Write of Passage by Vanessa Riley

Vanessa Riley
  • 5.0 (6)
  • Society & Culture
  • Weekly

Join bestselling author Vanessa Riley as she delves into untold histories, reflects on current events through a historical lens, shares behind-the-scenes writing insights, and offers exclusive updates on her groundbreaking novels. vanessariley.substack.com

  1. 2d ago

    The Blood Behind Your Ballot

    Blood. Bondage. And the ballot. People paid with their freedom—and their lives—for a right we sometimes talk ourselves out of using. Today, I want us to remember their names. The Blood Behind Your Ballot Nothing but the Blood and the Bondage Today, this podcast airs on Election Day. Every Tuesday that happens, I don’t take it for granted. Sometimes we get too comfortable in our ways. Sometimes we grow tired. And sometimes we begin to believe we are so small that our voices cannot possibly be heard. I know that feeling. It’s why some of us stop writing. And it’s definitely why some of us stop voting. I’m not going to tell you that life isn’t hard. It is. But before we decide that showing up won’t matter, I want us to remember what it cost the people who came before us to make showing up possible. Some bled. Some were beaten. Some were bound to a system determined to silence them. Some were imprisoned. Some died. All because they believed they had a right to be heard—and that we would have that right, too. Before we get to the ballot box, let’s remember what it took to get us there. * February 3, 1870 — The Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, prohibiting the denial or abridgment of citizens’ voting rights because of race, color, or previous enslavement. States returned to using poll taxes and other restrictions to circumvent these protections. * April 13, 1873 — In Colfax, Louisiana, following an election dispute, armed white men attacked and killed approximately 80 to 150 Black men defending the Grant Parish courthouse. * 1877 — Georgia made its poll tax cumulative. So prospective voters could be required to pay accumulated unpaid taxes for missing elections, creating more barriers to voting. For the next twenty years, poll taxes became a central means of Southern disenfranchisement. Payment requirements operated alongside literacy tests and intimidation. They targeted Black political participation but also excluded many poor white citizens. * November 10, 1898 — In Wilmington, North Carolina, white supremacists killed Black residents and forced out the city’s legally elected diverse government. The death toll recorded by the coroner was 14, but a commission in 2006 estimated as many as 60 murders. * March 3, 1913 — Women were assaulted as they walked in Washington, D.C.’s Woman Suffrage Procession. Approximately 100 marchers were taken to Emergency Hospital. * October 20, 1917 — In Washington, D.C., two women, Alice Paul and Rose Winslow, were imprisoned for picketing outside the White House to demand women’s voting rights. After being sentenced for obstructing traffic, they went on a hunger strike, were force-fed, and Paul ended up in the psychiatric ward. * November 14–15, 1917 — Arrested for picketing the White House while trying to get President Wilson to support a constitutional amendment securing women’s voting rights, Lucy Burns, Dora Lewis, Mary Nolan, and Alice Cosu were sent to Occoquan Workhouse in Lorton, Virginia, where they were brutalized by the guards in the “Night of Terror.” Dora Lewis was knocked unconscious. Mary Nolan was dragged despite her disabled foot. Alice Cosu suffered a heart attack. * August 26, 1920 — The Nineteenth Amendment was certified. It prohibited voting discrimination because of sex. Poll taxes were used to burden women, especially those whose husbands or fathers controlled the household money. * November 2, 1920 — In Ocoee, Florida, Moses “Mose” Norman was denied the right to vote on the grounds that he had not paid his poll tax. The dispute led to a white mob committing violence. Julius “July” Perry was lynched. Black homes were burned. In the Election Day massacre, the disputed death toll is as high as 60. * December 6, 1937 — In “Breedlove v. Suttles”, the Supreme Court upheld Georgia’s poll-tax requirement. * November 1942 — Southern senators filibustered anti-poll-tax legislation. The Senate’s historical account describes the taxes as a means of disenfranchising low-income voters, including many African Americans. * December 25, 1951 — The home of Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore, who led Black voter registration, was bombed on Christmas Day. Harry died December 25; Harriette died January 3. * May 7, 1955 — In Belzoni, Mississippi, Reverend George W. Lee, who was a voter-registration organizer, was shot and killed. * August 13, 1955 — In Brookhaven, Mississippi, Lamar Smith, a World War I veteran active in voter registration and local elections, was shot and killed outside the courthouse. * September 9, 1957 — The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was signed, creating the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and strengthening federal authority to pursue voting-rights violations. * May 6, 1960 — The Civil Rights Act of 1960 was signed. This required the preservation of voting records and expanded federal remedies against discriminatory registration practices. * September 25, 1961 — In Liberty, Mississippi, Herbert Lee, a farmer who helped recruit people for voter-registration classes, was shot and killed by state representative Eugene Hurst. * June 9, 1963 — In Winona, Mississippi, Fannie Lou Hamer was arrested and brutally beaten in jail when she returned from a voter-education workshop. She survived. * June 12, 1963 — Jackson, Mississippi: Medgar Evers, the NAACP’s Mississippi field secretary, was shot and killed outside his home. * January 23, 1964 — The Twenty-fourth Amendment was ratified. It prohibited denying voting rights because of failure to pay a poll tax or other tax in federal elections. * June 21, 1964 — In Neshoba County, Mississippi, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, civil rights workers working on Freedom Summer’s voter-registration campaign, were murdered in a conspiracy involving Klansmen and a deputy sheriff. * July 2, 1964 — The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed and addressed discrimination in voting, public accommodations, education, federally funded programs, and employment. * February 18, 1965 — In Marion, Alabama, Jimmie Lee Jackson was fatally shot by a state trooper. His death helped spur the Selma-to-Montgomery voting-rights march. * March 7, 1965 — In Selma, Alabama, state troopers and other officers attacked approximately 600 peaceful voting-rights marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in what is called Bloody Sunday. Fifty-eight people were treated for injuries at the local hospital, including John Lewis, who suffered a fractured skull. * March 9, 1965 — In Selma, Alabama, after participating in a peaceful march, Reverend James Reeb and fellow ministers Orloff Miller and Clark Olsen were walking toward a movement meeting at Brown Chapel AME Church when white segregationists attacked them. Reverend Reeb was killed. * March 25, 1965 — On U.S. Highway 80 in Alabama, Klansmen shot Viola Liuzzo between Selma and Montgomery after she helped transport Black voting-rights marchers. Her passenger, Leroy Moton, survived. * April 27, 1965 — In “Harman v. Forssenius”, the Supreme Court rejected Virginia’s poll-tax workaround. * August 6, 1965 — The Voting Rights Act was signed, establishing powerful federal tools against racial discrimination in voting, including advance review of voting changes in covered jurisdictions. It also directed the attorney general to challenge remaining poll taxes in state and local elections. * January 10, 1966 — Near Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Klansmen killed Vernon Dahmer. They firebombed his home and store after a radio announcement publicized his help with Black voter registration and poll-tax payments. His wife and three children escaped, but his daughter, Bettie, suffered severe burns. * March 24, 1966 — In “Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections”, the Supreme Court prohibited poll taxes in state elections. The Court held that making payment of a fee or a voter’s wealth an elec… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vanessariley.substack.com/subscribe

