would never reach out to me during that window. Everybody falls in line–as soon as you prioritize yourself, they’ll start prioritizing you. It just takes a little discipline in the beginning.

Stuart Horwitz speaks to writer, photographer, and documentary maker, Kim Frank about the years-long process of writing Elephants in the Hourglass: A Journey of Reckoning and Hope Along the Himalaya, published by Pegasus Books earlier this year. Frank shares what kept her motivated throughout, her commitment to authenticity during the sometimes challenging promotion phase of authorship, and why she so ardently believes in the importance of refusing to rush through revision–or any part of the creative process. 

S: How long did you work on this book? From the moment you got the idea to the time you held a copy in your hand. 

K: I went to India for the first time in the spring of 2018, and soon realized I couldn’t possibly tell the whole story from just one trip. It’s so complicated, so culturally imbued. I wasn’t sure what the project was going to be then. I thought it might be a magazine article, or maybe a documentary, perhaps a book. That’s when Anthony Geffen, the founder and CEO of Atlantic Productions, took a look at my stuff. I had photographs and field notes spread out on his kitchen table. He told me, “You need to write the book in order to figure out what the story is–then you can consider a documentary.” 

I was a fiction writer so I didn’t really know how to tackle a full-length nonfiction book. At first, I was in despair. As you know, because that’s when you and I talked. The first time I ever had a call with you, I was about ready to give up. And you stopped me from giving up, so thank you for that. Around the same time Anthony, who had become a mentor to me, said something that I’ve carried with me since: “Kim! Sometimes you have to fight for the story!” And so that’s what I did. I thought about the people I met in India. The people who gave me their trust there, their time, their story, in the hopes that I would amplify their voices and make them feel seen in a way they haven’t before now. And then there’s the people who invested on the home front–my husband, my children, my parents–all those who gave me the time and space to write. It was all of them who helped me not give up over the years of working on this project. I felt this incredible responsibility to finish because I wasn’t just by myself anymore. Six years later, in January 2025, I held a copy of the book in my hands for the first time. 

S: Let’s talk about promotion. How do you make it authentic, and how do you keep yourself fresh when you’re answering the same questions over and over?

K: The more time I’ve spent working on this project in India and beyond, I’ve come to really believe there’s a force bigger than me at play. I’m a vessel. I’m just doing my part: the storytelling, the authenticity. As long as I stay connected to the elephants’ energy, to the thing that’s bigger than me, all will be smooth. The way will open, whatever that’s meant to be. The challenge is the more you have to promote your work and promote yourself, there’s this real danger of the ego becoming bigger. “Oh, I didn’t get invited to speak at that event. What’s that about?” “Oh, that person’s book is getting more attention than mine.” This growing ego feeling is very different from the connected channel I had been able to tap into when I’m focused on the creative piece of it. 

But I do love talking to people who get it. I really love doing interviews. I especially love when people have an open mind and heart that can talk about the more ethereal bits involved in the creative process. I really have enjoyed talking to people like you that I care about, that have helped me along the way. Second to that, I like doing talks because I feel like I’m able to connect with people and I’m able to bring the story to life through myself. There are parts of promotion that I am actually having fun doing. 

S: I feel as if your commitment and perseverance is a talent. Without that personality trait, as a writer, you’re cooked, really. You’ve got to be somebody who can say, “This is what I’m doing; I don’t know whether it’s going to be a success or not. I don’t know how many years it’s going to take. I don’t know whether you agree with me or not…but this is what I’m doing.” 

K: I’d love to speak to that from a craft perspective. I often hear writers say, “I’m a one-and-done. I wrote that draft to the end and it’s good enough.” For me, and what I want to teach others, the art is in the revision. Revision is where you meet the creative gods. You have to get the whole thing on paper first, and then the work begins. Then, the art begins. It’s like a sculpture. You have this great big mass and you have a vision for what you want that hunk to look like and through revision, revision, revision, all the shaping, all the detail comes out. So if you’re not in love with the process, you won’t finish the work the way it needs to be finished. If you’re in a hurry to get to the end, the end is going to feel really hollow. 

People say to me, “You must be so excited to have your book in your hands!” And yeah, I’m thrilled to be holding a physical book from a traditional publisher, that I had an agent for, all those things. But if I rushed through writing the book in the hurry to get an agent or to get it published, I would have missed out on the growth of myself as a creative human. People on the outside would ask me, “Isn’t it good enough now? Why do you have to keep writing it?” Because it wasn’t done. It’s a process. It has to nourish you. It can be frustrating as hell sometimes, but the process also has to nourish you or else what are we doing? 

