First Draft Episode #248: Claire Comstock-Gay
APRIL 21, 2020
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE
Claire Comstock-Gay is the author of weekly horoscopes for New York magazine’s The Cut, and her debut book about astrology, Madame Clairevoyant’s Guide to the Stars, is out now.
This episode was sponsored by HIGHLAND 2, a better way to write, and by We Didn’t Ask For This, the newest novel by Adi Alsaid, out from Inkyard Press April 7 (listen to his First Draft interview here).
Sarah Enni: First Draft is sponsored by the newest novel from critically acclaimed young adult author Adi Alsaid, We Didn't Ask For This. Inspired by The Breakfast Club, this timely new novel brings climate change to the forefront as a group of international students turn their annual lock-in night into a platform to use their voice for environmental change. We Didn't Ask For This is a powerful look at not only how we treat the planet, but how we treat one another.
It has already earned star reviews from Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus Reviews. And I know Adi, he is a fantastic writer and he's a world traveler, so his reflections on climate change come from personal experience. And this feels like a very timely and important book. We Didn't Ask For This is out today from Inkyard Press and is available wherever books and eBooks are sold.
First Draft is brought to you by HIGHLAND 2 a writing software created by John August, screenwriter and cohost of the Scriptnotes Podcast. Also a guest on this very podcast, his episode is fantastic. And after talking to John and listening to hundreds of episodes of Scriptnotes, I heard him talk about developing this writing software and I decided to give it a try.
I just finished writing a first draft entirely in HIGHLAND 2 and I'm obsessed with it. And here's why I love HIGHLAND. It's so simple, but it's still really powerful. There's one navigation sidebar. And within that sidebar you have tons of different tools at your disposal. You can drag bits of text in there that you might want to come back to later, or you can monitor your stats like word count and page count, or new words and new page count.
The main screen where you write is this simple, endless scroll of plain text. But with just a few keystrokes, you can add notes to yourself in-line without them showing up in the final, automatically formatted version of your book. And you can export into many formats, including as a Word doc. HIGHLAND 2 is clean, beautiful and organized, which is to say, it didn't distract me, it just let me get in there and focus and write.
I highly encourage you to go check it out. You can find it at Highland2.app. That's Highland and the number 2.app. Or you can also find the link in this episode's show notes. And if you do try Highland and enjoy it, let me know, I'm so interested. I was tracking my progress on my first draft in the Instagram story feed, you can go in there and see my struggle [chuckles] but HIGHLAND was the number one thing that people asked me. Everyone wanted to know what the software was that I was using, and this is it. So go check it out.
Welcome to First Draft with me, Sarah Enni. This week I'm talking to Claire Comstock-Gay, the author of weekly horoscopes for New York Magazine's The Cut whose debut astrology book, Madame Clairvoyant's Guide to the Stars is out now.
I love what Claire had to say about how astrology urges us to accept ourselves the way we are, how writing a weekly horoscope led her to shed the preciousness about her writing, and how she thinks about herself as a messenger to her audience.
Everything Claire and I talk about in today's episode can be found in the show notes. First Draft participates in affiliate programs. That means when you shop through the links on FirstDraftPod.com it helps to support the show at no additional cost to you. And First Draft is an affiliate of bookshop.org which is a great organization. So shopping on the website benefits First Draft and independent bookstores.
If you'd like to donate to First Draft, either on a onetime or monthly basis, simply go to paypal.me/firstdraftpod.
You may have noticed something new and different in your feed this month. I've launched the first episode of Track Changes. A nine episode podcast mini series that will get into everything you don't know you don't know about book publishing. The first episode is already out. It is the one just before this in the First Draft feed and it's all about publishing 101.
The next episode, which will come out on April 30th, is gonna get into everybody's favorite topic... agents. Who are they? What do they do? Why do you need one? And how would you even go about doing that? It's a rich topic so we really get into it. In researching for the mini series, I learned so much more than I could fit into nine episodes. So I've also launched the Track Changes newsletter, a subscription newsletter that every week will bring you further insights into how books get made.
Both projects aim to provide transparency and give writers the information they need to think about their art as their career. You can sign up for a 30 day free trial of the newsletter and learn more about both Track Changes projects @firstdraftpod.com/TrackChanges.
Okay. Now please sit back, relax, and enjoy my conversation with Claire Comstock-Gay.
Sarah Enni: So, hi Claire, how are you?
Claire Comstock-Gay: Hi Sarah, I'm great. Thanks for having me.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, I'm so excited to chat today. I've been a longtime fan of your horoscopes, so this is really a thrill.
Claire Comstock-Gay: I'm really happy to be here talking with you today.
Sarah Enni: Yay! So I like to start my interviews at the very beginning, which is, where were you born and raised?
Claire Comstock-Gay: Oh, I love it. So I was born in Washington, D.C. and lived in Baltimore until I was eight. My family moved to Boston for a year after that. And then we moved to New Hampshire, which is where I kind of think of myself as being from.
Sarah Enni: That is a decent amount of moving around.
Claire Comstock-Gay: Yeah, it is. And then I went so much more after that even, right? I went to college in Iowa. I moved to New York after, I lived in new Orleans, and now I'm in Minneapolis.
Sarah Enni: Okay. I love that. And kind of related to that, I want to ask about how reading and writing was a part of growing up for you.
