Chelsea Bieker: On Believing in Yourself as a Writer, Motherhood and Domestic Violence, and Her Latest Book ‘Madwoman’

As an unpublished novelist, I was thrilled when a friend connected me with an editor at Little, Brown. The editor generously took the time to call me and recommended a book she insisted I had to read. Soon after, she sent me a physical Advanced Reading Copy of Madwoman. I remember thinking, “How have I not discovered this author before?” Chelsea Bieker’s work perfectly aligns with my love for literary suspense infused with a feminist edge. Simply put, Chelsea is an exceptional writer, and I knew I had to speak with her.

Chelsea was incredibly gracious and open throughout the process. Our conversation ended up being her first interview for Madwoman. In our discussion, we delved into her writing process, her experiences as a mother, and how they relate back to her own mother’s struggles with domestic violence. Finally, we explored the inspiration behind Madwoman.

KM: I often wonder about the admission process for MacDowell. Perhaps having an MFA helps, but I truly believe it’s the strength of the submission that matters most. How was your MacDowell experience?

CB: I agree. It was such a huge thing to get in for me at that time. I did have the MFA, but I didn’t have any bylines and I wasn’t represented yet. It was such a confidence boost. And then I happened to be there at the same time as many other younger women writers who were unpublished, and we all connected so deeply. They are still some of my best friends today. 

It feels like MacDowell was almost more transformative for me than my MFA program. It really changed so much for me. I can source many things back from that experience. I’m really grateful that they took a chance on the short story that I submitted. 

KM: You mentioned your confidence went up when you did MacDowell. Did you have seasons of doubt?

CB: Oh, yeah! It can’t be understated how meaningful early encouragement can be from outside sources, especially when you don’t have a lot to go on or you’re not really sure. At that stage, you don’t feel super grounded in your abilities yet. So to hear from someone else, “I believe in you,” is huge. It can just provide enough energy to keep going because it can be really difficult. And there’s so much rejection. Even now, I’m rejected all the time. And you just learn that that is part of it. And that is not a reason to stop. 

I’ve thought about this a lot recently: I was a competitive gymnast growing up. It taught me that if you keep going, something will happen. Gymnastics is so hard. It’s one of the hardest sports ever. It’s very punishing. And it’s brutal. Really, it’s a brutal sport. And I was so determined. I wanted it so badly that I just wouldn’t stop trying. And you see through that, there is a reward. It might look different than you set out for but you will change, you will get the skill, or you will write the book. It built a tenacity in me that made me accustomed to not giving up. Persistence is number one. Not everybody can stay in the hot kitchen that long. 

For the writers who continue to hang in there, they’re going off of an internal sort of belief. I always believed that I was supposed to be writing,and I knew that that was true. I guess on the hardest days, that’s what got me through. 

I remember when I decided to pursue writing, I did a journalism degree in undergrad. So I was writing, but in a different vein. And even with that, people were like, “You’ll never make money.” [My response in my mind] was “That’s your story, that has nothing to do with me.” So I went ahead and did it anyway. I decided eventually I was going to write literary fiction, which is a very specialized and difficult skill. People had their doubts, but I just didn’t really care what they thought. I focused on the people who were already doing it, who are lighting the way for me, versus listening to a random person who has never followed their dreams. I’m going to listen to the people that are doing it, because there’s so many. You have to see yourself as worthy of trying. 

KM: You have an article on your Substack that recommends other writers record themselves reading affirmations aloud. I’ve listened to my own recording, and wow! I can tell I’m conquering limiting beliefs, but sometimes as I read an affirmation, I feel that I don’t fully believe it yet. Can you speak more to that practice and how it’s influenced your writing? 

CB: It’s amazing how doing those affirmations feels like the best brain bath ever. We ask so much of our brains all day long. It almost feels like taking your brain and putting it in a hot bathtub with bubbles, like “Just enjoy this bath of wonderful things that I’m going to say to you.” Because most of our day is not like that. It’s such a small time to carve out. But I think it does wonders and alerts us to the areas of ourselves that maybe we don’t love or we don’t believe, and we can work on those. It’s a very fast highway to figure out what those are. 

KM: I saw on Instagram you posted a story of your daily word counts. I also saw that you select “North Star” books for each of your projects that help guide the direction. Are there other pieces of your writing practice you want to share?

CB: I really like the idea of touching the project in some way every day. And not being too judgmental about what that looks like. If I can’t write that day, then can I read a North Star book that feels connected to the project? Or can I journal for five minutes? Or can I take a walk, listening to the soundtrack that I made that goes with the book? 

If I can just close my eyes and think about the book, that is still the work and that still matters. We all have the Notes app. You can still engage in tiny ways that go a long way. I guess the biggest part of my process is really asking myself to look at the project or engage with it in some way every day. That doesn’t mean sit down and write two thousand words every day—that would not be realistic for most people. But I do really enjoy doing these more concentrated spurts of activity, if I can really feel that it’s time to get material out, or if I really just need to get that push and finish the story or whatever it is. I will set up a more tangible goal for myself, like one thousand words per day for five days in a row. Little challenges are helpful to me. I record my word counts in an Excel spreadsheet just because I think it’s useful to see your patterns, and to remind yourself that you've come a long way. It's nice to have that visual representation. 

KM: Is it ever challenging to engage with a project daily? Do you ever get sick of it or doubt the project? Do you plot in advance? Do you typically feel confident in where the story is going? 

CB: I generally like to have some sense of the bigger story. I’ll start to piece it together, sometimes with images of the end and sometimes images of where it starts. I really like to get that container going with a beginning and an ending. That doesn’t mean that I know what’s going to happen at the end, it just means that maybe I know the day that it ends, or some little tidbit of information or some resolution that I want to try to hit. And then I’m riding toward that, knowing that it could definitely change and probably will. 