  2. Oct 27

    Right to Write

    What do a ballot and a blank page have in common? Both require you to believe your voice matters. And both are absolutely useless if you never do anything with them. This is my writing quarter. Everything—and I mean everything—should be focused on writing. My job during this season is simple: to encourage you, motivate you, and get you into those chairs. Whether you’re transcribing, dictating, punching keys on a keyboard, or riding around with a notebook tucked into your bag, I want you writing. That’s my commitment to you. But as always, we live in a world. And this world has ups and downs. There are wars, political diatribes, disasters, and the everyday frustrations that make us want to scream into the void. And then there’s The Cheesecake Factory. Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: LPETTET / Getty (from the Atlantic asking to leave the Cheesecake Factory out of the fight) Yes, it still exists. It’s gaudy and gold and over the top, like former President Obama alluded to this past weekend in Cleveland. New York Times spent time on Cheesecake Factory! We go for the spectacle, the oversized plates and, the cheesecake. It’s still delicious. And yes, sometimes a slice of cheesecake seems like the only reasonable response to the madness happening around us. But since I would still like to fit into my wardrobe, I have to find another way to process my feelings. For me, that way is writing. And maybe it can be for you. Writing Through the Madness One of the reasons I talk to you every week is that I need a place to channel my emotions. Sometimes that emotion is joy. Sometimes it’s frustration. And sometimes, it’s rage—hot, burning lava. I need a place to spew about my perspective on the world. Not because my perspective is more important than anyone else’s, but because I’m a writer. And a writer has to write. The emotions I experience need somewhere to go. If I don’t process them, they’ll occupy every corner of my brain until I feel like my head might explode. So I write. I write about what troubles me. I write about what inspires me. I write about the things I cannot change and the things I desperately wish I could. Sometimes I pour those feelings onto the page. Other times, I consider pouring them into a cheesecake. But again, the wardrobe must work. So writing wins. Now, you might be wondering what any of this has to do with today’s lesson. That’s a fair question. I know it sounds as though I’m rambling, but I promise I have a point. You do not have to wait for the perfect moment to write. You do not have to wait for the perfect words, the perfect atmosphere, the perfect inspiration, or the perfect alignment of the planets. You simply need to write. Free Your Mind by Filling the Page I’m a tremendous proponent of journaling. Take a notebook, a notepad, or even an artist’s sketchbook and put your feelings on those pages. They don’t have to be beautiful. They don’t have to be organized. They don’t have to even make sense to anyone but you. The point is to release the thoughts that have taken up residence in your mind without paying rent. Think about how much mental energy we spend replaying conversations, worrying about current events, or imagining everything that might go wrong. Those thoughts take up space. Writing them down can help free that space. And once you’ve released some of that emotional clutter, you may discover that you have more room for the creative work you actually want to do. Your novel. Your short story. Your poem. Your next great idea. Sometimes, before you can create the world you imagine, you have to make peace with the world you’re living in. And that brings me to something else that’s been on my mind. Your Voice Matters Beyond the Page We’re in an election season. So I’m going to take this opportunity to say something important. Make a plan. Get informed. Go vote. Exercise your civic duty. People have fought, suffered, bled, and died for the right to enter a voting booth and make their voices heard. That is not an exaggeration. Think about the generations of people who were denied the ballot because of their race or sex. Think about the suffragists who marched, protested, and endured imprisonment. Think about the civil rights activists who faced violence while demanding equal access to the polls. Think about the people who marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma in 1965 and were beaten for demanding voting rights. Think about Jimmie Lee Jackson, whose death helped inspire the Selma voting rights campaign. Think about Reverend James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo, who were killed during that struggle. These were real people who paid extraordinary prices for the freedoms we exercise today. And yet, I still hear people say, “My vote doesn’t matter.” Really? Look at your gas prices. Look at the cost of beef. Look at your grocery bills, your taxes, your schools, your roads, and the policies that shape your everyday life. No single elected official controls all those prices or circumstances, but public policy influences our economy, our opportunities, and the communities in which we live. Our choices have consequences. And so does our silence. Now, you might say, “Well, I have the right not to vote.” Of course you do. I also have the right to walk into the street blindfolded and hope a car doesn’t hit me. But I have more sense than that. And I hope you’ll recognize that having a voice means having an opportunity to use it. You may feel discouraged. You may feel overwhelmed. You may believe that one person cannot make a difference. But the answer to feeling powerless should not be to surrender. Sometimes the answer is action. And that brings us right back to writing. The Ballot and the Blank Page Voting and writing have something powerful in common. Both require you to believe that your voice matters. When you vote, you’re participating in a collective decision about the world you want to live in. When you write, you’re exercising your imagination to create a world that doesn’t yet exist. You’re declaring that your ideas deserve consideration. You’re deciding what matters, what should be questioned, and what possibilities deserve exploration. You’re giving shape to something that previously existed only in your mind. That is a remarkable kind of freedom. And I don’t want you taking it for granted. I don’t want you sitting on your laurels. I want you sitting in your chairs. Because butt-in-chair is still one of the best ways to get things done. If you’re discouraged by the direction of the country, get informed and vote. If you’re discouraged by your writing life, sit down and write. I know that sounds overly simplistic. But sometimes we spend so much time in our heads that we make things far more complicated than they need to be. We convince ourselves that we need another class, another notebook, another software program, or another three months of research. We decide that we cannot possibly begin until we know exactly how everything will end. And while we’re busy preparing to write, we aren’t actually writing. Let’s change that. Start Small. Write a Haiku. When I was in school, I loved writing haiku. Three little lines. * Five syllables in the first. * Seven in the second. * In Five in the third. Seventeen syllables to capture a thought, an observation, or a moment. There’s something wonderfully freeing about a small assignment with clear boundaries. You don’t have to write an entire novel today. You don’t even have to write a chapter. If you’re stuck, write a haiku. Give your mind freedom. Build a concept; let it grow. Challenge yourself now. See I’ve haiku’ed myself into expressing my idea within boundaries. That’s writing, taking a formless notion and giving it shape. We can turn an impulse into language. That’s freedom. And please know, not everything will be brilliant. Some of it will be junk. Most of it will be a mess. But there will be glimmers of beauty. So write anyway. Somewhere inside all the clutter will be ideas that become something extraordinary. Why I Love a Fast Draft I love dictating the first draft… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vanessariley.substack.com/subscribe