Claire Comstock-Gay: Oh yeah. So I imagine you get this answer quite a bit on this podcast, but I was such a reading kid, just all about books all the time. I really loved reading mysteries and I really loved reading books about magic as a kid. And so I remember really getting into reading, I think through the Boxcar Children books, like kid mysteries. And then kind of the classic fantasy books, like I was a Lord of the Rings nerd in fourth grade.
Sarah Enni: And for this conversation, I want to ask about, in your young life, was astrology a part of that at all? Were you aware of it?
Claire Comstock-Gay: You know, it really was not, even a little bit. I was kind of vaguely aware that it was a thing. I liked reading the comics in the newspaper and the horoscopes are usually kind of right next to that. So I would look like, "Oh, I'm a Sagittarius." And it would be some really non-interesting thing to me like, "Ask your boss for a raise." And it's like, "Okay, I'm 10. I'm not gonna do that."
And kind of more than that, I really did not respond at all to the descriptions I was reading of my sun sign, which is Sagittarius. And so I kind of wrote it off until I was in my twenties.
Sarah Enni: Okay. And I want to ask about creative writing and whether that was a part of your young life or were you expressing yourself through writing? When did that begin?
Claire Comstock-Gay: Yeah, you know, it's funny, I was really into keeping a journal as a kid. And it's funny cause I don't do that at all anymore, but when I was young, I was constantly, constantly writing in my journal. I didn't so much think that I would be a writer when I grew up, even though I loved reading. I didn't connect that in my brain somehow.
When I was a teen I secretly wrote poetry, but that was very private and secret to me. I didn't want anyone to ever know about that. I didn't want it to be looked at.
Sarah Enni: Well, teenage poetry is the epic, I think it connects all of us.
Claire Comstock-Gay: [Laughs] And so I never, like in college I studied Russian Literature, but I never took a creative writing class, even though I was kind of starting to secretly write fiction at that point. But I never studied it formally or seriously or anything like that.
Sarah Enni: So what kinds of things were you starting to write in secret?
Claire Comstock-Gay: It was poetry and fiction. And it's funny because I read fiction, I still read fiction kind of more than anything else, but couldn't figure out a way to write it. But I was writing poetry. I had a secret poetry live journal for a long time [laughing].
Sarah Enni: Ooh, yes.
Claire Comstock-Gay: And so I wasn't ever doing it with the thought that I would maybe even ever publish.
Sarah Enni: I'm so interested in that because, what's clear to me from reading your horoscopes online and then from reading this book, is that you're a really gifted writer. But it's so interesting to hear that you didn't really feel like it was working, or you weren't finding the right kind of expression that way. How did you think about that when you were at that age?
Claire Comstock-Gay: I think it was partly not finding the right form. It was partly an issue of confidence in a lot of ways. And I think that was just a me thing. I don't think there was anything in my life that kind of taught me that. It was just, for whatever reason, I didn't think it was for me. And I think it was also, I don't know why I had this idea, I was like, "I don't want to be a writer. I want to be a reader." I had this idea that I was a reader and I didn't need to write because I just, yeah, I don't know.
Sarah Enni: Oh, that's so interesting. Do you think it was... I hear that and I think about times that I've had similar feelings in my life, and it was just kind of coming from a place of fear. Or, I don't know, like denying the creative urge in some way, shape, or form.
Claire Comstock-Gay: I think it was partly fear and weirdly, like in a twisted up kind of way, partly rebelliousness. Everyone's like, "Oh, you're like a bookish child. Are you gonna be a writer?" And I'm like, "No."
Sarah Enni: "Don't tell him what to do." I can definitely relate to that. So I want to hear how astrology came around. When did that enter your life?
Claire Comstock-Gay: Yeah, so astrology kind of came around for me when I was in my early twenties. I had just moved to New York after college, and I was hanging out with kind of feminist punks, right? In scenes where astrology is really big. And I had this whole idea that it just wasn't for me cause all the Sagittarius descriptions were so just truly incorrect from what I could tell.
And I was at a party at my friend's backyard and someone was like, "Okay, well, sure, but what's your rising sign then?" And that was the first time that I even knew there were other signs for me, and all of us, to look at. And so I went home and I figured out what time I was born and I looked it up, and my rising sign was Cancer, which is kind of the moody, emo teen of all the signs. I was like, "Oh yeah, there's me, the secret poetry writer. Grouchy, crabby." Like, "Okay, yeah, okay, you got me." And so from that point I kind of shifted my perspective and I started reading about it more and getting into it.
Sarah Enni: And it's so funny to hear you say that, and you kind of go over this story in the introduction to Guide to the Stars. But I had a really similar experience. Even though I had loved astrology for a long time, for pretty much my whole life, I got into it via reading the Greek myths and stuff like that.
And I'm a Gemini, which you get into as well in a way that I appreciate, cause it covered a lot of me, but not all of me. And it felt like an okay enough fit. And then when I learned about rising signs, my rising sign is Sagittarius, and it just totally unlocked it for me. I was like, "Oh yeah, that's all the other stuff that doesn't really jive with Gemini that is absolutely expressing itself in my personality."
And actually, I'll come back to that in a little bit when we get more into the book specifically, because you do a really wonderful job of talking about embracing complexity. But I want to ask about, and this is jumping ahead a little bit, but I can't resist. I loved in the book you wrote about... I'm like oh [papers rustling] let's quote it. It's page five, the intro.