S: It is frustrating and there are so many unknowns, the biggest being: is it going to reach this hard to define level of success we carry somewhere in our minds? 

K: And you can’t control that. You just have to get out of your own way. If we grip too hard to something we want, sometimes we block the path for what’s possible. Right now with promotion, I know I need to be doing all these things. I need to be promoting the hell out of the book. People have to be doing the Amazon reviews and all the things, but there’s also part of me that thinks it will seek its own level somehow. I want to be more focused on: Who am I every day? I can’t become preoccupied with how successful the book is or isn’t… In my opinion, if the book has made a difference in someone’s life or if it inspired them in some meaningful way, that’s a win to me. 

It’s very easy to get out of balance. I’ve done a lot of work to deepen my practice: my yoga practice, my mantras, my spiritual connection, and build the tools necessary to take it on the road, so to speak. When I’m at home, it’s easy to have that balance. But when I’m out traveling things begin to feel overwhelming. So I’m recognizing that exercise–for me, yoga and what yoga means as far as its spiritual practice–is as important as hygiene, and I need to constantly prioritize it as such. You never question, no matter where you are, if you’re still going to bathe and brush your teeth. I haven’t yet mastered incorporating those elements into my daily hygiene to where I prioritize it on the road as well as I can prioritize it when I’m at home, but that’s the goal. 

Madison Utley speaks to Dr. Surendra Chawla following the release of his book, When Persistence and Providence Joined Hands: One Cardiac Surgeon’s Journey. The powerful memoir tells the story of how the boy forced to flee the massacres surrounding the partition of India and Pakistan became the man who built a world-class cardiac facility as a prominent heart surgeon in the United States.  

MU: Talk to me about the motivation for writing your memoir. When did you realize this was something you wanted to do?

SC: I have always had the habit of keeping detailed records. I wasn’t sure why I was doing this, other than to keep in touch with the memories. When I joined my first hospital, a lot of information came out of that. I kept my operation notes from every single surgery I did. This was before email or computers, so boxes and boxes got filled with paper. When we moved from one house to another the question became, “What are you going to do with all of this?” Much of the material was handwritten and hard to decipher, but I didn’t want to let it go. When I retired in 2018, I transferred many of these handwritten notes into the computer. So I opened the boxes, I put them in sequential order, and I copied over everything that I could. It was in that process that the story started to take shape. 

MU: What led you to seek editorial help with the process, and what do you feel like was gained from looping Stuart in? 

SC: A friend of mine, Curtis Robinson, told me he was writing a book and that Stuart was helping him. Getting that recommendation was the best thing that could have happened. I could not believe how organized Stuart was in conducting the process of working together. He steered me from writing a biography which could have been dry and confusing with all of the details and names to writing a more streamlined memoir. He knew what was best for the material, and we were in sync with each other. In fact, he was one step ahead of me. In my definition, a close friend is someone who when I start a sentence, they finish it. Stuart was one of those. Again, him getting involved was the best thing that could have happened. 

MU: What have you gotten out of writing this book? What kind of reader responses have you gotten thus far?

SC: I got the satisfaction that all my boxes were cleared out. Now all that has been moved into the computer and made it into the book will be saved for my children and grandchildren to look through, pictures and all, forever and ever. So there’s satisfaction that the job is completed. It is all true narrative. Every part of the story has been authenticated. No one can challenge a single page without me having a copy of the records. 

One physician’s assistant in the hospital read my book. He said, “I read up to where your mother is giving you the lessons about life. I’m stuck there because I want to accomplish everything she said to you before I go to the next chapter.” That was so emotional for me. All of the feedback has been so positive so far. So I never planned to write this story, but I enjoyed every part of it and I am satisfied with the final product.

MU: Do you have any advice you’d like to share with other professionals who don’t have creative or long-form writing experience, but feel strongly about wanting to tell their story?

SC: People have been asking me how I wrote my book. Stuart’s name will be there every time, that he’s the person who helped me, that while I did gather the material myself, someone helped me put it into readable form. If Stuart wasn’t involved, this book would not have happened. 