  3. Oct 20

    Your Lying Manuscript

    Walter Mosley said it a month ago on a Zoom for The Center for Black Literature’s Summer Series. And in his MasterClass. I say it all the time. To get your novel finished, you need to have your butt in a chair and write every day. Whom are you going to believe—us or your lying unfinished manuscript? Putting Yourself and Your Words First When you’ve written a lot of books, people want to know how you do it. They ask about plotting techniques. Are you a pantser? A planster? Do you bounce between scenes or write straight through? What craft books do you recommend? Are you a morning writer or an evening writer? All valid questions. I enjoy talking about the work. But the advice I give that seems to generate the most consternation is this: write every day. “Now, Vanessa. When you say every day, do you mean every day? Don’t you take Sundays off? Don’t you go on vacation? What about Christmas? Surely you take off for Christmas.” Some of you are already looking at your work calendars, making me your HR rep trying to get me to approve your days off. Here’s what I mean by writing every day: take those words as literally as you need to take them to establish, in your own mind and spirit, that your writing matters. You need to believe that writing deserves a respected place in your routine. Your words don’t always have to wait until another month of research. Until you read another craft book. It doesn’t need to wait for a new, different notebook. You shouldn’t have to wait for a weekend when nobody needs anything from you. If you’ve allowed your writing life to build up excuses, forgive yourself. Begin anew. But let’s begin with vigor and consistency. But Write Every Day? Yes, there are days when—clutch the pearls—I don’t work on a manuscript. But I’ve written something, probably an essay for a podcast. Hint, hint. Or a little reflection for social media. Or something in my journal. Does that finish my novel? No. And I have to be honest with myself about that. A beautifully written caption will not resolve the emotional conflict or lack of tension I left my characters in three chapters ago. But every bit of writing keeps my writing muscles taut. Stringing coherent words together are like calisthenics. Arranging sentences are yogo. Any attempt at trying to get what’s in my head onto a page is a useful one. For me, daily writing makes returning to the manuscript easier. I’m telling you that writing is a muscle. And I want mine limber and strong, ready to work when I need it. Have you ever joined a gym or bought exercise equipment? In the beginning, there’s so much excitement. You have plans. You have goals. You have sneakers. Naturally, the sneakers need to be cute. Maybe you buy athletic wear. A matching set. Something that announces you are a person who intends to take this exercise business seriously. Then you do the workout. And the next morning, your legs have questions. Parts of your body angrily ask what are you doing. Eventually, the excitement of buying the equipment and icy heat lotion wear off, and you have to decide whether you’re going to keep at this. Writing asks that question, too. You bought the notebook. You downloaded the software. You found the perfect pen, the best journal. But, will you return to the work when the first burst of excitement wears off? How about when a scene is difficult? What about when you see words on a page and none of it comes out bearing any resemblance to the beautiful ones you imagined? That’s where I believe many stop, when they need their muscles to push through. This past week, I was at the Writing Sisters Summit, hosted by Nina Foxx, in Taos, New Mexico. The air was fresh. The mountains were magnificent. The dirt roads were scary. I want to be clear: I appreciated the scenery. I have lingering questions about the roads. But the sisterhood at the treat was amazing. Wanda Morris, Pamela Samuels Young, Sheila Williams, and I joined the faculty, bringing our experiences to a vibrant group of women writing across genres and at different stages of their careers. Some were working toward their first books. Others had been at this for years. We had time to talk about the writing and industry challenges. To ask questions and stay for the answers. To hear someone describe a struggle and recognize a little of our own. And yes, I got up early. I know. Another revelation. I walked the trails outside, feeling the crisp morning air on my cheeks. There was a slight breeze that smelled of sage. I took pictures, lots of pictures. I want to remember and treasure this experience. Then I switched from my camera to my Notes app and dictated thoughts about the project I’m working on. A phrase. A possibility. Something I was beginning to understand about the next new book. That counts, boys and girls. Was it the most productive writing session of my life? Word count-wise, no. But I was able to work out and articulate the premise of my next book. Something I’d been reaching for became clear. I captured it and brought it home. That is useful work. That’s words in a Note. My notes and journals are not a polished exhibit of perfect syntax and amazing grammar. There can be pages of disconnected phrases. Somethings will only make sense only to me. My daughter has license to destroy certain documents when I’m gone so your vision of me and being literate will be preserved. I’m being humorous, but I want you to understand that my daily writing isn’t perfect writing, sometimes it’s not good writing. A scene may begin as a few lines of dialogue. A character’s motivation may show up as something different than my outline. You may write a paragraph and realize the only sentence you need is the last one. It’s okay to write the paragraph to find it. That why editing and revision are powerful. But every word and thought dump in my daily writing moves me closer to a completed project. I think we struggle to write because we want prove that our writing is brilliant, and we’re setting up that moment to share with someone. That is too much pressure. And it’s unfair to you and your words. Daily writing for me, has taken away that pressure. I’m asking for words. Brilliance will come with editing and revision. And truthfully, the word the end needs to come before I start editing. Let me take a moment to say, sign up for word time. Find a writing retreat. If you can make it work, take the mini vacation. Plan the staycation. Find a local hotel with good room service—or reliable delivery—and give yourself some time with your words. It’s OK to go alone or together with other writers. You can start today pencilling in time on your calendar. The Writing Sisters Summit There was something deeply nourishing about being in Taos with women who had made room for their words. We stepped away from our usual responsibilities long enough to hear ourselves think. I came away feeling connected to the work and to the people doing it. I hope the women who joined us carried that feeling home, along with the things they learned and the pages they began. The retreat deepened my love for making room in my ordinary life for writing. I can’t wait for another mountain view or vineyard or rushing river or ocean. Today, I’m back in my office, answering emails, looking at my obligations. There definitely a stack of laundry to do. And there is the book, that I’m closer to finishing than I was yesterday, because my dedicated writing does this. For a very long time, my writing time was between 10 PM and 2 AM. I worked a full-time engineering job, and still am a full-time wife and mother. So every day doesn’t mean hours of writing necessarily. Every day doesn’t look the same. Some days I have the same hours. Some days I have small pockets of time. I use what I have. Journaling and essays keep me writing, but eventually I have to return to the people waiting inside a manuscript. So the other non-book writing can’t take over. But I’ll take words any way I can get them on to the page. Consider your writing life for a moment. Are you giving it regular at… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vanessariley.substack.com/subscribe

