Brit Bennett, THE VANISHING HALF

Deborah: It gives me great pleasure to introduce Brit Bennett. Born and raised in Southern California, Brit graduated from Stanford University and later earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan where she won a Hopwood Award in graduate short fiction. In 2014, she received the Hurston-Wright Award for college writers. She's a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree. Her debut novel, The Mothers, was a New York Times best seller. Her second novel, The Vanishing Half, was recently selected for this year's National Book Award longlist. Her essays have been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Jezebel. Welcome, Brit. Additionally, I would like to introduce our very special guest host tonight, Zibby Owens. Zibby is the creator and host of award-winning podcast "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." Zibby, named New York City's most powerful book influencer by Vulture, conducts warm, inquisitive conversations with authors as wide-ranging as Alicia Keys, Lena Dunham, to Delia Owens and Jennifer Weiner. I leave it to you, Zibby.

Zibby Owens: Thank you, Deborah. Thank you so much for having me here tonight. This is such a thrill. Brit, I am so excited to be interviewing you tonight. Just bear with my glee as I ask you questions. [laughs]

Brit Bennett: Thank you. Thanks for being here.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh, I snooped on you earlier today doing your Instagram Live with Shondaland to get a little preview of what's been on your mind. Thanks for that today too. I read about how your mother had told you about this small town which really was the inspiration for this book. Maybe you could share that story with everybody here and go into more how you took that germ of an idea and translated it into what became one of the most sensational novels I've read in my entire life.

Brit: Thank you. Thank you for having me tonight. Thank you, everyone, for watching. I honestly don't really remember the context of the conversation I was even having with my mother. I just remember her very offhandedly mentioning this town that she remembered from her childhood where everyone was so obsessed with skin color that they just married within the community in hopes that their children would get lighter from generation to generation. She said it to me very offhandedly like it was something that everyone just kind of knows. It immediately struck me. All I remember is being like, wait, slow down, slow down. Let's go back to that thing that you just said. That's crazy. It immediately struck me. I wrote it down in my phone. I have it in my notes. I just jotted down that basic idea. Then at the time, I was still finishing up The Mothers, so I didn't really go back to it right away. It immediately struck me as something that was potentially the setting for a novel. It was an idea of a town that's oriented around this really troubling idea. When you're thinking about a novel, the idea of having something that immediately presents itself as a problem -- immediately, this town presented itself to me as a problem. From there, I thought about, what would it be like to be a light-skinned person in this town that has this really horrific ideology? What would it be like to be a dark-skinned person in this town? That was the basis of the idea of these twin sisters whose lives take them in very different directions.

Zibby: It's one thing to have a little note in your phone and start noodling on a concept, but it's another to then blow it out into all these different interwoven stories across timelines and all the rest. What happened between the idea and now? How did you craft it to become what it was in terms of process? Did you outline it? How did you get it from there to here?

Brit: I talk about it as if this was a straightforward journey. Of course, it totally wasn't. I don't really outline. I know that it took me many, many drafts and many years of trying to figure it out. I knew immediately that I was interested in these twin sisters, one who you see at the beginning of the book when she has returned to this town with her dark-skinned child, and the other one who's kind of vanished off into the wind and you don't know what happened to her. I knew that that was the opening of the book. From there, it was a lot of trying different things out. I didn't realize originally that I was interested in the lives of the twin sisters' children. I thought originally it would just be, one half of the book would be one sister and the other half of the book would be the other sister, and that would be really nice and neat. Then I realized I was really interested in their children. I was interested in the men in their lives. I was interested in all these other minor characters that gripped me because of their own stories about reinvention and transformation that really appealed to me. It took a lot of trial and error to try to weave all of those stories in a way that was even coherent, let alone hopefully moving and interesting to the reader.

Zibby: Did you use flashcards? Paint me a picture here. I have to know how you did it because it looks so seamless when you read it. Of course, it's not when you do it. Did you keep it all in your head? Were you cutting and pasting like crazy?

Brit: Eventually, there were some flashcards. As far as the beat by beat of it, honestly, again, it was trial and error. At first, I thought, is the first chapter Desiree and then immediately you see Stella? Am I going to delay when you see Stella? That became something I was trying to modulate. Then as far as the daughters, I originally thought the book was going to be chronological. I thought, I'm just going to be moving through time. Then there was always something to me that didn't feel -- it felt disjointed, the lives of these women. It didn't feel like they existed in the same timeline, really. Then once I realized that, that kind of freed me to play around with that timeline and make some other bigger imaginative leaps. There was not a streamlined process at all. There was a lot of frustration, a lot of banging my head against the wall, and fortunately, a lot of really great help from my editor who was just in the trenches with me the whole time trying to help me figure this thing out.

Zibby: Wow. Your editor, then, deserves some sort of medal or something. One thing I was struck by in the beginning was how all the characters had left home in a pretty dramatic way. Desiree and Stella both left. When you go through generations, Jude eventually leaves. Kennedy eventually leaves. Reese has left his family. Early has left his family. They do so, in part, to find themselves, but also just to escape and begin again. I was wondering why you incorporated that theme. What did you yourself ever leave behind that might have amplified this message in your personal life?

Brit: I have never had as dramatic a departure as all those characters that you just described. All of my leavings have just been going somewhere for school or just wanting to move or wanting to do something new. I've always been drawn to that idea of leaving home. I think it's inherently pretty interesting. I also do associate it so much with change. I think that it can be really hard to change who you are when you're around the same people who have always known you to be one certain way versus once you get a little bit of distance and then you can kind of try out different people. You can play around with who you are in a little bit of a different way. All of these characters experience that similarly. When Stella is growing up in this town, she dabbles with passing. She's tried it before, but it's not something she can really get away with because she still lives at her mother's house. She can't truly commit to this life as a white woman in a way that she finds herself -- she starts to ease into it more once she and her sister go to New Orleans. She can ease more into that life but then fully commits once she has left her sister behind. That's true of a lot of these characters. Once they gain that physical separation, you can make that mental and emotional separation that is required in order to become a different person or to become the person that you want to be.

Zibby: Is there a piece of yourself that you wanted to change and reinvent in a new place? Is there half of yourself you would like to have vanished?

Brit: [laughs] I don't know about that. I do know that in writing this book, I kept thinking about my relationship with my family, which is very close. At the same time, I think sometimes that closeness can feel sort of claustrophobic. You can feel sometimes kind of trapped into the person. For example, I'm the youngest child in my family. There is a sense of always being the baby when you're at home, which can be nice sometimes in ways and other times can be a little bit frustrating. There are things like that or having these roles that you can be hemmed into. I'm talking about this in a very low-stakes way. The stakes for all these characters are so much higher of the types of roles that they're trapped into and the ways in which they're trying to break free from them.

Zibby: The way that they transform is so dramatic. Everything that you would think is static becomes fluid, from race to gender to names. Everything is in flux constantly in this book. I think that's what's so unique because you never know who you're getting to know as they get to know themselves. I wondered if you could talk a little more about that sense of fluidity that nothing is stable except, perhaps, love.

Brit: That was one of the things that really drew me into writing this book. I knew I wanted to write this story that was going to be about passing, but I wanted to write into this literature of passing from my perspective as a twenty-first century writer. From my perspective, I think sometimes the most famous passing literature, it kind of essentializes identity in this way. Sometimes there's something inherently contradictory about those stories because you have a character who's moving from one category to another which kind of destabilizes those categories. At the same time, there's often a way in which, if they are exposed, it's because somebody senses that you are black. They sense an essentialized blackness within you that you cannot rid yourself of. That is what makes you black, because there is something essentially black inside you. There are those types of understandings of race. There are ways in which I think a lot of passing stories can actually be, they can be sort of transgressive in one way, but also this very regressive way of thinking about identity where identity is essentially fixed within you. For myself, I wanted to write against that. I wanted to write against that idea that there's anything essential about these identities, the idea that there's anything stable about them, or that there's anything even clear.

Stella's experience of passing when she finally commits to it is that she goes in to get a job and somebody mistakens her for white, and she just goes with it. There's something so absurd about that because she walked into this office building as a black woman and she left as a white woman. How is that possible? But it is. There was always something, to me, very, absurd is one of the words that I was thinking about this, about these identity categories. Again, they determine so much about our lives. The fact that whether Stella is black or white determines whether she can get this job or not, but she becomes white because somebody believes her to be white and she just says, yeah, I am, so what does that mean that her racial identity determines this very real fact of, can she pay her rent and can she feed herself? At the same time, it's so flimsy that she can just easily slip into one category. To me, it was that contradiction between those two things of the very real implications of all of those categories of race or gender but also just the flimsiness between them and the way in which they are permeable in ways that we may not easily assume, but in ways that at least I believe to be true.

Zibby: You must be asked all these questions about identity and all this stuff all the time. This must be your bread and butter. You must talk about this forever. Does it make you turn a lens onto yourself to think, how do I feel about my own identity? How important is your race, your gender, your sexuality to you as an author and to you as a person? How did that play into the writing? Is it that you want all that to be fluid? Is it that it's so central to your core of your soul? Tell me about your relationship to your own identity.

Brit: That's a really huge question. I guess it's fluid. It's something that I don't have an easy answer towards. There's a lot of ways within this book I was thinking about ways in which identity and labelling identity can be really important for community formation. For example, when Jude arrives in LA, she becomes friends with a group of drag queens who have all found community with each other and welcome her into this community. There are ways in which forming those types of spaces around identity can be really lifesaving and really important. On the flip side, there are also ways in which labels for certain types of identities can be restrictive. They can feel like they box you in in some way. I was thinking about that a lot for the book too, that moving between ways in which any type of labeling can be really liberating and also ways in which it can make you feel trapped, and these characters moving between in a lot of those different ways.

In a lot of ways, writing the book, I think more than anything, it's caused me to take a step back, one, when I'm speaking. One of the things that I thought about in this book is the way in which identity is so much more complicated than our language allows. A good example of that is Stella's daughter. I still have not really decided a way to racially identify her. I don't really know is the accurate way to describe this person who is a daughter of a black/white-passing mother and has a white father and believes herself to be white. There's not a succinct way to describe her. Part of it has made me take a step back and be critical of the language that I use in thinking about identity and also in the ways in which I make snap judgements about other people's identities. Part of the book is that you just have no way of knowing. Identities are not as clear as we believe them to be.

Zibby: I think that it's true for people too. You don't know the core of people's identity on the surface. You don't know what people are going through on the surface. You could pass by them on the street. It's like how the drag queens who you reference literally could be somebody completely different. You could just be going through something really challenging. You just might not know. It's almost like shining an X-ray machine onto everybody. What would that do to society if we all could actually see inside, what was really going on? Maybe everything would be a little better, I hope. I don't know.

Brit: Maybe. [laughs]

Zibby: Maybe. Or much worse. Maybe sometimes I don't want to see inside. In terms of going back to your craft a little bit, even what you were saying with language, the way that you were able to tap into different ways of speaking based on all the different characters and even in so few words paint such a picture of what was going on and what someone's personality was like and then how you had all these cliffhangers. The scene where the wine bottle drops, that's going to be a Jeopardy question in fifty years. What's the biggest cliffhanger? In terms of things like that, did you pick those up in your MFA program, voice and language, I know we already talked about structure, but cliffhangers and building that suspense? That's something in this book that, it's so propulsive, not to use an overused word.

Brit: I don't know. For this book, when I started to realize the structure of it was going to be these pieces, that it wasn't necessarily this one continuous narrative, that you were going to have these starts and stops, then I did become interested in the idea of those types of cliffhangers. For that section in particular, that's dead center of the book. Thinking about that middle point of the book or the movie or whatever you're looking at is usually when something big happens, so the idea of that being the moment where the stories start to converge. Something about the dark red wine on that white carpet was really memorable to me at least when I was thinking about this moment that would convey the shock that this character's experiencing. I thought about it in that way. In general, thinking about the suspense, I think of this kind of as a fake mystery story because the mystery is not really, where's Stella? That's what feels like the mystery at first, maybe, is, we've got to find Stella. Where did she go? I tell you where she went. That's not really the journey.

The journey is more, what has become of Stella or what's Stella in a more existential way of what happened to Stella? That's more the question pulling you through. For me, for both of my books, the thing that I did take away from my MFA program was this idea of creating suspense by revealing information instead of withholding it. For me, in The Vanishing Half, from the opening section I tell you, this is Desiree. This is Stella. This is kind of what happened to Desiree. This is kind of what happened to Stella. Here is the setup for the whole town. I didn't want the question reading the book to just be, what happened to Stella? I just wanted to tell you right away. She's living as a white woman somewhere. We're going to go on after giving you that information.

Zibby: What has this been like for you? I know you already had a New York Times best seller with The Mothers which I have to go back and read. Now I'm so excited to have a new thing on my shelf that I can't wait to get into. You've had such success. This was such a blowout hit during such a crazy time of the world. Your life must be somewhat different even if you're in the exact same place. How does it feel to you to have had all this happen? You're only thirty or something like that. That's crazy. What does it feel like that you've been set on this trajectory and to have seventeen studios bidding over your movie rights? That’s just nuts. What does it feel like to you?

Brit: I think exactly what you just described. It's been the weirdest year of anybody's life. Certainly been the weirdest year of my life. For me, it was just very strange to swing between these poles of being really excited about things happening with the book, being really horrified by everything else. Also, the weirdness of experiencing all of this in isolation has been really strange, talking the TV rights for the book and having these really intense Hollywood conversations just being by myself in my apartment dealing with all of it. It's been a weird feeling of feeling both really exposed but also very alone and also really excited about the book and also really devasted by everything else happening in the world. It's been a weird year of swinging between those poles in a lot of different ways.

Zibby: Do you have some amazing work of fiction that's going to come out of this time of this vacillation between the two poles?

Brit: I don't know how amazing it will be, but I've been writing because, again, I'm by myself. I'm like, what else am I -- when it was earlier in the lockdown, I was teaching a class. The class went on Zoom. Then eventually, the class ended in May. I had this five weeks or whatever in between when the class ended and when the book came out. I was basically just working on this next book because I had so much anxiety about what was going to happen with The Vanishing Half. I'm publishing in a pandemic. Is anyone going to care? Then all of the other just normal anxiety of being in New York at the time. I've been able to try to pour some of my energy into working on something else. It's been great to be able to start a new project and think about a whole different new fictional world and give me at least some place to put all of my energy that is just being contained in my apartment right now.

Zibby: Can you tell us any more about that book?

Brit: It's still very early. It's about music. It's about singers who have a lifelong feud. It's a really different project for me, but one that I've been really excited about.

Zibby: Wow. Did you have an eye to make this into something cinematic when you were writing The Vanishing Half, or was that just not even in your consciousness?

Brit: I think that you're always influenced by watching TV or films or these other things. I'm sure those elements kind of creep in as you're writing, but I don't think about casting it or anything like that. I never think that far about anything. I don't think about it, but I am excited to see what the adaptation will look like.

Zibby: Have you been able to see your family or friends at all, or have you been walled off completely this whole time?

Brit: I got to go back to California for the summer. I saw my family. I've been able to see friends at the park and everything while the weather's still nice, so hoping that we'll hold out for a few more weeks of nice weather before we all retreat into our winters of solitude.

Zibby: Exactly. Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?

Brit: My advice is very basic advice, which is just read everything. You learn from things that you like and also from things that you hate, so I think reading widely. That's not to say read everything, like, you have to read everything that's ever been in print. That's just to say read widely. That's one of my pieces of advice. Just be patient with yourself because the work will be bad for far longer than it will ever be good. That's if you ever feel that your work is good. Most writers I know never feel that way. You have to just learn how to be patient with yourself. Trust that that's part of the process, is kind of hating your work. The difference is being able just to stick through it and to believe that you can make it better throughout all of the challenges of wresting with the work.

Zibby: What type of books do you like? What are some of your biggest influences? What do you like to read even when you're tired?

Brit: Different things. I'm sort of a slow reader. I've been balancing a lot more nonfiction and fiction these days. I've been reading a lot of biographies because of the new book, so lots of music biographies that I've been reading. I generally love fiction. The book that I've read recently that I loved the most was Feast Your Eyes by Myla Goldberg which came out, I think, last year. The structure of the book is like an art catalog where she is describing photographs, but you don't actually see the pictures as you're reading the book. You're just reading descriptions of them. I love that. I've been thinking a lot about, how do you write about art that the reader does not get to actually experience? I'm writing about music that doesn't exist, so it was really cool to see how somebody is doing that with describing pictures that you never get to see.

Zibby: Very cool. Thank you. I know everybody else is going to have a lot of questions, so I don't want to monopolize you. Thanks for letting me probe into your inner psyche for a few minutes and find out more of the backstory. Thanks.

Brit: Thanks.

Zibby: Deborah, if you want to...

Deborah: Thank you, Zibby. Thank you, Brit, for that.

Nicole Krauss, TO BE A MAN

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Nicole. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Nicole Krauss: Thank you for having me.

Zibby: I'm so excited to discuss To Be a Man, your collection of stories. I just took this off of my shelf behind me where I knew exactly where it was on eye level. I pass it every day, The History of Love, just FYI in case you were wondering. For readers who don't know anything yet about To Be a Man, can you tell us what this collection of stories is essentially about and what inspired you to write all of them or to make a whole new collection of stories?

Nicole: It's always hard to say what any book is about, per se, even a novel, but it's especially hard when it's a collection of short stories. If pressed, I would say that it's a collection of stories that's largely about relationships, about what it is to be a woman and what it is to be a man, about the tension between freedom and relationship, the requirements and limitation of relationship, and the difficulties of freedom. It's a lot about the paradoxes of people. There are a lot of men in these stories, a lot of women looking at men and experiencing men. The men, just like the women, are full of contradictions. They're not contradictions that I want to solve as an author, but I want to hold and to look at. Maybe that gives you a taste.

Zibby: I'm glad I pressed. Your pressed answer, that was a perfect, beautiful, articulate answer to that question, par for the course with your writing. Let me talk about just a few of the stories with you. The first story, for instance, "Switzerland," with Suraiya -- at first, I didn't even realize if it was a girl or a boy. As the story unfolds, you kind of realize what's going on and that there are three girls in this intermediate boarding house-ish type place. One girl gets ensnared in a perhaps not-so-great relationship with a, presumably, much older man. What happens to her along the way? We can only imagine as the story unfolds. In this story, I felt like the girls were so -- with so few words, you created these entire characters. You enabled me to feel fear and worry for a character that had just appeared in my imagination. I'm always intrigued by how an author can do that because a minute ago I hadn’t even met this character. Next thing you know, I'm like, oh, no, don't go to the hotel! What do you think it is? What do you think helps you create that intimacy and ability to get the reader right in to get to know a character like that?

Nicole: I think it begins with the writer's own relationship to the characters. I tend to choose characters that I feel an enormous amount of compassion for. I don't think that's unusual, but I don't think it's always the case. I think there are writers who do very well choosing characters that they hold in ironic distance from themselves. For me, I get so close to my characters that I am them. I'm inside of them or I'm pulling out pieces of myself in order to make them or pulling out pieces of intimate experience. In this case, the narrator is thirteen. Those older girls, Suraiya and Maria, are eighteen. I had the structure or the setting or maybe the circumstance of the story came from my own experience of being thirteen in a boarding house in Geneva at boarding school. It's a time, at a certain moment in life, I found myself going back to in my memory and thinking about that time. The story kind of came out of that. The other two girls that the narrator are describing, I just think she feels, and so I as narrator felt, such enormous affinity for them or connection to them. They were these older girls who cut this pathway into this more mature life that as a thirteen-year-old she knew was on the horizon but she hadn’t reached yet. They were teaching her something about it in their way. I think there's a kind of strange gratitude in that. Maybe that's part of what allows the reader, if the reader likes the story, to feel like a quick connection to them as well.

Zibby: Then in other stories about the character who goes to, I think it was Tel Aviv and inherits her father's apartment and starts following the strange man who comes in and starts cooking her dinner -- I'm blanking on the name of this story, but I can look it up really fast.

Nicole: That story's called "I Am Asleep, but My Heart is Awake," which is a [indiscernible] from Song of Songs.

Zibby: That story was fantastic, but almost harder to imagine, a little bit on the outer reaches of the suspension of disbelief. Would she really have followed him this far? How would she have gotten back? I feel like at times you play with our imagination a little and push the envelope.

Nicole: That one story in particular because that story is predicated on this idea that a man can arrive inexplicably into one's apartment and then have an ability to sleep, and sleep like the dead in some sense. There's the question, of course, of whether that story is real in the way that we think of realism or whether it's real on a more soul level. It's a story about the question of the existence of the soul and what happens to the soul after death. There, I hoped that the reader would suspend their disbelief a little bit in order to go to where the story emotionally wanted to go. A lot of the other stories are more realistic, but there are a couple that are like that. "The Husband" is also another one of those kind of stories that asks the reader to leap off into something perhaps more imaginary.

Zibby: The line that stuck with me the most, or the thought I should say, is that the apartment that this woman inherits of her father's, she realizes, oh, is this who he really was, and where we had been living all this time, because the mother had passed away, had that just sort of been a front? Yet that was her entire life. Here she was in this other place which seemed so fundamental to who he was as a person. Yet she was just meeting it after he passed away.

Nicole: This is something that a lot of us, even if we don't have a parent who comes from one country and raises us in another country and then we go back to that origin country and understand, this is the place that made my parents, and it gives all this new access to them, I think even when we don't have that experience, all of us at some point or other come to understand that our parents are adults with their own secret, private lives that, as children, we didn't know about or didn't want to know about or they didn't tell us about. I think that coming to terms with one's parents' other life not as a parent is really an interesting thing. It happens in stages. It happens first probably when we're teenagers. Then it happens throughout life. As we go through the things we watched them do, like have our children, we understand, oh, my god, this is what they must have been thinking or feeling. Then of course, I think as they get older or pass away and we go through their things, we find out all these other -- I know so many incredible stories of people finding out whole other lives of what their parents lived that they didn't know about. All of that was on my mind in that story, what happens after a parent dies, what is left, and what you can go on discovering about them.

Zibby: Has that happened to you?

Nicole: No. Thanks goodness, my parents are both alive. Thank you for asking. They are still well.

Zibby: Good. It seems like you have a close connection with Israel. It makes appearance in most of your work. What is that about?

Nicole: It's just a place that -- it's kind of another -- I wanted to say another version of home, but I always have trouble with the notion of home is place because my family comes from so many places. Growing up, we never were encouraged to commit to any one place as an idea of home. America was where we were being raised, but we were from Europe. Israel was the place where everyone in the family met, fell in love, got married, etc. It's just a place that I've been going to all my life. It's become another alternative as a place to draw on as a writer. I feel such a connection to it. I know it so well. As a writer, it provides me something different than, let's say, New York, which is my other local geography. New York has wonderful things and people and strange contradictions in its life. Israel has a totally different set of those. The whole system of values in the society is completely different. The levels of intensity are different. I find that those things, to go back and forth between the hot and cold of those environments, in some ways just gives me a lot. I wouldn't want to give up either one. Of course, I've set novels and stories in a lot of places, London. England was a big part of Great House. There are stories here set in Switzerland, as you mentioned, and Japan and South America. I'm certainly a person drawn to geography as a way to reach ideas or feeling in fictional narratives.

Zibby: Interesting. I didn't mean to suggest that you were a one-location pony, if you will. [laughs]

Nicole: No. You're right to point out that that's a place that is paramount in my work. Certainly in the last novel and in these stories, absolutely.

Zibby: Do you find, is it more place specific, or do you also feel like the religion is a key factor?

Nicole: I'm not a religious person. I think it has more to do with three thousand-plus years of history. America's such a new place. Israel, every stone in the ground sings with history. The complexity of that combined with a state that's very, very new and people trying to invent themselves, I think all that is very, very rich material. There's so many things that pull me there. It's one of those places where it's so intense as a writer. You can go and gather forty stories, but you're exhausted afterwards. New York, I find, is much better to actually work, to get work done. I almost never get work done in Tel Aviv. I do the abstract work of gathering lots of stories and experience. New York is a place where, of course, everyone is working all the time, and so you don't feel like you're missing the beach and the restaurants and the life and friendship that seems to be everywhere in Tel Aviv.

Zibby: I feel like the whole culture here, I'm also in New York, is if you're walking around the park all day, people are thinking, what is she doing? Whereas, you are working. You can be thinking and brainstorming and creating and doing all this essential work that you need to do before you sit down and put stuff on paper. It's sort of a culture of, why are you not running somewhere else faster at times?

Nicole: Work as a religion is a very American ideal. In New York, it's just only exaggerated. It is remarkable when you grow up with that and you go elsewhere, to the Mediterranean or to India or wherever, Morocco, and you just realize this is not the values of everyone else in the world. Everyone wants to live and to get by and survive, but work as a definition of self is a peculiarly American thing. I think it takes work to distance oneself from that idea.

Zibby: Yes. New York particularly has its clutches in a lot of different things we need to extricate from ourselves to have a healthy life. [laughs]

Nicole: Every place does these days.

Zibby: That's true, now in particular. Tell me more about how you got to this place in your career. When did you know you were a writer? How did you really get started? Then how did you not give up along the way?

Nicole: I really started where a lot of writers do, when I was a teenager, fourteen. It's a very specific moment. I was in ninth grade. I had this older friend who was a senior. He was writing poetry. It sort of became this way of inventing myself, which is what all teenagers are in the process of doing. They're trying on different selves very, very quickly. The discovery that language was a medium in which that could happen with enormous speed but also breadth, you could become so many things on the page, I think that was very attractive to me. I stayed writing poetry for a long time. I thought that that's what I wanted to do. It was really much later when I was already finished with college that I started to write fiction. I actually finished with graduate school too. I started my first novel, Man Walks Into a Room, was the first time I really started to write fiction. I was twenty-five when I wrote that. I've been going since then. Since I was fifteen, I've been at it. In terms of not being discouraged, I've been discouraged a million times. At this point, it's so deeply part of how I process life and relate to the world and relate to other people, how I keep in balance with experience and feeling and communicate, all those things. It's so much who I am. I can no longer take it out of me or tell you why I do it or why I go on doing it. It's just like breathing for me.

Zibby: Another writer I interviewed at one point, or author I should say, compared it to dreaming. She's like, dreams happen. They always come. You always have them.

Nicole: Except that writing doesn't always come, which is really interesting.

Zibby: That's true.

Nicole: I think you always need it. I always need it. There's not always fluency, I find. That's a whole nother story.

Zibby: Do you write where you are now? Is this your workspace?

Nicole: I was in my workspace until we --

Zibby: -- Until I dragged you across the apartment? [laughs]

Nicole: I'll often sit here and work because this is actually a rocking chair. I don't know why I don't give it away. It's also where I nursed my kids. I can't quite give it up. It's extremely comfortable. I tend to sit in the same couple of chairs to work.

Zibby: I guess the days of the coffee shop writing --

Nicole: -- I never was a coffee shop writer. I just find it too distracting. I find other people too fascinating. I just want to look at people and understand what's going on. I can't focus on my work. I have to be alone.

Zibby: Do you find that in your own friendships, say, or relationships or if you go to have a dinner with a friend or something like that, that you apply that same sort of analysis, if you will, or observation where you're trying to figure things out in every situation you're in? Are you always sort of mining unconsciously for material in a way?

Nicole: [laughs] Unfortunately, yes, as all of my friends know. My first thought to your question was I think that there's a psychological machine in some of our brains that is constantly trying to understand people's motivations and to understand the subtext of what they're not saying but they're saying and to try to make sense behind the scenes of what's visible on the surface of the conversation or the person. Yes, I can't dismantle that. That's always at play, and for better or for worse. In terms of material, as I get older this is more and more problematic because more and more interesting things happen to all of us as we get older. All around us fascinating things happen, to everyone it seems like, as we all enter midlife. This question of material and using material has been an interesting one.