And you have this really wonderful passage where you talk about how when you discovered astrology at this point in your life, it was really an affirmation. Let's see, I'm gonna mess up quoting this to you, but the gist of it is, "What I did need, and hadn't found anywhere else, was an affirmation that the way I was wired was fundamentally okay." I wonder if you can just explain that feeling.
Claire Comstock-Gay: Yeah, totally. And that really kind of gets to so much of what I see is the value of astrology. In our understanding of the world and what it means to be a person, there's this idea that there's a best way to be and we're all trying to be that best way, right? And so we're trying all of these different ways to kind of optimize ourselves and become better and become, you know, normal.
And astrology is here to say like, "No, there's all these different, totally contradictory, totally different ways of being. And this is all baked into who you are and it's all fine." And so like with Cancer, it was a lot of the really private moodiness that I always felt wasn't good, and I should try to sand off of myself, right? And astrology comes and it's like, "No, that's just how you are. And there's better ways to deal with it and worse ways to deal with it. But that's just it. And that's fine." Or like with my Sagittarius self, I'm constantly beating myself up for being a little restless and flaky. And astrology is like, "No, that's not wrong. You just have to learn how to deal with this."
Sarah Enni: Yeah. I connected so much to that and I read it and was like, "Ding!" Like, "Oh yeah." I think that is why I feel so, and we'll get into it a little bit more later, but I have a lot of skeptics in my life and explaining to them why astrology is truly so meaningful to me. You just gave me a great explanation.
Because the other thing I really respond to is, I don't know if you've read her, but Gretchen Rubin is a writer about human personalities and she also has a metric that is just kind of saying, "This is how some people are, I've noticed a pattern." She's not trying to suggest that you try to be one or the other. She's like, "This is just kind of a tendency you have." And I just felt so soothed by that. I don't think we were raised with a lot of messages of accepting ourselves.
Claire Comstock-Gay: Yeah, I really agree. And I think accepting ourselves just really for whatever it is that we are, right?
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Not just accepting our good traits. Okay. I want to kind of shift to talking about how you started writing horoscopes.
Claire Comstock-Gay: It really kind of was just me getting tremendously lucky and falling into this. So a friend of mine, the writer Molly McCardell, was editing for The Rumpus, for social media for The Rumpus, it's a literary website. And she thought it would be fun to do horoscopes. So she asked me if I would do those, kind of knowing that I had a really casual interest in astrology. And so I did.
And it's funny because I really started writing horoscopes, you could say it was a little bit too soon, cause I was still learning a lot about astrology at the time. And so I kind of learned as I was writing and never expected it to blossom into what it is now. I didn't get paid, this was in 2012, I wrote them for three years weekly just for fun. Which seems like incredible looking back that I had the time and the energy to do that. But it really was fun. It felt like a fun kind of low stakes, interesting writing exercise, that let me think about craft, and especially audience in a way that I hadn't ever been able to do before.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, okay. Those are all things I really am interested in. This is such an interesting, almost like a thought experiment, about as like a writing prompt. It comes with baked in structure and also a really hard and fast deadline.
Claire Comstock-Gay: Yes. Oh my gosh. Yes. Thank god for deadlines. Where would we be otherwise?
Sarah Enni: And also, you wrote in the New York Times piece from I think 2015 that, "In the rest of my writing I'm much more critical, but that's not the job of these horoscopes." And it kind of made me think about having to write something every week is a great way to sort of lose some of that preciousness that might prevent you from writing or publishing otherwise.
Claire Comstock-Gay: Totally. Partly because of just the sheer volume that you have to keep cranking them out at. And partly there's something really nice about the kind of vanishing nature of horoscopes. Sometimes people will revisit, especially meaningful ones, but it's not as though these are gonna be anthologized and someone can read these horoscopes. They're really time, not time sensitive, but like they're really tied to a moment in time. And so kind of ephemeral, I guess. And it lets me be a lot freer as I write them.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. I mean it's also reminding me of you talking about writing a journal when you were younger. I mean, I would argue, I guess that this kind of could be seen as taking the place of that.
Claire Comstock-Gay: Totally.
Sarah Enni: Even though it's not explicitly writing about your life, it's definitely a reflection of your worldview and expressing your interpretation of humanity. And that's a great way to journal in general, I would say.
Claire Comstock-Gay: Absolutely.
Sarah Enni: I want to ask about that learning on the job. I think that's so interesting. And I'm curious about what was that process like? What resources did you go find for that? What was your journey?
Claire Comstock-Gay: So it was really just a lot of reading whatever I could find. I started, I don't know if you know the website CafeAstrology? It's kind of a classic gateway website. And so I read that a ton. I would look at books. And what I really wanted actually, I really wanted a narrative book that you could just read. And I really wasn't finding anything.
And that's a lot of what I was thinking about as I wrote my book, was trying to write what I would've liked to read when I was just getting started.
Because there's so much information in astrology, there's so many different interconnected moving pieces. And if you [chuckles] I'm a Sagittarius, I like the big picture. And it just felt really granular in all of the books I was reading, and hard to get a grip on what this whole system was like overall, versus these little nuggets of information.
Sarah Enni: Right. And you mentioned it in the book that there are lots of almost technical manuals. And those are great too, especially if you're in the place where you want to get really deep into the chart and get granular. But yeah, approaching it from a narrative way is so different and underrepresented, like you're saying.
Claire Comstock-Gay: Yeah, yeah. Cause there's a ton of really excellent books for learning how to do a chart or whatever. But really, for me, I think of astrology, just for myself, it's useful as a broad way of seeing the world, right? Versus looking at the little elements on a chart. And that was what I was looking for and not finding the way I needed to find it.