  4. Oct 13

    A Writing Life You Can Actually Live

    I believe in writing every day. Sometimes that means a hundred words. Sometimes 2500. Did you hear me say good or great words? No, I didn’t say that. Today, let’s talk about the actual writing life we should achieve. A Writing Life You Can Actually Live Three proposals, a Vermont retreat, and figuring out the writer I want to become. Before I get started, this week’s download, the writing goals calculator, is available in my resource shop for free. Get the link at Substack or my website. I just turned in three book proposals. One new idea. Two reimagined, tires kicked, engines inspected. And absolutely no pages of an actual story. I need my agents buy-in and I don’t know those people yet. We’re still being introduced. I’ve just stocked piled articles in Newspapers.com, Wikipedia and YouTube Rabbit holes, and the occasional ancient tome on my shelves. But in Vermont—the writers who shared that retreat with me—gave me space to think about what I want my writing life to look like over the next three years. The answer kept coming back to multigenerational stories that tie our present to a vibrant, often hidden past. I want to focus on sisterhoods carrying love, ambition, secrets, and unfinished business across time. Apparently, even after all these 31 books, I’m still asking: Who do I want to be when my writing life grows up? Truthfully, that’s a question that all of us need to ask and keep asking. Heck, it’s the secret to staying young. Everyone’s trying to figure themselves out. Writers do it on the page and in front of an audience. As we figure ourselves out, we ask: What do we want to do? Whom do we want to become? All while balancing the real world: Those other occupations that pay bills. And what about our relationships? Do we have them? Are we keeping them: Family, friendships, peers, romantic and platonic coexistence—all of this makes up our complicated and gloriously messy thing called our lives. Did I mention the money? Most of us need it—unless we’re nepo babies, but sometimes that gift doesn’t work out. We all do need the money. But I digress. I’m not a writer who can sit still. You may have figured that out already. Yet every time I commit to a book idea, I need it to do more than sound interesting. It has to stir something inside me. It has to give me a reason to say: Yes. These are the people, the questions, the history I want to spend the next year or two researching, writing, revising, promoting, and talking about. A proposal can be a few pages. The commitment behind it is considerably larger. As authors, we spend a lot of time worrying about our brands. Some of us are still trying to figure out what that word means when applied to a human being who occasionally writes in pajamas and tiaras. My slightly Type A personality has helped me think about the direction of my work from the beginning. I knew I wanted to tell historical stories. My first avenue was Christian fiction. Then came Regency romances. My work expanded into historical fiction that brings the Caribbean diaspora into view—a history my very Southern American education too often skipped or downplayed. Or obliterated—thanks to United Daughters of Confederacy. What I like to write or read changes as my curiosity grows. Each book has helped me see more clearly what I want to explore in the next. Vermont gave me time to listen to that curiosity without immediately demanding a word count from it. Which brings me to this week’s lesson: Get comfortable in your own writing skin. It’s tempting to want to be the writer who sits down and produces a 80,000-word book in three or four weeks. Sounds enviable, but often we miss the preparation that it took to get there. Some writers I know who work at the speed of light have already spent months deeply studying their subject, developing their characters, and figuring out the story—before sitting and writing. We as voyeurs see the words arriving. We miss the months of work that made it possible. My friends call me a fast writer. We’ll sort of. I can produce a lot of words when I’m sufficiently caffeinated, the research is done, the characters are clear, and I know where the story needs to go. There have also been times when my Type A personality took the wheel and I checked myself into a hotel with room service to crank out ten or twenty thousand words in a day. That habit can get expensive in more ways than hotel bills. Sleep deprivation. Health. Family time. Isolation. Everything leaning out of alignment with that elusive word: balance. Even if I can do this pace, I must consider what it costs me. This week’s writing tool is the word-count chart. Download it. Keep it displayed. It shows how steady effort adds up and gives you a realistic sense of how long a draft might take at your current, realistic pace. A hundred words a day. A thousand words a week. Whatever fits the life you actually have—these numbers help you make a commitment and understand how long it will take before you can type “the end.” I think some people become frustrated because writing a book “takes too long.” They have a wonderful idea, perhaps even a strong beginning. Then the middle stretches out ahead of them. Life gets busy. The ending seems impossibly far away. The story goes quiet in a notebook or a forgotten Word document. Writing a book—even writing a blog post—requires more than motivation. I believe you need fire in your belly. I want you to care deeply about what you’re putting on the page. But you also need to know yourself well enough to help that fire survive an ordinary Tuesday. How much time can you give this work? How quickly do you usually write? What preparation helps you move forward? What schedule can you return to when the initial excitement settles down? I believe in writing every day. Sometimes that means five hundred words. I didn’t say good words. For me, much of the magic happens in editing, and I need something on the page to edit. If you’re a weekend writer, that’s okay, too. Build the habit around the time you have. Make writing important enough that it gets a place in your life. Be careful about repeatedly teaching yourself that your writing time is the first thing you can give away. An emergency is an emergency. But when every invitation, errand, or passing distraction takes precedence, you may find yourself waiting for time that never arrives. Writing is a commitment. I know. A scary word for some folks these days. You can love it and fight with it. You can get frustrated, need a break, and come back wondering why these people in your head won’t behave. There will be highs and lows, rejections and wins, sentences you adore, and a whole chapter you would prefer never to discuss again. That’s the love story of writing. I want a writing life I can look back on and say: Yes, I probably should have gotten a little more sleep. But I love what we’ve done together. So as I wait to get properly acquainted with the people in at least one of those three proposals, I’m focused on sustaining a life that will help me tell these stories—and still leave room to live my own. You should too. This week’s book list includes my Vermont crew’s books: * The Inevitable Undoing of Zahara Douglass⁠ by Leslye Penelope — A woman searching for the missing twin sister no one else remembers uncovers family secrets and supernatural powers that could threaten the world. * Private Bodyguard⁠ by Veronica Forand — A security operative must protect the tech billionaire she blames for her brother’s breakdown while confronting their tangled past and unexpected attraction. * Where the False Gods Dwell⁠ by Denny S. Bryce — Three women accompanying Katherine Dunham’s 1935 research expedition to Jamaica forge an unlikely sisterhood as personal secrets and a deadly storm threaten their futures. * Analiese Rising⁠ by Brenda Drake — A teenager investigating a mysterious list discovers she can raise the dead and becomes entangled in a dangerous war between gods. * Southern Discomfort⁠ by Sharina Harris (Preorder)— After a scandal threatens her car… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vanessariley.substack.com/subscribe