There is a story in the book, the title story, "To Be a Man," that involved a kind of agreement with certain people that I would use certain material with their blessing. There are writers who certainly don't ask for the blessings of the people whose material that they borrow or steal, but it does matter a lot to me that I don't betray confidence. On the other hand, again, I hope it comes down to a certain kind of compassion. When you feel compassion for the people you're writing about, even if you expose a vulnerability or fragility, a mistake, a whatever, at the end, you're holding them up in the human light. That's the goal. In the end, there's the love of attentiveness, what it is to attend to somebody and look at them and try to understand them. My hope is that that is always what comes through. So far, it has. I haven't offended anyone yet, lost any dear ones. Let's hope for the best.

Zibby: I read this article about you in Elle, not to snoop or anything, but just to find out more. Let me see if I can find the quote. Of course, now I'm not going to be able to find it. You were talking about divorce. I'm particularly interested, as I got divorced about five years ago or so. I'm always reading up on it and all this stuff. You had said something like that you knew something was amiss and yet you didn't know what to do with that information, similar to knowing that the afterlife might not exist but not knowing how to handle that in the day-to-day life either.

Nicole: That's a quote from Forest Dark.

Zibby: Oh, sorry. I'm so sorry.

Nicole: No problem. That mistake is often made, the sense that I am continuous with her. That's my own fault because I gave her my name. I remember writing that line.

Zibby: The question is really, how do you, especially in a life event like this where I at least felt the ground kind of shook under me and everything had to be reimagined, how do you then take that experience and put that into writing without betraying -- back to our other question of mining for material. How do you use that and help yourself through whatever experience you're going through in the best literary way?

Nicole: For that one, for my divorce, I didn't have a hard time with that because I didn't write about that. I feel like one of the journalistic or critical mistakes of writing about Forest Dark was the notion that it's a book about divorce, but it isn't. Divorce doesn't happen in the book. It's about a woman who understands that she's reached a moment in her life where she can no longer sustain the forms that she's committed to, one of which is her marriage. The divorce doesn't actually take place in the book. It's just her journey into herself, really. Because that book wasn't about divorce and it wasn't specifically about what it is to have a husband or any specific husband at all, I felt that I steered clear of there. I do think there are certain areas, the one that jumps most readily to mind is one's children, there are certain things that you just cannot -- there are lines you cannot cross. That, I feel very strongly about. I didn't have that issue in my work. The kind of things I'm thinking about are friends or lovers or parents or siblings, those kind of things where it's a slightly different situation.

Zibby: Are you already at work on your next big project, or are you taking a minute?

Nicole: Both. I'm always working. I'm always writing. I'm trying to find my way into a new novel, which is always a long process for me, but a pretty playful one at this point in my life. It wasn't always. I'm playing with a few ideas and working on things, but I don't yet feel that I've found the vein that I'm going to mine for the novel. Let's put it that way. I wrote a story during quarantine that's coming out with Harper's in their next issue. Then I thought maybe I'll put aside short stories for now and really try to get into a novel. We'll see.

Zibby: Is it just when the mood strikes?

Nicole: No, I'm a pretty disciplined worker. I work every day. When I'm in this stage, I'm reading a lot. Normally, I would say I'm living a lot in order to acquire, accumulate experience. Living a lot, I don't even know what that means in times of COVID. What does it mean to live a lot now? That's been interesting, particularly because my life has been, in these last however many, seven years, been deliberately designed to allow for maximal experience. How can one do that? Or can one not do that now and just have to burrow in? We'll see. I feel like a lot's happened to me. I think I still have a lot of material to draw on in the banks there.

Zibby: Time to open up the vault and go back. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Nicole: The only thing I ever think to say is just it really requires doing it constantly. A lot of times so many people imagine that they have a book in them. I think we all do. The book in all of us is the self. That's the book we're all writing. In order to actually translate that or some part of that into a real book, it really requires the doing, the daily doing of that. It seems like obvious advice, but I think very few people actually take it, honestly. I think a lot of people think about writing or imagine writing or want to write or see the value of writing, but don't go to the hard effort of putting language on a page day in and day out. That's the only way anything ever gets written.

Zibby: Last question. Just wondering, what are you reading now? What do you like to read?

Nicole: I'm reading this right now, which is beautiful. It's Landscapes by John Berger. I don't know if you’ve read John Berger. He's absolutely one of the most wonderful writers to read. I loved his book Portraits. A lot of his [indiscernible] is about portraiture. I just picked this one up. Of course, he's written novels as well and all kinds of essays. He's no longer with us. He died a couple of years ago. He really was one of our gems.

Zibby: Awesome. Thanks for chatting with me today. It's been such an honor to talk to you because I've been following you for so long. This has been so nice.

Nicole: I'm so glad. Thank you for making the time for me. I really appreciate it.

Zibby: Oh, gosh, it's my pleasure. Have a great day.

Nicole: You too.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Andrea Davis Pinkney and Brian Pinkney, LORETTA LITTLE LOOKS BACK

Zibby Owens: Welcome so much, Andrea and Brian. This is a such a huge thrill to be interviewing both of you and getting a visual element and literary. It's so exciting. Thanks for joining me on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Andrea Pinkney: Thank you.

Zibby: Let's talk about your most recent book first, Loretta Little Looks Back. I can't speak today. Can you please tell everybody what this particular book is about? It's so unique and interesting. Also, what inspired you to write it?

Andrea: It is a mouthful, isn't it? Loretta Little Looks Back, say that ten times fast. Maybe I will begin by telling you what it's about by introducing you to some of the characters. The title is Loretta Little Looks Back: Three Voices Go Tell It. As Loretta says, "Right here, I'm sharing the honest-to-goodness." As young brother Roly proclaims, "I'm gon' reach back, and tell how it all went. I'm gon' speak on it. My way." As young Aggie B who is twelve years old will tell you, "Folks claim I got more nerve than a bad tooth. But there is nothing bad about being bold." This is their three stories. It is the story of the Little family: Loretta, Roly, and Aggie B. It spans from 1927. We begin in a Mississippi sharecropping field. We go all the way up to the 1968 presidential election. It spans three generations. We really get a front-row seat to African Americans on the Civil Rights journey, but also claiming the right to vote. That's a little bit about the book.

Zibby: You describe this book as a go-tell-it, a monologue novel. The way you wrote it was, even though it reads as a novel, some is more like poetry. Some are more like scenes from a play. It's all very visual and auditory as well, almost as if it should be on stage as well as a book. Tell me about how you structured it because it was so interesting, this format. Tell me.

Andrea: Loretta Little Looks Back, I am calling it a monologue novel. It really is a mix of poetry, first-person narratives, gospel rhythms, a little bit of blues thrown in. In each of the sections, the characters come out on stage, as you will, and they talk to us. The idea is that we're really getting behind the eyes of Loretta. We're getting in the belly of Roly. We're getting right, right, heart and soul of Aggie B. Kids, young readers, can really feel what they're feeling. It's very experiential. The idea also is that the book could be shared with friends. It could be done as a readers' theater. You can read it quietly and contemplatively on your own. Really, we just want to hear those voices of the three characters. We really want to inhabit who they are so we can experience what they're going through.

Zibby: Did you consider just writing this as a play?

Andrea: I did. Speaking as one who likes that front row seat -- we live in New York City. I spend a lot of time in the theater. That was my first thought. We just strung it together as a narrative, and now it lives as a novel. Maybe it will live as a play or a film someday at some point.

Zibby: There you go, all very versatile. Of course, you have your husband, an acclaimed illustrator in his right. You guys are such a power duo. This is insane. He does all the illustrations. Now Brian, we're looking at your incredible studio here with all these drawings behind you. Tell me about what it was like working together. I know you have before. What was it like illustrating for this novel in particular?

Brian Pinkey: When I illustrate with Andrea, it's an amazing process. It's always different because her approach to writing changes with every novel or every book that she does. My first thing is that I just read the stories over and over again to the point where I know them so well. I start feeling it in my heart. Then I just start making artwork. The best way for me to explain that is to actually show it while I'm talking. This is the paint that I used. There's gouache here. I have acrylic. I have watercolor. I think with the paintbrush. It's almost like I'm thinking theatrically. In the case of doing the cover, I'm thinking about what colors would be in the South. I'm thinking blue. I think of the sky. I think of lots of sunlight. I'm making circles. I know in my mind this is going to be Aggie's face. Andrea talks about her looking back in the title. I thought, what would that be like to be looking back but also moving forward at the same time? I'm thinking abstractly. This is going to be her face. This is going to be land. This is going to be sunlight back here. It's very wet. The watercolors move very fast. I'm using a sumi brush, which is a Japanese watercolor brush.

Then I'll go back in just intuitively thinking about brown skin, her face. It's going to be somewhere here. The soil is also brown. They're sharecroppers. There's green for the vegetation that's growing. I'll get something very messy like this. Then I'll just sit with that for a while because you can see I paint really fast. I'm going to show you a piece that I had earlier that's very similar but already dry. It has to dry. This is kind of my underpainting. Again, I would do a lot of sketches like this until I find one that I like. Then I'll go back in with another brush called a Da Vinci Maestro, which is a very fine-pointed brush. I'll go in with black ink. I'm using black ink here and a brush. While I work, I am thinking about the blues and jazz. It's very improvisational. Again, my hand is dancing while I'm drawing. I'm thinking, this is going to be Loretta Little looking back. I'll look at hundreds of pictures of beautiful, young, African American girls to get an idea of what she should look like. In my mind, she kind of looks like my niece who is about twelve or thirteen now, very curious. I think, what would it have been like for her if that was her? Just with the paintbrush, drawing her hair. Now I use different pressure. What's great about this is because my studio is not in the home, Andrea actually does not know what I'm doing when I do it.

Andrea: I'm loving it. It's always a wonderful surprise.

Brian: This is how I work. I'll look at outfits like costumes of -- what did the clothing look like? I want to make sure everything is authentic to the time. I'll look at cotton fields. How does the cotton grow? All the while, I'm thinking, what is this saying about the main character? She's looking back over her shoulder here. I'll take breaks and go back into it with more color. I may do this image four or five times, six or seven times, to get the one that I think is exactly what I want. I can hold this up a little bit on the bigger screen so you can see how it's coming out. You know the cover of the book.

Andrea: I'm going to hold this up where you can see it. What I love about the cover is that Loretta Little is indeed looking back. What Brian has done so brilliantly is that she's gazing back at her history, her legacy, and also looking ahead into an unknown future. I really love the cover.

Zibby: I love the cover too. This is great.

Brian: That's basically the process. In terms of Andrea and I working together, we've come up with a couple guidelines so that we actually can stay happily married and work together. Andrea, you want to me start out?

Andrea: Kick it off, Brian. You got it.

Brian: Some of the rules we came up with that -- Andrea is an editor and an author. She has an amazing eye for details. I appreciate that, but I'm also very sensitive. It's very important for me that when Andrea sees something that doesn't look quite right to her, she words it correctly for me. For example, if she sees Loretta Little's foot, she can't say something like, "It looks like a football," because that kind of hurts my feelings.

Zibby: Has that actually happened?

Andrea: That has happened.

Zibby: It sounded like that might have been an actual [indiscernible/laughter].

Brian: Her thing is that if you see something that doesn't look quite right, she can't say, "Loretta Little's foot looks like a football." She has to say, "Loretta Little's foot looks unresolved."

Andrea: It's unresolved. It's a work-in-progress.

Brian: Then my self-esteem stays intact. Then I can come up with some lame excuse, or maybe a good one. Andrea always has guidelines for me, which is that she loves it when I read her manuscripts no matter what stage they're at. As the artist, I do have the peripheral vision of it. I can kind of see it. Her rule for me is that no matter what I think of her writing at the time I must start my comments outs with, "Honey, you're off to a great start."

Andrea: We're all off to a great start one way or the other. Brian mentioned his studio is not in our home. That's deliberate. Most authors and illustrators don't meet each other. They don't collaborate in the traditional sense. The person in the publishing company, the editor, keeps those individuals apart. It seems very strange, but that really is how it works. If I weren’t married to him, if the illustrator of many of my books wasn't sharing a box of cereal or a tube of toothpaste, then I wouldn't see what he's doing in the studio. We don't talk about it. We do get together once a week on a Saturday. It's usually from around noon to three o'clock in the afternoon, three hours. We come to the dining table. That's really when we talk about the work. We have a designated time period. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end. I know that if there's something else I want to say or convey, I wait until the following Saturday. There's a nice boundary around that. We were talking about work all the time. That meeting space allows us to talk about it and to move on and have a happy family life and a great marriage.

Zibby: This should definitely be your next book, by the way, all these tips. This is great. "Honey, you're off to a good start" is a great way to really preface any conversation, almost any idea.

Andrea: It's always true.

Brian: Anyone in a relationship, your partner says they're going to clean the room, they don't or they do and you're not quite happy, you can say, "Honey, it looks a little unresolved."

Zibby: Unresolved, okay. Good starts and unresolved things, I'm making mental notes here. This is good to know, the secrets to the successful collaboration. I love it, especially in a creative field where it's not right or wrong. It's always in the eyes of the beholder, essentially, what the work is from a book to a drawing to everything. Excellent advice. Can I hear a little more about how both of you got into your fields to begin with? I want to also hear how you met. I heard that it was through work or something. Go back in time for me a little bit. Give me some background.

Brian: I'll start. My family are all in the arts. My father is Jerry Pinkney who's an award-winning children's books illustrator. Growing up, I always visited him in his studio and would see him make pictures. I followed in his footsteps in a way. Then I went to art school, university art school, visual arts, and came out and started illustrating and getting freelance jobs and doing books. It was hard work, but I love doing hard work. That's how I got started.

Andrea: I fell into children's book publishing, and really book publishing, a little bit by accident, which happens to a lot of people. I did go to journalism school. I wanted to be a journalist, which I was. I worked for a lot of the leading women's magazines. I was the contemporary living editor at Essence magazine. Part of that job at Essence was that every month I had to fill a section with information about African American children's books. This was in the mid-eighties. I would call up publishers. I'd say, "Send me your best books." There weren’t a lot to send. Now someone who works in publishing will do anything to get that coverage in the media. My editor-in-chief at the time, Susan Taylor, said, "Andrea, you've got to fill this section." I said, "Susan, I can't. There's just not enough books for every month." I met someone at the BookExpo America conference. I said, "Hey, we need the black Baby-Sitters Club. We need more board books for babies. We need biographies." We got to talking. One thing led to another. I got my first job in book publishing at Simon & Schuster where I was a children's book editor. Then I went on from there. Then I started writing books. Brian was illustrating textbooks at the time. I kept saying to him, "You should call your editor at this-and-that publishing company and tell them we need a black teen series, board books for babies, mysteries, fantasy, adventure, biographies." He said, "Well, why don't you write some of those books?" Here we are.

Zibby: Wow, that's amazing. With so many ideas of what you wanted to do, how did you even decide where to begin?

Andrea: As a magazine editor, I almost feel like you're installed with a radar. When you're working for a magazine, you have to have ideas constantly because you have to be filling that magazine every month, long lead, four months ahead. The radar is always up. I was saying to my then fiancé, maybe somebody should do a book about the dancer Alvin Ailey. Is there any children's book about Duke Ellington? Has anybody written just a little cute series for babies? Just riffing on the ideas. Brian was saying, "You do it. You do it. You do it." Again, here we are. Always got the idea mill going.

Zibby: Then from an editor perspective, tell me about ushering in other people's work on these same themes and topics. What's that book like on basically both sides of the fence, so to speak?

Andrea: I work as a publisher and editor in a publishing company. I work at Scholastic and I'm an author. I do have a lot of ideas. They're not always the books that I am inclined to or that I have the right voice to write them myself. Part of what I love to do is think, here's an idea, who would be amazing to deliver this? I'll often contact that person or their agent or ask somebody, first, "Is it a good idea? Who do you think would be a great person to write it?" It works both ways. Let me just say that when I've got my author hat on, my editor switch is turned off. I can't edit myself. When I have my editor/publisher hat on, the author has gone to sleep. I'm there in service to help other writers tell their stories.

Zibby: Wow, amazing. Can we go back now to Loretta Little Looks Back? Now I said it right. There we go. [laughs] In doing all the research for the book, you mention in the note at the end how you had talked to so many people and got real oral histories including many people from your own family. Can you talk to me a little about what that was like and how you conducted that research and investigation?

Andrea: My family and Brian's family as well, our families both come from the South, mine from Virginia, Brian's from North Carolina. I grew up hearing a lot of these stories on front porches, summer evenings, fireflies, sweet tea, hearing about the legacy of Civil Rights from members of my own family. Somehow, those stories stuck with me. The other thing is that I will say that both my parents were Civil Rights foot soldiers. My father marched with King. I was born a few blocks and a few days after the March on Washington happened in Washington, DC. I'm the kid who -- they say, what did you do this summer? We had the same summer vacation which is that my family got in that wood-panel station wagon and in July, we went to the NAACP Annual National Convention every year. We went to the National Urban League conference. Right before school was going to start in September, we went to something called the Congressional Congress. I would hear African American notables giving speeches. My family would have to talk about it. I'd be like, ugh. [laughter] I dreaded, "What did you do this summer?" Everyone said they went to the beach. They went to camp. How often can you say, "I went to the NAACP National Convention"? Looking back, it stuck. A lot of what you read in Loretta Little Looks Back are from those experiences. Hearing Fannie Luo Hamer, the Civil Rights voting activist, plays a role in Loretta Little Looks Back. Those are the kinds of speakers I heard as a kid myself, like Aggie B is hearing in the story.

Zibby: In terms of what was from your own life versus fiction, did someone in your family get cancer from harsh materials that were sprayed in the fields for mosquitoes? Did that happen? Did the MS happen? What was real and what did you make up?

Andrea: There is a part in the book where a parent dies of cancer as the result of pesticides that are used coming on new to the scene in sharecropping. I won't give it away. I will just say that did not happen. I have had a parent die of cancer, so I infused the emotions of that young girl into that experience.

Zibby: I'm sorry, I hope I didn't give anything away. I was just wondering. I like to know.

Andrea: Not at all, no.

Zibby: I'm really sorry to hear about your parent's experience. What about the disease of the nerves, as you talk about in the book?

Andrea: One of the characters has MS, multiple sclerosis. No, that is not my own experience. It's not the experience of anyone I know. Again, people that I do know, family members, have had similar afflictions, and so I infused it in the book. I was really fortunate to work with the Multiple Sclerosis Society to get all the depictions correct and infuse it with the history of that disease. Everything is really on point.

Zibby: Tell me a little more about your actual writing process. For instance, the chapter Billy-Club Bullies which was bam, bam, bam, tell me about sitting down. Where are you typing these words out? Give me a visual of how you're getting it done, how you structured it. Do you have Post-its everywhere? What's the process like? Then where are you when you're pounding these out?

Andrea: No, I'm not sitting in front of a keyboard, mostly. My husband will tell you. Here's an example. I get up at four in the morning. I'm up. This happened today. I go out. I'm walking. It's dark out. I've got a big hoodie with a big zippered pocket in the front and a pen. This morning for example, it was raining. I came in dripping with the big hoodie and stuff in the front pocket, it's like a kangaroo pocket, this little rickety pen and a notebook. That stuff hopefully will end up in a book. That's how Loretta Little Looks Back started and many of the books. I eventually get to the keyboard. My writing is really from four AM to about six or six thirty in the morning. It takes many forms. Yes, I have Post-it Notes, scraps. It eventually gets to the keyboard, but I don't get up, sit down, and start writing.

Zibby: Wow, what a process, four to six. Then you do your regular work the rest of the day?

Andrea: Yes. In a non-COVID moment, I change clothes and go to my office in Lower Manhattan.

Zibby: Then what time do you go to bed? How much sleep are you getting?

Brian: Not enough.

Andrea: I go to bed pretty late. Not enough, yeah.

Zibby: Pretty late, wow. I guess that's one of the perks of not needing as much sleep. There you go. Do you also get up at four AM, Brian?

Brian: No. I maybe roll over when I hear her get up. I get up around seven and usually leave the house around seven thirty, get to my studio these days around eight thirty, and have my own creative process. I'll get to the studio, look at everything I have to do for the day, and then meditate or do yoga. Then I have a whole kitchen here. I make my food and everything. Then I just start sketching and painting. I'm working and meditating and moving all the time. I usually don't even sit in a chair. I'm either walking, moving, working, or taking a nap. I love taking naps, which is part of my work because my ideas come to me when I'm meditating and napping. Then I put them on the paper.

Zibby: How convenient is that? I want to put napping into my workday. Let's see if my kids really go for that. No, I'm working. No, really. [laughter] What are you working on next? I know this book is coming out. Do you have more coming down the pike together, separate?

Brian: Yes, we're always working on several projects at the same time. Some are in the concept phase. Some are in the sketch phase. Some, I'm working on finishes. I have projects that I'm working on that I've written. I have projects I'm working on that Andrea's written. Some, we don't even know yet what they're going to be.

Andrea: The next one, I'll just tell you, is something for very young children. That's all I'll say.

Brian: We can't talk too much about the details of it, but it is in progress and process.

Zibby: When are you going to write your memoir? When is that going to happen?

Andrea: Brian, are you working on your memoir?

Brian: I'm always working on my memoir, a memoir of some sort. It just keeps shifting and changing. It's a lot of my growing up, just being creative and playing with art and images and imagination. Most of the books that I write are about imagination. Most of the books that I've written are somewhat autobiographical.

Zibby: Amazing. You two seem to have it all figured out. I'm incredibly impressed. The marriage and the workflow and the meetings on Saturdays and the creativity and the awareness of how you work best, I'm very impressed, I have to say. What advice would you both have to aspiring artists and aspiring authors?

Brian: My advice to aspiring artists is to make art. Art is to make art. Find a way that feels most true to you to make art. For me, it's with traditional materials, watercolors, gauche, ink. I let myself change. Sometimes I discover a medium I had never used before. Working with acrylic is pretty new. Some artists work on computers. They work on iPads. Whatever feels natural and to just make art. Continue to draw every day. Make art every day. That would be my first -- and look at people that you admire.

Andrea: I would say the same thing. Writers write daily. People say to me, oh, come on, do you write on your birthday? Yes. Do you write on Christmas? Yes. Do you write on New Year's? Yes. Do you write when your house is a mess? Especially, because I don't want to clean it. Writers write every single day of the week under all circumstances and conditions. Is everything I write publishable? Most of it isn't, but I'm in the act of pursuit of the craft. I also say read everything. Push past that comfort zone. I hear a lot of people say, I don't do fantasy. I'm not a mystery kind of person. Read those books. Read everything. Become a sponge. It would be like me saying, I think I'm going to become a ballerina and just do it every now and then. You have to work at that. I would say, writers, just always be in the act of pursuit of doing it.

Zibby: Love it. Thank you. Thanks so much to both of you for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" and for sharing your beautiful work in every format and all your marriage tips. I'll probably have a better day because of it. [laughs]

Andrea: Thank you, Zibby.

Zibby: Thanks so much for your time. Buh-bye.

Andrea: Buh-bye.

Jane Igharo, TIES THAT TETHER

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Jane. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" to discuss Ties That Tether, your awesome book that just came out. Congratulations.

Jane Igharo: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Zibby: It's my pleasure. Would you mind please telling listeners who aren't familiar with your book or who perhaps are not Book of the Month club members and didn't notice that it had been chosen as one of the picks, congratulations for that again, what Ties That Tether is about?

Jane: Ties That Tether is about a Nigerian woman who immigrated to Canada when she was twelve and promised her father back in Nigeria as he passed -- he was ill. While he was sick, she promised him that when she did come to Canada, she would stay true to her culture by marrying someone who was Nigerian, specifically Edo. Years later, she meets someone who is not Edo. He's of Spanish descent. They have a blossoming relationship. She's still caught between her family's expectations and her heart.

Zibby: Excellent. I happen to have read the essay you wrote on Shondaland, so I know where this story came from. Perhaps you could tell us a little more, the inspiration for this novel.

Jane: The inspiration was my experience as a Nigerian woman. I immigrated to Canada when I was eleven. I've had to deal with what my family, specifically my mother, expects from me and who she expects me to date. Just dealing with all of it and dating guys within my culture and secretly dating guys outside my culture, that inspired this book. [laughs]

Zibby: I think what you touch on in the book is something that people in so many cultures that are tight-knit or who feel that any external influence is in some way a threat can relate to. It usually comes from the older generation. I feel like these days, we don't think twice about, really, anything. Our parents, and particularly our grandparents, are like, no, no, no.

Jane: It's definitely the older generation, for sure.

Zibby: Tell me about your secretly dating the first guy who was not Nigerian and how it was not telling your mom about it and worrying the whole time about her finding out and all the rest.

Jane: That was stressful. [laughter] It happened when I was at university and I got a bit more freedom.

Zibby: Was he in your class? How did you meet him?

Jane: I met him on the public transit.

Zibby: No way.

Jane: Yeah. He was really cute. He was from El Salvador. We just clicked. I dated him secretly.

Zibby: Wait, that's not enough detail for me still. You're on the public transport. Then what happens? You start talking to him? He started talking to you?

Jane: He started talking to me. He sat beside me. I can't really remember the conversation. It was a while ago. We exchanged numbers, started dating. I had to hide my phone and lie to my mother about where I was going.

Zibby: Were you living at home?

Jane: Yes. I wasn't living on campus, university, because I didn't live that far from my university. I was living from home. So much harder to hide when you're living from home. That's tough.

Zibby: You managed to keep that a secret. Then you started dating other nationalities, somebody from Jamaica, someone who was white. Still, your poor mother is in the dark here.

Jane: For sure. I recently told her about this two years ago when I was dating someone who was Nigerian. She was very much content, very much happy. I was like, "You know, I used to date a lot of guys who weren’t Nigerian." She didn't believe me. She thought I was joking. I really had to spell it out for her. I'm like, "His name was this. He worked here." Then she was like, "How dare you." [laughs] She was so shocked, but she got over it.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. This is none of my business at all. Are you dating someone Nigerian now?

Jane: Yes.

Zibby: Okay. So she's very happy.

Jane: You know what's funny? She read my book, and I think she really did change her perspective a lot. A few weeks ago, she was like, "If you bring a guy home, a white guy home, like Rafael," which is the hero in my book, "I will totally be okay with it." [laughs]

Zibby: Really?

Jane: I was like, that's progress. That great. I don't know if he can be like Rafael, but just keep your mind open. That's good.

Zibby: I love how you came to this conclusion that it was really just fear that drove your mom. Tell me a little more about the conversation you had with her because I found that so interesting. We have all these assumptions about our parents and why they make their rules or why they are the way they are. You really uncovered the root of it. Perhaps, that's what enabled her to finally let go of what she had held onto so strongly.

Jane: Sometimes I feel like we don't even care to understand where our parents are coming from. We just get angry. We don't want to figure out their perspective. For me, I gradually realized my mother was coming from a place of fear, like a lot of immigrants when they move to a new country. They're far from home. They're try to preserve what they had back there. It’s so different. It's just preserving it, keeping that culture and tradition so their children can have it and their children can have it and it can still be strong even in the new setting. It's really what motivates them most of the time, a lot of the time, to just say, don't date outside our culture. I just wanted my readers to understand that as fear not prejudice.

Zibby: Also, you talked about how growing up you were happy to read all the books from school and all the rest, but they typically had white protagonists. They were not stories that reflected your inner experience. You feel very strongly about portraying characters like yourself in fiction. Tell me more about that.