Sarah Enni: And I want to talk about your development. I mean, what strikes me about the many years that you spent writing, and still write, horoscopes is just how much you must've developed your voice. And you mentioned a little bit about audience. I'd love to just hear how over the years your writing has developed? And also just your conception of an audience, or how you think about your writing, all that good stuff.
Claire Comstock-Gay: Kind of where to start with the question of audience. It's interesting because I think often we, and I mean we kind of loosely, right? Culturally, we think of writing as you're expressing yourself. And in horoscopes, no one's reading them because they want to know anything about me. I'm kind of like a messenger here, but it's not about me.
It's about this connection with the reader. It's about offering something to somebody else. And a lot the best writing does that anyway. But to totally take out of the equation, and especially at the beginning, any idea that I was doing this for me or expressing my inner self. It really is all about figuring out ways to connect and to offer this gift to people.
Sarah Enni: And your name, of course, is obviously on the book and on The Cut, and everywhere that people read your horoscopes, but you are Madame Clairevoyant.
Claire Comstock-Gay: [Chuckles] Totally.
Sarah Enni: So you did kind of totally move towards eliminating your identity with relationship to your writing in this interesting way.
Claire Comstock-Gay: Yeah, and it has been funny to have my name kind of slowly, my real name, slowly creep in. Cause for a long time I really was able to just not even think of it as myself even. It really just felt like this other voice that I was channeling.
Sarah Enni: It's just so fascinating to me to think that you sort of completely eliminated your personal self from the process of writing in order to really find this beautiful literary voice. Do you think you needed that space to kind of get brave enough to write like this?
Claire Comstock-Gay: Yeah. I really think that I did. And I don't know, it really just changed things to not feel so stuck in myself, I guess. And it is funny kind of tracing back my whole history of writing. And it's all of these kind of trying to eliminate the self a little bit, which is so weird. Or, not the self, but like just to not feel like I'm being looked at while I'm doing the thing. I think it was really necessary.
Like if you look at journaling or like secretly posting my poems on the internet. It was all about like, "Don't look at me, just let me do my thing, but don't look too much."
Sarah Enni: Yeah. It's so interesting, and I can relate. I mean, last year my first book came out last year and I had like a minor breakdown beforehand cause it was just like, "Oh, I'm gonna be exposed."
Claire Comstock-Gay: It's so horrible. It's funny with this book now coming out, I'm really having to reckon with that feeling of being exposed that I've been able to avoid.
Sarah Enni: Okay. Well let's come back to that cause I kind of want to lead us to the actual book itself. But do you mind recapping your journey. You jumped around to a few internet outlets and, as you mentioned, you kind of moved on to actually getting paid for this. And your popularity kind of skyrocketed as astrology became this big movement. Do you mind just kind of mapping that for us?
Claire Comstock-Gay: Yeah, totally. So in 2015, so that was three years after I had started writing horoscopes. I started writing for The Toast, which I miss. And so that was really wonderful. And then a year later they closed down. And at that point I thought, "Okay, here's the sign I've been looking for. I can stop writing horoscopes now." [Chuckles] Which is so funny now.
And so then at that point The Cut got in touch with me to see about writing for them. And so that was really just this stroke of truly wild luck. And I don't mean, "Oh so undeserved." Cause that's not it. But it's just funny that it shook out that way.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. That's so interesting. I love that they came looking for you. That's so smart of The Cut.
Claire Comstock-Gay: I love The Cut. I think they're very smart and they're great to write for. And so that was really the first time I started getting paid for writing. And I still had a full time job at that point, but I was making actual money compared to the $50 that The Toast was able to pay. And so that really changed both materially. It was like, "Oh, this actually could conceivably be a part of my professional life versus this extra thing that I do."
Sarah Enni: I do want to ask about that. I love you talking about the fact that you're then moving onto this really giant preexisting platform, and that you're getting paid. I mean, I guess in my mind, The Cut is like where I go for everything. So, it feels massive. I'm so interested in, did you have any conscious reckoning with how you were writing them? Or did it change how you approached writing them in any way?
Claire Comstock-Gay: I think in the beginning I was just a little bit more fearful suddenly. Like my name was showing up on this big website, my real name. And I was getting paid and suddenly I had something to lose which I didn't before. I think totally coincidentally, right when I started writing for The Cut was also exactly when I moved out of New York. A hundred percent coincidence.
And I think that helped to protect me emotionally a little bit. Just feeling like I'm a little bit removed from the media world even as I'm stepping into the media world. It let me keep the focus on the work itself versus any of these other things that suddenly became factors.
Sarah Enni: Do you mind me asking what led you out of New York?
Claire Comstock-Gay: Yeah, really broadly, it was just wanting to live somewhere else again. I had left New York once, I moved to New Orleans, which was great, and then moved back. And then just wanted to go somewhere else. I really love living different places. And so we ended up moving here because my partner was able to transfer his job out here. So it was kind of an easy, low risk move to a different place.
Sarah Enni: And that's so funny to have those coincide like that, and to get the illusion, at least, of being able to go into the woods... quiet. I love that. I want to ask about audience in this way, like having a much larger audience at that point for your writing. This is a very particular kind of writing. People bring a lot of emotion to it.
You certainly are very clear about not being for people looking to this to like buy a car on certain days or something like that. It's not that kind of horoscope. But people still really engage with it in an emotional way. And I'm just wondering how you think about that.