I don’t do a ton of plotting ahead of time. But with the book I’m working on now, there are three perspectives. I had an early sense that what I needed to do first was just journal every day about it and not start writing it yet. I called it “taking it for walks.” So every day I would do a walk with music that reminded me of the project, and I would just visualize it. I would just let more and more come to me. I did that for a couple of months, and I didn't touch the computer. After about three months of that, I finally felt like, “Okay, I can start writing it now.” That’s the first time I’ve done it that way. 

I like to hold the plot really loosely, because when I sit down and write, it will change. I will say something I wasn’t expecting. The best part of writing is the element of surprise, so I never want to ruin that. But having those little markers to write toward is really helpful.  

KM: That resonates with your Substack, where you talk about writing as a subconscious process. I find that my own writing surprises me all the time.

CB: I really believe that the story already exists inside of me, and I’m just pulling it out. I think that’s a big confidence builder, if you can be like, “This already exists, and I’m actually just bringing it into physical form.” And knowing that you’re the only person that can do that, for that story. 

KM: That feels a lot more abundant, to know it’s already in existence and just needs to come out versus pulling things out of thin air and grasping at straws. Speaking of creating a book out of thin air, what inspired you to write Madwoman? 

CB: I really wanted to write a book that was reminiscent of some of my experiences as a mother. When my kids were young, I wanted to talk about motherhood in a really frank way. At the beginning of writing it, I was like, “I think I’m just writing a journal. I don’t know what this is really.” About midway through writing it, something really shifted. I think it had a lot to do with where I was in my own personal life, confronting the past in a new way for the first time. I dug deeper into the really well-worn stories I had told myself, and questioned them with the new tools of adulthood. 

I was really thinking about my mother’s experience because she lost custody of me when I was nine. The story was so focused on her alcoholism as being the cause of this loss. And that is true. But also, as I was writing, I was realizing that actually the violence she was enduring on a daily basis probably had a lot more to do with her addiction, and the loss of custody, and all of these things that happened to her, than anything else. The domestic violence that we lived through set the tone for all of these other things to happen, and that was the part of the story that was always left out. Instead, I felt like it was just focused on her addiction. So Madwoman became a book about domestic violence, escape, and motherhood from a different angle than I maybe had originally set out to write. I realized I couldn’t write about motherhood without writing about this. 

KM: One of the pieces of the book that really spoke to me was that as Clove becomes a mom, she’s thinking of her mom’s experience under a new lens. I think we all naturally do that. I find myself wondering all the time, “What was my mom doing when she was my age? How were things harder or easier for her?” I think you may have said this in the book, that we’re constantly echoing ourselves back to our moms because we came from our moms, which I find really fascinating. 

CB: Once I became a mom, I remember thinking how I did all the steps necessary to create a really different life from my mom’s life. And still, [motherhood] is really hard. I think that humbled me enough to realize what my mom’s experience was like with daily violence. If you are experiencing daily verbal abuse, it’s so much harder to mother. You’re under siege every day. It didn’t take away my anger toward her for the whole situation, but it made me understand her in a much different way, and understand how helpless you would feel in that scenario with a young child. I’ve never had to deal with that.  

KM: Madwoman shows us domestic violence from the child's perspective. Often, women stay in these relationships for the child and to keep the family together. But Clove’s narration of the experience is that all she wants is for her mom to be happy. Clove wants the family to separate. She wants freedom for herself and her mom.  

CB: Yes, I was really craving a story that we would see from the child’s perspective, and the way that it affected that child into adulthood. It’s such an important thread to the story. Clove has so many complicated feelings about her mom. She’s thinking, “Why won’t you leave?” I think a lot of people don’t know how complicated of a question it is for so many reasons. But as a child, you see the problem so simply. I wanted to show it from that angle.

KM: Your writing is vulnerable as you draw on experiences from your own childhood. What has your experience been like as you publish and promote Madwoman? 

CB: Well, going back to Godshot, I was really surprised that people were so interested in my own life. I think it’s human nature that we have that curiosity. But I had to quickly figure out, “What am I comfortable sharing, and what am I not?” 

A lot of the stuff I talk about is personal, but it’s also very processed for me. So I’m not going to talk about something that I haven’t already looked at a lot, or done therapy around. I won’t show a fresh wound. And I’m conscious of other people involved to an extent. 

It was funny, with Godshot, people would ask me if it was a memoir. And I did not grow up in a cult. But I think what I do in my fiction is I’m using a plot that’s going to explode a feeling that is true for me. 

[Even when something is inspired by my life], the plot and character do become their own thing. I try to distinguish that for people, but it is still vulnerable. And I would not want it any other way. I don’t want to read work that’s not vulnerable, or that’s not a risk for the writer. I’m just not interested in work like that.

I really believe that we, as humans, are made to share stories. You never know who you might touch or affect by being honest and sharing yourself in that way. And we can do that safely. It’s a personal choice. I don’t think we should all go around spilling our whole lives, but if you have a truth to share that you feel could help others, then it’s really life-giving to do that.

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Chelsea Bieker is the author of three books, most recently the novel Madwoman, a Book of the Month club pick the New York Times calls “brilliant in its depiction of the long shadows cast by domestic violence.” Her first novel, Godshot, a national indie bestseller, was longlisted for The Center For Fiction’s First Novel Prize and named a Barnes & Noble Pick of the Month. Her story collection Heartbroke won the California Book Award and was a New York Times “Best California Book of 2022.” Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Marie Claire UK, People, The Cut, Wall Street Journal, and others. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, as well as residencies from MacDowell and Tin House. Raised in Hawai’i and California, she now lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two children.