Jane: Growing up, I didn't see people like me, black people or specifically Nigerian characters, in books. The first romance I read was Some Nerve by Jane Heller. I love that book so much. I read it multiple times. I could relate to it on some level, but not completely because the protagonist wasn't like me in any way. She wasn't an immigrant. She wasn't black. She wasn't Nigerian. There was still that disconnect. The first book I ever truly connected with was Americanah, and that was just only a few years ago. I first read that book I think two years ago. It was published before then, but I only got my hands on it two years ago. I really felt seen. I loved the themes within that book of immigration and identity. She talked about hair, which people might not get. For black girls, hair is a big deal. I felt very seen in that book. I'm really excited that throughout my career I plan to write about Nigerian women. A lot of people have been reaching out and saying, this is the first romance that I've seen a Nigerian heroine, and it's amazing. I don't know if it actually is because I haven't read every single book in the world, but it makes me feel really happy to know that another Nigerian girl is seeing herself in the words that I write.

Zibby: It's amazing. What made you write? What made you start doing this? What made you write this book?

Jane: What made me write? Someone asked me this before. The answer is very straight. I couldn't help it. I couldn't not write. The journey to becoming a writer was incredibly hard. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. I wrote two books prior to this one in different genres. Trying to get an agent was incredibly hard. It didn't happen until Ties That Tether. Even through that entire process, the idea of giving up never occurred to me. It didn't seem like an option because even through the tears that I cried and the times I wanted to throw my laptop out the window, I knew that I couldn't give up. It just wasn't an option. I write and I will continue to write because I have to, because it's in my blood. I think it's what I'm destined to do.

Zibby: Have you always loved to write?

Jane: I wanted to be a Disney actress when I was younger. [laughter] I really wanted to be that black Hannah Montana. I went on a few auditions, but they didn't work out. It was the summer after I went on an audition and I was really sad because I couldn't progress to the next stage that I wrote a poem called Longing for Spring. It was horrible. I was in elementary school. It was the first thing I wrote, in a purple journal. I kept reading and writing. It just kind of happened. That summer after a huge disappointment -- I found out that I wasn't meant to be an actress because I cannot act. I'm horrible, but I can do something else. I started to explore that.

Zibby: Wow. I know you felt like it wasn't an option, but when you were crying, how did you get back to your laptop? How did you just say to yourself, it doesn't matter, I'm going to do it eventually? Was it just this interior monologue, this faith?

Jane: Yeah, it's faith. I'm a Christian. My faith helped me through this. There's a Bible verse that says a man's gift maketh room for him and bringth him before great men. I wrote that and I framed it. I put it in my room. I would recite it every time because it meant to me that eventually your gift will bring you to a place that you're meant to be if you make room for you in this world where it's crowded and full of so many other talents. Somehow, it will make room for you. Great people will see you. That was in my head. I said it all the time. My family was amazing. My mother, she's an immigrant, but she never pressured me to be a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer, which so many African immigrants or maybe immigrants in general tend to do. I'm so grateful because I can't imagine being a doctor or a lawyer. It's just not for me. I listened to songs that cheered me up. This sounds really ridiculous, but I always listened to that Miley Cyrus song, "The Climb." It's a really good song if you want to be motivated. That helped me a lot.

Zibby: I am going to play that right after this. I'll probably recognize it from my kids. Can you say the verse from the Bible again that you repeated to yourself? Just say it a little slower because you went so fast the first time. I just want to hear it more clearly.

Jane: A man's gift maketh room for him and bringeth him before great men.

Zibby: Cool. I like it. It's great to have a mantra. It's great to have something that you feel like is from, I want to say a higher power but that sounds so hokey, but something that is grounding in that way and that really means a lot to you. It's great. The Bible and Miley Cyrus, who knew? Who knew they would be in the same sentence in this interview?

Jane: [laughs] Who knew?

Zibby: If you were to have kids who wanted to date outside the Nigerian world, would you have any issue at all, or no?

Jane: No, I wouldn't as long as they take the culture that my mother has given me and I have given them and they hold onto it. My main character eventually learns in the book, you can appreciate many cultures, you can practice many cultures and still stay true to yours. It doesn't take anything away from that. That's basically what I would tell my children, to remember where their mother came from and hold onto that no matter what, no matter who they love.

Zibby: Jane, tell me about your writing process. What was it like? Did you outline this book? Did you consider writing a memoir? Did it all just come pouring out? What was it like?

Jane: This is the first book I've ever outlined. As a new writer, I didn't know what I was doing when I started writing initially, like many writers. I just dove into it, sat in front of my computer. That was a huge mistake. I went to a conference in New York with writers. I learned a lot. I learned how to outline my book and plot points and all that stuff, very technical stuff that readers might not realize writers are trying to do. That really did help me, outlining the entire book from beginning to end even though things changed a lot. It gave me an idea of what to do and relevant points to hit instead of just having chapters that were not pushing the plot forward. My writing process since then has been always outlining my book. Sometimes I write the whole thing. Right now, I'm working on a book. I have a whiteboard, but I'm just outlining things as I go because I don't know what's going to happen in the story. Outlining is wonderful.

Zibby: Excellent. Can you say any more about your next book?

Jane: Book number two does not have a title. I'm really struggling with that right now. It's about a biracial woman who never met her Nigerian father. Then she learns that he's passed away. He's invited her to Nigeria for his funeral because he wants all his children to attend. He's this incredibly wealthy man in Nigeria. She decides to go to Nigeria to learn about her father and his family and the part of herself she never knew. She gets there and she meets this unconventional family of his, a first wife, a second wife, a mistress who never made it down the aisle, and children who are basically Nigerian royalty. She's tossed into this colorful, insane family. Most of the characters are trying to find themselves as she's trying to find themselves. I explore themes of immigration and identity and class in Nigeria, the rich and the poor.

Zibby: Wow, that sounds amazing. Oh, my gosh, that sounds great. That sounds like a movie. I'll be tuning into that when that eventually gets optioned and all the rest. Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?

Jane: It's very cliché, but I stand by it. Never give up. If you feel it in your gut that this is what you're meant to do, just don't stop. Not giving up can mean many things. It can mean shelfing a project and starting a new one, which is very painful. Sometimes it's necessary. It could also mean taking writing classes, going to conferences. Writing is so isolating, but it's so amazing that you can meet people who are like you, who are on the same journey, and learn from them. Not giving up also might mean joining a book club and just talking to people who are reading books, seeing what is marketable, seeing what publishers want. A lot of the times, writers don't know what publishers want. That's very important to know. Not giving up, that's my advice.

Zibby: Love it. I have to ask, did you record the audiobook for this? You have the best voice. I'm serious. This should be your side hustle, is being an audiobook narrator.

Jane: Oh, my god, I would love to. I didn't record the voice. I really would have loved to, but I did not. The person who did record I thought did a wonderful job. I really hope to do an audiobook for another of my books.

Zibby: Put that in your next contract. You got to negotiate that up front. Put that in writing.

Jane: Thank you. I will do that.

Zibby: Awesome. Jane, thank you so much. Thanks for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." Thanks for giving the vantage point of the daughter and the mother in this situation because you can relate to both. As a mom, I can relate to wanting to have my kids keep my culture, but see the point of view of the kid. I can feel myself as the kid too. All to say, thank you for your story.

Jane: Thank you for your time and for speaking with me. This was very fun.

Zibby: Good.

Jane: Thank you. Bye.

Zibby: Thanks. Buh-bye.

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Charlotte Wood, THE WEEKEND

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Charlotte. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Charlotte Wood: Thanks for having me, Zibby, so much.

Zibby: I'm so excited to discuss The Weekend with you. This book was so lovely and moving and really well-written. Oh, my gosh, I was just really looking forward to this conversation. I still think about your character sitting on the side of the road whenever I'm getting in my car now trapped under an underpass too narrow to even get out. I'm like, ah! [laughter]

Charlotte: I'm glad they stayed with you.

Zibby: Yes. Can you please tell listeners what The Weekend is about?

Charlotte: The Weekend is about friendship and getting older. The book opens when three friends -- some people have described them as frenemies, but I think they love each other more than that. They're aged in their seventies. Their names are Jude, Wendy, and Adele. They come together on a very hot weekend in Australia just before Christmas, which I know is kind of weird for American readers to think about Christmas being in the middle of the boiling summer. In Australia, that's what it's like often. They come together at the beach house of their fourth friend, Sylvie, who has died just around a year before the book opens. They are there to clean out Sylvie's house. They’ve been friends for a really long time, for around forty years. Their friendship is worn by this stage and worn by grief as well. They’re discovering over this weekend particularly that Sylvie was the one who really held this group together. Without her, they’ve kind of lost the sense of how to be with each other. They just feel lost to one another. It's a very difficult time for them while they grapple with their grief and Sylvie and their grief for their friendship that seems to be dissolving in front of them.

Zibby: What inspired you to write this book? Why these characters? Why this weekend? How did you come up with the structure of it and the whole thing? Why not the month or the long weekend? [laughs]

Charlotte: The reason I wanted to write about these women is that I've always been interested in female friendships and how sustaining they are for so many of us. I've always had quite intense friendship from when I was very young. I have a really nice husband and my own siblings, but friendships are the thing that kind of propel my days. My last book, The Natural Way of Things, was about really young women. It was very dark and nearly brutal book about misogyny. I wanted to release myself and my readers from the darkness of that book. The way to get away from a previous book is almost just to flip it and go to something opposite. That was young women. This is older women. That book was set in the middle of the desert in Australia. This book is at the beach on the coast. It's a much lighter book even though the story is about these women having to face the fact that they're in the last years of their lives. Even if that's another ten or twenty years, it's obviously the last phase of their life that they're heading into. They haven't really thought about that properly. That's one of the things that each of them is grappling with.

One of the things I was interested in is, how do long friendship sustain themselves or not? I have friends that are twenty-five years standing. I love them, but we have changed a lot over that twenty-five years. Sometimes I feel that old friendships, we can just [indiscernible]. We can sort of set them in cement in some way. I feel like we need to be able to have our old friendships move and change and live and be as rich as -- sometimes when you meet a new person, you kind of fall in love with a friend, with this person, because they're facing up with the contemporary you. Whereas sometimes our olds friends, and we all do it to each other, can think, no, I know who you are. You're the person that I met twenty years ago, thirty years ago. I was really interested in casting forward for myself about, what kind of woman might I be if I'm lucky enough to reach my seventies? How will that woman live within the friendships of old? What might be the forces at work upon all of us at that point?

Zibby: Wow. You had a great quote in the book. You wrote, "The thirties were the age you fell most dangerously in love, Adele had discovered after the fact, not with a man or a woman, but with your friends." You write, "Lovers back then came and went like the weather," but you said, "No, it wasn't lovers, but friends, these courageous, shining people you pursued, romanced with dinners and gifts and weekends away. It was so long ago, forty years." It's so true because usually your life is somewhat set, friends. Obviously, you can get divorced and remarried and whatever, but that's one or two major changes in your life. The friends, they come in and out I feel like so often at just the right times for what you need.

Charlotte: For these women, they all met, as Adele says, in their thirties. All of them were quite powerful in their professional lives. A lot of this book is about work, actually, and how women don't just identify with their family identity. They identify with their work. I feel like the ways that we think about older age in popular culture, in television and in books, often older women are just identified by their family roles, by their roles as mothers or grandmothers or whatever, or spouses. The women who I know in their seventies are working or wish they were working. They had very fulfilling professional lives. These women in my book, Jude was a restauranter. She ran the city's finest restaurants. She was one of those very powerful women in the hospitality world. Everyone wanted a table at her restaurant in the city in this book. Adele was a very well-known stage actress. Wendy was a public intellectual and globally known as a feminist academic and intellectual. Her books are still on university lists around the world. In their thirties was the really blossoming time of their cultural power that had this blazing allure for all of them. They came together through various means. They were this shining little crowd in their world.

Now they're looking at each other going, oh, man, I remember when you were so powerful. Now I feel that you might be hiding something. Your health isn't great. You are in a bit of denial about what's going on for you professionally. They all think that about each other while not really facing their own doubts and little crises of confidence. They feel like they can't afford to look at some things that are creeping in at the edges of their vision. This weekend together forces them to look at those things. Actually, just going back to your earlier question about why a weekend, it's really helpful, I've found, in fiction to bring in the boundaries of time and space to create pressure on people. For a book like this that is about -- it's the internal lives of women where not a lot of dramatic things happen. It does build to a big crisis for them, but there are not world events crashing in on these women. Bringing those edges of the setting in time and space in more tightly allows a sort of concentrated focus. It's kind of The Crucible effect, I hope. The pressure builds. Part of that is the fact that they are just there trapped together in this house for three days.

Zibby: Tell me about the writing of it. You started out and you found the structure that would work for you and what would create the most pressure to exhibit all these wonderful things and goals that you had for the book. How was the writing process for you? How did it differ from your first book? Do you write right there? How do you do it?

Charlotte: I write here in my studio in Sydney. I also write at a house at the coast where the town in the book is kind of modeled on. It's a couple of hours north of Sydney. It's a middle-class people's holiday town. That's where Sylvie's beach house is. I wrote it over a few years. My previous book was the first one I had published in the States. This is actually my sixth novel. I had a lot of books published in Australia before that. I start usually with a place. This time, as I said, I knew I wanted to be near the ocean for the -- I felt like I wanted light and air and weather at my disposal fictionally. I knew it was going to be about friendship. Then I just put them in this house together. For ages, Sylvie didn't exist. I just had these three friends. I had them in this house. I don't really plan my books at all apart from this setting. They were having these fractious moments. I needed to figure out, why are they there? If they are having such struggles with their friendship, why don't they just not go? Then I finally hit on the idea of Sylvie. Actually, fairly early on in the process of writing the book a really lovely friend of mine became sick and died. She was a writer. Her name was Georgia Blain. She was very, very loved in this country as a writer.

I was really astonished by my grief for Georgia, the ferocity of my grief. She was my first friend who had died. I've been through grief before in my family, but this was really different. I felt really overwhelmed by the primitive feelings of my grief and the way that I felt like a child and felt angry and so jealous. It was such a weird series of feelings that I needed to work them out. I knew that Georgia would approve of this way of doing it because she wrote very close to life herself. I could pour all my feelings about this unmanageable grief into these women and their feelings for their friend Sylvie. When I said jealousy, it's that thing of feeling that -- early on in the book, Jude confesses in her own head that she was just impatient in hearing about anybody else's death. It was sort of irrelevant. Sylvie was the one who had died. She just couldn't tolerate anybody else whining about people dying. She says, "People die all the time. Of course they do. But Sylvie, this is different."

I think we all, on some level, can feel that sense of ownership and protectiveness of this person. They had a rich and beautiful individuality that shouldn't be just lumped in with anybody else's. I actually think this is one of the saddest things about the pandemic. You've been through it more than anybody. We're sort of lumping all these people in together, and they are not like other people. I channeled all that stuff into the story as well. Then I just observed as much as I could, people around me, people I see in the street, thinking about my own friendships and how they may or may not change over the next twenty years, and about how we -- I used to think that as we grow older we necessarily begin to know ourselves better and better. I'm not sure that's true. I don't think that anymore. I feel like we can carry on illusions about ourselves forever. Sometimes it's our friends who present us with a really shocking assessment of who we are. I was interested in exploring that as well.

Zibby: I'm so sorry about your friend. That's terrible. Did it help? The pouring into the characters of all the emotion, did that actually work?

Charlotte: I think it did. I think it did in a way that it didn't go away. I still miss her. I felt like I honored her in some way, in a way that she would understand because she was a fiction writer. Also, she was a very funny person. She had a very dark sense of humor. I like to think she would've liked this book. It helped to express some of those things that you feel kind of ashamed of. I don't know if other people do, but in my grief for her, I felt like I should be more grown up about this. I've been through the deaths of both my parents. I've been through other deaths. I should know how to do this by now. I was just hammered by these very primitive, savage feelings. I think sometimes that's what literature is for, is to allow space for these kind of things that are unspeakable, feelings we're not allowed to have. Literature is a place where we are allowed to have them.

Zibby: It's funny to think about the bookshelves behind you and everything, that in each one is all the feelings that people couldn't say. We open it up and we're like, oh, my gosh. It's poured out. It's almost like containers, like a wall of Tupperware, almost, for everybody's feelings.

Charlotte: I think that's true.

Zibby: It's like The Container Store.

Charlotte: And it's private. It's a private place for us to go to. Unlike television or film or other media, a book is such a private space for the reader and the story. I feel like that's why reading is so precious to me, because it's only me and the book. I know you can watch television by yourself, but somehow it doesn't have the same effect, because it's in your own head I guess. All the pictures are pictures that you make. The people are people that you make as a reader. It sounds weird, but it's almost a holy thing to me, that space of a book for a reader.

Zibby: It's true. It's the only form of mental telepathy that we have. It's spilling out the insides of your mind that goes right into the insides of someone else's mind. How else would you do that? TV, you're like, I'm on my phone. I'm like, whatever. This, it also requires your complete attention or else you can't actually read.

Charlotte: That's right, the absorption that comes with reading. You can't cook and read at the same time.

Zibby: I guess audiobooks.

Charlotte: That's true, actually. That's another whole discussion.

Zibby: Pretty skilled. [laughs] Are you working on another novel now?

Charlotte: I am. I just started. It's taken me a while to settle in. The pandemic, we've been really lucky in Australia, very, very lucky in terms of scale. Everyone was terrified. We had a big lockdown that has gone on for some parts of the country for a long time. The mental focus was not there for a long time, but I'm getting back into it now. The new one is going to be about, in some ways -- it's so embryonic that I don't really know anything about it yet, but it's going to involve Catholic nuns. I grew up a Catholic. I've never really written about that, the influences on me. I just thought there's some interesting stuff there. That tension between in the world and being out of the world is really interesting to me, the big capitalist world [indiscernible]. It's very early days, so who knows.

Zibby: Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Charlotte: My advice would be don't wait to start doing it. Just start because life is short. We know that now more than ever. Just dive in wherever you are even if you don't have time, even if you are working full time in a job. My first several books were written, and I had full-time work. I used to write on the couch at night or on the weekend. You don't need a space to work in. All you need, really, at the most basic is a pencil and a piece of paper. There's nothing stopping you but your own mind. It can be a home to go to. It can be the most thrilling, wonderful, liberating thing to have in your life. I would just say don't wait. The other thing I would say is try and tell the truth. That sounds weird when you're talking about fiction, but write stuff that feels true to you, not to please anybody else, not to impress anybody else, not for the market. Readers will respond when you are deeply connected and immersed in the work. I think a lot of new writers spend far too much time worrying about whether this kind of work will sell, or you shouldn't write in first person because blah. There's so many bits of really silly advice out there. I hope this isn't another one of those. Just start. Be sincere. Put everything into it.

Zibby: Thank you, Charlotte. Thank you for sharing your grief in this way that now comes and helps the rest of us. Thanks for your lovely, wonderful book and for introducing us to these characters.

Charlotte: Thank you so much, Zibby, for having me. I send lots of love to everyone in the States right now.

Zibby: Thank you so much. Thank you, and to Australia. We'll just send love to our entire nations. Why not? Ambassadors for the evening. [laughs]

Charlotte: Thank you, Zibby.

Zibby: Thank you so much. Buh-bye.

Charlotte: Buh-bye.

Sophie Kinsella, LOVE YOUR LIFE

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Sophie. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Sophie Kinsella: Thank you so much for having me. It's such a joy to see you. I love it when these things work out and we can see each other. It all fell into place. The universe works. It's great.

Zibby: Sometimes it does. Who knew? Where are you? Are you in the UK now?

Sophie: I am. I'm in my sitting room, which is the quiet room. You will notice there are no children in this room. It's seven PM here. I have to say, this podcast has been the best thing ever because I've had children for the last hour. You know what it's like. We've been doing homework and piano and eat and trumpet practice and, oh, I've got a cart. At seven, I was like, I have to go now and do my really important podcast. I'm really, really sorry about that. What a shame. See you later. Can we do this every night? This would be great.

Zibby: [laughs] I would love that excuse too.

Sophie: I've got to go and have a really essential chat right now. So sorry to miss out on the whole bedtime chaos.

Zibby: It's tear-inducing. It's true. Sometimes we just have to solider on through.

Sophie: We do. So I'm very happy here.

Zibby: Good. I'm so glad. I've left the Zoom school situation in the next room because we're still during the day, obviously. That's also really fun. [laughs]

Sophie: We are back at bricks and mortar school. We are not in that anymore. That is quite the challenge.

Zibby: It's just the afternoons. They go in the mornings. Then they come back, and then there's more in the afternoons. Of course, it's on the iPad, so they're like, let's just play with something fun on the iPad.

Sophie: [Indiscernible/crosstalk] super motivated like we all are in the afternoon. [Indiscernible/crosstalk] after lunch, aren't we? Work is exactly what we want to do right now.

Zibby: Totally. Of course. Yes. [laughter] That's nice. That's all great. Anyway, now that bedtime and Spanish are going on in separate rooms, we can have our adult conversation, which is great. I have been reading your books since, I feel like, you started writing them. I feel like I've grown older as you've grown older, and all these major life events your characters have gone through in the Shopaholic series and all the rest. It's just been great. Now to be talking to you about it is just the perfect ending to this journey through your books.

Sophie: I love meeting someone who has read my words and they enjoyed them. Perhaps they’ve made you smile or whatever. This is a real treat for me. As you imagine, authors, we're on our own most of the time. We send out our words, and we just hope. It's this act of faith. I hope somebody likes it. I hope somebody is whipping over the pages or they smile or they laugh. This is really quite a treat for me just to hear that.

Zibby: I feel like someone like you who's had so much success in the literary world and best seller after best seller wouldn't need that validation or wouldn't even appreciate it anymore.

Sophie: Oh, no, it's the opposite. However long you've been doing it, you start to think, do people still like what I do? How can I put that to the test? Especially this year when I haven't been out and about, it's just really important to connect in every sense, as humans, as family members, and as an author with your readers. We've all missed out on so much connection this year that I think we're all craving interaction of all different kinds. For me, it's lovely. Hi, reader. This is so nice. I feel a bit robbed of contact. I might get quite needy in a minute. [laughs]

Zibby: I'm wondering if I'll be able to actually close this laptop or if you're going to be in there every time I open it.

Sophie: I will. You know it.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh, so funny. Let's talk a little bit about your latest book. Tell listeners what it's about, what inspired you to write it, this hilarious writing retreat that you have your main character go on, which is just so funny with your characteristic sense of humor. I think that's part of why I was so excited to talk to you because this is completely what I find funny, is what you find funny.

Sophie: You think, oh, no, is this just me? Really, looking at the differences between instinct and practicalities of love. My heroine is super romantic. We all go through a journey with a loved one. We meet them. We take in details about them. Maybe these days we've met them online. I think this is what makes it really interesting. You build up a picture. We kind of fantasize, don't we? We fill in the gaps. Maybe you text them or you go on that first date. You've got so many good impressions, but you don't quite know the rest of it. You fill in the gaps. Then gradually, you get to know the real deal. For most people, this is quite a slow process. You're taking in information. You're thinking, does this person match up to what I originally imagined? You have reality checks. I thought, what's the most extreme version of the reality check? I set up this heroine who is a deluded romantic. She just believes in instinct. Then it happens that she's at this writing retreat where nobody uses their name, nobody gives out any personal detail. I have to say, this was slightly inspired by -- I have a friend who went on a yoga retreat, and nobody said a word all week. You're just taking in impressions of people.

She falls in love with this guy. She doesn't know what his name is or his job or anything about him except how he looks, his demeanor, what he says about writing, but nothing else. They don't divulge any details. She falls in love and takes it to the max. They commit to each other. They pledge to each other. It's like your most extreme version of your holiday romance. Then boom, come home, reality. It's the most extreme of, wait, what? Wait, wait, this is not what I imagined. This is how you live? This is your job? She's imagined that he's an artisan carpenter based on very little evidence. She's just got it in her head that this is who he is. She's got the idea that he has a particular name. None of this is the case. Then she's faced with, okay, so this is the guy in my head. This is what I'm presented with in real life. He, by the way, is exactly the same. He had all kinds of ideas of what she might be like. He comes to the end. He gets to the airport. Reality is there. She gets met by her crazy dog and her crazy friends. He gets met by Mr. Corporate Driver. They look at each other in absolute shock, like, wait, who are you? I love you, but I have no idea who you are, and now I'm going to have to find out.

Part of the inspiration was that saying that you read, and it's around the place, love me, love my dog. There's a dog in this book. I thought, I'm going to extend this to, love me, love my life, because they get to know each other's lives from the dog to the friends to weird habits to things which seem small but actually become quite -- there's a moment where he runs her a bath. He says, "I'll run a lovely warm bath." He draws her a bath. This is going to be the healing moment. She gets in. She's like, "What is this? This is not a warm bath. This is tepid. I'm freezing." He's staring at her in utter incomprehension, like, this is a really warm bath. It just signifies how they're on completely different pages. They better get used to this. The book explores, what do you get used to? What can you put up with? At the beginning of the book, she is adamant she is not a deal breakers kind of a person. She doesn't believe in them. She thinks they're the work of the devil. She lectures her friends who are a bit more pragmatic and dating online and having to create profiles. She's like, "I can't engage with this. I could just love any man. I have no parameters. I'd never have a deal breaker." Then she's looking at this guy thinking, okay, I don't like this. I don't like that. I can't relate to this. Your family has these weird customs. The question throughout the book is, what can they get used to? What can they not get used to? What could change? How could they compromise? And hopefully finding the comedy in all of that because that's what I like to do. I like to slightly torture my characters in really terrible, embarrassing, cringy moments at all times. They certainly do go through a few of those.

Zibby: Wait, why do you like to do that to your characters? By the way, then your reader is similarly cringing and holding their breath and covering their face as well. What is that about? Why do you like to do that?

Sophie: I just find it so entertaining. I love to laugh. I love to push it, what I feel is just enough to make you laugh and go, no way, and also kind of be obsessed by turning the page to see, how are you going to get out of this? and hopefully not take it so extreme that it's painful. Although, I do think that sometimes I do torture my readers. [laughs] I just can't help seeing the potential for the extreme version. Everybody doesn't get on with some aspect of their partner's life. I thought, I'm going to just take this to the max. So her flat, he can't get on with her furniture, so many things about their life. At the same time, I do feel like comedy has to come out of reality. There is a real contemporary thread to all this. I read an awful lot online about online dating and, what are people's real deal breakers? How do they go about this? It does cause pain as well as comedy. It does cause some thoughtful processes going on and some development. The characters have to go somewhere in the light of all this. Hopefully, there's a mix. There's comedy, but there's real stuff. I hope there's love in this book too.

Zibby: It's great. I love how you set it up in the beginning when her roommates are online and she's like, "How can you do that? How can you search ten miles from where you live? What if he lives eleven miles away?" They're like, "No, no, no, it's fine. He'll lie about that part." She's horrified. It's true. I think it speaks to this whole crazy falling in love thing in general, which seems completely random. What if you just missed, by your parameters, the guy of your dreams? What if he just walked out of the restaurant before he walked in? What if you never met and if it's your fault? Nothing really makes sense, so you have to just roll with it.

Sophie: I completely agree. I think that we have an added pressure on us when we have to create a profile and define it in advance because sometimes you don't know what you're looking for. It's a bit like shopping. One of my characters does actually liken it to choosing a white shirt on a website that has so many white shirts. You're bewildered. Actually, I was slightly inspired. I created a fictious website with a million filters. I was slightly inspired by shopping websites where in order to make any sense of it all you just have to filter. This size, this kind of color, this sleeve length. Apply that to a life partner. Even with clothes, you think, wait, I don't really know. What if I saw a great shirt and it did have a longer sleeve but I loved it? [laughs] I'm stressed. What do I want? I can't go through a thousand shirts. You put that to a man, I don't know. Does the hair color -- I don't know. Once you start looking at it, it is quite funny, but it is also quite painful if this is what you're having to do. As you say, it's so arbitrary.