Claire Comstock-Gay: I really feel like it is a gift for me to be able to connect with people in that way. Obviously, the point of any kind of writing is to connect or to communicate something with other people. That connection takes on really different forms in different types of writing. And the connection that I'm able to make is this really intense, really personal, really specific feeling to readers. Sometimes, it's just this extra intense connection and it feels a little bit heavy sometimes, right? Because I'm just a person. I'm not magic. I don't have extra... anything. I'm just a person who's doing this work.
Sarah Enni: Right. Well that's kind of my point of interest with it is, that it is a lot to take on. And like I said, you're very clear about your interpretive style. You, I don't think, are claiming to bring a technical prowess to this. It's sort of you as like a narrative interpreter of the world. But yeah, people really do latch onto horoscopes in a unique way.
Claire Comstock-Gay: I once was doing an interview, and the person was really kind of pressing me like, "How would you feel if someone broke up with their partner cause of your horoscopes?" All these questions. Like, "How would you feel if someone really did something cause of what you wrote?" I got the impression that she wanted me to be a little bit freaked out by that or something.
But I feel like I try really hard not to instruct people to do anything. And so if somebody does something cause they read my horoscope, that's something they have been wanting to do. That's something they really needed to do and wanted to do and took this thing as permission to do it. And so they did it. Right or wrong, I don't know, but that's how I tell myself it works.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. I do want to not skip over... also in that New York Times article in 2015 you talked about your interpretive style. I kind of want to express it a little bit more to the listeners. You wrote in there that, "Instead of continually attempting to read the stars, I began reading people." Do you mind kind of describing what you meant by that?
Claire Comstock-Gay: Yeah, I mean I think it really is about people, right? And I think most astrologers understand this in their own way, that there's this conception among skeptics that astrology is all about like being a head in the clouds. Like, "Oh the moon, the sun dah dah dah." But none of it really means anything on its own in our lives. It's all about us and the way we reflect the stars or the way the stars reflect us. However you want to see it. But it's about human feelings. It's about human interactions.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. And you wrote in there that... your example was like instead of looking at a star chart about Capricorn or something, you were thinking about Capricorns in your life and thinking about where they were in their journeys and what connected them as far as what they might need to hear at that time.
Claire Comstock-Gay: I feel like that was kind of as I was still learning really how to do horoscopes. It was so helpful to think about the patterns and echoes among the people I knew in my life. And this is the kind of thing where skeptics are like, "Ugh! Classic confirmation bias here." It's like, "See it however you want. I don't care." But you really do, if you're paying attention, if you're looking in a certain way, you'll start to notice all kinds of really bizarre similarities and just bizarre patterns among people.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Oh man. It's the best! I love those moments. And you're like, Oh yeah!" I mean, I have a ton of Leos in my life and let me tell you... a lot of through-lines there.
[Both laugh]
Sarah Enni: Okay. I want to, really quick ask about, we're gonna get to the book in just a second, I swear. But I want to ask about your routine. You started writing for The Cut and then you moved. And you started to get paid for your horoscopes. I'm just curious about how your routine has shifted and what is your kind of day-to-day like?
Claire Comstock-Gay: Well, so really the hugest change has been, once I got my book deal, I was able to quit my job, kind of with that plus The Cut. So I don't work full-time anymore, which was really, really wonderful. I don't stick to too much of a routine though. I know a lot of people have their rituals, their schedules. I try so hard and it just doesn't work for me. I have to just do whatever I'm gonna do that day. And so sometimes that means really sitting down and writing all day long. Sometimes that means writing three sentences and then walking the dog. And so I strive, I dream of being a person with routines. That's not me right now.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. No, I relate to that big time. It's like, at least in my case, I'm like, "Oh, I've done something four days in a row. This is great. I did it!" And then it just falls apart like immediately. And that's fine. It is what it is. As long as the writing's getting done.
Claire Comstock-Gay: It is, as long as it's getting done. I guess this is the main thing, as long as I'm not beating myself up about it. Cause that's where I really start to kind of spiral and think like, "Oh my gosh, I'm so awful." It's like, "No, just do what you're gonna do. You know that it'll get done. It's fine."
Sarah Enni: Yeah, exactly. That acceptance, like you're saying, just like, "I've done it in the past. I don't have to do it the way everyone else does." Or however we think that they do. I mean, who know?
Claire Comstock-Gay: Totally.
Sarah Enni: Okay. Let's start talking about Guide to the Stars. I'd love to hear about how the book deal came about.
Claire Comstock-Gay: So it was something I'd been thinking about for a little while before I really tried to write a proposal. Once I started writing for The Cut, a couple of agents and editors got in touch asking me if I'd ever considered writing a book. I really struggled for awhile after that figuring out just questions of structure. I couldn't quite point to a book that already existed that looked like what I wanted to do, which is both a strength and a real problem when you can't point to any existing thing.
So for a year or two I was just working on figuring out what it would look like. But eventually, my current agent got in touch to talk about a possible book. I was nervous, I didn't have a lot to bring to that conversation, I felt like. It was very much, "Yes I want to, but I don't know, help me!"
Because a book proposal is a really specific and strange form if you don't know what that is, which I definitely did not. But talking to her really felt like she kind of understood what my work is about and what I was trying to do. And so then I signed with her and she and I worked on this proposal together at that point.