  5. Oct 6

    Finding the Idea You Have to Write

    For me, the most hectic—and refreshing—moment is when one book is finished and turned in. My mind doesn’t like to be idle, so I find things to do. I read. I explore. I bake. And eventually, I reach that moment when my brain says, “The heck with this. Let’s write. The question becomes, what do I write.” This week’s tool: Idea Assessment: Finding the Idea You Have to Write Getting started is one of the hardest things a writer has to do. Where do you begin when you want to write the next great American novel? My first piece of advice is simple: take your expectations down. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t dream big. Dream as big as you want. But no great novel can come from you if you aren’t committed to writing the novel in the first place. Writing is one of those endeavors where best intentions, wishes, and all the things you would’ve, should’ve, could’ve written don’t count for much. At some point, you have to show up and put words on paper. That’s how you win the game—or, more accurately, how you put yourself in the game. Before there are chapters, however, there is an idea. And an idea doesn’t have to arrive fully formed. Where Story Ideas Come From For me, book ideas tend to come in three ways: a person, a circumstance, or a fascination that won’t let me go. Because I write historical fiction, I may happen upon an unusual fact or discover a person in history who immediately piques my interest. Something about that person catches hold of me, and I need to know more. That happened with Queen of Exiles. While researching and writing Sister Mother Warrior, I encountered the story of Marie-Louise Coidavid Christophe, wife of Henri Christophe. Christophe rose as a soldier in the Haitian Revolution to the liberator Dessalines’s right hand man and then became the king of Haiti, which made Marie-Louise its queen. But what fascinated me was how this simple hotelier’s daughter grew to handle herself on the world stage through building a kingdom in Haiti, then in exile arriving to Europe. I wanted to know her. Who was this woman? What happened to her? What did she experience? How did someone live through such extraordinary transformations? That curiosity became a story. Sometimes, though, it isn’t a person. It’s a circumstance. My Lady Worthing Mysteries grew partly from my fascination with the complicated political and social world surrounding abolition, race, class, and freedom in Regency England. But another piece came from something much more personal: watching Murder, She Wrote with my mother. Those seemingly unrelated things could live together in my imagination—an amateur sleuth stumbling across murders and a historical world filled with political intrigue—catnip. Thus a circumstance became a playground for story. And sometimes an idea begins with nothing more complicated than something you can’t stop thinking about. A question. An image. An experience. Something strange you read. Something that happened to you. Something you wish had happened. Something that makes you angry, delighted, curious, or confused. Pay attention to the thoughts that keep coming back. They may be trying to tell you something. The StoryMetric™ Idea Assessment: Start With the Bubble This is why I created the StoryMetric™ Idea Assessment process. That’s a lot of fancy words for the way. Vanessa’s brain works and how she teaches story craft. As an engineer, I love spreadsheets and forms. But I love love, magical forms that help build to something. So I built a bubble form where I throw ideas into them, play with those ideas, question them, and gradually refine them until I find the story I know I have to tell. At the beginning, I don’t want perfection. I want possibility. The Idea Bubble is deliberately simple. Give yourself ten minutes and fill the bubbles. One way to get moving is to use a basic story pattern: Subject + Verb + Object + Conflict A girl wants to become an astronaut, but she’s afraid of heights. Is that your novel? Maybe. Maybe not. That’s not the point. The point is that you’ve made something where nothing existed before. Fill another bubble. And another. Don’t edit yourself, not yet. Don’t decide whether an idea is literary enough, commercial enough, original enough, or important enough. Generate first. Assessment comes later. Then take the ideas that create a spark and begin asking questions. What is the situation or circumstance? What fascinates me about it? What question keeps returning? What connection do I have to this idea—something I’ve lived, witnessed, inherited, studied, or wondered about? Now we’re moving from having an idea to discovering whether there might be a story inside it. Give Yourself Permission to Want What You Want The next question is one writers sometimes don’t want to answer: Why do I want to write this? Maybe you’ve never heard of this subject before and you’re fascinated. Maybe you want to explore something you don’t understand. Maybe there’s something you want to say that might encourage another person. Maybe this is personal. Maybe you simply want to write. Or let’s get mercenary: maybe you think the idea will sell. That’s allowed, too. None of these motivations is inherently wrong. Some writing may be primarily for you. Some may be intended for a particular community of readers. Some may be a gift you want to put into the world. Some may be unabashedly commercial. Some may begin as one of these and become another. I’m Vanessa Riley, and I’m giving you permission to write about anything you absolutely want. You don’t know how far an idea will reach when you’re standing at the beginning. And there are no stupid ideas. There are no trivial ideas. If you look at an idea and think, That’s stupid, my response is that you may simply not have developed it enough yet. Question it before you discard it. Turn it around. Make it more specific. Find the conflict. Change the circumstances. Ask what fascinates you about it. Ask why it keeps coming back. The important thing at this stage is clarity—not justification. What Kind of Story Might This Be Once an idea survives that first examination, I start asking another question: What kind of story could this become? Literary Fiction? Historical Fiction? Romance? Love Story? Mystery? Thriller? Horror? Commercial Fiction? Memoir? Biographical Fiction? Science Fiction? Space Opera? Fantasy? Saga? Women’s Fiction? Or maybe your answer is: I don’t know yet. That’s a perfectly legitimate answer. You’re still in a nebulous phase. You aren’t signing a contract with a genre. You’re forming a hypothesis. But having some idea of where you’re going can begin to tell you what you need to learn. Genre starts shaping your research. It gives you craft questions. It helps you identify the books you should be reading. It begins to reveal what kind of experience a future reader might expect. So choose a direction without treating it as a permanent label. Then test it. Genre Is Also a Promise This is where the I shift from What do I want to write? to What experience am I preparing to give a reader? Genre creates expectations. A reader who picks up a Mystery has expectations that differ from someone choosing a Romance. A reader selecting Horror is looking for a different emotional experience from a reader choosing Women’s Fiction. Those genres may overlap. Writers may bend conventions. Books may be hybrids. But readers still bring expectations with them. That isn’t a limitation. It’s information. Think about pacing. Character. Conflict. Worldbuilding. Emotional experience. Plot and structure. Ending and resolution. Tone. And of course Genre conventions. What does a reader who loves this kind of story anticipate in each of those areas? The fun of writing is knowing the rules and carefully breaking them. You never blindly obey every convention, but you should fulfill expectations, maybe bend them, combine them, delay them, and sometimes give the unexpected. But you should know the rules and expectations. Find Your Story Neighbors The next question I ask is: What stories live near my story? I call these S… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vanessariley.substack.com/subscribe

  6. Sep 29

    Who Gets the Book Thrown at Them?