Zibby: Yes, so arbitrary. What it really comes down to is that it's completely out of your control. I think that's what all the filters are designed to fool you into believing, that you have some control over your search when really, it's completely random and out of your control. So I know how you came up with this, but you've been consistently innovating and coming up with new ideas and taking your character through all these times. Tell me about how you decide what books you're going to write, what you're doing with your characters. Does it always come from life? How has the progression of your characters evolved?

Sophie: That's interesting. I think that each book has a slightly different genesis. Sometimes I'll start with a character. With the Shopaholic series, it was very much, I can see this character. Now I want to put her in different situations. Sometimes stuff just happens in life. I'm aware of what we're all talking about. With social media, that became an interest to me because we're all talking about this. I tend to plug into the conversations that I'm hearing. I wrote a young adult book about anxiety and computer games. That was very much picking up on the conversation of the day. When I was writing I Owe You One, I knew I wanted to get two people together and that they would exchange favors with each other. I didn't know what would be the mechanism to bring these two people about. I'm sitting in a coffee shop. This really happened. By the way, people are always saying to me, I bet you pick up things from real life, don't you? I bet you just listen in on conversations and use them all. I'm always like, I really wish that people would just act out a whole novel at the next table in the café and I could write it all down. That would be handy, but it's never happened yet.

Anyway, the miracle happened. I'm sitting in this coffee shop. This guy -- I have to say, he was very handsome, an American, which added a bit of sparkle to the event. He looked at me. He just went, "I have to step outside. Could you mind my laptop for a minute?" I was like, this is it. This is how my characters meet. The coffee shop gods have given me my beginning. That was absolutely given to me as a gift. As I say, each book is different. In this book, there's a very naughty dog who is the bone of contention between our lovely couple. In a similar way, I was looking for a dog. I was thinking, I need a dog. I want a really good character of a dog. I have a dog. I met dogs, but they weren’t quite -- then I stayed with some friends, and I met this beagle. He was such a character that I was like, that's it. Okay, you're going in my book. You get inspiration all around.

Zibby: That's great. I love it. When did you know you wanted to write? Did you always know? Did you know from when you were a child? Did it come later?

Sophie: It wasn't my childhood ambition. I wasn't the child walking around saying, I'm going to write a novel one day. I loved to read. I read obsessively. I read books over and over and over again. Looking back, I think it gives you a real sense of story, how stories work, if you practically know a book by heart, whether it's a classic or whether it's just a run-of-the-mill book knocking around in your house. I loved stories and words, but I didn't even really plan to write until I was in my twenties working as a journalist. Even at that stage, I thought, this is what I'm going to do. It was really going on the tube to work and reading every day. In the days before we were all on our phones, we read books. I read books the whole time. I just had this chord of recognition. Wait, I know I'm writing financial articles and that's my job, but this is what I want to do. I want to make it up. I've never been any good at facts. I still am no good at facts. It's all invented. I just started in my spare time. I sat on the train waiting until I got an idea. The minute I started, I just felt like, yes, now I feel at home. I was lucky enough to get that one published. That's all I've done ever since. I'm fit for nothing else. Obviously, bathing my children I can do. [laughs]

Zibby: Yes, that's a skill we all somehow seem to magically acquire, not so much writing the Shopaholic series. Was that your first book, Shopaholic?

Sophie: I used to write before that under the name Madeleine Wickham.

Zibby: Oh, that's right. I knew that. I'm sorry.

Sophie: Then I switched style. The first one was Confessions of a Shopaholic. That's where I really found comedy and realized how much I like writing comedy. That felt like a new beginning. It was really exciting because it was a new voice. It felt like I was starting my career all over again, which is a great advantage that you have as a writer. You can rebrand, take a new name, start again. It's quite liberating.

Zibby: That is your actual name, though, right, Sophie Kinsella?

Sophie: It's not, no.

Zibby: It's not?

Sophie: No. I know. [laughs] I've been Sophie for so long.

Zibby: What's your real name? Your real name is Madeleine? No way. Sorry, I should've somehow realized that. I apologize.

Sophie: No, it shows how good my disguise is. I answer to Sophie now. I practically feel like Sophie because I live so much of my life as Sophie. All my children know I'm Sophie. It's actually quite nice because I'm anonymous day to day. I go and do my stuff, nobody even tweaks. Well, they sometimes tweak, but I feel quite under the radar, which is quite nice. It's good for being a writer because you can eavesdrop in coffee shops, as previously mentioned.

Zibby: Yes, and come up with all your ideas. Wow, I'm sorry. I think I did know that at some point. I forgot. I'm sorry.

Sophie: Don't be silly. Lost in the nick of time.

Zibby: Do you always have your next thing? Do you know what your next book is already?

Sophie: I always have a few things up my sleeve. I find with an idea for a book, you need to give it a bit of time. I'm working on something at the moment. I've had the shell outline for a while. I have all kinds of ideas. I don't think you know instantly if it's going to have legs or if it's really a book. Is there enough to it? I like to think ahead and have them in different stages of development. Right now, I'm at the nice stage where you're fleshing out an idea. I think this actually will work, so that's nice. The bad moment is when you think, that seemed like such a great idea in the cocktail bar. I was super excited. I wrote all these excited notes in lip liner because I didn't have a pen, and it makes no sense. It's gibberish. It's not a book. [laughs]

Zibby: Wait, how far down do you have to go? How many pages or how much time do you invest before you decide whether it's working or not?

Sophie: For me, I won't have written an awful lot. It's more in planning stages. I obsessively plan. It's when I'm sketching out all my plan and the details and all of that, that's when I know I've got a book. I won't start it unless I feel confident in that. I have friends who, they just start. They just start writing. I'm in such admiration of that. I would love to be that kind of free flow, see where you go, let it grow, but I'm not that. I want to know that I have an ending even if it's not "the" ending. I want to feel that there's a sort of solid plan for me to follow.

Zibby: Do you have it on index cards? Do you just write it out? How does it look?

Sophie: I have a big board with index cards. I always get kind of impatient with that because I can't put all the detail I would like on the index cards. At some stage along the line, I either abandon that and that starts to look a bit sad and unloved and I start to write things on computer. Then I write them on bits of paper. Then I have Post-its. I have a million different systems. My new thing is dictating into the phone, which is just great. A line of dialogue pops into your head and you just randomly say it into your phone looking slightly deranged as you do so. If you're walking through London ever and seeing someone in Trafalgar Square talking into her phone with a glazed expression, that's me. Then I forget what I've put where, so I have to do this go around -- I had one idea on my phone and I had some other scene that I wrote on my laptop -- and try and put it all together into a book. I sometimes forget bits. It's a bit like when you're doing a dinner party. You had this sauce. You had this side dish. Then you get to the end. You're collapsed. You open the oven, and there's that bread you had heating the whole time and you forgot to serve it. [laughs] It's a bit like that.

Zibby: Love it. Just even your mentioning dinner parties makes me sad. I am missing that time of life when we could entertain and see friends and all the rest.

Sophie: It's so weird, isn't it? I just can't believe we're still here.

Zibby: I know.

Sophie: I saw it as a summer thing. I felt psychologically that the new school year would begin and we'd all go, that was the summer, that was weird, and on we'd go. Now, don't know. Very strange.

Zibby: Has it affected your work or creativity or all that? It must, or maybe not.

Sophie: Yes. It was weird. During our extreme lockdown, I was actually really glad. By absolute luck, I finished writing Love Your Life pretty much two days before lockdown. Family was here. We had to do, as you say, the home school and all of it. During lockdown, I edited it. That's a really different process from writing. It's changing what you've already done. I'm so glad because I think that against this apocalyptic backdrop, I don't know how I would've written those final scenes, whereas to edit them was fine. There they were. I could change them. I could amend. Believe me, it was a wonderful escape for me to go back into that world. It felt quite indulgent, especially writing the Italy bits. It's like, I'm not here. I'm in COVID-free Italy right now. I'm on the beach. I'm in this amazing monastery. I'm in love, and the food. It felt like a really lovely place to escape to.

Since then, that kind of obsessive following of the news and every development, I have been unable to keep up with that. I don't have the stamina to be following every development. I just do what I'm told, try and follow the rules, which are quite confusing, I will say. They keep changing. Sit on the sofa is about it. I'm able now to go into another world. My brain isn't constantly drawn back into, wait, what? Pandemic? It was for a while. What I did, actually, during lockdown, is I wrote Shopaholic Lockdown Diaries, just a little fun thing for my readers. A lot of readers, I'm touch with them on social media. They would say, "What would Becky do?" We had tremendous problems in the UK with stockpiling and shopping. You couldn't get this and that. Shopping was topic A for a while. I just couldn't resist it. I thought, this might cheer everybody up. I wrote what Becky was up to. You know, it was a tonic for me. I hope it cheered up some people. It was very of its moment, but it was kind of therapy as well for me.

Zibby: I have to go back and read those. I somehow missed that as well.

Sophie: It was very tiny. It was just her diary of a few days. I put it up on the internet. It was a gift, really, to my readers. Here's something to entertain you today.

Zibby: Is it on your Instagram? No? I'll go back.

Sophie: That was really nice. I'm someone who, I just try and find something to laugh at even in the worst lockdown situation. It took a while. I couldn't do instantly. After a few weeks, I was like, come on, let's cheer the troops up here. Let's find something to laugh at.

Zibby: That's great. So needed, so necessary to find those outlets of not just the end-of-the-world mentality. That's great. Thank you for that. What advice would you have for aspiring authors?

Sophie: I'm someone who has had to find their voice. I started with one kind of writing. I changed into another kind of writing. It's sort of similar but quite different. I would say be true to what you want to write. Don't try and second-guess. Write what is right for you at the moment, but be prepared to experiment because there might be different versions of you. You may not hit on the right voice straight away. Don't worry about that. Just keep trying. I've written comedy now because I really enjoy it. I think that you can tell writers who love what they do, whether it's crafting an excruciating thriller plot that's just so intricate or whether it's making people laugh or whether it's wonderful love scenes. Write something that is going to light your fire because, believe me, you're going to be with this book for a long time. It had better light your fire.

If you really don't know where to begin, something I sometimes say is imagine that you go into a bookshop and you see the perfect book. It's like a visualization. Imagine walking in. You're like, that's the book I need to buy. There are some books, you walk in and it's a no-brainer. I have to buy this. Of course, I am going to read this. Whatever that is, whatever speaks to you, that's the book you need to write. That's the book that you would pick up. If you would pick it up, then lots of other people would pick it up. It'll be different for everybody. It might be the plot. It might be the premise. It might be a character or a style. It could be anything, but make it something really strong that is going to be still exciting in six months' time when you're at chapter ten and you hate the whole book and you forgot why you started and you're thinking of giving up. You need to have that initial inspiration to come back to you to keep you going.

Zibby: Excellent advice. Love it. Shopaholic, is Becky going to make another appearance in a real book, do you think, or you think not? What's the plan?

Sophie: I can never say goodbye to Becky. The book I'm working on at the moment is not a Becky book, but she's always in my mind and in my heart. I don't think we've said goodbye. I never know when. I'm someone who, I have different ideas floating around, but then I always act on instinct much like Ava. It was like, I have to write this book right now. I can't always predict which one is going to grab me, but Becky's not going anywhere.

Zibby: Excellent, phew. [laughs] Thank you, now I don't know what to call you, Madeleine. I started calling you Sophie. Now I'll end this interview calling you Madeleine.

Sophie: I go weeks of my life at a time being Sophie. I feel like Sophie. It's my middle name. It is who I am, really.

Zibby: Whoever you are, thank you for coming on my podcast. I'm sorry to have to say goodbye and release you to your kids. Maybe you could pretend --

Sophie: -- I'm just going to carry on talking to the laptop. Right, that's a very long question. Yeah, I've got to [indiscernible/laughter] great length. This has been absolutely lovely to chat with you.

Zibby: You too. It's been great. Thank you for this comic interlude in my crazy day. Thanks. Bye.

Max Gross, THE LOST SHTETL

Zibby Owens: We are live on Facebook. It took me ten whole minutes to figure out what I was doing wrong, but I finally figured it out. Thank you for your patience. Now I can finally say hello. Hi, Max. How are you?

Max Gross: Hi, Zibby. I'm well.

Zibby: Max was smart to get to our conversation early. Then I messed everything up. Now, of course, I can't really even see him that well. Are you still there, Max?

Max: You can't see me?

Zibby: Yes. Okay, there you are. You just froze a little bit. You're back.

Max: Can you hear me or see me?

Zibby: Yes. You froze for just a second. So we're here today to talk about The Lost Shtetl by Max Gross, which is you. That's the cover, but I have the advance version. This is in conjunction with the JCC's Florida Jewish Book Fest which you will be attending. You'll be a panelist for their fiction forum. That's really exciting. This is a kickoff to that. I'm excited to be with you. Let's talk about your book. Welcome.

Max: Thank you so much. I really hope I don't have any more frozen moments. I'm sorry about that unstable connection.

Zibby: Who knows? It could be mine.

Max: Here is the actual book. This is the actual book. You have the -- there's the actual book.

Zibby: That's excellent. Very exciting. Please tell listeners what it's about.

Max: The Lost Shtetl, it's about a Jewish village [distorted audio]. It's so isolated that it is completely overlooked by the Nazis during World War II. It's completely overlooked by the Soviet Cold War. It is basically rediscovered in the here and now. I've been describing it as a Yiddish Brigadoon, just reappearing after many years of anonymity. Or you could think of it as an Amazonian tribe of Jews in the middle of the Polish forest. That's basically the plot. It gets all sorts of [distorted audio] clash of civilization when they are reintroduced into the modern world.

Zibby: How did you come up with this idea?

Max: Actually, I'm a big history buff. I was reading a book about World War II. In this book, I just had this very weird thought. I was like, there were so many shtetls in Eastern Europe prior to World War II. How is that they all fell to this horrible war? Why weren’t there any that sort of slipped through, some middle-of-nowhere village? Why did they all succumb to this? This thought occurred to me. Maybe one did. It was an interesting idea, but it took a long time. How would it realistically happen [distorted audio] assemble that whole little [audio cuts outs]?

Zibby: Max, it keeps freezing a little bit.

Max: Oh, no.

Zibby: Just a little, so if I'm not answering. I heard how you were a big history buff and you had to wonder what if. What if something had survived? How could one not have made it? and your research. Did you do any traveling to the actual places and have a site that you imagined it to have been?

Max: I sort of created the province. It was a fictional province. Like in Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha, I have my own little fake province in Poland. I did visit Poland. I used to be a writer for the New York Post. I was on the [indiscernible] beat, which is a great beat if you can get it. I convinced my editor, David Kaufman, to send me to Poland for just a travel story. I was pretty deep into the book when I went. I got to [audio cuts outs]. I did visit Auschwitz. I did see a little bit of the countryside. It was definitely a very interesting experience.

Zibby: I've been to Auschwitz. It's really just haunting to even step foot there and think of everything that happened and all the rest. I think your creativity is so great to reimagine what would happen. I love that novelists in general are always like, what if, what if, what if? Then all of a sudden, we have these amazing stories. Now I can just get lost in your story of your wondering what if, what if, especially for this horrific period of time. What if more had lived? It begs the question, what if everybody had survived? What would the world be like? My mind goes there.

Max: Absolutely. It still is sort of crazy to think that it was such an [distorted audio] everybody's life back then. You don't see too many events like that that do that. Actually, a friend of mine who just heard about the book told me about these Russians who had still been living under the auspices of communism years later. He just sent me this story. I haven't looked at it yet. I was like, this is a case of unbeknownst to me of life imitating art imitating life imitating art and all that stuff. [laughs]

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. How long did it take for you to write this book? What was your process like? Did you outline it first? What was it like?

Max: It's funny. When I first thought of the idea, I thought that it was going to take place in the forties. I thought it was going to be something that, okay, they got missed, almost like they'd come out of the bomb shelter. What the hell happened while we were gone? I thought more, why would they have just, in 1946 or 1947, why then would they have all of a sudden woken up? Why in the fifties? I was like, you know what, it should take place now. It was just the lightbulb that went off in my head. It could really grapple with all of the contemporary problems that people face and that are very much on my mind and very much on, I hope, a lot of my readers' minds, stuff like that. I really started going with the book when I started thinking about the characters. The main character, Pesha and Yankel, when they started forming in my eyes, I was just like, let's follow the whole story. What would happen? The town gets rediscovered. The idea of them being missed by the Holocaust, that's almost the starting point.

The real bones of the story should be, what's happening now when they are suddenly introduced to all of this history that just plops down in front of them? I had an outline, but I definitely strayed from it a lot over the course of writing it. I wrote the first draft a while ago. I finished the first draft in something like late 2014. Selling a book is a long process. There was a couple of years of that. Also, there was a period where I was reworking it and rewriting it. I also had a son who's now five. There were just a lot of interruptions in the finishing of the book. The process was, I thought of the idea in 2008, 2009. Really started working on it in 2010, '11. Finished a draft in 2014 and then sat for two years. In 2017, I was like, all right, I have to finish this. Worked on the revised version. I had a very lovely lady named Michelle Brower who's an agent read a version of it, gave me her notes. Her notes were very, very smart. I basically worked around those. In 2017, I started pitching it to other -- long story. Michelle switched agencies, all these other things. I found David Vigliano, Nick Gianni, and Tom Flannery, my agents now. Nick is no longer with the agency. We wound up selling it. That's the whole saga, more than you probably wanted to know.

Zibby: No, I find that process so interesting. I really do. How great that you stuck with it and didn't let it just stay as a file in your computer or whatever, to bring it out. I'm sure every experience like having -- I have a five-year-old son too. I have four kids, but he's my baby. Having kids changes, also, your perspective and adds, I feel, some depth to your writing. You just have a new perspective as if you did anything, if you had a new job or if you adopted a puppy or something. I'm sure that all these experiences can only help, in other words. For anybody feeling bad that they have a thing on their desktop, it might get better with time. Who knows? [laughs]

Max: Absolutely, for sure. If you have four kids, you know what it's like. My god, you can [distorted audio] you have some crisis that has to be addressed right away with your child. I think it was Janet Malcom who called it an infinitely postpone-able act, writing. I'm glad that I finally got back to it.

Zibby: That's so funny. Yes, my kids' urgent thing today is putting things on the wish list for Hanukkah. Mind you, it's obviously still October. Why this is urgent now -- we don't even know when Hanukkah is. I had to look it up today. Yes, the urgency of kids' needs always trumps a beautiful paragraph that needs to be crafted carefully and all the rest. Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?

Max: Pretty much. Since I was a kid, I was always writing stories. My parents were both writers. My father was a mystery writer. His most famous book does not have his name on it. His most famous book is The Verdict which became a movie with Paul Newman, the early 1980s. He wrote true crime. He wrote mysteries. He was a columnist for New York Newsday for sixteen years, wrote for People magazine. My mother was a writer and editor as well. She was one of the editors for T magazine, the Times style magazine. There were books everywhere in my house growing up. If you wanted to keep up, you really had to do your reading. You had to do your homework. You had to know what you were talking about. My parents were just not going to tolerate cruddy conversation. That was just not going to be. I grew up a bit of a bookworm.

Zibby: Did you grow up in New York? Where did you grow up?

Max: I grew up in Brooklyn Heights, which was sort of Brooklyn, but it's kind of Manhattan.

Zibby: It's not Manhattan. [laughs]

Max: Look, I feel like I have great street cred saying that I'm from Brooklyn.

Zibby: You do. It's super cool. You have major street cred in the literary universe. You are born and bred in the heart of the New Yorker. I give you credit for that.

Max: [laughs] I grew up in Brooklyn Heights. Went to Saint Ann's School. I don't know if you --

Zibby: -- Yeah, of course.

Max: Even though it's called Saint Ann's School and it was a very, very hippy-dippy place, I was surrounded by Jewish people. Everybody from the headmaster on down was Jewish. It was always sort of a fascination for my parents as well as me, was Jewish history, the Holocaust, but also Jewish literature. I remember as a kid going to this friend of my parents house for weekend -- they lived in Cape Cod or something like that; I was about twelve years old at the time -- and finding Gimpel the Fool on this person's shelf in the little room that was my room for the weekend. I took it off. It definitely was this love-at-first-sight moment. It was a moment where I was like, oh, my gosh. To a certain extent, The Lost Shtetl is my tribute to Isaac Bashevis Singer. There were books everywhere. We were very interested in Jewish topics and Jewish books. We were interested in all sort of books too. I think The Lost Shtetl is also my tribute to Gabriel García Márquez. One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of my favorite books. Macondo, the town there, was very much a model for Kreskol in a lot of ways.

Zibby: Your parents must be very proud of you. They must be kvelling and excited.

Max: I don't think that they will have figured out how to get on Facebook. [laughter] Maybe they’ll watch it afterwards.

Zibby: I'm sure this is one of many appearances you will be doing, so I'm sure they’ll catch something along the way. When you were saying, I grew up and there were books everywhere, how could I not be a writer? I'm just crossing my fingers that one of my four kids might actually want to write someday. I'm imagining Zoom 2030 when one of them says, I grew up with a lot of books around. I'll be like, yes! I did something good.

Max: I think it's the best way. Just put them in the room with the books. They’ll get it. They’ll take it up by osmosis or something.

Zibby: Exactly. I'm hoping that happens. It doesn't seem to be working, but whatever. I won't give up. So what happened between Saint Ann's and the New York Post and the book? What else in your day-job life? What happened writing-wise aside from those things? Or was that it? Was it college to the...?

Max: No, actually, after college, I went to Israel for a year. I went to a very not-Jewish college. I went to Dartmouth College, which is a wonderful school. Actually, I was talking about this to a reporter, Emily [indiscernible], last week. I definitely think that there are traces of being left alone in the wilderness that sort of gave me some inspiration for this book. When I graduated, I applied for graduate school. As I said, I always wanted to be a writer. Applied for graduate school. I got into an MFA program in Columbia for film, actually. I was going to do screenwriting. I think I was sort of sick of academia. I had been in school my whole life. I was a little exhausted with that whole structure. I thought, [distorted audio] more interesting with the next year. I don't know what it'll be. Then I decided, you know what -- there was this program in Israel, and I don't think it exists anymore, called the Arad Arts Project. Basically, you sit and you work on your art, whether it's painting or music or writing. It's out in Arad which is near Beersheba in the desert in Israel. I went for a year. It was supposed to be seven months. Then I wound up spending an extra five months there.

It was a very formative experience just because I was on my own in a completely different country talking to people who had completely different experiences from me and very, very sharp perspectives. When you're in Israel, you can speak to Arabs. You can speak to Jews. They live together. They live under the same tent. It's so starkly different. That was a great experience despite the fact that -- I was there during the intifada. [Distorted audio] a lot of pain, but it was nevertheless something that I feel very much formed me. Then when I came back, I worked at The Forward newspaper for about three or four years. It used to be The Yiddish Forward. Then about twenty years ago or so, maybe a little bit longer than that, they had an English version of it that they formed. That was a great experience. I was actually talking about this recently as well. When you work at one of these local newspapers, first off, there are so many people who call you because you're the only person that they can call to tell their stories. I had the lowest job on the totem pole in the sense that I was answering the phone. I was getting all the phone calls from every disgruntled person who just wanted to tell me about their evil landlord or about the implants that their dentist was putting into their teeth, real stories. Somebody did call me to tell me that.

I used to actually get calls from the widow of Chaim Grade who was a Yiddish poet who was one of the real luminaries in the world of Yiddish literature. She called me to yell at me every time The Forward mentioned Isaac Bashevis Singer who she regarded as the worst writer who ever lived and who had done such shame onto the Jewish people. It was really right out of a Cynthia Ozick story, this whole experience. It was a great experience. I was talking to people who had a lot to say and who had great stories. That was also [distorted audio]. Then I went to the New York Post which was a great gig. I was working at the home section, the real estate section. I was also just writing a lot food stories. Then because the travel desk was right next to the real estate desk, whenever the travel editor would go on trips, he would ask us to write his headlines and his captions. To thank us, he would send us places. He'd be like, "We have this trip to Italy coming up that we need written about. Do you want to go, Max?" Terrific, that's wonderful. [laughs] Then when he left -- this was an editor named David Landsel -- the powers that be at the Post were just like, "We have to figure out who we're going to hire to be the new travel editor. Until we figure that out, you guys take care of it." We were like, okay, fine, we know what we're doing. After a couple months, they were like, "You guys are doing fine. We don't need another travel editor." It became travel and real estate and food, which was a great job.

Zibby: Do you have a day job now, or are you mostly committed to being a novelist, or what?

Max: I'm definitely committed to being a novelist. The thing that I learned when my son was born, that I could only really get away with doing it if I am committed to waking up before six AM every day to actually get a few pages out there. I'm actually the editor of a commercial real estate magazine called the Commercial Observer, which is, in its way, also an extremely interesting gig just in the sense of the real estate community is almost this shtetl of billionaires to a certain extent. [laughs] The people who own New York, there are so many crazy people in that list. I've met most of them. They’ve all got these incredibly strange, bizarre stories that go with them. I don't know what my next book will be, but I think that’ll be influencing it.

Zibby: Wow, the shtetl of billionaires. That's a cool title too.

Max: The shtetl of billionaires, I'm going to trademark that right now.

Zibby: I have my little team getting the trademark while you're here. No, I'm kidding. I don't even really have a team. I have a tiny team. Anyway, so what are you working on next? Do you have another novel in the works?

Max: I don't know if I'm allowed to really talk about it because I think Harper owns me, body and soul, for the next sixty days or something like that. I'm not sure that I'm allowed to speak of that. One of the things that the long process has allowed me to do has been to just get onto the next thing. I have been working this whole time on new things. I definitely don't want to wait so long before the next thing comes out. There are a couple of different things that could be the next thing. I'm working on all of them at the moment.

Zibby: I feel like this is just the beginning for you of your lifetime of talent in this area. It's very exciting to see someone's debut and where it's going to go from here. It's just very cool. Now I love knowing that this green cover is all about Dartmouth. Who knew?

Max: You're not an alumnus, are you Zibby?

Zibby: No. I went to Yale. Although, I did spend a week at Dartmouth doing a tennis camp when I was in high school, so I feel like I can say I went to Dartmouth, right? No. [laughs]

Max: I feel like I can say I went to Yale because before I went to Dartmouth, [distorted audio].

Zibby: Great. So actually, we did all our schooling together as it turns out.

Max: Schooled together. [laughs]

Zibby: I had tons of friends who went to Dartmouth, my former sister-in-law. I've spent a lot of time there. Then my ex. Anyway, whatever, I won't go into it. Yes, I've spent a lot of time up at Dartmouth. I know that feeling of being in the woods. I could imagine being lost there in a community all unto yourself. Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?

Max: One of the things that I will say was I made a resolution in late 2016. I am going to finish this. I don't know what is going to happen to it, but this is going to be as good a piece of work as I can do. I am going to not stop every day until this thing is finished. I would wake up at five AM when my [distorted audio]. I feel like there's [distorted audio]. I am going to take something to completion. I'm not going to just have a good idea. I'm not just going to throw some things on the page. I am really going to think about it as a complete thing. I am going to work at it every day. It took a lot of time, but it paid off. My advice would be, get up early. People work better at night, but I personally work better in the morning.