Sarah Enni: Oh that's so great. How did you guys kind of hash it out? Like I said, this podcast is all about talking to aspiring writers, so there's nothing too granular about a book proposal. I love hearing about it. So how did you guys kind of go back and forth on that and come together with something that you were happy with?
Claire Comstock-Gay: So some of it was just chatting on the phone about what I wanted to do, what was really important to me. And this was all stuff that I was able to think through as I talked to her. But what I really wanted to do was write a book that you could really just read all the way through.
So many of the astrology books that are out there, unless you're really trying to become an astrologer, but if you're just a casual reader, you're gonna flip to the Taurus chapter if you're a Taurus and not read anything else in the book, probably. And kind of for good reason. Or you'll read like your sign and your crushes sign and your best friend's sign, right? But there's no reason to read any of this other stuff unless there's someone in your life like that.
So to write a book that would be kind of engaging and fun to read, even if you're not that sign, or you're not trying to become a serious astrology student.
Sarah Enni: Was that the point at which the idea to bring in icons was formed?
Claire Comstock-Gay: Yeah. Because I was thinking astrology comes alive in other people for us. And unfortunately we don't all know the same people. I can't write about the people that I know cause you don't know them. And so this is the work in general, I think that famous people do for us. I think about the way that I, and my friends, can talk about the contestants on the bachelor as though we all know these people, right?
None of us know them, but we all know them a little bit. And so using these kinds of popular figures to do that work for us.
Sarah Enni: Oh, that's so interesting. I actually just was talking to, I don't know, maybe you know her, Courtney Maum wrote the book that's called Before and After the Book Deal (also I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You, Touch, Costalegre). And it really breaks down the publishing process and is a fantastic guide for new writers. But she was saying that since the book came out, the reception she's gotten is that people can use the book as a portal to have conversations, hard conversations.
Because they don't have to say like, "Hey, I was wondering about advanced structures cause I don't understand that?" They say like, "In her book, Courtney says this about advanced structures. Do you find that to be true?" So it's like this way that you can have conversations without being too vulnerable or it being too scary.
Claire Comstock-Gay: I just read that book by the way, and totally wished that I had read it before doing all of my stuff. Just thinking how much easier it would have been. Oh my gosh.
Sarah Enni: I know. It's such a great resource. I'm so glad it's in the world, but I couldn't agree more. I read it and was like, "Wow, where was this five years ago?"
Claire Comstock-Gay: Seriously [both laughing].
Sarah Enni: I really love that kind of thought process of bringing in these, I mean, I definitely read my chapters, Gemini Sun and Taurus Moon and Sagittarius Rising. And I loved the Taurus chapter, especially talking about all the pro wrestlers. That must have been so gratifying for you to see that connection.
Claire Comstock-Gay: It was. All the way through it was really fun to figure out what connections I could work with. And it's so much fun when you're just like, "Oh, I wonder if they're a Taurus too?" It's like, "Yes!"
Sarah Enni: Do you have like a spreadsheet of many people's signs somewhere?
Claire Comstock-Gay: I do. I'm constantly adding to it. It's so much fun to see the connections bubble up.
Sarah Enni: That's so funny. Actually, I want to pause and just actually have you pitch the book really quick for us?
Claire Comstock Gay: So Madam Clairevoyant's Guide to the Stars is a narrative exploration of astrological archetypes using not the figures in mythology that we're used to, but kind of pop culture archetypes instead.
Sarah Enni: It's kind of like, astrology's roots are in storytelling anyway with Greek figures and myths. And these are our Greek myths... celebrities. The Olsen twins in mine, which I loved. I was also like, "Wow, I remember the plots of all these movies. Gosh, I guess I did watch all of them.
Okay, so you and your agent worked together to put the book proposal together. Then what was the process of moving to work with an editor? And how did the book kind of form into its final shape?
Claire Comstock-Gay: I guess it would've been the summer of 2018 that we went out on submission, which of course is just the most horrible time ever in a writer's life. It's really exciting and really horrible cause you're so vulnerable. You want this thing so bad and you have no control over what happens with it at that point.
I was lucky. I ended up getting three offers on the book and went with Harper in the end. I was really thrilled just because in the conversation with my editor there, she just really seemed to get what my work is all about, what I was trying to do with it.
I feel like I was really lucky. Both my agent and my editor are young also. And I think there's kind of a debate over is it better to have an experienced agent or a younger agent? For me it was really helpful to have people on my book's team who are kind of operating in the same social and intellectual universe as me. I think a lot of older people have just different experiences with astrology. Astrology was something really different twenty years ago than it is right now.
Sarah Enni: Oh, I'm so interested in that cause that's exactly where my mind went. And I'd love to hear any thoughts that you have on this. But we, I guess Millennials, it's a little bit broader than that, but let's say that as a general term Millennials and Gen Z are engaging with astrology in this really interesting way.
Do you mind? I'd love to hear your thoughts on how it's distinct and why you think we're so drawn to it.
Claire Comstock Gay: So this is gonna be a partial answer cause I don't know what astrology was looking like in the 90's, I guess. But for right now, I think they're kind of different threads. I think a lot of it is just really fun. I think as more people have gotten into it, we've reached this critical mass of you can just enjoy astrology, right? It doesn't have to be this whole thing.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, totally. It's fun.
