Sarah Flocken on a Crystal High

How a debut novelist, or anyone, can fall down the rabbit hole

I first met Sarah Flocken a few months ago in a social media class taught by Leigh Stein. In that class were Elizabeth Kaye Cook and Anna Rollins (author of FAMISHED). We became fast friends after discovering that we each have evangelical backgrounds. (If you’ve been following the Yesteryear drama here, here, here, and here, we have not only thoughts but real-life experiences). Since the class we’ve met monthly to decode the mysterious world of publishing and to cheer each other on as we climb our writerly mountains.

Sarah’s debut novel, BE WELL (Heliotrope Books), is available now for pre-order on Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon (if you want to know why pre-orders are so important, check out Sarah’s own post here; #3 is my favorite). She’s already working on her next novel, so this is your chance to get in on the ground floor and discover a great new voice. Sarah will be reading from the novel around southern California and elsewhere in the coming months, so be sure to follow her on Substack and Instagram for dates.

Look at that super clever book swag! You can clean your glasses with it! Me and Sarah with cacti crowns at Coffee & Plants, San Diego.

Here’s a little interview we did together so you can learn more about BE WELL.

MJ: I’m wondering if we can do things a little differently and start by having you tell us about the themes of your novel and how you became interested in them.

Themes! I feel like I’m in high school AP English class all over again.

OK, here’s a big one: how easy it is to fall into unquestioning belief in anything if you feel like your circumstances are desperate or hopeless. This is something I think we saw a lot of during the Recession years (2007-2009), and don’t talk about as much as I think we should. As time went on, America got more visibly polarized, and more people I cared about began to cling almost cultishly to religion, wellness trends, diets, or MAGA. I wanted to know why people were so prone to thinking this way. As I was working through early drafts of BE WELL, this theme seemed to emerge naturally.

I’m pretty used to giving the pitch for BE WELL at this point, so here it is!

“An awkward young woman graduates straight into the Great Recession in Los Angeles in 2009, does increasingly desperate and stupid things to avoid moving back to her childhood home, and gets involved with a maybe-cult along the way.”

Sounds fun, right?

Is this the first novel you’ve written or are there others abandoned in a drawer somewhere? How did this project come about?

BE WELL is actually the first novel I’ve ever written start to finish. It all began in October 2019, while I was taking a UC San Diego Extension class called “How to Start a Novel.” The initial idea for the novel sprang from a writing exercise where we had two minutes to write down words or phrases representing things that interested us. Then, we had to circle the top three that jumped out. I think the words/phrases I circled were “the feeling of taking a shower after exercising,” “heat ripples,” and “the gem room at the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History.”

From there, I wrote ten more drafts over the course of five years. The story has evolved significantly since I wrote that terrible first draft in the terrible first months of 2020, and I’m so proud of that fact. Once this book sees the light of day, it will have gone through 13 revisions.

It’s safe to say I’m fairly stubborn and persistent.

What’s your process like? Do you get up early for quiet hours or do you write during a commute or in cafes?

To be honest, I write whenever I have any kind of window of time during my day. During periods where I’m in “drafting” mode, I set myself a goal of 500 words per day. That’s purposely pretty low, and it feels easy to accomplish, so it often motivates me to do more. I’m a recovering perfectionist, so the point is to just get something on the page that I can edit later because, as I’ve learned, whatever I write will probably go through a dozen revisions anyway.

The pockets of time I have to write tend to be in the evenings after all the chores, etc. are done. If I’m really on a roll with something, I will often stay up much later than I intended. I’m a night owl with creative work, I guess. Mornings are for cheerful, coffee-fueled, client-facing Sarah in her PR day job.

Sometimes, though, I will sneak some writing in between work projects or Zoom meetings on a slower day. Don’t tell my boss (I’m my own boss).

Do novels still matter? What’s your take on this evergreen hot button?

I have a master’s in English literature and wrote my thesis on two novels (albeit two short ones: The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh and The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon). They’d better matter!

But seriously, as long as there are people who are willing to buy and read novels, I say novels matter. So do other written works like poetry, novellas, plays, prose poems, screenplays, essays, memoir, etc.

I think instead of asking this question, we should just keep writing novels that we would want to read ourselves, instead of focusing so much on what the market wants, because the market is always going to change.

Who are your favorite novelists? Did any particular writers or books inspire your own?

While I was revising BE WELL, I read SELF CARE by Leigh Stein, and that was a huge jolt of inspiration. Obviously the world of Sagebrush is very different from the world of Richual, but some of the characters might have crossed paths at a wellness retreat in a parallel universe.

I love Leigh Stein’s other books, and I’m also hugely into Ottessa Moshfegh, Rufi Thorpe, and Mona Awad. Basically, cringe-funny weird-girl lit is my jam.

I would, however, like to shout out the incredible novelists who have reviewed and written nice things about BE WELL. Please go out and buy books by Charlee Dyroff, Nic DiDomizio, Jessie Gaynor, Deborah Hemming, Holly James, and Candice Wuehle.

Who should read BE WELL?

Aside from everyone? I’d say I wrote this for the elder millennial who graduated in 2008-2013. Maybe she was a humanities major. Maybe she has a really cringey sense of humor. Maybe she yearns for the years of the iPod shuffle and skinny jeans. Maybe she’s aghast at the lack of critical thinking around her. Maybe she’s furious at the absurdity of our world, but keeps on trucking because what other choice does she have?

That’s what I mean when I say that I write goofy-ass fiction for smiley people who are silently enraged. Unhinged plots, real human emotions – if you’re into that, I’m your gal.

What do you do besides write these goofy-ass books?

I run a public relations business in San Diego, and I’m a comedian, improviser, and pun contest host (yes, competitive punning is a thing).

I’ve got a lot going on, but take a wild guess at which thing people want to talk about the most when they meet me at a networking happy hour. I won’t WINE about it.

A pun master in her natural habitat.

Thank you, Sarah! I hope you get some weirdinteresting questions in the comments…