Zibby: Me too. Yes, those morning hours before the kids wake up are sacred.

Max: Me time.

Zibby: Congratulations again on your book. I hope you have a great time at the JCC Book Fest, the Jewish Book Fest. It's so great you're going to be there. For all your upcoming stuff, I'll be rooting for you. Good luck.

Max: Thank you, Zibby. I hope it was just that one thing that I was frozen. I apologize.

Zibby: It's not your fault. It's technology. This happens all the time. There was in and out. This will be a podcast on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" as well eventually, not too long, but not today. I will take out all the bits and pieces that were not perfect. We will make it sound like we had no trouble at all when it's on the podcast.

Max: I love it.

Zibby: So there's that.

Max: There's that. Great. Zibby, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Zibby: No problem. Sorry again for the beginning introduction of stress.

Max: No worries.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Rumaan Alam, LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Rumaan. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" to talk about Leave the World Behind. I'm delighted to finally be talking to you.

Rumaan Alam: It's my great pleasure. I only wish that we were doing this in person because I can see into your home library, and it's absolutely beautiful. I would love to get in there and poke around on those shelves personally.

Zibby: You have an open invitation as soon as people are allowed to socialize again. I don't know when that will be. I miss having people here. I miss it. I loved having authors streaming in and out. You're welcome anytime.

Rumaan: Someday I'm going to take you up on that.

Zibby: Please do. As I mentioned, we were supposed to do this interview a while ago, but now you've had all sorts of great news that has come since the launch of the book, including today. It won't be when this airs, but today you found out you're now shortlisted for the National Book Award, which is really exciting. Congratulations.

Rumaan: Thank you.

Zibby: And also a Barnes & Noble pick and a Read with Jenna pick. What next for this book? [laughs]

Rumaan: The thing about writing a book, and I'm sure you've heard this from your guests in the past, is that it's just this very sustained leap of faith. You have absolutely no idea what will happen when the book exists. I'm also aware of the fact, as you know very well, there are so many great books every year that never really connect with the right readership. Sometimes it takes time for a book to find its way into the hands of the right readers. When that happens quickly, you know what a blessing it is. I know every step of the way, what a particularly thrill it is because the book isn't alive in any meaningful way until someone reads it. It just isn't. Those awards are wonderful. Being part of a television book club is wonderful, but the reason it's wonderful is in service of getting the book into the hands of the people who will bring it to life. That's what's exciting about it. The idea that more readers will come to it is a thrill, really a thrill.

Zibby: If you were to win an award and no one found out about it, let's say there's this secret Pulitzer Prize but you can't announce it, you wouldn't be excited?

Rumaan: I'd be excited because, of course, it's a statement about how those judges felt about the book. That's really just a statement about how those particular readers felt about the work.

Zibby: I'm just playing with you. It's fine.

Rumaan: Of course, it's gratifying to the ego. Every artist is possessed of an ego. Writing is just an act of ego, really. Of course, it's thrilling, but you have to think about what really is important in those moments. What thrills me, honestly, the most is when I see on Twitter or on Instagram -- I've seen this a bunch, and it's so lovely -- when readers get the book from the library, when the hold is released and they get the digital edition from the library. That's really thrilling to me. Look, the name of this podcast is moms don't have to time read. We live in a culture that doesn't make a lot of space for an experience of art. When people pay for your work, not in terms of their money but in terms of their attention, that's sacred, almost. It's really moving to me that people would spend the limited time that we all have, the hour before bedtime, with my work. It's really meaningful. I really love that.

Zibby: That's such a nice way to look at it. That's great. I love that. Will you please tell listeners who might not know what this is about a little about the plot and how you came up with the idea for it?

Rumaan: Leave the World Behind is a novel about a middle-class white family who live in Brooklyn. They're a professional couple. Amanda works in advertising. Her husband, Clay, works as a professor. They have two teenagers, Archie and Rose. The family, when we meet them, is heading out to Long Island for a holiday. They're not going to a super chic part of Long Island where you can go buy an expensive painting or have a thousand-dollar bottle of wine. They're going to a more quiet, understated part of Long Island. These parts do exist because, in fact, this is based very much on a place that my family and I went on vacation, beautiful, bucolic, rural farmland not far from the ocean, not far from the millionaires in East Hampton, but its own little quiet part of Long Island.

Zibby: Where is it? Can you say where it is?

Rumaan: Oh, it's my secret to keep. I will tell you later. The family goes on vacation. They have the experience that you want on vacation. They go and buy a bunch of fancy groceries. They make hamburgers. They lounge by the pool. They go to the beach. They stop at Starbucks on the way home from the beach. That's my dream vacation stuff. That's what I love to do. The second night they're in the house, there is a knock at the door. It’s late at night. They're in the middle of nowhere. No knows that they're there. It's not their primary residence. There's no reason someone should be knocking on the door. It's an older black couple named George and Ruth who tell Amanda and Clay that this is their house. They're the owners. They rented to them on Airbnb. They’ve come there because there's an emergency happening in New York City. From then, the book shifts from being a book about holiday and family to being a book about what you do in a moment of crisis. I feel like that's a good way of talking about what the book is without -- I don't really care about spoilers, but I'm mindful that some readers want to experience the shifts in this book for the first time themselves.

Zibby: We'll just leave it at that. Was the book inspired by your vacation?

Rumaan: Very much so. In 2017, we had had this beautiful vacation. At the end of that year, it was December and I was staying as a guest of the wonderful writer Laura Lipman at her home in New York City. It's on the Upper West Side. It was December. It was very cold. It was not far from the Hudson. When I left the apartment to run out and get a cup of coffee or something, it was just freezing cold, freezing cold. You know how in New York, you can have those patches of ice on the sidewalk? It never rained and it never snowed, so you don't actually know where this ice came from, but it's that kind of weather.

Zibby: I think they call it black ice.

Rumaan: It's just looming ice. You're like, what I want most right now is that feeling of summer vacation. I was remembering my own vacation. That particular moment, that stay, had really lodged in my head. I want to write a novel about vacation, but I wanted to push through it, push through the particulars of a family in a vacation home, which is a convention of books. There are many great books. I love that convention, but I wanted to find in that material, something with bigger implications, something that told us about not just family life, but cultural life, civic life, political life, the moment that we're all in right now. That was the attempt of the book.

Zibby: Looks like you hit the nail on the head.

Rumaan: I'll let readers decide, but thank you.

Zibby: Popular culture is saying you got it. Nice job. When you get an idea for a book, what comes next? Do you outline? Do you just sit and write it? Do you do any research? What's your process like?

Rumaan: That's a good question. Usually, what I do is I write into it for fifty pages, seventy pages or so. Then I make an outline. In those first fifty to seventy pages, what I'm looking for, really, is the sound of the book. To me, the sound of the book establishes everything, how I'm going to write about the people, what the people are going to be like. Somehow, the name of the person really defines how I write about them. It's just about nailing whatever the voice is. Once I've nailed the voice, I can sit down and say, what am I doing here? What is this story going to look like? I outline. Usually, what I try to do is confine an outline to a single piece of paper because it feels very doable. I can tape that piece of paper up onto the wall of my office. I can copy that piece of paper down in my notebook. I can carry it around with me. I can have this one little cheat sheet that says to me, this is what you're doing. This is the book. It is in twelve sections or four sections or whatever the structure is. When I say outline, I don't even mean the kind of outline that we made when we were in third grade and we were learning how to write a paper about the Declaration of Independence where it's the main idea and all this stuff.

Zibby: There are no Roman numerals?

Rumaan: No, no Roman numerals. Usually, what I do is I just put one, two, three, four, five. Here's the main idea of this section. Here are maybe how the characters will work. The outline is revised in tandem with the book. It's not a roadmap for a vacation destination. The math is changing as you're in progress. I adjust the outline. I change things around. I feel my way forward with some guide, but also a little bit by instinct.

Zibby: Interesting. Then once you do the writing, how long did it take for you to write this book?

Rumaan: I wrote this book very quickly. I wrote a draft of this book in about three weeks.

Zibby: Three weeks?

Rumaan: It fell out of me. Yes, I wrote a draft of the book very quickly, in about three weeks' time, but that doesn't reflect the amount of labor I had put in prior thinking about the book. I keep a notebook with me. I write sentences down. I write scenarios down. I write character names down. I write down ideas for scenes. I had a secret Twitter account where I was tweeting lines from the book. I tweet a lot, and I realized at some point that it's just a form of writing. I'm wasting that energy. I could channel that more productively if I tricked myself almost the way that you might trick yourself by getting off the subway two stops early, and then you're getting in your steps for the day. It almost feels like that, taking Twitter, a technology I use all the time, and forcing myself to engage in my fiction that way.

Zibby: What would you tweet?

Rumaan: What became the first chapter of this book was originally drafted as tweets.

Zibby: One line at a time?

Rumaan: Yeah, one sentence at a time, one thought at a time. I think that really helped me stay inside of the world of this book until I sat down and wrote it. I sat down and wrote it. The draft came out very quickly. It's very important for everyone to understand that that draft is very bad, very, very bad. It's the same relationship between a bowl of pancake batter and a finished pancake. The application of heat makes a pancake, and the application of time makes the book. It's revision, revision, revision, breaking it apart, breaking it into sections, looking at each section, seeing how each fits together, rewriting. Over time, you lost your sense of what material from that first draft exits in the final draft. It's really hard to say. For me, the work doesn't begin until I have those first three hundred pages. There's nothing to do. You're just talking theoretically. If you force yourself, as I usually do, to sit down and write, write, write almost like a marathon, don't look back. Don't correct. In a first draft -- the character's name is Amanda -- I could break that and call her Amy on some pages. It doesn't matter. I don't stop myself. I know I'm making mistakes. Revision is for addressing those mistakes. That period takes a very long time. It took a year, but that's what it's for. Good work takes time.

Zibby: Wow. I like that process. The secret Twitter account, did you ever unveil that it was you?

Rumaan: No, no, no, it's locked. No one can follow it. I'm the only one. I don't think my own account follows that account. It's totally locked. It's just an interface that I could switch my -- when you're inside Twitter, you can switch your identity to that other account, and then you can see all these sentences. It was just a fun way of staying engaged in exactly the same way that -- I'm sure you've seen this on the subway. You'll see somebody, an artist, sketching. If you don't have any artistic ability, that looks like an amazing thing to you. I think that what they're doing is just warming their hand. They're just indulging their eye. They're just sitting there. They have the time. They're commuting uptown or whatever. They’ll say, I'll just capitalize on this forty minutes that I have of sitting-down time to move my hand and use my eye. I think that that is so much of what being an artist is, is about keeping that muscle toned.

Zibby: Tell me a little more about your background and growing up and how you ended up here, how we got here, essentially. Where did you grow up? When did you fall in love with writing? Assuming you did.

Rumaan: That's an easy question to answer because I knew from a very early age that I wanted to be a writer, probably five. I was writing at that age. I think a lot of kids are inclined toward artistic expression, drawing. Kids can get really passionate about drawing. Both my boys have gone through periods where they're really passionate about making graphic novels. They're just reflecting what they take in as art. It's also because there's an impulse inside of you to communicate that way. Some people never grow out of that. I think I never grew of that. That was something I wanted to do deeply, and I knew that for a long time. I studied writing when I was an undergraduate. I studied at Oberlin College. I worked with a writer named Dan Chaon who's an extraordinary writer who blurbed this book, which is such a great honor for me. Then I moved to New York to work in magazines. As happens to so many people who have a particular feeling about art, reality intrudes. You've got to pay your rent. You have to join the labor force. You have to find a way forward. That can be difficult to do and also stay connected to the work that you care about. I tried to do it. I did do it. I worked in magazines. I had a lovely career in publishing. I also still wrote. I still exercised that muscle. In 2009, we had our first son. In 2012, we had our second son.

At some point in that period when my boys were little, little, little, I had a playdate with the writer Emma Straub who's also a novelist. She was my neighbor at the time. Emma and I went to college together. She said something that is so simple but so clarifying. Knowing my aspirations to write, knowing that I had been a writer all along in private, she said to me, "No one is ever going to ask you to write a book." That’s absolutely true. No one is. No one is ever going to ask you, unless you're Michelle Obama. Michelle Obama will be asked, but no one would ever ask me. The lesson being if there's something you want to do, you need to do it. I really do credit my children with this because having children, as I think it does for many people, clarified my own priorities. A lot of stuff falls away when you have kids because you just can't do it all. You realize that you care about your family life. You may realize you care more about your career than you had thought, and you want to commit yourself to that. You may realize that you care less about your career than you thought, and you want to be at home with your family while your children are young. This is what children can provide for so many people, mostly for women, to be honest, because this is not always the way that fathers have to reckon with this big question of, what is it you most want? In my household, there are two fathers, so it's a different dynamic.

What I learned in that moment when Emma said that to me was that I really wanted to try this. I didn't want to be fifty-one and not have given it a shot, not that fifty-one is so old. It's perfect valid to rebegin your career or your artistic life at that point, but I knew I wanted to do it. It was burning within me. My younger son came home in 2012. By 2014, I was working at New York magazine. I had an amazing job where I was editing the design issues, which was such great fun. Built into that job was a hiatus of, I think it was twelve weeks. It might have been fourteen. I had these fourteen weeks where I wasn't going to be working in an office. I wasn't going to be making any money, but I was going to be kind of free. My younger son was a baby. My older son was in school. He was in his Montessori school, his little preschool. Everything was kind of settled. I said to my husband, "I'm going to try something. I'm going to take these fourteen weeks, and I'm going to try something. You can't ask me any questions about it. You can't talk to me about what I'm doing. Every night at seven o'clock, if you're home --" He travels a lot for work -- "if you're home, you'll put the kids to bed. I'm going to sit down in the living room," which is where my desk was at the time, "and I'm going to work. In the morning, you're going to get up with the kids and let me sleep a little bit. I'm going to be focused on this."

Zibby: [laughs] Oh, my gosh, your saint of a husband.

Rumaan: I know. I know.

Zibby: I would be like, I don't like this plan at all. Absolutely not.

Rumaan: This is another big lesson from my career. For many people it is a spouse who provides this particular kind of stability, but it doesn't have to be. A lot of artists require an anchor in reality, somebody who cares as much about their work as they do. My husband provides that for me. He said, to his great credit, "Yes. You do what it is you need to try to do." For those fourteen weeks, Zibby, the boys went to bed at seven. I sat down at the desk from seven until one or two in the morning. I slept from two until six when everyone wakes up, of course. I would have breakfast with the kids. I would pack their lunch. I would take the little one to the daycare. I would come home. It would be eight thirty. I would have slept four hours. I would go back to bed. I would sleep until noon or eleven. I would get up. I would do the laundry, do the dishes, make sure dinner was ready, make sure everything was ready for seven PM so that when the kids went to bed I was back at my desk. The latest I think I ever stayed up was, I stayed up until four one morning, so I slept for two hours. I was younger then.

Also, I think you can kind of survive anything when you have a baby because the baby has so broken your relationship to time that it almost doesn't matter. When you have a small baby, you can be like, it's 1:50 and I have to be out of the house at two thirty, three. I'm going to sleep for eleven minutes. I'll feel better. I'll be fine. You do it because you don't have much of a choice. They showed me that I could do more than maybe I thought. In that period, I didn't do anything. I didn't watch any television. I barely had dinner with my husband. I barely spoke to him. I was really committed to that work. That's the period in which I wrote the first draft of my first novel. Work demands sacrifice. It demands sacrifice. What I had to sacrifice was that sleep, but it changed my career. It changed everything about my life because I sold that book. I found an agent based on that book at the end of that year in December. The book sold the following spring. It appeared the following summer. Completely changed my life.

Zibby: I hope your husband got a dedication in that book. He didn't, did he? You didn't even do it.

Rumaan: I think I dedicated it to the kids. [laughs]

Zibby: Oh, man, this poor guy. You need to go give him a hug after this conversation.

Rumaan: I can't stress how important it's been to my work. His faith in my commitment to it has been hugely important. This is demanding work. It's self-centered work. His acceptance of that and his belief in that and his confidence in my ability to do that have everything to do whatever success I've had. Very few artists, I think, feel confident at all times. You need to know that there's someone saying, no, no, no, you ought to be engaged in this. You're on the right path and it will pay off. I don't mean in terms of money. I just mean in terms of, you'll be happy. You'll have done the thing you want to do. When I said before about Emma challenging me or pointing out that no one would invite me to write a book, what I was thinking about was not, I want to have money or I want to have a career. It was that, I want to have done this. I cared about this. It was the thing I cared about since I was five.

I want to have been honest with myself and worked for that, and so I did. I'm really glad that I did. It makes it so much easier for me to be comfortable with the challenges of a life in which you're not always -- no matter what you do for a living, you care about it deeply, whatever, but there are other things to be done. Other reality intrudes. Family life intrudes. My responsibility as a parent is so much easier for me to bear because I know that I'm satisfied professionally and personally and artistically. I've catered to the monster inside of me. I've indulged myself, and so I can do the acts of parenting which have, as you know, nothing to do with the self, nothing. You're just a conduit. You're just a hand putting food into a mouth. That's what you are. That's the relationship. That's what you've committed to. That can be very difficult for people. That's a difficult relationship. It's also sacred and very meaningful. It's what I care about most.

Zibby: I feel like you just summarized what it means to be a mother, essentially, honestly, or a father. That's what the whole thing is. I would say a tiny percentage of, let me just say primary caregivers get that kind of filling of their bucket, so to speak, that enables them to then go back and do it. I've noticed the same way. I used to only work a little bit. Now I do this. I'm doing all these other things. Then I go out my door and I'm like, all right, pillow fight! [laughs]

Rumaan: I think it's true. It allows you to still be a person. It's a personal choice also. There are parents for whom that role is so fulfilling and it's all that they need. They can be really inside of that. It's not that I don't find it -- I find it deeply fulfilling. Words can't even really hold it, how fulfilling I find it. I think part of the reason I'm able to find fulfillment and joy in it is that I have this other thing. It's become important to me as a part of the practice of parenthood, because children are ego monsters, that they see firsthand the ways in which people have other things that they care about and that they can hold in their head the contradiction that you are the person who takes care of me and is always there for me, but sometimes you will not be there for me. Your not being there for me because you are a doctor working late, because you're a bus driver on your route, whatever it is, you are also doing as an act of care for me because you earn money and you take care of me. They can understand that over time. I think that's really a useful way to understand your place in the world. That's what I tell myself anyway. Who knows? No parent knows what they're doing, really.

Zibby: No, nobody knows what they're doing. I certainly didn't mean to say that I am not fulfilled by my children either.

Rumaan: Right. I know you are.

Zibby: I love being with my children. It is my greatest pride and joy. So are you working on anything new now? What are you up to?

Rumaan: When I described being at Laura Lippman's apartment in Manhattan, I was actually writing a different book. I've been trying to go back to that book. Leave the World Behind emerged and took over my life and my imagination. It was something that felt really urgent that I wanted to write. I'm glad that I did. I want to go back to this other book. At the moment, I'm teaching, actually. I'm teaching at Columbia and at Pace. I am, as so many parents are, kind of orchestrating my children's education as well in this particular period. I write as a freelance writer and critic. I'm encaged in a lot of stuff. To be honest, I don't feel wholly committed to the work of the fiction right now. In some ways, I think that that's natural. When I'm charged with talking about my third book, it's going to be difficult for me to be engaged in thinking about my fourth book in the same way that very few people are eager to run out and get pregnant again when they have a four-month-old at home because you're in that moment. You need a little time and a little space. I don't know, but I do intend to write another book. I hope that I get that clarity soon. I think when the semester ends and it's winter, and hopefully we'll have a new government in this country, I might feel a little less quotidian stress and be able to relax into a fiction again. That's my hope.

Zibby: Then in the meantime, this is going to be a movie or a limited series? What's the latest?

Rumaan: Yes, it's going to be a feature film that the writer and director Sam Esmail is writing. He's adapting the novel. He'll direct the film for Netflix. Sam is such a brilliant filmmaker, if you don't know his work. He made a show called Homecoming, I think it was for Amazon, with Julia Roberts. He made a show called Mr. Robot. Sam has a very particular sensibility that really, really suits this material. He understands how to find unease in what looks like elegant calm. Homecoming is such an extraordinary show. Julia Roberts, who is the star of Homecoming, will star in this adaptation of Leave the World Behind, which is insane. Every time I say it, saying it does not make it sound real. Denzel Washington will also star in the film. It's in such good hands. It's part of a larger charmed run I've had with this particular book to find collaborators like that who you can put the material into their hands. What a win.

Zibby: That's amazing. I'm so excited to see it. That's going to be great. What advice would you have for aspiring authors?

Rumaan: I think that you have to actually do the labor. It's so hard to. One of the things that I always stress when I'm teaching is that there's more time than you might think there is.

Zibby: Especially if you stay up until four in the morning.

Rumaan: Look, not everyone is wired to do something that deranged. I totally understand that. The significant factor in that is not just my husband's help, but that was huge. It's that I wasn't working for that period of time. I could never have done that and had to go to a day job. Most people have to. That's a real luxury. When I say that there's always time, what I usually mean is that there are ways of tricking yourself, much as I tricked myself using Twitter. That's a great example. When I teach, I always say when I'm feeling really stuck and really desperate, I set myself a very arbitrary and accomplishable goal, usually with some sense of play, like, you have to write 333 words. You can't write more than that, but you cannot write less than that. It has to land at 333. You don't have to write the thing that you are thinking about writing. You can write anything, but it has to last that long. Or turn on an episode of Friends, turn off the sound, and sit there and write until that episode is over. The truth is that even on a really busy day, you would probably allow yourself the particular indulgence of sitting still and watching a sitcom for twenty-two minutes and saying, I'll do the laundry the second this is over. Let that TV run with a notebook on your lap or with the laptop on your lap, and write that whole time. Then when the show's over, turn it off. Go deal with the laundry. Get the dog walked. Take out the checkbook and deal with your bills, whatever it is that your life involves.

Twenty-two minutes is not a lot, but it's a step forward. It's just like going to gym. We've all had that experience when it's January and you're like, god damn, I've done nothing but eat since Thanksgiving. I've really got to go to the gym. You reactivate your gym membership. Then you're like, I can't go today because I have to take the kids to soccer. I can't go next week because, actually, they have this dentist appointment that I forgot about that I made eleven months ago. Why did I make it now? You find all these ways to tell yourself you can't do it. Then one day your resolve breaks. You're like, well, fuck, I guess I have to go to the gym. You go to the gym. You're like, I'll just go for thirty-eight minutes. I'll ease into it. You go, and what happens? You feel amazing. You're like, I went. I did it. I didn't go for an hour. I went for thirty-eight minutes, but you know what? I did it. Now I know I can do it. I'm going to do it next Tuesday too because I know the kids are in soccer. I can drop them and go and run for thirty-eight minutes and come back and pick them up. Everything is fine. The world will continue on. Making space for writing in your life, if that is something you prioritize, can function the same way. If you go to the gym for thirty-eight minutes a week, it might take you six months to feel like, yeah, I feel strong, I feel better, I feel good, but you will get there. If you write for twenty-two minutes a week and you're producing three hundred words, yeah, it's only three hundred words, but six months later -- I can't do math. I just realized I backed myself into a corner.

Zibby: I get the point. [laughs]

Rumaan: You're at like seven thousand words. That's not that much, but six months later, you're at fourteen thousand words. Then you're like, wow, I have one fifth of a book here. I did it. I put one foot in front of the other and did it. That's exactly the same way that everyone who does this does it. Every writer you admire who you think, oh, my god, I could never do what Jane Smiley does, I could never do what Louise Erdrich does, I could never do what Margaret Atwood does, yeah, they're all geniuses, there's no question, but Jane Smiley has to sit down, take out her pencil, and be like, all right, it's time. I got to show up and do it. Anyone can do that. As Emma said to me all those years ago, very few people will invite you to do that. If that's what you want to do, you have to find a way to do it.

Zibby: Wow. That was a pretty tempting pseudo-invitation. I feel like that was very inspiring.

Rumaan: Get to work. What can you do? It's just work. It is just work. If there's one thing we understand in this country, because we have such a warped relationship with work, it's that we can do more. You can squeeze time out. To be honest, I don't have much of a life beyond this, to be perfectly clear. At this moment, no one's doing any of these things, but I very rarely go to the movies. I very rarely go out to dinner. I very rarely have a night where I'm just out with friends doing nothing. I spend a lot of time here at this very desk where I'm talking to you, but it's a choice that I've made. I've published three books in the span of six years. There's a direct relationship between my productivity and the other choices I've made. There's a lot of privilege in play there. There's a lot of luck in play there. Fundamentally, it is accomplishable. If you want to write, if you care about it as I do, I think you'll find a way. You just have to allow yourself to find a way.

Zibby: Awesome. I will be sitting here mostly at this desk. You will be over there. I'll think about you on the invisible Zoom once you're off and imagine you writing and not having any fun. No, I'm kidding. It was lovely to meet you.

Rumaan: Likewise.

Zibby: One day, you'll come here. We won't have to be apart from a screen. This book was amazing. I'm honored to have talked to you. Best of luck with all the great successes that you deserve. Go get a bottle of wine for your husband.

Rumaan: [laughs] Thank you so much, Zibby. It was really lovely. Bye.

Zibby: Bye.

Cheryl Strayed, THIS TELLING

Zibby Owens: This is a recording of the Instagram Live that I did with Cheryl Strayed. I was over the moon to be interviewing her. I have been a fan for so long. You can probably tell in my fandom, adulation, and all the rest when I talk to her. I hope I did an okay job. I was stuttering. I was a little bit nervous, actually, because I'm such a fan. Anyway, Cheryl Strayed is the author of the number-one New York Times best-selling memoir Wild, the New York Times best sellers Tiny Beautiful Things and Brave Enough, and the novel Torch. Wild was chosen by Oprah Winfrey as her first selection for Oprah's Book Club 2.0. Her books have been translated into nearly forty languages around the world and have been adapted for both the screen and the stage. The Oscar-nominated movie adaptation of Wild stars Reese Witherspoon as Cheryl and Laura Dern as Cheryl's mother, Bobbi. Tiny Beautiful Things was adapted for the stage by Nia Vardalos who also starred in the role of Sugar/Cheryl. By the way, that's who was in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. The play was directed by Thomas Kail and debuted at The Public Theater in New York City. Cheryl is the host of the New York Times hit podcast, "Sugar Calling," and also "Dear Sugars" which she co-hosted with Steve Almond. Her essays have been published in The Best American Essays, The New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, Salon, The Sun, Tin House, The New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in fiction writing from Syracuse University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota. She lives in Portland, Oregon. I spoke to Cheryl on our Instagram Live about her new story called This Telling which is an Amazon Original Story, kind of a mini-novella. She calls it a long story. Anyway, that's what we talked about. It's really great. It just came out.

Cheryl Strayed: Hi. Zibby, hi. How are you?

Zibby: I'm good. How are you?

Cheryl: Oh, my gosh, it's so nice to see you.

Zibby: It's so nice to see you too. I am so excited to be talking to you. You're such a hero of mine. Thank you for doing this.

Cheryl: Thank you. I think you're pretty awesome yourself. I just heard you say that you're a memoir addict. I love memoir addicts. I'm one too.

Zibby: We could talk about these all day. Have you read a good one lately? Should we chat memoirs?

Cheryl: Oh, gosh.

Zibby: I know. There's so many, right?

Cheryl: Yeah. The minute people ask me that question, my mind goes blank. I can tell you a couple of amazing books I've read. The Undocumented Americans, are you familiar with this book?

Zibby: I'm not.

Cheryl: Karla Cornejo Villa -- I should've written down her name.