Claire Comstock-Gay: It is fun. Right? It's just fun and cool and weird. I know a lot of astrologers are driven kind of crazy by the memes. I really kind of enjoy that that's a part of astrology right now. I think it lends this really kind of frustrating, but sometimes really exciting, democratizing impulse to it all. It's not at all about going to astrologers and that's the only way you can engage with astrology, right? Anyone can do it all the time and they can be wrong. I think people are wrong a lot. And I think that's okay. Right? I think it's okay.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, it's so funny and that's such an interesting way to put it. I mean, is anything broadly accepted nowadays that isn't memed up? It goes hand-in-hand with being noteworthy now. And the other thing that, and again, neither you and I are historians, so we're just speaking to our personal perspective. But I think about the way that we're engaging with astrology now, and I think about the way that we're engaging with television now.
TV in previous generations was seen as this deeply unserious thing. And I mean, not only has the quality of TV increased substantially, but there is a movement to think deeply about why we connect to stuff that's broadly popular. And to bring a level of interrogation to that, and seriousness to considering that. And I feel like that's been part of the approach to astrology is like, "This is providing answers for something. And it's actually worth intellectual consideration about why and what and how."
Claire Comstock-Gay: Totally. For me with astrology, a huge part of actually why it was so freeing for me as a writer, it was partly the having my name removed from it. But it was partly also not working in a tradition that has any kind of respectability. And so it wasn't like, "Oh, if you write a good enough short story, it'll go in The New Yorker." Right? But it's like, "Oh, if you write a good enough horoscope, what happens? Nothing. You just wrote a good thing."
There's no awards that you're gonna win for doing good astrology writing. And so just getting out of the old respectable forms, I think, has been really valuable for me. And then it's interesting, right? It always comes back around, cause then now if it gets too accepted then it just gets kind of sucked right back up into the mainstream.
Sarah Enni: Institutionalized. Oh that's funny. Well and actually, you just led me right to my next question, which was about, you sold the book and now you have people on board that totally get your vision. But this is not writing horoscopes. A book is a whole other much more permanent thing. So what was the writing of the book like?
Claire Comstock-Gay: The writing of the book was really enjoyable for me. Obviously, it's hard, right? Writing a big project is hard. But it was really fun to be able to work in a different form, to kind of spread out a little bit, and really write about kind of whatever I wanted to. Which is not to say that no one edited me.
But they just gave me a lot of trust to kind of go where I wanted to with the book. I mean, I think I couldn't think about that too much as I was writing just because it stressed me out too much. It really is a whole different ballgame. Nobody writes reviews of what you write online. Right? But people review books. And so yeah, I haven't found a way to kind of think about that, not in way that I can deal with.
So I just try not to think about it too much and kind of accept that... I guess what it is is that, I think in a book especially, there's no way that you escape being exposed when you write a whole book, right? You're just out there and readers will see you, and that's fine. You have to be okay with it. You can't hide, you can't escape being seen. That's just what it is.
Sarah Enni: I definitely really relate to that feeling. Was this book, did it sell in a one book deal? Or do you have another project under contract?
Claire Comstock-Gay: No, this was just a one book deal. So I'm trying to figure out now what's gonna be next. I'm not totally sure yet.
Sarah Enni: Well, and the question I was also wondering about was have you been doing other writing recently? Have you been actually stretching out into your own fiction or other forms of writing?
Claire Comstock-Gay: You know, not so much in the past few months. And I think this is kind of the classic pre book pub. I'm in that point where you just can't do much of anything, which is so frustrating cause the book's all done. I'm not doing anything. But I'm just so emotionally stressed and then tied up with publicity and stuff.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. It's not a great headspace for looking at other things.
Claire Comstock-Gay: It's so funny, I laugh so much thinking about myself at the beginning of this process. And I really thought like, "I'll be the one who doesn't get that stressed." It's like, "Oh baby, not a chance."
Sarah Enni: I know. There's no amount of intellectual knowledge that can spare the heart, unfortunately.
Claire Comstock Gay: No. Not to bring up reality TV again, but I really feel like it's thinking that you'll be the one to go on the show and keep your cool, right? Like, "No one acts normal on the reality show, but I'll be the one who does." Like, "Mm, no, you won't."
Sarah Enni: Oh my God, it's so true. "I'll be the one that's there not to make friends. For real!" Yeah, that's hilarious. But have you been writing your own fiction in the background over the last few years? Or are you interested in kind of getting more serious about other forms of writing?
Claire Comstock-Gay: I have. I've been working on a novel that's kind of stalled out at the moment, but hopefully once this book is out in the world, I'll be able to return to it more seriously.
Sarah Enni: And would you think about writing more in the astrology space within the realm of a book?
Claire Comstock-Gay: I don't think about it. I'm not sure right now. Right? Like looking right now, I don't know what else I have so much for an astrology book, but that's not to say that I wouldn't suddenly have an idea.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. And it's such a beautiful book and I love that you had the concept of what you were going for and you really achieved it so wonderfully. So it's not to be like, what's next? At the expense of saying this thing right now is a really beautiful, wonderful thing.
Claire Comstock Gay: Thank you. And I'm not trying to avoid the question, it's just like, "Oh my gosh, how do I even think about committing to another project again?" Whoo.
Sarah Enni: I know. And these things are like you're not signing on for like a weekend away. It's like, "Okay, the next four years of my life will be....what?" Was there anything else about Guide to the Stars that you wanted to get to or talk about specifically?
Claire Comstock-Gay: Oh, you know, not really that I can think of. These questions have been really fun and really great.