Sarika (Dr. Chawla’s daughter): If I can interject; I’m a writer by trade, so it would have made sense for me to help my father write his life story. He’s got everything ready to go. Why wouldn’t I be the person to do this for him? Yet, I don’t recommend that family members really do that. For some, it could work, but there’s so much information, so much detail. It’s hard to see the forest for the trees when you’re dealing with a family member. His life story before I existed is not attached to who I am and what I know of him, so having a third party who is completely objective, who doesn’t know us at all, come in and see his story holistically was really meaningful and very powerful. It gave a great perspective. Stuart absolutely nailed my father’s voice. You can hear him speaking when you read it. He did a much better job than any family member could do. That’s why I’d highly recommend looking outside your own circle.

Madison Utley speaks to Tony Pesare following the December release of his second book, Back in the Game. The two discuss how “author” coexists with the many other hats Tony has worn and continues to wear–state trooper, police chief, university dean of justice, prosecutor, actor, writer–as well as what advice he has for other aspiring writers who aren’t quite sure they have the time.   

Q: Tony, talk to me about the motivation behind your disparate personal and professional pursuits. 

A: I’m very goal oriented. If I’m not working towards something, I feel like I’m not accomplishing anything. I also really like to try things without knowing whether I’m going to succeed at them. I’ve been acting for a while but it took a long time for me to now feel comfortable and confident on stage. I worked at learning Italian for two years and it just didn’t click. So I’ve had as many failures as I’ve had successes, but I like to be challenged. I like to stay engaged. 

Q: How did writing come into the picture? Was that always an interest, or was it just one of the many things you’ve tried out and then decided it resonated? 

A: I didn’t do much creative writing in school or anything. I spent 24 years on the state police. Most of my investigative experience over that time came when I was in the intelligence unit which focused on organized crime. We did investigations into the mafia. There was one case with three witnesses we had in protective custody that resulted in the conviction of a major member of organized crime–for a hit, which is rare. I said to myself at the time, “This should be a book.” 

I knew I had two avenues; I could’ve written it as true crime, but that would’ve taken a lot of strict research. I realized that if I did it as fiction instead, I could weave my personal story into it, my journey of growing up in a low income area of Providence and then getting to be a state trooper. That inspiration was my first foray into serious writing. 

When I shared with a friend I was writing a book, he told me that his daughter had written many books and she worked with a guy named Stuart Horwitz. I met with Stuart in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and when he saw the big binder that contained my first draft he chuckled. He said, “I don’t usually get something this expansive to begin with.” We hit it off right away. I learned from him what the arc of a story should be, and that there should also be an arc within every character. We got the first book out, They Always Win, and it was really successful regionally. It was just a great experience. I knew that if I ever wrote another one, I was going to go back to Stuart. 

Q: So you’re talking here about your first book which came out over 10 years ago. Your second, Back in the Game, was published earlier this month. How was it to get back into long form writing after all that time? 

A: I was the chief of police in Middletown, Rhode Island for 14 years. During that time I took a break from writing and concentrated on my law enforcement career. Besides, the muse was just not coming to me. 

When I started putting this second book together, I was daunted by not having written in a while. My friend who I was talking about it with said, “Why don’t you try something? Promise yourself you’ll write at least one page a day.” So I did. I wrote one. One became ten. For some reason things clicked and it started to flow. I kept at it until it was where I thought it was finished and then that’s when I started working with Stu again. 

This time I spent much more time with him. We delved into many more areas of the work, and spent a lot of time going back and forth. He also connected me to a whole team, like 1106 Design, proofreaders, and beyond. I can’t overstate his helpfulness. 

Q: What would you say to those who have an interest in writing, but who also have entire careers in other spaces and aren’t sure they have it in them to write a full-length book?

A: One of the best books I ever read about writing was by Stephen King. In it he says that “writing is rewriting.” If you want to write, what you need to do is write and rewrite and rewrite. Get disciplined. Build that muscle memory. Then seek out someone who can guide you through the rest of the process, like Stuart. There are a lot of phonies out there so you have to make sure you’re dealing with somebody that’s reputable. If you find that person, that person that you can trust, work with them. 

I’d also say that self-publishing is a great vehicle for many, many people. If your dream is to publish a book, your dream can come true, it just takes a lot of hard work. 

Q: What’s next in the pipeline for you?

A: I’m now in the marketing and promotion stage with book two. That’s a lot of work. Last time, with my first book, I really enjoyed going to bookstores. That was my favorite thing. Reading a chapter or giving a little presentation about organized crime or writing and then signing books afterwards. So it’s hard work but there are really fun parts too.

I’ve also already started in on the third book of the series, which is great, but I’ve also been joking that I really just want to work with Stuart again. We truly do have a good time together.