On this week's episode, I have author Shelia Heti, book writer of Pure Color, Motherhood, Alphabetical Diaries, and many many more. We talk about how I discovered her writing and why Pure Color meant so much to me. She also explains her writing process and how she approaches a story. There is so much more.Show NotesSheila Heti Website: https://www.sheilaheti.com/Sheila Heti on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_HetiMichael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/courseFree Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/freeJoin My Newsletter - https://michaeljamin.com/newsletterAutogenerated TranscriptSheila Heti:That's what I was thinking.Michael Jamin:It was work harder.Sheila Heti:I was like, I got to work harder than any other writer alive.Michael Jamin:And what did that work look like to you?Sheila Heti:Just always writing and always not being satisfied and being a real critic of my work and trying to make it better and trying to be more, try to get it to sound and more interesting and figure out what my sentences were and letting myself be bad and repeat myself until I got better. And I don't think that I ever let that go. I'm not sitting here today saying, I work harder than any other writer alive. I do remember having that feeling when I was young. That's what I need to do. That's the only wayMichael Jamin:You're listening to What the hell is Michael Jamin talking about? I'll tell you what I'm talking about. I'm talking about creativity. I'm talking about writing, and I'm talking about reinventing yourself through the arts.Michael Jamin:What the hell is Michael Jamin talking about today? Well, ladies and gentlemen, I'm talking about, honestly, one of the greatest, I feel, one of the greatest writers of my generation. Yep, yep. Her name is Sheila Hedy. She's the author of I guess 11 books, including Pure Color, although it's spelled with a U, the Canadian Way, a Garden of Creatures, motherhood, how Should a Person Be? And her forthcoming book, alphabetical Diaries. And she's just an amazing talent. So she's an author, but I don't describe her this way. And by the way, I'm going to talk about Sheila for about 59 minutes, and then at the end I'll let her get a word and then I'll probably cut her off. But I have to give her a good proper introduction. She's really, really that amazing of a writer. So author isn't really the right word. She really is, in my opinion, an artist who paints with words.And if you imagine going up to a Van Gogh painting, standing right up next to it, and then you see all these brushstrokes, and then you take a step back and you're like, okay, now I see the patterns of the brushstrokes. And you take a little step back, oh, the patterns form an image. Then another step back, you say, oh, that's a landscape. It really is like that with her writing. She has these images that she paints with words, and then they form bigger thoughts and you pull back and it's really amazing what she does and how she kind of reinvents herself with each piece. And so I'm so excited and honored she for you to join me here so I can really talk more about this with you. Thank you for coming.Sheila Heti:Yeah, thanks. That introduction made me so happy. Thank you for saying all that.Michael Jamin:Lemme tell you by the way, how I first discovered you. So I have a daughter, Lola, she's 20, she's a writer, and we trade. I write something we trade. It's really lovely that we get to talk about. And so she's off at school, but she left a book behind and I'm like, all right, what's this book she left behind? Because that way I can read it and we can talk about that, have our book club. And she left Pure Color. And I was like, oh, I like the cover, so I'll take a look at it. And what I didn't realize, it was the perfect book to discover you by because it's book about among other things, about a father's relationship with his daughter. So I text her, I say, I'm reading pure color. She goes, Sheila Hedy'