Zibby: It's okay. I caught you unaware.

Cheryl: The Undocumented Americans, really a stunning, amazing book. I love Motherland by Elissa Altman.

Zibby: Me too.

Cheryl: Did you love that?

Zibby: Love it. Love her. Such a huge fan.

Cheryl: Me too. Also, I'm almost done reading Caste by Elizabeth Wilkerson, which is not a memoir. She writes about aspects of her life. Wow, have you read that book yet?

Zibby: It's on my shelf. I have it. I just have not gotten there yet, but I'm getting to it.

Cheryl: I feel like everyone in America should read Caste.

Zibby: Yes. My mother was like, "You have to read this book." If nothing else, I'm going to read it for her.

Cheryl: That's great. Do you have a child behind you? I'm going to put on my glasses so I can see this.

Zibby: Oh, gosh. Thank you for telling me.

Cheryl: There was a little urchin popping up.

Zibby: Guys, get out. Thank you. Sorry. It's five o'clock on a school night. I'm very sorry. This is what happens. [laughs]

Cheryl: Oh, no worries. I have two teenagers. I don't think they're going to pop up, but you never know.

Zibby: You never know. Let's talk about your latest which I listened to in the car the other morning with my husband and my sister-in-law and everybody. We just loved it, This Telling, part of the Out of Line series which are all about women on the verge of a breakthrough. You're in such good company with Roxane Gay and Emma Donoghue and all these great women authors writing about feminist stuff. For those people on the Instagram Live who haven't read it or don't even know about it that much yet, can you please tell us a little more about the story?

Cheryl: I was approached by [indiscernible] and the editors there to write a piece of feminist fiction, a short story. They basically said, whatever you want to do, just make sure it's feminist. Of course, I thought, well, that's everything I write. I am a feminist. It's part of all of my work. When I started to think about what I was going to write about, what kept emerging is this story that I have been wanting to tell and trying to tell in one form or another for actually many years. It's rooted in a piece of my own personal history. It's one of those scenarios where I've always thought, what if it went the other way? It's this. When my mom was in her teens in the 1960s, she became pregnant. She was not married. She got pregnant. Because abortion was illegal then and, as we know, there was a lot of social censure against women having babies without men, she was basically forced to marry my dad. That's why my parents got married. My mom was pregnant with my sister. She had me and my brother and sister. Onward she went.

When I was a teenager and really asking my mom about her life, she told me this story about the choice that she had, which was really no choice at all. Those of you who are familiar with my other work know that my parents' marriage was a terrible one. My father was abusive to her. It was a very hard thing to endure. The little creative writer in me really reflected upon the impact that that kind of lack of reproductive choice, the impact of that on girls and women. In my mother's life, it pushed her in one direction. The main character in This Telling, a young woman named Geraldine, finds herself in the exact same situation my mom found herself in. It's the mid-sixties. She's just out of high school. She finds out she's pregnant. What was fun and fascinating for me to do is just imagine, what if my mom had taken this other track? What would've happened? What would be the outcome of that? With Geraldine, I followed her. The story opens up when she's seventeen. It ends when she's seventy. I follow her. The story is very, very, as you know, little micro-chapters as we follow her over the course of her life and how she reckons with that decision she made back in the sixties.

Zibby: Wow. It brings up so many what-ifs for so many people, and especially in light of all the prevalence of DNA testing and everything that's going on. A friend, I just saw the other day, just told me that she found out she was adopted. She's sixty years old. This happens all the time now. All these things that we thought were secrets or that people thought were secrets are no longer secrets. I feel like that's really what your story was about. It's this corrosive power of secrets and how keeping them can just affect everything from the inside out for the rest of your life, more so than whatever actually happened in some cases.

Cheryl: Completely. I'm so glad you picked up on that because that's what I was really also trying to interrogate, is the way that silence is always serving in cooperation with shame. The reason we have secrets is we're ashamed to tell the truth. Of course, as we've seen over and over again, that especially when it comes to the realities of the lives of women, the lives of mothers, the radical act of telling the truth is a radical act. Change can't be made until people say, as you see -- I almost just said me too. Me too when it comes to sexual violence and sexual harassment. Me too when it comes to abortions or finding yourself in relationships or situations that you wouldn't have imagined or expected. So much of, essentially, women's bodies are cloaked in shame. This story, for me, was about the impact of shame on one woman's life in the form of my main character Geraldine, but also her movement, we don't want to spoil the story, but her movement towards stepping out of that shame. In some ways, the only way to reject shame is to tell the truth about who you are. That is just a fact. That’s so much easier said than done, especially if you're someone like Geraldine who has been really steeped in a culture, in a generation that said, no, you should be ashamed.

Zibby: It's hard to believe, maybe because I live in New York, that there are still places that view all of the choices as not really choices now, that there are different tolerances, I should say, of all sorts of things, and control and all these things. Anyway, away from politics.

Cheryl: Zibby, I want to say something about that because I think it's really an important thing for us to remember. I think a lot of American women sort of think, oh, yeah, we have access to birth control. Abortion has been legal for a long time. We have all kinds of choices when it comes to reproduction. First of all, those things are very much being threatened on many fronts right now. Also, what I found is we even have kind of revisionist history about that. When I was writing This Telling, like all stories, it always goes through an editorial process. Geraldine, my character, she gets pregnant in 1964. The editor was like, "Wait a minute, wasn't birth control legal by then?" It really was fascinating for me because I think a lot of people are like, yeah, it's been legal since the sixties. Then when I actually did the research and learned that, technically, a very small group of women had access to the pill earlier in the sixties, and they were married women in certain states, that they literally had to have permission from their husband to be prescribed the pill. It really wasn't until the early seventies that women in all states could get the pill even if you weren’t married, which was later than I even imagined. That was the other piece of that. It's, in some ways, a historical story. It only goes back to '64, but that's been more than fifty years now. I think we forget what it was really like for women who were coming of age in the sixties. We think of it as this wild and free time. Actually, most of America was really quite still very conservative, certainly when it came to issues of sex and female bodies.

Zibby: Tell me about writing something like this which, in audio form, was forty-five minutes. I'm not even sure how long it would have been had I read it in hard copy. Tell me about trying to get so much into this format. This is not a common length, necessarily. It's not a short story. It's more like a novella of sorts. You've done in-depth memoir and all the rest. What was this particular assignment like for you?

Cheryl: I'm so glad you're asking about that. What I try to do with everything I write is I try to do something new. I try to stretch myself. Trust me Zibby, there were so many times where I cursed myself. Like I said, it starts when she's seventeen and ends when she's seventy. To really try to tell that much of a life in that small of a space -- it is a short story, but it's a long short story. To try to fit that in was a challenge. With the style -- I don't know if you noticed. I'm sure you noticed.

Zibby: I did. The chapters?

Cheryl: I had to be kind of minimal in the language. Each chapter is almost like a little sketch, just a sketch of a moment or one scene or a gesture or a thought. I tried, in some cases, to summarize a whole era in a very concise way. It was really fun for me on the level of language of trying to say as much in a most economical fashion as I could.

Zibby: It's so funny. My husband, sometimes I read him books. Sometimes I make him listen to audiobooks like this, and especially in the car. This one, he listened to. I was like, "What did you think? That was so great." He was like, "I just felt like it was very abrupt. Each chapter ended in such an abrupt way." I was like, "But that was so great because then you wanted to listen to the next chapter." I think that's what propels a reader on so well, the shortness, the right to the point of it, basically. That's the whole trick of a writer, is getting an image into somebody else's head in the least amount of words, unless you're heavily invested in the actual beauty of each individual sentence, but you have to do your job. It has to get the point across. With the shoes, for instance, that was such a perfect thing. I won't give anything away. The shoes, the spotting each other at the mall, these little moments with just little -- it's great. It's just amazing.

Cheryl: It's definitely, for me, a challenge as a writer to let each piece be what it is. I would say that most of my work, I'm much more expansive and much more like, I'm going to describe everything and tell the full story behind all of these details. That was the cool part, is trying to do that very minimalistic, abrupt -- I wouldn't use the word abrupt, but certainly concise and knowing that there's so much off the page that I'm hoping that the reader in their mind will elaborate on, if that makes sense.

Zibby: Of course it makes sense.

Cheryl: Kristen Bell read it.

Zibby: Yes, I know. That was so cool. That was so neat.

Cheryl: It's funny. As I was writing this piece, it was late last year, early this year, my daughter and husband and I were binge-watching The Good Place. It felt perfect that she was the one to read it.

Zibby: Did you get to pick? Did you have any say in that, or not?

Cheryl: I had a little say. She's the perfect choice.

Zibby: That's excellent. You've been writing for so long. I was on your Instagram earlier. You had the picture of yourself twenty-five years ago for Wild. I was like, wow, was it that long ago? When you read your writing, it feels like it happened yesterday. You're so in it. This sense of immediacy is just overpowering. Yet it's from a long time ago. You've been writing and producing all this stuff about all these periods of your life. I know you say you like to experiment with form, but how do you keep it interesting to yourself? How do you keep coming up with new stuff? How do you keep it going so well? What's the secret?

Cheryl: It's true, I've been a writer since I was nineteen. I'm fifty-two now. With Wild, I didn't actually write the book until much later. I've written all along the way. I have been publishing work since I was in my twenties. One of the ways to keep it alive is I always do take on a challenge. With every piece, I don't feel like, okay, I've got all these years of writing behind me. What I feel like is, how am I going to pull this off? I always feel afraid. I always feel like I can't do it. One of things I say over and over is that the way it feels to me to write a book is that I can't write a book. The way it feels to me to write a short story is, I can't write a short story. I can't even tell you how many times during This Telling that I just thought, I give up. I surrender. I'm retiring. I can't do it. Then you persevere. You get through it. You do your best. That’s the thing, too, that I want to say.

I do want to tell people, you can go to Amazon and get my story, This Telling, just clickity, click, click. You could also get the whole collection, my story along with all the other amazing writers who are in the collection. What I always feel really full in my heart, whether it be I'm writing a short story like This Telling or my next book or Wild, is that I'm trying to do my very best. I'm trying to use all of my intelligence. I'm going to try to put my whole heart into that work. I labor over every word again and again and again, but my work ends with the writing. I can't help it if people love it or if they hate it or if they're indifferent to it. I try to really just focus on the work and not on people's opinions of that work. I think that that in some ways keeps me really alive as a writer because I'm putting my focus always on, how can I make the best words on the page today, or on the computer screen today? I think if I shifted my attention to being like, do they love it, do they hate it, what do they think? that's when I would lose my grounding as a writer.

Zibby: Interesting. When you first came out with Wild and you shared everything, it's like you're an open book. We know all about so much stuff about you. Do you feel as you're going through life that you make different decisions about what you want to share, what you feel comfortable sharing? Do you regret any of the earlier sharing? Is there anything you'd want to take back? How about your kids? Where are you in this today?

Cheryl: There's nothing I would take back. My first pieces when I first began publishing back in my twenties, they were essays that were extremely revealing like Wild is, two essays. One's called "The Love of My Life." One is "Heroin." They both ended up in Best American Essays. They both introduced me to a big audience in a situation where I was really laying bare my heart. It was extremely educational for me. It was a sort of practice for what would happen with Wild which was a million times bigger, but that people who I don't know would know a lot about my personal life. What I try to do as a memoirist and personal essayist is really to try to be as vulnerable and brave as I could possibly be about telling the truth about who I am and about my experiences in my life, shucking off that thing, that silence and shame that we were talking about. My character in This Telling essentially lived her life under the trap of silence and shame. I, as a writer, do the opposite of that. I'm like, if I'm ashamed about it, I'm going to write about it. I do think that, for me, it was really important to be mostly vulnerable with myself.

I'm definitely careful about the things I write about other people. I don't say, okay, I'm just going to say everything. I'm going to talk about my siblings. I'm going to talk about my husband. I'm going to talk about my kids. It's not that I don't write about them. When I do write about them, I am more considered because I don't think it's my right to violate their privacy. I try to violate my own privacy, not other people's. Of course, inevitably when you write about people, you do have to sometimes announce to the world things about them that they wouldn't otherwise tell. I try to do that with a lot of love and respect and also sometimes permission. My kids are teenagers now. They haven't read my books, but a lot of their peers have. I feel okay with it. I think that someday they’ll come to my books and they’ll be grateful that they can see the inner life of their mom. I would certainly have loved to have that.

Zibby: That's a nice way to look at it. I don't know. Would I want to know the inner life of my mom? I'm not sure. [laughs]

Cheryl: My mom's been dead a long time. I would love that. I would love to have that. I think when your mom is still alive and you're active, that maybe you still need to have that kind of boundary. I certainly by no means would ever say to my kids, okay, time to read Mommy's books now. I think that they’ll come to them when they do. It could be well into their adulthood.

Zibby: So what are you working on now? What's your next book?

Cheryl: I'm working on another book. I just finished writing a screenplay. I was hired to write a screenplay about a very interesting person. I can't say who it is. I finished that. I'm doing some revisions on that right now and working on my next book. Listen, it's a novel, but then I'm also working on a memoir. I keep changing my mind about which one I'm going to finish first. I'm kind of running two races at the same time. I'm not sure who's going to win. Memoir or novel? Memoir or novel? It's funny. Wild was published in March of 2012. Then Tiny Beautiful Things was published literally four or five months later, which is insane. I had a crazy year of book promotion, more than a year to be honest. I just wonder because I'm writing these two books at the same time -- they won't, probably, come out four months apart, but they might come out in quicker succession than expected.

Zibby: How are you toggling back and forth like that? How are you structuring your time? How are you allotting time to each project? How do you even, in your head, keep it straight? Is it just, you pick it up when you are inspired for each one?

Cheryl: I'm going to actually do a little writing retreat soon. I think what's going to happen is -- I'm at the moment of truth, like, okay Cheryl -- because I can't. I can't really get to that total sink-in mode until I commit. I've written a bit of both, a substantial amount of both. There's a certain point where I'm like, now this one, I'm diving in. That decision's coming very soon. You're right. I don't go day by day. I'll work for a month on this and get stuck. Then I'll work for a month on this and get stuck. I'm going to have to make a decision. Do you have a vote? Novel or memoir? Oh, you're a memoir addict.

Zibby: I was going to say, I vote for memoir all the time. I also love fiction, though. I read a ton of fiction. I love both. There's just something about memoirs that’s so intimate where I know it's you. It's not like I suspend disbelief and it's a character. I can still get really emotionally invested, and I love it. With a memoir, it's literally, like what you were saying, someone's just giving you their diary. They're like, here, let me put this in your hand. Then I'm going to just stand by and let you read it. I just feel this enormous gratitude to memoirists because I'm like, thank you. Thank you for trusting the reader, essentially, with what you're writing. I think it always helps so much. It helps somebody with what you're going through.

Cheryl: Totally. It's interesting, absolutely. Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things and Brave Enough, all three of them nonfiction, so many people say, you helped me with these books. My first book, Torch, is a novel. Lots and lots of people read that and say, oh, my gosh, that helped me so much. I saw myself in these characters. I do think that, for me, really good fiction, it does that thing where you actually feel like you're reading about real people. You can identify with that character as much as you identify with somebody who happens to be a real person. I think that it can have that function. I will say writing This Telling made me feel like, oh, my gosh, it's so fun to be back in the world of fiction again because you can change your character's plot. You can be like, wait a minute, let's have her do this instead of that. Whereas memoir, you're stuck with the plot of your own life.

Zibby: That's true. Memory, of course, is a big constraint. You talked about writing a screenplay. What has it been like entering the Hollywood land of life? What is like being in the entertainment world in that way?

Cheryl: A whole new universe. It really is a new universe. First of all, the Wild movie experience was as good as it could possibly be for a writer. I have friends who have had really bad experiences in Hollywood. Most writers have the experience of having their book optioned and they're so excited about it and it's glorious, and then nothing happens. I had the great fortunate of having Reese Witherspoon. She was partnered with this producer, Bruna Papandrea. They were just like, we're going to make this movie. We're going to get it done. It was amazing. They got to work on it. They hired Nick Hornby to write the script. Next thing you knew, we were rolling. We shot it in Oregon. I was really very involved with everything. They sent me the script. I would weigh in on it. They had me on the set. I got to become friends with all the people who made the movie, Laura Dern who played my mom and Reese who played me and lots of folks. It was just a wonderful experience.

What was really cool about it is, I knew from the start that I was going to need to not be like, wait a minute, cut, that's not how it is. That's not how the book is. I had to really realize this film is not my book. My book is my book. My book is the thing I made. What they're making is an interpretation of this. It's its own thing. If you only see the movie, you didn't really have the Wild experience. There's so much more in the book. I think that the movie did a really beautiful job being true to the book in a lot of ways and honoring the book, but there's stuff in the book that there couldn't be in the movie. They had to really streamline it more, as you do. Now being a writer in Hollywood too just as a sideline job has been really fun. Like I said, I'm really into trying new stuff. That's how "Dear Sugar" was born. I was asked to write an advice column. I said, "I'm not an advice giver. I don't write advice columns." Then there, I went for it. It was honestly one of the biggest things of my life, a really powerful thing. When I was asked to write this screenplay, I was afraid. I thought maybe I can't do it. Then I did it. I felt like, wow, I learned so much in that process. I'll be able to talk about it more directly someday, I hope. I do hope the movie gets made because it's a really cool experience. It's a different world, but it's also a wonderful -- I learned a lot about writing in writing in that very new form.

Zibby: I think we need to explore at some point, why you keep thinking you can't do it and why you're scared at the beginning of projects when all evidence is to the contrary. I guess that's just the way people are.

Cheryl: Would you please be my therapist, Zibby?

Zibby: No problem.

Cheryl: It's because I'm damaged. I'm laughing, but I'm telling you the truth. I really always think I can't do it. Then I always do it. It's just part of me. It's my psyche. I don't think it's necessarily a sign of weakness. I don't know that it's something I have to fix. Maybe it's just that I'm embracing it really fully and saying, this is how I feel. This is how it feels. It's scary. It's hard. The fact that I always meet that fear and difficulty with essentially saying, I'm going to persist anyway in doing it, I think that's what matters in the end.

Zibby: You're absolutely right.

Cheryl: I think I'm not alone. I can't read the comments, but are people saying, I feel that way too?

Zibby: I haven't been reading them either, but I guarantee you, I know other people are feeling that way because most authors I talk to are like, that must have been a fluke. I hope I can do it. It's not just you.

Cheryl: Is it called imposter syndrome or something? What's weird is whenever I hear that phrase, imposter syndrome, I don't feel like an imposter in that kind of larger way. I definitely feel like, yep, I am a writer. This is my call. I've answered that call. To me, the imposter is more on the daily. There I am sitting in front of my laptop, and I have to do what I feel I cannot do.

Zibby: This is what I say to my daughter when she gets scared to go to school or something like that. We have this mantra. I've done it before, and I can do it again. I just have her say that over and over or I write it on a little piece of paper. Now that's our thing. You're free to use that if that helps. [laughs]

Cheryl: It's a great one.

Zibby: What advice would you have to aspiring authors?

Cheryl: So much advice, but let me just give a little bit. I think that this thing we're talking about is really key. I would say that most writers I know struggle with this very thing I was just talking about, that sense of doubt or doom, or I tried and I failed and I can't do this, that voice in your head that keeps you from writing. You have to come up with a way to work with that. Probably, what's going to happen isn't that suddenly one day you're going to be like, I'm a great writer and everything I say is brilliant, and so let me just type away. That's probably not going to happen. I don't know one person who writes that way. You need to learn how to manage those voices in your head and decide that you're going to continue the work even if it's hard and even if it feels impossible or scary. You also have to find a way to glide past the external voices who say that's not a very good career plan or hardly any writers make a living from writing or all of those practical advice givers who basically want you to go get what they call a real job.

What I would say to anyone who really wants to be a writer is writing is a real job. It's the realest work I've ever done. Of course, it's fraught with all kinds of -- there are no guarantees to any kind of artist in this world that you'll ever have that external success that manifests itself in a check in the mail. We know that you won't get the check if you don't try. We know that you won't succeed as a writer if you don't write. Decide to keep faith with that. Decide to keep faith with the daily practice of doing it. By daily practice of doing it, I don't mean you have to write every day. I mean whatever little fire that you have burning in you that tells you you're a writer, feed that fire. Do that work. Whether you write one time a month for a day or write every day, come up with some system where you get the work done in spite of all of the forces against you that live both in your head and out in the world.

Zibby: Once you finish something great, do you allow yourself to be like, actually, this is pretty awesome, once it's all done?

Cheryl: Yeah, every single time. Here's the other thing. I guess that's the benefit for me of being an experienced writer now. I actually can see, I know the pattern. The pattern is, I can't do this. This is impossible. I can't do it. I quit. I quit. No, no, no. Then I keep going. I keep going, and keep going, and keep going. I get to the end. Then I look at it. I think, wait a minute, what was wrong with me? This isn't so bad. This is actually kind of okay. It might not be perfect or the best thing I've ever written and some people might not love it, but hey, it stands up, man. I did it. I made it. The reason it's such hard labor is we writers, we make something that didn't exist before. We made a story where there was no story. We made a poem where there was no poem. We made a play, a screenplay, whatever it is. Once you have it there before you, it's hard not to have some gratitude and respect for it. Yeah, I feel great when I finish something.

Zibby: See, you're cured. Our session is over. [laughs]

Cheryl: That's right. My therapist, Zibby, has now helped me. It's so much like running a marathon or hiking a long trail if we want to use Wild as the metaphor. Every time I go on a hike, there are times where it's like, okay, this is hard. It's hard to keep pushing up the mountain. Then you get there and you're like, this is glorious. That was worth it. Persistence is such a key piece of being a writer.

Zibby: That's amazing, and also loops back in with This Telling and the whole feminist theme of the entire series, of the entire collection. It's all about breaking through and doing great work and achieving and not giving up.

Cheryl: That's right, and staying strong even through the hard times. Full circle.

Zibby: Full circle. Cheryl, thank you so much. I was so excited to do this with you. Again, I have so much respect for you. It's been so nice getting to talk to you one on one. Thank you.

Cheryl: It's really, really lovely to talk to you as well. Thank you for all of you who are listening to us and tune into this. I hope you go and read This Telling. I hope you enjoy it.

Zibby: Yes, absolutely. I think I have a code on Audible because they're my sponsor now. You can get a free month on Audible. Audible.com/zibby, and you get a free month of Audible. Use it to get This Telling.

Cheryl: You can listen to it on Audible like you did or you can go read it. Go do Zibby's link, everyone.

Zibby: If you want. You don't have to, but I just realized. Anyway, thank you so much. Stay in touch.

Cheryl: You too. Bye, Zibby. Thank you.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

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Brooke Adams Law, CATCHLIGHT

Zibby Owens: Welcome to "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." Congratulations on Catchlight. So awesome.

Brooke Adams Law: Thank you. I'm really excited.

Zibby: Start by telling the story of the prize you won and how this whole novel came to be.

Brooke: Oh, my gosh, okay. It's a little bit of a journey. I don't know if you're even ready. I had the idea in the summer of 2007, so this is thirteen years in the making, which is part of the reason why it's so exciting. The way that it came to be originally was I had this idea for a book. It's twofold. My grandmother had recently died of Alzheimer's disease. Also at the time, I had just graduated college. I was reading this book by Madeleine L'Engle, one of her lesser-known books called The Severed Wasp. That book is about this woman, Katherine, who's in her eighties. She's a concert pianist. For her whole career, she travels the whole world. She retires. She comes home to New York City to make peace with her life and really process her memories and figure out, what was that whole life I just lived about? I started asking this question. What happens if we don't get to do that at the end of our life? What happens if you go through this process of having dementia or Alzheimer's and you don't remember your life? What happens then? That was the genesis of the book. In any case, I started writing. I ended up with a draft. I was like, I know that it can be better. I have no idea how to make it better. I decided to get my MFA degree. I spent the two years of my program, I started over from the beginning, wrote the whole book again; started over a third time, wrote the whole book again.

In any case, this brings us all the way up to 2014. I went gangbusters, queried 125 agents, was entering contests, was pitching small presses. It's no after no, after no, after no. Then also, the silence, silence, silence from other people. [laughs] I put it away for a little while. Then in 2019, I entered, for the second time, the Fairfield Book Prize contest. The first time around, I didn't even make the final cut. I was like, what do I have to lose? I have nothing to lose. The thing about the Fairfield Book Prize is it's only open to members of the Fairfield MFA community. You have to either be a student or have graduated from that program. On the one hand, it's a smaller pool than a lot of contests. On the other hand, you know that everyone's work is really good. Everyone's worked with the same amazing mentors as you. Everyone's really solid in what they're doing. In any case, I entered in 2019. That June when my daughter was nine days old, I opened my inbox. It's like, "Hey, did you get our email from two days ago? Catchlight won the Fairfield Book Prize." Part of the prize is a book deal with Woodhall Press. That's how it came to be.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh, so awesome. I love that story. How old, now, is your daughter?

Brooke: My daughter is fifteen months old at this point. She's toddling around and has big opinions about life. Then my son is four. We're right in the thick of it parenting-wise.

Zibby: That must have been the best feeling ever. It just goes to show, persistence is so important. It doesn't even matter who ends up publishing it. Until I was getting to know this industry, and I don't know if it's just me, but I never paid an ounce of attention to who published what book. I didn't know what the reputations were of different publishers. None of that meant anything to me even as a huge reader. Do you feel the same way?

Brooke: Yeah. I've been a reader for all of my life. I have never even noticed if it's a small press. Sometimes I end up with self-published and I don't even know. I don't even know that that's the case. I really feel that way too. I never paid any attention until recently.

Zibby: I realize now that they all have their own particular brand of -- well, their own particular brand, end of story. For people buying books, who cares? It doesn't matter where the book comes from. It's so amazing that you got yours out there and that we're talking. It was a very motivating, inspiring story to not give up. When you know you have something to share, just kept getting it out there.

Brooke: Thank you so much. For me, there was also this lesson of sometimes there's a pause. There was a pause of a few years where I was consciously like, I'm going to put this away for a little while. I'm not giving up on it. I also wanted to write something else. I was spending all this time pitching. I was like, I really just want to work on something else. It was a pause. What I see now, because hindsight of course is twenty/twenty, is this idea that six years ago, I didn't know anything about marketing or the business side of publishing. Since then, I started my own business, and so I know a lot about marketing and just getting the word out. I feel like I'm in a much better position that I would've been five or six years ago. That gives me some hope. Sometimes it's the not yet. It's not a no. It's just not yet. It's the patience and persistence married together that really made the difference for me.

Zibby: Totally. You went and got a whole degree in the middle. I tried writing a novel when I was just out of business school. This is when I was twenty-eight or something. I remember I applied to MFA programs, which people said was ridiculous because I had just finished business school. I don't know if I actually meant it. Anyway, I got rejected by the two I applied to. I was like, well, that's it. I'm not supposed to be a writer. End of story. [laughs]

Brooke: I don't know. I don't think that the gatekeepers that get to decide -- that goes with publishing too. There are great books out there and great writers. There's gatekeepers that may or may not know. It's just maybe not a fit for their program, but it doesn't mean that you don't get to be a writer, if you want.

Zibby: I interviewed Jennifer Weiner again recently for a live event that we did for Temple Emanu-El. She was saying anybody on social media can be a published author now in two second. That's it. Write something. You put it on your post. There are no gatekeepers in some ways at all. There's almost too much content on the one hand and not enough in the other. As long as it reaches people, that's the greatest.

Brooke: Agreed.