    Three names: Crystal Mason. E.L.A. Chanel Miller. Their stories are different, but each bore the brunt of injustice while others—the folks society deemed worthy of protecting—well, their futures were too promising to ruin. So they were given grace. Until the outcry became too loud to ignore. How loud can you scream? Who Gets the Book Thrown at Them? The last seven days have had my mind spinning. On September 24, Crystal Mason was finally able to breathe. You see, in 2018, Mason was convicted of illegal voting in Texas and sentenced to five years in prison after she cast a provisional ballot in the 2016 presidential election. At the time, she was still on federal supervised release for an earlier tax-fraud conviction, and she did not know being on supervised release made her ineligible to vote. Her provisional ballot was never counted, but the law came for her anyway. Think about that for a moment. A ballot that never counted. A woman who said she did not know she was ineligible. Well, that situation gave her a five-year prison sentence. After years of appeals, in March 2024, the Texas Second Court of Appeals reversed Mason’s conviction and entered a judgment of acquittal. The court found the evidence insufficient to prove that she actually knew she was ineligible to vote. But prosecutors didn’t want to take the L. They continued to try to revive the conviction. But in the last seven days, on September 24, 2026, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals—the state’s highest criminal court—rejected these efforts and left Mason’s acquittal in place. Eight years after her conviction for casting a ballot, she’s finally free of the charges. I guess justice delayed is better than denied, right? Then on September 25, another court confronted the disturbing use of government power. U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher found the federal government in contempt after immigration authorities deported a young asylum seeker identified as E.L.A. to El Salvador despite court orders to protect him here. E.L.A., the young minor identified in the papers, had come to the United States as an unaccompanied minor at sixteen. The government wrongly deported him, acknowledged the error and facilitated his return to the United States. Then it deported him again. Judge Gallagher has now ordered the government to facilitate his return. One wonders what will happen, to a teen imigrant who came here seeking a better life. So, you’re asking yourself, Vanessa, what do these two events mean? At first glance, perhaps nothing more than two court rulings happening within twenty-four hours of each other. But I can’t unsee who gets swept into the mashing jaws of American justice—and gets grace. Crystal Mason is a Black woman who casts a provisional ballot and was given a 5-year sentence. E.L.A. is an immigrant: a young Salvadoran asylum seeker who came to this country for asylum, and despite court orders, was deported. Twice. The woman—the Black woman, and the immigrant get the harshest penalties. Which brings me to Cornell. On September 28, a criminal investigation was reopened into allegations involving a former Cornell University student and members of Cornell’s student Greek fraternity, Chi Phi. Jane Doe has been trying to get justice since October 2024, because no one wanted to purse her case beyond school discipline. In a civil lawsuit filed this month, Doe alleges that she’d been drinking, went to the Chi Phi fraternity house, was pressured to take what she was told was ketamine, became increasingly impaired, and was sexually assaulted by multiple men over a period of hours. These are allegations. The men have not been convicted of these alleged assaults, and the reopened criminal investigation will have to determine what the evidence establishes. One particularly disturbing part of the complaint involves an alleged Snapchat group conversation among fraternity members. According to the lawsuit, messages alerted fraternity members that a woman was upstairs and available for sex. Doe alleges that additional men subsequently entered the room and that assaults continued for hours. She reported the incident to Cornell University Police. Cornell conducted its own disciplinary investigation. The university says the resulting sanctions included suspensions and expulsions, and Cornell permanently removed the Chi Phi chapter from campus. But criminal charges did not follow. Then, on September 14, 2026, Doe filed a civil lawsuit against Cornell, Chi Phi, seven former fraternity members and others, alleging negligence, sexual assault, sexual battery, breach of contract and other violations of New York law. So today, two weeks later, Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten announced that he was reopening the criminal investigation and present evidence to a grand jury. And I couldn’t help thinking: Haven’t we been here before? White young man or men, sexual assault, no punishment. Yes, we have, with the case of Chanel Miller. In 2015, nineteen-year-old Stanford freshman and competitive swimmer Brock Turner sexually assaulted Miller, then twenty-two, after a fraternity party. Miller was unconscious. Turner was caught assaulting her behind a dumpster. Two heroes intervened. A jury heard the evidence, and in March 2016, Turner was convicted of three felony sexual-assault offenses. Prosecutors sought six years in prison, but Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Turner to six months in county jail, three years of probation, and sex-offender registration. Turner ultimately served about three months. At sentencing, Judge Persky explicitly considered the consequences imprisonment would have for the convicted felon Brock Turner: “Obviously, a prison sentence would have a severe impact on him.” His life mattered more. The judge worried about Turner’s education, his future, and reputation, something Turner forgot about when he committed sexual assault behind a dumpster. And what about her life? What about the woman who woke up in a hospital and had to piece together what had happened to her? What about the future she thought she’d have? And how this cruel act will constantly remind her of the lack of care a perpetrator and a judge had for her? In America, whose mistake becomes criminality? I ask that question, but it’s kind of obvious. White males from good families, going to a good school, get great grace. Their futures are considered, not the immigrant E.L.A. facing death in El Salvador. I don’t know what a grand jury will ultimately conclude about the allegations at Cornell. An indictment has to be handed down, then a trial will sort through facts. And of course, all that can happen is that a judge like Persky could rule for a light or non-existent punishment. Taken together, these stories force me to see the specter of American justice. The ghosts of the past still determine who gets the book thrown at them—and whose promising future makes the world hesitate before picking up the book or throwing stones. Maybe privilege doesn’t guarantee protection, but it definitely softens the arc of justice. And as I look at this week, I can see how race, immigration status, money, education, and institutional prestige still determine every outcome. No one is guaranteed to come save us from ourselves. And too many of us don’t recognize that something is fully wrong until we find ourselves in the crosshairs of those very circumstances. I’ve talked before about being our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. But right now, I also need you to focus on you. It’s Time for Your Story We are surrounded by messages every day telling us that we’re not important. That our experiences don’t matter. That our voices don’t matter. I’m here to tell you the opposite. You matter. Your voice matters. And your story matters more than ever. Now is the time to write your words down before someone else writes their limited vision of them. Tell your story. They’re banning more books and someday someone will decide yours—woman, immigrant, minority, etc. isn’t worth hearing. Bret Stephens wrote an opini… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vanessariley.substack.com/subscribe