Sarah Enni: Oh, good. I'm so glad. Well, I like to wrap up the episodes with advice. And I don't know, this is so funny. I mean, I guess I'd love to hear your advice for writing horoscopes.
Claire Comstock-Gay: Okay. Advice for writing horoscopes. Oh man. Okay. I love this question. I don't even know. I mean, I think my advice for writing horoscopes or astrology is on the one hand, they're kind of these solid, time-worn, ancient structures in place that are true and correct and they exist. But everybody's just interpreting them, right?
There's nobody who's got like a direct line to the real correct interpretation. And so you're allowed to trust your own intuitions about things. You're allowed to have fun. You're allowed to decide that, if something feels wrong to you, like really in your heart, it's wrong. That's okay.
Sarah Enni: And I'm really glad that you brought that up because that was something else that I underlined in your introduction was the true emphasis on the subjectivity of this as like an art form. I think there's a lot of, at least I'll speak to my feeling, is that part of the reason I think that astrology has blown up so much is also with this return to, how do I want to say this? Establishing a respect for women's intuition and what women experience and believing and trusting how women interpret the world.
Claire Comstock-Gay: Yeah. I think that's totally correct. And I think it's kind of part of this broader idea, right? All the rules that mainstream culture have told us that we have to follow. We're allowed to say no. We're allowed to think astrology's cool. We don't have to be like, "Oh no, pseudo whatever."
Sarah Enni: I love that. And I guess... It's so funny, I actually made my own astrology signs. I go to Burning Man every year, and my camp is a cult. So I thought, "Oh, for our cult I'll make a new set of astrology signs." And doing that was so freaking fun and it really was like, "Oh, this is part of the joy of astrology."
Just getting in there and thinking about how is this establishment of archetypes and trends that we've all seen in human beings around us, how does it play out in my life? And what connections am I interested in talking about and exploring? It's so funny. I'm just realizing that my question about how to write horoscopes was for me. [Laughs].
Claire Comstock-Gay: Oh, I love it.
Sarah Enni: It was a really fun challenge. And then I had a lot of people be like, "You're messing with the universe coming up with this on your own." And I was like, "No, I don't think so."
Well this has been such a fun chat, Claire. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me this morning.
Claire Comstock Gay: Thank you so much.
Sarah Enni: Thank you so much to Claire. Follow her on Twitter at Madame Clairevoyant. That's spelled the fancy way, so it's MMEClairevoyant. And clairvoyant is C. L. A. I. R. E. it's cute guys. You can also follow her on Instagram @ClaireComstockGay. And you can follow me on both Twitter and Instagram @SarahEnni, and the show @FirstDraftPod (Twitter and Instagram).
This show was brought to you by HIGHLAND 2 the writing software that won't break your bank or your brain available @highland2.app. And by We Didn't Ask For This, the newest novel by Adi Alsaid out from Inkyard Press now.
A quick and easy way to support First Draft is to subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening right now. And leaving a rating or review on Apple podcast helps a lot too. Leaving a rating and review only takes a couple minutes, but it really does kind of disproportionately help the show for reasons surpassing understanding.
I'm gonna read a recent five star review. This was left by Ms. Ham. Ms. Ham says, "Motivation! Five stars. Sarah has such interesting guests and I love the new mailbag episodes. Listening really helps motivate me to write and work towards my dream to publish a book."
Ms. Ham, thank you so much for that. Thank you for the feedback on the mailbag episodes. I really enjoy those too and I wanted to introduce a lot more interactivity and engagement with you guys. So I'm hoping that that is what we're achieving with those mailbag episodes. Thank you for taking the time to leave that review. It really does help the show.
Finally, if you have any writing or creativity questions that you'd like me and a guest to answer in one of those aforementioned mailbag episodes, please call and leave that question at First Draft's voicemail box. That's (818) 533-1998, or you can record yourself asking the question and email it to me at mailbag@firstdraftpod.com.
The point is I really would love to have your lovely voice asking the question so we can include it in the podcast version of the mailbag. So you know, help me out.
Hayley Hershman produces First Draft and today's episode was produced and sound designed by Callie Wright. The theme music is by Dan Bailey and the logo was designed by Collin Keith. Thanks to transcriptionist-at-large Julie Anderson.
And, as ever, thanks to you, emo Sagittariai, for listening... Sagitarius's... Sagigus? Well, I dunno [Laughs].
I want to hear from you!
Have a question about writing or creativity for Sarah Enni or her guests to answer? To leave a voicemail, call (818) 533-1998 or send an email to mailbag @ firstdraftpod dot com!
Subscribe To First Draft with Sarah Enni
Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Jason Reynolds; Creator of Sex and the City Candace Bushnell; YouTube empresario and author Hank Green; Actors, comedians and screenwriters Jessica St. Clair and Lennon Parham; author and host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast Linda Holmes; Bestselling authors and co-hosts of the Call Your Girlfriend podcast, Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow; Michael Dante DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish and co-host of the Sciptnotes podcast; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.
Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Track Changes
If you’re looking for more information on how to get published, or the traditional publishing industry, check out the Track Changes podcast series, and sign up for the Track Changes weekly newsletter.
Support the Show
Love the show? Make a monthly or one-time donation at Paypal.me/FirstDraft.
Rate, Review, and Recommend
Take a moment to rate and review First Draft with Sarah Enni in Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your honest and positive review helps others discover the show -- so thank you!
Is there someone you think would love this podcast as much as you do? Just click the Share button at the bottom of this post!
Thanks again!