Zibby: Your book was great. You had all the different perspectives with the people dealing with their mother who had Alzheimer's and the initial diagnosis and then the father. I don't want to give things away. I was like, oh, my gosh, no, now this? And such super different characters. I thought that, at first, the whole book would be told from the point of view of Laura. Then when I got James's perspective and what was going down in the bar bathroom and all of that, I was like, whoa, Brooke, okay. [laughs] Hold onto my hat here.

Brooke: I know. I love it. When I was in my MFA program, one of my professors recommended -- the original draft was only from the point of view of Laura. As you know, she's a therapist. She's very much always trying to manage everyone's emotions and make everyone play nice with each other. She does not have the best emotional boundaries. Her brother, James, is an alcoholic. He's the family black sheep. He's a total screw-up. I just started playing with his voice. I was like, oh, my gosh, he deserves to have a voice in this story because his perspective is so different. Also, I think there's this interesting tension with James where on one hand, he always screws up. He really does. Then also, it becomes a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy where he's like, everyone just expects me to screw up, so I might as well just hold to the pattern. Then you get to see the different choices that he makes as they go along. It's definitely a firestorm of things happening in their family.

Zibby: Did you take a lot of your grandmother's illness and put that in? Is that how you got all the details? Did you also do a lot of research?

Brooke: This is a great question. I didn't use much from her case or her story at all. I was asking this question about, who are we without our memory? Then when my grandmother was ill, I was away at college. I was only a few hours away, but there was still a certain amount of distance happening. I really thought about it after the fact. My dad is one of six siblings. I didn't see any of this up close, but I was like, what would it be like for siblings in this situation to suddenly -- in the case of this family which is totally fictional, I was like, they don't get along at all. They can't stand to be in the same room. Then all of a sudden, they have to make these very serious decisions about their mother's care and about her finances and how they're going to care for her. That was really all imagined. In terms of the actual disease, I just did a lot of research. I did ask my dad a little bit about his experience, but it was mostly research and then just my imagination going wild.

Zibby: It really is amazing. I feel like they should tell you earlier in life -- for people listening, maybe now this is our chance to tell other people. When my mother-in-law was in the hospital, she had to sign off on things with her brother, from whom she had been estranged for a long time, about their mother's care. Now again, my husband and his sister, they had to join together and sign. You can't lose touch with your siblings or not speak when it comes to making major life decisions for your parents. No matter how grown up you feel, you're ultimately the child of your parent. It comes down, often, to you to make those decisions. I had no idea. Even for the form about cremation, you need both signatures from the children. This is now getting really dark, but I didn't know that. I'm assuming other people might not know that too. Anyway, in your book you mentioned how it was the first time that all the siblings had been together without their spouses or children with their mother and stepdad in a really long time. I feel like as we grow up, it is so rare when we all have our own families to have that initial family back together.

Brooke: Yes, the family of origin. Actually, that line came from -- this was probably about two years ago. Actually, my aunt passed away very suddenly. My family is in Philadelphia. I'm in Connecticut. I drove down for the funeral. It was a blizzard. There was a blizzard happening. My husband ended up -- he was going to come, but he stayed home with our son. In any case, it was my dad, my mom, and my sister, and me. My sister's husband had to leave to go back to work. I can't remember. It was just the four of us. We were sitting in my parent's house where I'd grown up. My dad was like, "Wow, we've never, just the four of us, been together." I think it really was my college graduation, was the last time. That's what it says in the book. It was very poignant for just the four of us to have this moment of this loss for us, for my aunt. Then in the book, it's this moment when they find out Katherine's diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. It just happens to be the six of them in the room. I felt like that was really significant that the family of origin is coming back together for this sea change in the end of Katherine's life. I felt like that was very important for them to have that time.

Zibby: I'm so sorry about your aunt. That's terrible.

Brooke: Thank you.

Zibby: Now that you've been through this crazy publishing process and your book is out there in the world, tell me about that experience. What's that been like versus what you had in mind? Tell me about the aftermath, if you will.

Brooke: Oh, my gosh. I am honestly having so much fun. [laughs] It's really fun. Like I said, I've been running an online business for a few years. A lot of my launch stuff, I had already been planning to do it online. The fact that we've converged with pandemic is actually -- not that it's ideal for anyone in any way. Also, I'm like, oh, I can just leverage a lot of the things that I already have in place to make it work. I brought together a group of family and friends and people that I know to have a launch team. The launch team idea was, they all preordered the book. Then they got advance copies. We're going to have a party just for the launch team in a week or so on Zoom. They're going to commit to posting a review. It's just a fun way to build buzz. They commit to sharing on social media and telling friends and family of theirs. It just feels fun to work with my friends to get the word out.

They have been so supportive and my champions. It's really lovely to see this community, people from different eras of my life. It's a college friend alongside a colleague from my MFA alongside -- one of my clients signed up. It's just really fun to have them all in a little team and feel like they're standing shoulder to shoulder with me and helping me tell everyone about Catchlight. When people hear the story that I told of, it's thirteen years in the making, that has built some interest as well, which is really fun for me. I'm glad that this journey is appealing in some way. The other thing is, in the middle of it, I did not know that it was going to have this very exciting ending. I was kind of like, I don't know if this book is ever going to see the light of day. That's part of it too. It's such a long culmination that it's really just, I'm so thrilled that people are reading it and enjoying it that I think that shows. People are attracted to that, which is really fun.

Zibby: I love the launch team idea. It seems so simple. Everyone should have a launch team. I've never heard that before. Obviously, you have your teams in the publisher and all that, but just assembling your friends and making it an actual team. Are you giving them all T-shirts and stuff?

Brooke: I have gifts for them. I ordered custom Catchlight bookmarks that are just for the launch team. I'm now doing autographed nameplates that I'm going to send them that they can stick in the book. Like I said, we're doing a party just for them. Then this is actually my most favorite idea. This was an idea that a friend of mine in publishing gave me. They are actually getting access to the original first three chapters of the book that got cut from the final manuscript. The launch team is going to get access to that exclusive content. No one else in the world will get to read the original three chapters. The feedback that I got, which I agreed with, was it was too much setup. I was just setting everything up. My editor was like, "We just need to start. Just throw us in there." I definitely think it's a stronger opening. Also, they’ll get to see originally how I had conceptualized introducing everyone and setting up the world. That's a fun bonus too.

Zibby: So cool. I love that. Wait, so tell me about your marketing business. Maybe I need to hire you for something. [laughs]

Brooke: I love it. I've learned a lot of marketing just for my business. For a long time, I was doing copywriting for online entrepreneurs. I was doing websites and email funnels and sales pages and that kind of thing. I actually switched gears just in the past six months. I'm teaching all about writing and creativity. I have a membership community called Write Yourself Free. I love it so much. It's kind of an amalgam of personal development and writing, which are my two favorite things in the world. It's all about, how do we use the process of writing and creativity to have more self-expression and rediscover your purpose? Also, a lot of people in there are writing books or writing just for fun. I also have some entrepreneurs in there who are like, I need to write weekly blogs for my community. They just wanted a little bit of extra support in terms of, how do we come up with an idea? How do we stay inspired? That's what I do in there. Then I'm also offering writing coaching for people who are writing their first book. One of my clients right now is working on an amazing epic novel about Uganda. I can't wait until we get that finished and it gets to come out into the world too. It's really exciting.

Zibby: Didn't I see that you have something where Mondays at ten people all write together? Tell me more about that.

Brooke: Oh, my gosh, yes. Every Monday morning at ten AM Eastern, I do something called the writing circle. We literally just gather on Zoom. I do a ten-minute inspiration teaching at the beginning. Then we all sit on Zoom and write together for an hour. It's so much fun. People always say, I can't believe how much writing I can get done if I just don't get up. We all sit. Everyone leaves their video on for forty-five minutes. If you have to get up, obviously you can. People are always like, if I just focus for forty-five minutes, I can finish so much writing. It's really inspiring. I also set it up, to be totally honest, as accountability for me because I'm working my next book. I'm like, I need to just have this protected chunk of time once a week where I know I'm staying connected to it. Even while I'm doing all this launch work for Catchlight, at least once a week I know that I'm going to show up to this new book because these fifteen other people, whoever's going to show up that day, are going to come. I get to be there and hold space for them.

Zibby: I love that idea. I just love it. Are you all on mute?

Brooke: Yeah. We all mute ourselves for the forty-five minutes. Then at the end, we come back together. I usually have a question to wrap it up and people can chime in if they want to. The fun thing is, you don't have to come every week. You just come whenever you're free. Zibby, if you ever want to come join us.

Zibby: I really might.

Brooke: I'll send you the link.

Zibby: I am totally not kidding. That's awesome. I'm thinking, what do I usually do Mondays at ten o'clock? Is it free?

Brooke: Totally free forever. It'll be free forever because I just love doing it so much.

Zibby: That is awesome. That's a really great resource. It seems like, what would forty-five minutes do? They add up.

Brooke: Forty-five minutes every single week. I've been working on this new book not for very long, but I have twenty-five or thirty pages already. Right now, I'm only doing it that once a week, pretty much. That's pretty much what I've got. It adds up.

Zibby: What is your new book about?

Brooke: My new book is called The Apothecary of Stories. It's a little bit like The Alchemist in that it's sort of like a pilgrim's progress style. It's about a journey, but it's very symbolic. It's an allegory. That was the word I was looking for. It's this allegorical journey. There's things happening out in the world, but most of it is happening underneath. That's as much as I will explain, but I am kind of obsessed with it. I'm really excited to keep unspooling it as we go along.

Zibby: Your enthusiasm is so awesome. It's really great to hear. I feel like so many people are like, if you can do anything besides write, do it. You're like, no, I did. I'm the writing cheerleader of all time. [laughs]

Brooke: This is actually a pet peeve of mine. Part of what I teach in Write Yourself Free is that writing can be fun. I know that culturally we have this mindset that it's the most terrible thing in the world and the greatest writers drank themselves to death, which is actually true. A lot of writers have. I want to reclaim that for people that think it has to be, first of all, this super dry, intellectual exercise that's only open to people who have an advanced degree. I don't believe that at all. Even though I do have an advanced degree, I don't believe that at all. I think anyone can be a writer if you sit down and write. I also think that it can be fun and exciting and doesn't have to be horrific. [laughs]

Zibby: That's great. It's just awesome. If people want to join your writing circle, how should they do that?

Brooke: I can send you a link if you want to put it, if you have show notes -- do you have show notes, or not?

Zibby: Kind of. I have a little description. I'll try to remember that.

Brooke: Totally fine. People can go to my website, which is brookeadamslaw.com. It's just my full name. At the top, there's a little bar that says "Come write live with me." You just click that, and you can sign up. You'll get a reminder every Monday. Again, you can opt out at any time. You can also just show up whenever you want. It's not like you have to come every week.

Zibby: I know you're the marketing person and all, but you should, eventually if you build that up enough, you could get advertisers who are either pitching different books or people selling writing-type things or programs. You could sell ads, something, or sponsors.

Brooke: I like this sponsor idea.

Zibby: Maybe you could monetize it somehow for a -- not that I'm good at that at all, but just saying. Maybe. [laughs]

Brooke: Sounds fun. Thank you. Thank you for that idea. I love it.

Zibby: You've already shared so much advice for aspiring authors. I feel like that's what this entire conversation has been, but I always ask it at the end. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Brooke: Yes. There's a couple things. What I always say is, if you have a desire to write, I believe that it's a calling to write. I have students come to me all the time and they're like, who do I think I am to write? Who would ever want to read what I have to say? What I say to them is, listen, there are millions of people who never think about writing. It never enters their consciousness. The fact that it has entered your consciousness and you're really interested in doing it means that you're supposed to do it in some capacity, so just do it. Just jump in. The other piece is, I always say that the act of writing is what makes you a writer. I know plenty of people who have an MFA degree who have never written again. They wrote their thesis, whether it was a book of poems or the first hundred pages of a novel, and then that was it for them. They never kept it up. I believe so strongly that the act of writing is what makes you a writer as opposed to the book deal or the degree or the accolades or any of that. We can all claim the title of writer if that's what you want to be doing. All you have to do is sit down and write. You can start by showing up at ten AM for the writing circle.

Zibby: That's so cool. I'm totally going to check that out. I love it. That's great. You're right. So many people don't want to use that word to describe themselves because it seems pretentious or if I don't have six published novels, how can I say I'm a writer? Meanwhile, all I've been doing all day is writing. [laughs]

Brooke: You're a writer, totally.

Zibby: It's also like how they say people who are worried they might be alcoholics, people who aren't alcoholics don't usually sit around worrying about that.

Brooke: That's a really good point.

Zibby: It doesn't cross your consciousness, sort of like what you're saying with writers. My kids, they don't like to write. I'm like, "Let's write. Don't you want to write about what you're feeling?" They're like, "No." I'm like, "What? Why not?" [laughs]

Brooke: You're like, not everyone processes their life by writing? I'm the same way. I'm trying to get my four-year-old -- I'm like, "Don't you want to draw or practice your letters?" He's like, "No, I don't want to do that at all." I'm like, okay, we're very different. I remember as a four-year-old, bugging my mom to dot out my name so I could trace it. Even then, I was like, writing is everything. He's like, "I don't want to do that."

Zibby: That's why this podcast is so much fun for me. All these people, they're all my people. We were all reading as kids and writing in journals and diaries. Not all. Everybody has different journeys.

Brooke: I was totally that kid.

Zibby: That same mentality and approach to it. Gosh, I wish I could sort out my life without writing, if I could just instantly do it in my head. Maybe other people just don't have their lives sorted out at all. [laughter]

Brooke: It's not even, for me, sorting out because I don't know if my life ever feels sorted out. I'm just a gibbering idiot if I can't process via writing. I can't even compute to anyone what I'm thinking or express myself in any kind of way.

Zibby: I didn't mean to say, either, that my life was in any resolved or that I could check it off the list or anything. I'm like, I don't know what I want to do. Then I can sit down and write. I'm like, oh, I totally know what I want to do. These four things are making me choose something else.

Brooke: I can so relate to that.

Zibby: Brooke, thank you so much. This has been so fun. I hope I get to meet you in real life at some point when we go back to normal.

Brooke: I would love that.

Zibby: I'm excited for your whole launch team effort. I might just show up and surprise you on these writing circle days. That sounds like a good call.

Brooke: I love it. I'm going to DM you the link on Instagram.

Zibby: Okay, please do.

Brooke: Thank you so much. This was really fun.

Zibby: Bye.

Brooke: Bye.

Nicholas Sparks, THE RETURN

Zibby Owens: Hi. How are you?

Nicholas Sparks: I'm doing fantastic. Yourself?

Zibby: I'm good. Thank you.

Nicholas: Where are you?

Zibby: I'm in New York. This is my library/home office.

Nicholas: Wow. Is this in your apartment?

Zibby: It's in my apartment, yes.

Nicholas: I love it. I love all the books. I have books behind me too.

Zibby: I see that. Yours look awesome. I like how you have the little cages in case they're going to run away and escape.

Nicholas: All the books that you see here are actually my books, but they're my books in all sorts of different languages. Of course, I have, I don't know how many, twenty-plus or whatever, and they’ve all been translated a lot of times. Every book you see is actually mine, not that I can read them because they're in foreign languages.

Zibby: [laughs] That's so cool. I love that. Wow. How neat to have a library all of your own writing. Very inspiring. Thanks for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." This is such an honor to talk to you. I've read so many of your books. The Return is so great. I've been reading it every night as my kids are going to bed. It's fantastic. Thank you for all the content that you've put out into world.

Nicholas: You're welcome.

Zibby: Can you tell listeners who aren't familiar yet with The Return, what inspired you to write this book? What was really the main premise of it for you?

Nicholas: The initial thought for the novel -- you have to have an initial thought. I wanted to do a story with a theme of love and mystery. I hadn’t done that for a long time. The last time I did that I think was in a novel called A Bend in the Road. I've written other themes since then. I've done epic love like The Longest Ride or Love and Danger, like The Guardian and Safe Haven. I've done everlasting love in Every Breath. This time, I wanted to go back to love and mystery. Of course, I wanted to make it as different as I could than my previous attempt. Once you start with that, your next question is, what's the mystery? I realized, what if there's a guy and his grandfather died and his grandfather said some things that just didn't make sense? That, of course, leads to, well, who is this person? Once you have that down, the primary element I wanted to explore was the concept of the aftermath of trauma and how people react when something terrible happens in their own life. The characters in this novel, without giving things away, have all experienced a trauma. They all react in different ways while trying to do the best they can. I wanted to explore that, perhaps, because like everyone, I've had trauma in my own life. I think it's part of the universal human experience. That makes it something that everyone can relate to. As always, I did my best to create characters who, even if they weren’t necessarily doing what you would have done, you understand why they're doing what they're doing. All of those two themes, the aftermath of trauma and a little mystery, came together. Little by little, the story came into place.

Zibby: Wow. I feel like your main character here, though, has had more trauma than most. First of all, everything with his experience being a surgeon in the medical hospital and the PTSD that you write so well about in the story, but also his family history, it's one thing after another. The poor guy, it's amazing he can even get out of bed in the morning. It's great to then explore because you do have to get out of bed. No matter how much baggage you have, the days always keep coming, if you're lucky. How do you deal with that? How do you put one foot in front of the other when you've lost your ear and just all this stuff?

Nicholas: He, of course, didn't hop up the next day. That's part of his journey. First, he got really good at Grand Theft Auto. [laughs]

Zibby: Yes, I liked that.

Nicholas: He got really good at Grand Theft Auto and drank too much until his girlfriend left him. Then he said, hmm, maybe I better start changing things.

Zibby: I was like, should I tell my son who's obsessed with GTA that it's actually in a book that I'm reading? I don't know. [laughs]

Nicholas: Of course. He'll say, "See Mom, it's helpful. It's therapeutic."

Zibby: Exactly. I can't give him any more excuses to play video games, so I don't think I'm going to bring it up. Actually, one thing that I found so interesting in your book that I feel like doesn't come up as often, I was trying to rack my brain for other examples, is really exploring that relationship between a man and his own therapy. I feel like it happens a lot with women. You hear of women and their therapists. It's just not as common. The relationship between Bowen and Trevor, it really courses throughout the book and deepened your understanding of Trevor and where he was coming from and even gave the reader some good, helpful, therapeutic tips for your life. Tell me about developing that relationship in the story.

Nicholas: Of course, there still is a stigma with mental health. There are those who, they have an automatic negative view toward therapy. Part of me wants to blow up that kind of thinking because I think that for some people in certain situations therapy can be very beneficial. I think that a lot of people who don't believe in the concept of therapy, or believe in it as long as it's not them because they're fine, don't necessarily understand the evolution of therapy. Really, really long story short, Sigmund Freud started psychoanalysis, and this is what most people think that a lot of therapy is. It's someone laying on the couch and talking about their dreams and this and that. That was very prominent for a long time. That's what therapy was. Eventually, therapists and patients learned that knowing the root cause of something doesn't necessarily help you change it. I know the root cause of why I eat too much ice cream and that's why I gain weight. Here's why. It tastes good. Knowing the reason why won't necessarily help you. A lot of therapy has changed from trying to understand why to what you do. What can you do in that instant when you have an urge for ice cream? Of course, you can substitute any issue that someone's having. What can I do if I get angry? What can I do if my hands begin to shake, as in the case of Trevor?

There's things you can do. It's cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy. They give you a list. Let's do some certain things in those moments. Then rest of your life, let's try to be as healthy as you possibly can. You exercise. You eat right. It's all the advice your mother gave you: exercise, eat right, sleep right, avoid mood-altering substances to a great extent. Then in these moments, what can you do when you get angry? I can turn and walk away. I can try to reframe the situation. There's things you do in that moment. That's really what I wanted to explore. It's to give an idea for those who haven't had therapy or who don't know what it is or have a negative view of it, why it can be so beneficial. Trevor knows why he's messed up. He needs to know what to do to not be angry at a Home Depot when someone cuts him off in line. He has to know what to do when his hands begin to shake. That's really the therapy that he's most interested in because doing the right thing in situations that are challenging leads you to becoming a very healthy version of yourself.

Zibby: That's true. I think I need to remember that as I look in the freezer at night. [laughs]

Nicholas: Look for the ice cream. Knowing why you want it, that's not going to help.

Zibby: It doesn't help at all. I want it because I just want it. Now I'm going to have it. Or because I'm angry. When you were listing the behaviors that anger should elicit, I guess eating is not really the best coping mechanism. I'll leave that for somebody else's therapy. It's so funny you say this too because I know it's so dependent on where in the country you live or who you're surrounded by, how people feel about therapy and all the different views. I was a psychology major. I'm from New York City. Therapy here is just what you do. It's so common. I know there are so many other places and even different religions or different cultures where it's just not as accepted. It's great to have a book like this which so normalizes it and explains it clearly and carefully and calmly and outlines all the benefits. That's awesome.

Nicholas: Thank you.

Zibby: I read about how your mother is really responsible for all of your success by getting you to start writing at a very early age. You were dabbling in all sorts of other professions at that time. You were so young, but didn't really see this coming, necessarily, for yourself. Can you tell me a little more about getting your start and how you started in pharmaceutical sales and selling dental devices or whatever you were doing and ended up being you?

Nicholas: My mom originally got me into writing. I was nineteen. At that time, I was very into track and field. I was very competitive. I was on scholarship. It was my world. I had dreams of being an Olympic gold medalist. That's all I wanted. I got injured during my freshman year. Over the summer, I was just miserable. I couldn't train. I had all this excess energy. I was imagining all my competitors getting better. I was falling behind. It was emotionally, mentally, physically -- I was just not in my right head. My mom knew it. She said, "Look, don't just pout. Do something." I said, "What?" She said, "I don't know. Go write a book." So I did. I wrote a novel. I was nineteen. It took me about six weeks. It was terrible. I'm not being false modesty there. It was a nineteen-year-old writing his very first novel and taking six weeks to do it. I learned that I liked stories. I, of course, never thought I could make a living at it. Finish up college, get my degree, don't get a job right away, so I write a second novel. That never gets published. I say, what am I going to do? I experiment with some different jobs for a while, find out what's calling me, what's speaking to me. Then when I was twenty-eight, I kind of had an early midlife crisis and said, what can I do in the evening while keeping my job? I had bills and things. I sat down and wrote The Notebook. It's kind of like a start and a stop, and then a start and then a stop, and then a start, and here I am.

Zibby: Wow. I heard that -- I shouldn't say I heard. I read that an agent just found it in their slush pile and brought it to the top and that's how you got discovered.

Nicholas: Yeah, pretty much. I sent letters out to a bunch of agencies. Someone pulled it out of the non-solicited query pile and said, "Hey, take a look at this." That agent read the letter, asked for my book, read it in a couple of days. Her name is Theresa Park. She's still my agent to this day.

Zibby: Wow, I love that. That's so encouraging, too, for all the people who submit blindly that it can happen. It can be a smash hit and all the rest. You mentioned earlier that your own trauma sort of informs your writing. I read that your little sister died of a brain tumor. I'm so sorry to have heard that. Is that one of the things that motivates your writing? If so, I was hoping maybe you could speak to that if you feel comfortable.

Nicholas: There was a period there of about seven years where there was one loss after another. My mother died in a horseback riding accident. My father died in a car accident. Meanwhile, my sister's having this brain tumor. Then she eventually passes away. This was all in a very brief period.

Zibby: I'm so sorry.

Nicholas: Certainly, when you get hit with these traumas, you go through it as best you can. I had children. I had bills. I still had responsibilities. It was challenging. I found that I reacted differently to each of these traumas because of my age, because of where I was, because of the addition of additional responsibilities. They certainly inform my writing, particularly when I write about grief or loss or trauma such as in The Rescue. That was one of the big things, as I mentioned earlier, that I really wanted to explore. You've got three characters that have trauma. They all react in different ways just as I reacted in three different ways after each of my own traumas. In each of those cases, even though I reacted differently, I was just trying to do my best at that time to negotiate the cavalcade of emotion that I was feeling while putting one step in front of the other. It certainly informs my writing. It's led to direct inspiration. Message in a Bottle was directly inspired by my father after the death of my mother. Walk to Remember was inspired by my sister. It's informed or inspired specific stories. At the same time, there's elements there that have woven their way into each and every one of my novels as well.

Zibby: I'm so sorry about all that you've been through. How, as a dad, do you talk about loss and grief to your own kids? How do you help them make sense of the things that have happened in your family?

Nicholas: It's a difficult question to answer. Even though my kids, they range in age from twenty-eight to eighteen, they’ve suffered loss too, not necessarily their parents or their siblings like me. In twenty-eight years, we've lost pets. They’ve had friends who've passed away unexpectedly. In the end, I think the most important thing you can do is to validate their feelings. You listen to them. You're empathetic to them. You're with them in that moment. Then you don't necessarily try to help. You validate. Someone says, "I feel so sad. I can't stop crying." You don't say, "Well, death is a part of life." It's not going to help them. What you do is say, "I know you do. I have no doubt that it feels absolutely awful. Part of you might wonder if you'll ever stop crying." Anyone will respond to that, "Yeah, that's how I feel." What that does is it opens up the ability to communicate on a deeper level. The most important thing is to validate. You say, "Look, I get it. I've been through it. It's the hardest thing ever." That's whether it's children or whether it's friends or whether it's siblings or whether it's anyone. When someone is hurting, empathy, active listening, and then really responding to what specifically they're saying and not trying to fix it, just letting them know you fully understand what they're going through.

Zibby: You should've been a therapist. [laughter]

Nicholas: Perhaps. I've had a lot of children.

Zibby: You've done fine for yourself. Not to say this was not the right career for you. It's fine, but I'm just saying. You obviously have a gift in this area as well. It's a fallback career.

Nicholas: Fallback, right. I'm hopeful some of that went through The Return.

Zibby: Absolutely. When you write, what is your writing process like? How long does each book usually take you? Where do you like to write? Is it somewhere else in that room with the beautiful books?

Nicholas: Yeah, I write here. I write in the kitchen. I write in another room near the kitchen. Then I have a second office off the gym, much more informal. I sometimes write there. I can write anywhere. I can write on airplanes, in hotel rooms, and I have. Just generally, I write at home because I'm at home a lot. I pick a spot based on my mood, essentially. Novels take about six months to write and then probably another ten weeks to edit. Much of that ten weeks is not hovering over the keyboard. You send it up to them. Then they take two and a half, three weeks, and then they send back suggested changes. You work really hard for a week. Then you send it up again. You wait another three weeks. Then you make those changes. It follows that. Then after that, you're a good chunk into the year. The rest of the time is spent on tour and then conceiving the next novel. Then you start all over again.

Zibby: How has the pandemic been, your first tour throughout this new world that we're in?

Nicholas: It will certainly be a different tour than I've done in the past. Of course, we're very concerned about safety. I certainly don't want to do things that would make people feel exposed. There's a lot of feelings and very few people who want to get this thing. What can we do? Even though I will be going out and I think it's important to support local bookstores and things like that, it's all designed with safety in mind. We'll see how it goes. I think I'm going to six or seven different bookstores. We're limiting the lines. Not that we're limiting people who can get signed books, but they're ticketed. Only some people come then. It's spread throughout the day. I sign the books in advance. If we take a picture, there's Plexiglas between us, everything you have to do so that people will feel safe. That's the most important thing on this tour, is to do it in the safest way possible.

Zibby: How about the last six months while the pandemic has been raging? Have you been working on new books during this time?

Nicholas: Yeah, I finished another novel. It's now in the editing process. I've done that. I've started another novel. Just about done with that one as well. Workwise, it's been fairly productive. Like everyone, COVID has hit home. My daughter had it. She went through that whole experience. It's affected me as much as it's affected anyone, very limited. I've been largely sheltering at home. On the plus side, if there is one, I've worked from home for years. It was my normal thing. That part has not changed.