  7. Sep 22

    SORRY DOESN’T GIVE TIME BACK

    There is nothing worse than looking into your child’s eyes and realizing they’ve been struggling—and somehow, you missed it. I know that look. And years later, I still carry the guilt. I read Nikole Hannah-Jones’s devastating piece in The New York Times, “In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?” That part— I could feel her daughter looking at her. “Did you know…when you decided to put me here?” The question hit me straight in the heart and took me back a number of years to my own guilt bomb. Flashback: 2023 My dearest darling daughter was in her senior year of high school, and she was flailing. I can remember her soft brown eyes glancing up at me, filled with despair, like she had just realized her mother was human and not a superhero. In those small irises were water droplets and the look of failure. Seeing that in your child’s eyes is worse than a nightmare. My daughter had been homeschooled from the very beginning, and I can still remember clicking through the web searching for school programs, drilling through curricula—from IXL to Abeka—constructing strengths-and-weaknesses charts, researching resources, all nine yards, trying to choose a program that aligned with our family values and had the flexibility to accommodate an active-duty military man and a scientist-type, consulting, writer mom. Homeschooling fit the demands and worked until about third grade, when I realized Georgia’s limited homeschooling oversight could allow my child to miss key testing and other things. We decided to switch her to public school. We lucked out and found a hybrid county public school, Connections Academy. They had everything—or at least promise of everything. High praise from teachers and students, a solid curriculum, and the majority of the classes would still be taught in an online atmosphere . My daughter could continue to be at home or travel with me while attending school. I believed deeply in flexible, in-depth education. I still do. I believe in investing in my child’s education, so when there were weaknesses and I couldn’t help, I found tutors, sought out additional summer programs like Kumon, and did whatever was required to make sure my baby learned and enjoyed learning. From third through eleventh grade, my daughter got A’s and B’s. I thought she was fine. She wasn’t. In her senior year, my daughter cracked under the pressure. She had a pile of unfinished assignments, grades dipping toward D’s and F’s because of incompletes, and she started talking about not wanting to go to college. Then she admitted she had trouble reading and keeping up and that, when stressed, numbers floated. I was in shock. I reached out to the school for help. It took a while for the emails to return from the void, but there was no real help. Mandated county testing for this type of situation wasn’t a priority for them. Perhaps they, too, were shocked that an A-B student could have such problems. It soon became obvious that this excellent school didn’t have the resources or desire to be part of the solution. My husband and I had to save her on our own. We worked with our doctors to get her diagnosed. I was stunned by the diagnosis. My daughter had a learning disability that had gone undiagnosed for years. I’m not going to get too deeply into her private medical information. But some of its characteristics look like ADHD. It definitely bears anxious fruit, and it can affect her ability to perform certain mathematical processes. She required accommodations and a learning plan. Hubby and I had to implement them to get my daughter back to wanting to learn. Back to the Present I read Hannah-Jones’s piece, and my heart broke for her and her daughter. A mother’s guilt knows no end. Something inside crumbles, ripping at our insides, when our child is in agony—or worse, when they look up with failure written in their eyes and they see it written in ours. How did we let this happen? These kids are right to put some of the blame on us. We are the busy, opinionated generation with all these high moral principles, but sometimes lacking the time to invest, dissect, and implement. My daughter is now thriving and enjoying her college experience, but part of me still bears this grief. How did I not see it? How many years of suffering happened because I missed the problem? Then guilt joins in: How could I have spent this much time thinking about my child’s education and not known? How could I not recognize that she was struggling? Sorry doesn’t cut it. We can’t give time back. I’ve learned that looks deceive. I had interpreted working around the clock as passion. You simply do that when you love learning. Maybe that belief kept me blind. Achievement can disguise struggle. You can love your child ferociously. You can research. You can advocate. You can pay attention. You can invest time and money. You can believe you are doing everything you’re supposed to do for them and the next generation—and still fail. Back to Hannah-Jones In her New York Times article, Nikole Hannah-Jones talks about the battle of advocating against segregated schools and trying to create an equal, common baseline for schoolchildren everywhere. She had to reckon with the fact that schools with inequities based on the complexion of their student body or a lack of a strong tax base don’t always make it up to snuff. Sometimes folks do the bare minimum, not the unpaid extra that can make a difference. Putting middle-class or rich kids into these schools doesn’t automatically change what’s happening. And she had to trade her fear of putting her kid in a higher-performing school, where rich kids can exhibit both racism and classism, for the opportunity to give her daughter a competitive, quality education. She thought she was doing the right thing by placing her only daughter, her only child, in her neighborhood public school. She may have been deluded into thinking that the predominantly Black neighborhood school wouldn’t play in her face because she writes for The New York Times. Unfortunately, she found that some allowed neglect to fester into behavioral issues at lunchtime; she found folders of ungraded schoolwork, which made it harder to ensure a student corrected mistakes and learned. Hannah-Jones’s daughter fell behind and needed many tutoring sessions to catch up. The Ruby Bridges Interlude On September 8, Ruby Bridges turned seventy-two. She was the famous six-year-old who, in 1960, became the first Black child to integrate William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans. Federal marshals escorted her past screaming white crowds to get her into the building. I made a birthday post about her, and more than a hundred thousand people on Instagram (and Facebook) have viewed it. We know the picture. The little Black girl. The white dress. The braids. Or maybe we know Norman Rockwell’s rendering of that walk, The Problem We All Live With. But what I wanted people to remember was what existed outside the frame, beyond the braids and the federal marshals. Picture the crowd. The slurs. The angry men and women screaming at her. The death threats. The image of a Black baby doll in a coffin. Ruby had nightmares about that. White parents who defied the boycott and continued sending their children to William Frantz were threatened too. Federal marshals also escorted white children into the school. All this chaos because people wanted a better education for their children. Sometimes history is easier to tolerate when we crop the photograph and look at the child, not the system. Many of us have had to deal with the system, particularly when it comes to education. We celebrate that courage now because of the success of school integration. But most of us don’t have the guts or the fearlessness it took to be Ruby—or any of the kids who attended with her. Back to the New York Times Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote an extraordinary and painful essay in The New York Times titled “In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?” Please read the whole thing. Don’t read only a headline. … This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vanessariley.substack.com/subscribe

  8. Sep 15

    Before She Says A Word

    The best dress in the room doesn’t need three paragraphs. Jane Austen can slay it in five words: “Their dress had every advantage.” Translation: fashionable, confident, ready for the room—but perhaps not much more. And Bob Mackie? He could obliterate us all, defining a character or a career with carefully sewn sequins. Before She Says A Word What Bob Mackie Taught Me About Dressing a Character “Their dress had every advantage, their faces were rather pretty, their spirits extremely good, their manner unembarrassed and pleasant; they were of consequence at home, and favourites abroad.” These lines open the fifth chapter of Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Our heroine, Anne Elliot, is giving us what she saw of the Musgrove sisters, Henrietta and Louisa, as they entered the room—the cottage in Uppercross. Not once does Austen describe what the sisters are wearing, but the rest of the sentence fills our heads with an image. Austen is a masterclass in dressing for the room and the moment. That’s not a one-off. Austen uses Catherine Morland’s anxiety as she decides what to wear to a ball to highlight what it means for a young woman to realize she’s going to be looked at the minute she enters the room. In Mansfield Park, we get a little bit of color when Fanny Price hopes that her dress, a white dress, is not too fine. Mrs. Norris reassures her, “A woman can never be too fine while she is all in white.” None of this tells us the details, the trimmings of the dress. But again, it expresses the anxiety of a woman wondering if she’s holding up to the rules that society places on her. And it also gives us this very weak reassurance that she’s all right. Yet to the reader, the detail tells us so much about Fanny and Mrs. Norris. Now, while I love to spill on the details, partially because I’m a fabric-and-notion girly, Austen has made me more conscious of what I want the outfit to say about the person and the moment. So today’s essay is more about a designer whom Austen, once she got over the shock of the curve-hugging lines, might approve of: Bob Mackie, the gowns he designed, and the messages they spoke to the audience. Mackie the Industry Vet Robert Gordon “Bob” Mackie was born March 24, 1939, in Monterey Park, California. He began his career as a sketch artist, working for major costume designers including Edith Head and Jean Louis. While working for Jean, the young Mackie drew the design sketch for Marilyn Monroe’s crystal-covered “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” gown. His early breakthrough came when Mitzi Gaynor hired him in 1966 for her Las Vegas revue and television specials. His designs became household legends with his work for The Carol Burnett Show. He designed for Burnett throughout the 11-year run, including the legendary green velvet curtain-rod dress for the skit, 1976 “Went with the Wind!” With Cher, Mackie became known in the music industry. His revealing, beaded designs for The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour helped make Mackie a household name; later creations included Cher’s dramatic 1986 Oscars feathered ensemble and the gown she wore to accept her 1988 Best Actress Oscar. Mackie designed for Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Liza Minnelli, Lola Falana, Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, Madonna, Beyoncé, RuPaul, and many others. He shared an Oscar nomination for costume design for Ross’s Lady Sings the Blues (1972) with Ray Aghayan and Norma Koch. He never stopped designing, and younger stars like Miley Cyrus, Beyoncé, Zendaya, and more have taken to Mackie like a rite of passage. Mackie and the Light As I’ve studied the designs of the 1600s and the Georgian and Regency periods, I’m fascinated by silhouettes and fabrics. Every article and material indicates not only status but access and even the internals of a character. I’ve studied how candlelight can skip across silk, even change direction based on how the fabric is woven. I’ve learned to notice how the weight of velvet flows differently as a woman comes down stairs. My Lady Worthing mysteries are seasonal, so that is a fun thing to explore. Mackie knew the importance of light, particularly how beads throw light across a ballroom, how the shimmer can accentuate the length of a leg or arm, how swaying can start before a movement as well as linger when it’s done. His flame dresses, worn by Tina, Cher, Beyoncé, Miley, and probably more, are perfect examples of this balance. That is one of the reasons I have always loved Bob Mackie. Mackie understood something fundamental about clothes: the dress does not exist separately from the body. The light is entwined with the camera angles and the music, whether the performer is singing, acting, or offering a joke. Mackie and the Entrance Something that I pay attention to is how a character enters a room. Is it dramatic? Does it follow a confrontation? And for those of us still hung up on the movie Sinners, we all understand what it means to be invited in. The entrance reveals so much. Mackie knew this. Carol Burnett wanted to spoof Gone With the Wind. Mackie knew the iconic green-curtain dress in the movie made Scarlett O’Hara a beauty that Rhett almost couldn’t reject. The script called for Burnett’s character to come downstairs wearing curtains. Mackie decided simply draping curtains around her wasn’t funny enough. So the minute Carol had to reveal herself, Mackie knew typical elegance wasn’t the answer. The outfit had to be a part of the joke. Mackie made his curtain dress and insisted the curtain rod remain inside. It’s iconic. It tells its own joke the minute the dress is seen. The resulting green velvet confection—with its sweeping skirt, extravagant tassels, and horizontal rod extending from the shoulders—became one of television’s greatest sight gags. It is hilarious because it is also gorgeous. There is volume. There is drape. There are yards of sumptuous fabric. There are tassels and layers and a silhouette that would not be entirely out of place in a nineteenth-century fashion plate. Until you notice she is wearing the window. That’s Mackie. Fabric could create desire. Fabric could create glamour. And fabric could deliver a punch line. The costume is now in the Smithsonian. It was just that much of the moment. Mackie Made Her The Moment It’s 1975. Cher is heading for a divorce from TV partner and husband Sonny Bono. Everyone knew Sonny and Cher. Mackie knew the way Cher looked had to show glamour and a woman standing on her own. Bob Mackie was there to dress this new, solo Cher. The internet is littered with reels and videos showing dress reveals, all designed by Mackie. Cher becomes emblematic of sexiness, strength, and beauty while reclaiming the charm and humor everyone knew when she was married. While working with Cher, Mackie met Tina Turner. Tina and Cher performed together repeatedly, and Mackie was designing the clothes. Mackie later remembered this as an unsettled period for Tina. She’d left Ike and, as Mackie put it, was “kind of hiding out.” Tina had been working smaller venues to rebuild herself as a solo act. Mackie remembered her as searching for “a different life.” His clothes helped distinguish the emerging Tina Turner from the woman audiences associated with the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. He designed for her body in motion. Mackie understood that Tina wasn’t going to stand elegantly under a spotlight. She’d strut, kick, and dance around the entire stage. He emphasized her legs with extremely high slits and short skirts, with trunks sewn underneath so she could move freely. Mackie created a gold-and-silver chain-fringe bodysuit with enormous pleated gold-lamé wings for Tina’s solo nightclub performances, including one at Caesars Palace. He made sure the wings would remain behind her until she suddenly extended her arms and opened them to their full span. When Tina did, the world stopped for just a second. She was a beautiful butterfly. In her 2020 memoir, she remembered wearing the winged costume and feeling as though she were about to take flight and soar. Mackie knew … This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vanessariley.substack.com/subscribe

See All (99)

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
6 Ratings

About

Join bestselling author Vanessa Riley as she delves into untold histories, reflects on current events through a historical lens, shares behind-the-scenes writing insights, and offers exclusive updates on her groundbreaking novels. vanessariley.substack.com

Information