Zibby: You've written dozens of books. How do you keep coming up with new characters, new plotlines? You're like, I just wrote another novel. It sounds so causal for you. Whereas some people, it takes them their whole lives to come up with one novel. How does it work for you? Is it just the engine and once you go, the creativity keeps going? How does it work for you?

Nicholas: It was interesting. When I first started in 1996, that's what you were supposed to do. The Notebook was published in 1996. At that time, authors wrote a book a year. If you wanted to be a successful author, you had to figure it out. It's a little bit different now. Authors, whether you're Dan Brown or you're Gillian Flynn or Dennis Lehane, for instance, all excellent, excellent writers, and I love their work, they don't necessarily put out a novel a year. Back when I was starting, that's what you had to do. I figured that's the only way to do it. You get in the habit of doing that, and so I've done that. Once you reach this stage, my goal is always the same as it has been since the very beginning, which is to write the best book possible, one that feels original to the reader, one that strikes them as something entirely new that they haven't read before even while knowing it'll be set in North Carolina, even while knowing there's romantic elements.

How on earth do you make it different? I think about, what haven't I done? What haven't I done recently? We talked about the theme of mystery. Hadn’t done that in a long time. That was one of the original thoughts in this book. Let me have a mystery that leads to all sorts of questions. What is the mystery? Then I said, what really haven't I explored? Three different reactions to trauma, brand-new idea, nothing I've ever written about before. I've done it with individual characters, but not every character in that novel. I said, oh, okay, so here's something I haven't done in a long time, something I have never done before. This is all new. This is all original. Then from there, you just keep asking yourself what-if questions regarding, what if the character's fifty? What if the character's forty? What if the character's thirty? Then what happens to the story? What is the mystery? What if this? What if that? What if this? Then you just keep walking all the way through until the story forms in your mind and you're ready to begin writing.

Zibby: Actually, I found myself getting a bit impatient really wanting to know what the backstory was for Natalie and why she was looking sad all the time. I was like, what is going on with her? When are we finding out? I can't wait to know anymore. All of them, actually, but hers in particular. What types of books do you like to read in your spare time?

Nicholas: [Audio cuts outs] traditional best sellers. You have your classics. You have foreign literature. You have award-winning literature, different styles, poetry. I read that. That's probably about sixty percent of what I read. The other forty percent is nonfiction. I find that my own interests are drawn toward histories, and just obscure histories generally. I don't want big sweeping things. I do read those. I might read a book like Salt. It's the history of salt. Or Fermat's Enigma; it's basically the story of math or something like that. I'm also drawn toward biographies of people long since dead, and hardly ever political figures. So histories, biographies, a lot of sociology, books by Jon Krakauer, things like that, whether it's Missoula which discussed date rape on college campuses and the reality. It was set in Missoula, Montana. Modern sociology as well, I'm very interested in that.

Zibby: I know so many of your books have been made into movies. How are you feeling about the movie aspect of your work? Do you see it all cinematically as you're writing it? Do you really enjoy the adaptions of all the stories? What's your general takeaway from that element of your writing?

Nicholas: I always try to conceive a novel with the idea that it will be both a novel and a film. Then when I write, I only think about the novel. Then after the novel is written, I only think about the film. It's important to understand that the nature of Hollywood has been changing over the last ten years. International markets are much larger than they used to be for the box office. Streaming has become much more evident. Novels are now being adapted into limited series or extended series. There's a lot of changes. Then of course, in comes COVID-19. People aren't sure when and where they can start filming. There's challenges associated with that. For right now, it's a little tricky to navigate. We'll see what happens.

Zibby: Do you have any advice for aspiring authors? Last question.

Nicholas: The best advice is to read a lot. One of the standard jokes that I ever say when I speak in front of a crowd and get asked this question is -- they say, what advice do you have for aspiring writers? I say, I'll tell you what helped me. When I was a kid, I watched a lot of TV. [laughs] I mean that. There's things you can learn from television. There's things you can learn from film. There's things you can learn from novels. I certainly was a very avid reader. If you watch television, you'll note that particularly every show you watch -- I'm talking more about network television, but even on streaming. It's just slightly different. They're really good at ending before the commercial or at the end of the show with a bit of a cliffhanger that makes you want to go and see what happens next. Of course, anyone familiar with my writing, I try to make it almost impossible to stop reading at the end of a chapter because you have to know what happens next. Where do you learn that? You learn that more in television and film than you would, for instance, in a classic novel by Flaubert or someone like that, or Proust. Read. Understand story. Stories can be understood.

Then I think the best thing is to figure out what you really want to write. There's a difference. Do I want to write something that may or may not get published? That's a different standard than, I want to write something that will a hundred percent be published; which is a different standard than, I want something that's going to be a best seller; which is a different standard than, I want to be wonderfully, critically reviewed in The New York Times and on NPR or things like that. They're all different, so to be clear on what you intend to write. Then finally, if you're a young writer, whatever you do, don't write about a young character. Everyone says write what you know, but the thing that happens when you're young is that you think all of your thoughts are original. Really, everyone's had them before. For my first novel, The Notebook, my main character was eighty years old.

Zibby: Wow. This has been a particularly great episode for my son because now in addition to GTA and playing video games you have said that watching TV is really good for you. [laughter] I guess I'm going to have to play it for him. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks for sharing your personal history and for The Return, which was so great. Thank you.

Nicholas: Thank you very much.

Zibby: Have a great day.

Nicholas: You too.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Nicholas: Bye.

Mikki Daughtry and Rachael Lippincott, ALL THIS TIME

Zibby Owens: I had such a great time getting to know Mikki Daughtry and Rachael Lippincott who are the number-one New York Times best-selling team of Five Feet Apart which was made into a hit movie. Now they’ve come back with their second joint novel called All This Time which was absolutely beautiful and a tearjerker -- I didn't see the twists coming, which always makes me feel like a dufus -- but is fantastic. Mikki is a really well-renowned screenwriter and is actually writing the new Dirty Dancing movie which is super exciting because I think Dirty Dancing -- I saw it in the theaters like twelve times when it came out. I'm pretty much obsessed. Rachel is hard at work on her third novel and used to be an athlete and just got married to her wife. Her pictures are on Instagram and they're beautiful, as we talked about. Anyway, I hope you enjoy our episode.

It's so great to be talking to you, ladies. Thank you for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Mikki Daughtry: Thanks for having us. Zibby, I wanted to say I'm sorry about your -- I follow you, and I'm sorry about your mother-in-law. That is a shame.

Rachael Lippincott: I saw that as well. I'm so sorry to hear that.

Zibby: Thank you. It's been a crazy time. I just started doing podcasts again. Now I feel like I can at least have my old shred of my personality back and life goes on type of thing, not that I don't think about them all the time and write about them all the time. At least I can put on a happy face and chat and all the rest. Thank you. I appreciate your saying something. On to your book, All This Time. First of all, so good. Did not see any of the twists and turns coming. I hate when I have to admit that because I feel like I read so many books that I should know. I should be prepared. Oh, my gosh, what a heart-rendering story. I'm so glad I got to read it early.

Mikki: Thank you for reading it.

Zibby: For people who don't know what All This Time is about, can you just tell them a little more about the story and also, following your huge success with Five Feet Apart, what it was like embarking on another project?

Mikki: I'm hesitant to say what it's about. You know why. It's about love and loss and how we overcome that and the people we find to help us through and how dreams play into that and how the things that we want can become reality or reality may not be what it seems in the sense that when we lose something, we're caught in this maelstrom of pain and sorrow and guilt sometimes. It really sometimes takes a helping hand to get out of that. On occasion, that helping hand becomes the person you were always meant to be with. That's really all I can say without grenade-ing most of it.

Rachael: That was something that really drew me to this story, and also Five Feet Apart in a way, was the exploration of grief and the twists and turns that that journey in particular takes. I absolutely loved that bit when I read the screenplay for Mikki.

Mikki: The way it came about in this sense was -- Five Feet Apart, it was really the strangest, the way that we got the book written. It was exact opposite of what normally happens, which is there's a book and then they buy the movie rights and there's a movie. In this case, there was a movie that was being made. They were like, this would probably make a really good YA novel. Let's reverse engineer it. That's how that came about. When Rachael came on board, she adapted the screenplay from Five Feet Apart. We were already filming. In this case, it all happened -- Justin Baldoni, the director of Five Feet Apart, had a friend, Claire Wineland, who had CF. She told him, "I can't ever be with someone with CF, someone who would understand me, because we're not allowed to touch each other or even get within six feet of each other." That really sparked with him, an idea for a story. Then I wrote the screen for that. Rachael adapted it. Justin found me through the screenplay I had written, this story. That's what happened.

When Five Feet Apart was such a success, we were like, what would be a really good sister book to this? What would be a good companion piece kind of thing? I really feel like the tone is the same. It's a similar feel. It's definitely a similar genre. It's got all the same hallmarks as Five Feet Apart, but it's totally different. It's like your cousin who looks just like you but is nothing like you. It's kind of like that. This is the script that he read of mine that made him want to hire me to write Five Feet Apart and to come up with that story. It felt like the perfect companion piece, and so Rachael and I -- I was like, "Hey, you want to do another one? Here's another script. Do you want to take it?" The funny thing about this one is, honestly, it was an adult script. The original piece, my original work, was an adult script. It wasn't a YA. It was a pretty easy shift, though, to rejigger it and to rebreak it to fit a YA format. You just age them down. Their concerns are different. I can tell you a lot about the original. It’s heavier. It's much more painful. You can see, Zibby, having read this, where if you age that up and give them a family, where it goes from there.

Zibby: I don't think I can handle that. [laughs]

Mikki: Right. It's a whole different -- oh, we can't talk about it. If it were out, I could be, this is everything that happened. It came from there. Then I aged it down. I went back through the script and said, let's take some of this drama, not the drama, but let's take some of this adultness out of it and go for what are important to young people just starting their lives instead of people who are in their lives. That's how it came about. I am a chatty chatter, so you have to shut me down.

Zibby: No, it's good. The thing about this book that really hit me too is that I felt I could relate not only to the main characters, but also the mom.

Mikki: Oh, my god, I love her.

Zibby: That ages me somewhat. I'm forty-four, not like I'm ancient.

Mikki: I'm right there with you.

Zibby: I felt like her pain and the fact that she had lost her husband and her trying to -- your child's pain is almost worse than your own pain. Probably, it is worse than your own. It actually is, I should say. Her watching the pain that Kyle has to go through -- Kyle's my husband's name too, by the way.

Mikki: I saw that.

Zibby: That really got me too. You didn't go into it too much. You could just see by her actions, how she was feeling. It just broke my heart, the whole thing.

Mikki: Thanks. I really wanted there to be a family situation that wasn't the, oh, I hate my mother. That is a reality for a lot of people where they're constantly in that battle with their mother. I wasn't. There are relationships with teenagers who have really great relationships with their parents. I wanted to speak to that. His mother is not his problem. I didn't want that to be some kind of situation there where we're focused more on, he's fighting with her and he's trying to break away from her. He's lost what he thinks is the love of his life at the beginning of the book. I think I can say. It's on page three.

Rachael: I also think another element of that that really spoke to me was the fact that she is a single mother. They have this really deep connection because for so long it's just been the two of them, in a lot of ways, against the world, similar to Will in Five Feet Apart. I just loved that. He was suffering so much. You would see her at the door trying to connect to him, trying to find a way to open the dialogue back up like it used to be. I really just loved the portrayal of the single mother like my mom, fighting it out. You guys go through everything together. You always have her. You always have that connection, that person that is always in your court, always trying to think of your best interests, to help heal your heart however they can. That was really a cool part of the story for me too.

Zibby: It's so true. By the way, Rachael, I was looking at your Instagram. Your wedding pictures were so [indiscernible/laughter]. I just had to say, those dresses, oh, my gosh.

Rachael: Oh, gosh. Thank you so much. I'm still in a state of [indiscernible/crosstalk].

Zibby: [Indiscernible/crosstalk] that you can research somebody and know the most private moments.

Rachael: It's like I was there. No, I'm kidding. Thank you so much. I appreciate that.

Zibby: I also really liked how Kyle is getting over a football injury. At one point, that's the worst thing he could ever possibly imagine could happen. Then life, what you think is the worst thing ever suddenly gets put into perspective and something even worse comes along. You're like, oh, gosh.

Rachael: You're like, this is rock bottom. Then it is not.

Zibby: Now this is a really big deal. I thought that was a big deal. I feel like injured athletes -- actually, my husband Kyle was an athlete as well. I guess he is an athlete, but he was in the professional tennis world for a long time. He used to play football and all this stuff. When he stopped, it was a whole big thing. What does an athlete do who's not really doing their thing anymore? I think there's not that much. I remember at the time I was like, "Let me find you some articles. Let me find you some books." I was googling. Come on. There are so many athletes out there this happens to. There must be a ton of literature. Of course, I'm more into fiction. It was just nice to see that here. I know it's just one injury, but just what happens when your dreams stop and it involves your body instead of just your mind. Tell me a little bit about choosing that.

Mikki: That was part of the aging down, actually, to turning it into a YA. What would be important to this guy? It's exactly like you said. I wanted to give him something that he thought was his life. He'd think, this is going to be it. This is forever. I've got it planned out. It's everything. He hinges every part of his personality and his worth on that. When that taken away from him, he turns to his girlfriend and kind of puts all that weight on her. We get to see, at the very beginning, what that weight has done to them. It was a big part of the aging it down for YA, to give him something that he thought was his whole world that he could lose in a shattering way and think, oh, my god, it's the end, it's over. We're like, oh, buddy, no. Oh, hun, no, no, no. There's a bigger world out there, and it gets a lot worse.

Rachael: That particular aspect spoke to me on two levels. One was on a very personal level. I was a huge athlete growing up. My freshman year of high school, I played three varsity sports. It was my thing. Then I had spinal fusion surgery going into my sophomore year. In my head, I was like, I can heal up. I could play junior year, maybe still get into college. Then I just had this huge crisis of conscience where I just could not play sports. I was healing. I was recovering. All of a sudden, I wasn't an athlete. My body wasn't necessarily my temple anymore. I kind of had to look around at my life and see what was still there, what was important to me, what I liked doing, when this huge aspect of my personality that was so big when I was thirteen, fourteen years old, what else there still was. Another element was back when I was in college, I wrote part of a manuscript that was about a boy who was in a really bad accident.

Mikki: Oh, you did? I didn't know that.

Rachael: Really? Yeah. He played football. We're just surprising everybody today.

Mikki: We say that, that things cross over sometimes. It's really weird. I didn't know that. I didn't know you wrote anything like that.

Rachael: I started writing a manuscript about a boy who was a football player who got into an accident. His entire life changed. He could no longer play the sport he loved.

Mikki: Totally [indiscernible] out of your head, then.

Rachael: When I read the manuscript, I was like, oh, this is it but way better. It panned out. It kind of felt like it was a character that I knew and a scenario that I understood a little bit of, so it was cool.

Zibby: Why did you originally have spinal fusion surgery?

Rachael: I had scoliosis. My spine was just not doing the thing it should've been doing. Just straightened it out.

Zibby: I guess with writing at least, unless your fingers are -- it's so different.

Mikki: Just don't break your fingers.

Zibby: Yeah, just don't break your fingers.

Mikki: Break everything else. Just don't break [indiscernible].

Zibby: How do you two work? How do you do it? Tell me your process, how the magic happened.

Mikki: This one is different. I have a full-time writing partner, Tobias Iaconis. I always want to call him eye-ack-onis now because my phone pronounces his name phonetically. One of these days, I'm going to literally say his name wrong. It's Tobias Iaconis. We write our screenplays together, not necessarily this one, but we do a lot of writing together. Rachael and I have worked, so far, only in the sense that I have given her a fully formed, fully fleshed-out screenplay with the dialogue and a lot of the prose. She adapts that. She's adapted that with Five Feet Apart and with this one. She's adapted those stories into the books. It's a little bit of a different process where we don't -- oh, sorry.

Zibby: Are you a part of the adaption, or do you just hand it off?

Rachael: She's a part, especially with this one, with All This Time, a huge part. With Five Feet Apart, it had just gone into production. I think a lot of that was her reshaping that screenplay. I would keep getting emails like blue edition or purple edition or pink edition as they started going into production. I think a lot more of that was her sending it to me. We obviously had long phone calls, especially at the beginning where she was telling me everything in detail. I would ask questions. I could always bounce everything off of her. Especially with All This Time, we had a conversation about it a couple days ago, actually, just talking about how she felt that the scenes were super detailed. It was almost already in book form at a lot of parts.

Mikki: Oh, I know what you're saying. I was like, what are you talking about? We were talking about when you get a production script, it's very lean on details. It's mostly dialogue because all of the set design, all that stuff, is taken out of it because they’ve done the work already. What I gave Rachael for All This Time was a very meaty -- I knew it was going to her and not into production. I knew it was going to her, so I was able to really give her a beefy, beefy script. It was kind of a quasi-script-novel-y thing.

Rachael: Somewhere in the middle, for sure. It isn't just a complete handover. I always have Mikki on call. She's looking through everything, commenting, changing, revising.

Mikki: Rachael does not get any sleep. It's just like, oh, my god, there she is again.

Zibby: Sorry if I'm a little slow on this. I'm sorry for the sirens also. This book, you said you started with the screenplay. Is this already in production?

Mikki: No. Lionsgate has bought the rights to the book for the movie. This started, like I said, from the original screenplay that was the adult version. Then I aged it down. When I aged it down, I filled in a lot of the stuff about what it would be. It was in chunks. I would be writing. The editor, Alexa, would come back and say, "Maybe there's some scenes that this could happen." I would write the screenplay scenes and then give them to Rachael, and she would adapt them. It's how we had our little wheels greased the way we worked together like two little cogs with Alexa cranking it.

Rachael: Definitely. I would get a draft back that would have notes from Alexa. Then I would also get additional scenes from Mikki as well that would just be additional parts of the story to fill out certain scenes, certain characters, certain backstories. It would be both at the same time and then integrating them together into the next draft that I would turn into both of them.

Zibby: Got it. Now that I finally have gotten this process down, so then when Five Feet Apart became a movie, were you a part of that, Mikki? You had written that screenplay.

Mikki: Oh, yes. I was on set. The funniest thing is when -- it was really close to production when they said, "Simon & Schuster wants to turn this into a book." As Rachael was saying, she got a script. Then I was on set. I would be like, oh, we're changing this scene right now. I wonder if Rachael has gotten to this scene yet. I would quickly text her and be like, "Rachael, Rachael, have you done this yet?" She's like, "I'm working on it right now." I'm like, "Stop! We're changing it." We get a lot of comments. They're like, oh, my god, the movie is so close to the book. We're like, well, yeah.

Rachael: For a reason.

Mikki: I was like, "Don't write that yet. Here's what happening." I would shoot her off some pages.

Rachael: I think that answered your question.

Zibby: I have it all straight. [laughs] I saw that you're already working on a third one. Are you doing that together?

Mikki: Rachael. Nope.

Rachael: I'm working on a third book. I can't talk about it as of yet. I'm currently working on it. I'm in my second draft of it. I'm deep in the edits. Deadline is coming up. That one's just a solo one. Mikki is also working on --

Mikki: -- I'm back in movie world.

Rachael: Many a thing.

Zibby: What are you working on in the movie world?

Mikki: Dirty Dancing.

Zibby: No way!

Mikki: Yeah, the sequel with Jennifer Grey. I can't say anything, obviously, about it. That's really exciting. Then Tobias and I have a children's horror movie at Netflix that's going into production in about a month. They're setting up in Toronto right now, building the sets and hiring everyone. That’ll go, hopefully. You never know what's going to happen. Hopefully, that keeps trucking along. I shifted seamlessly right back into my movie writing, screenwriting. I'm like, what is that word? [laughter]

Rachael: What's that thing that I do?

Mikki: Screenwriting. Maybe another novel for me at some point that I write. We'll see. Right now, I'm firmly entrenched in making movies.

Zibby: That's so neat. Did you already finish writing Dirty Dancing too?

Mikki: Working on the second draft right now.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh, wow.

Mikki: I don't know if I'm supposed to say that. I don't think it's any secret that we're writing. We're writing.

Zibby: They announced it was going to be a movie. Someone has to write it. I'm sure they probably linked to you somewhere. Jennifer Grey has become a friend of Kyle's and mine.

Mikki: She's amazing.

Zibby: I met her through another friend. Then we've all gotten together in LA. This is so great. Not close friend, obviously, but I'm going to have to find a way to barge myself onto that set. I've never really been on a movie set before.

Mikki: Oh, my god. Do it. Do it. Do it. It'll be a little bit. I'm not sure when they're planning on shooting. There's a ton still to do. Yes, you should get your ticket now.

Zibby: If people ever are out and about and on sets again.

Mikki: If that happens. I know. They're doing it. I don't know how much you know about it. In Toronto, and rightfully so, they're being very, very careful. They fly you in. They're not letting many people in. You have to stay in strict quarantine for two weeks. If you're in a hotel, you can't come out of your hotel room. The police come by every day to check if you're still there. This is what I've heard. I know that it's true because they're working on [indiscernible] up there. If you're caught out at all, it's a $750,000 fine per incident.

Zibby: What?

Mikki: Per incident. Don't fuck around. Canada's not playing, but they're filming up there.

Rachael: $750,000. Ooh, I'm sorry.

Mikki: Per incident.

Rachael: Oh, my gosh.

Zibby: [Indiscernible] the people who made that up. They're sitting there. How did we make?

Rachael: That's a scary amount.

Mikki: Let's make it prohibitive. Don't you dare walk out. It's like if you walk out of your room to get a soda in those two weeks. Then once your two-week quarantine is up -- like I said, this is what I've heard from them setting up for [indiscernible]. When your two-week quarantine is up, you're out. You're out and about. You're part of the community. You wear your mask, but it's more lenient. You go about work and your life and stuff.

Zibby: That's amazing. Good luck with that.

Mikki: I'm not going. We're staying home for this one. We're skipping this one. Normally, we would go. It's very prohibitive when we're working on this other -- we're working on Dirty Dancing. It's a lot of restrictions to not be able to move freely and do the work that we need to do otherwise.

Zibby: What kind of books do you two like to read in your spare time? Maybe you don't like to read.

Mikki: No, I'm totally a reader.

Zibby: I don't want to make any assumptions.

Mikki: I'm a writer who doesn't read. I'm sure they are there. I love British novels. I find that I really tend to lean toward Australia. I love Liane Moriarty. She's so much fun. Anything she writes, I'm in it for a fun little romp. Then I love Kazuo Ishiguro. He's probably my favorite, and Julian Barnes. Those two British guys, I can't. I can't even. It feels so small, but it's so huge. The fact that they are able to have such an impact in such a realistically grounded world that they write about, it's like you're there. Remains of the Day, just stop. I love Gabriel García Márquez, obviously. One Hundred Years of Solitude, how are you a writer and not married to that book? That's the epic masterpiece of all time. Those are the kind of things I read when I read. Then I read a lot of 1930s and '40s novels. It's really fun because it's of the time. The World's Illusion is a really good one. It's very political. I really love it, set in the times of industry workers and how they were treated. It's a narrative. I like stuff like that. I'm kind of a weirdo. I live in the past, for sure.

Rachael: I read all different kinds of things. I'm a huge fan of Nina LaCour. She's probably my favorite YA author. I talk about her a lot. Her book, We Are Okay, is absolutely my favorite. I really love it. A lot of times there's a conversation between plot-based and character-based stories. I just love that. It's essentially just a book of a girl alone in her room drinking tea and reflecting on life and grief and all these other things. It's a very quiet book, but so much happens. She's just so talented at saying exactly what needs to be said and nothing more and nothing less. I just love that. Oh, man, other books that I really love. I love Laura Taylor Namey's book coming out later this year, A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow. Absolutely fell in love with that. It's wonderful. It's also set in the UK, in Britain. That's a really great read. I'm also a huge fan of mysteries. My favorite is Agatha Christie. You turned my brain on to the British thing, so I'm going to just keep going on it. I really love the Miss Marple mysteries. That's classic, feel-good read, especially during the craziness of the past few months. I've been checking into a couple of my favorite ones of those. I also really love the BBC episodes that they did on them. Those are probably my favorite.

Zibby: What advice would you guys have for aspiring authors or screenwriters?

Mikki: That's the question. Work your ass off. Don't expect any favors. If you get a favor, be grateful. I always say this, once you start getting there, please don't buy your own hype. It's easy to think that you did it by yourself and to think that it's all you and you're so important, you're so vital. Yeah, maybe, but a lot of cooks go into the kitchen. A lot of cooks are in the kitchen. A lot of the flavor, whether -- I can only speak for myself. I hate saying that ubiquitous you. I can speak for myself that at the end of the day, I've done the work, but it's everybody around me and their opinions that I trust and respect and love. They're all in there. The stew is better with a lot of flavor, if that makes sense. I take everybody's salt and pepper, and I throw it in there. I'm like, let's see what happens. I definitely would say, and I say this pretty much every time I'm asked, if you're doing it alone, don't be afraid to reach out and let people help you. Even a bad note is a good note in a way because it's going to expose something that may be missing. They may not be telling you in the right way. It's something that we call in the business, the note behind the note, which is, I really wish he did this here. That's not really the issue. The issue is something's missing in that moment that makes them wish for something different. That's what you have to get to. Without that bad note, you wouldn't look at yourself and say, oh, there's a hole here. Rambling again. I write much better than I speak, just let me say.

Zibby: So do I.

Rachael: That was perfect. I feel like I shouldn't even go know after that, honestly.

Mikki: What do you have for new and up-and-coming writers? That's kind of where we're different. I'm in my thing. You're just getting in.

Rachael: That's a really good question. Something that was really big was just -- you aspire to be a writer. You always dream of it. It was really hard for me to prioritize, especially when you don't have a book deal or you don't have a screenplay that's been optioned by film or something. It's really hard to find time and give yourself the time to devote yourself to this passion and devote yourself to sitting down and putting words on the page. I think it's so important that you carve out that time and that space if this is what you love to do. Really, just let yourself have the freedom to write. Let yourself have the freedom to put things on a page and explore the stories that you really want to tell. That was always really hard, especially when I was starting out, just giving myself the time and what I loved doing, the opportunity to really work.

Mikki: I can speak to that, what you're saying, Rachael, just a bit for screenwriters. If you're just coming up and you're trying to, like Rachael said, find the time and find the motivation to stick with it, find a screenwriting group. I was in a screenwriting group, Twin Bridges. It was everything to be held accountable for pages. We'd go and we read our pages. We read each other's work. We're commenting and critiquing and helping and giving notes and learning very much about the craft. Joe Bratcher ran the class, Joe and Judy, his wife. They taught at UCLA. A very, very integral part of my getting started professionally was to have the motivation and the responsibility of showing up with the pages I said I would show up with, and then learning. That's where I got that whole "it takes a village" kind of thing because everybody piles on and tells you what they think. You're fielding ideas. Do it. For screenwriters, that would be. I would say if you are looking for something to hold your feet to the fire, get yourself in a writing group.

Rachael: I would agree totally a hundred percent with that. Also, you have this space. Forming a writing group is really important because then you not only have somebody to bounce your ideas off of and grow from, but you also have this accountability, like what you just talked about. If you show up for one of your weekly get-togethers and you don't have anything on the page, you're going to look a little foolish.

Mikki: You're the asshole.

Rachael: That's really sound advice.

Zibby: Amazing. Thank you, ladies, so much.

Mikki: Thank you, Zibby.

Zibby: I can't wait until your next book and, Mikki, your movie. I, embarrassingly, have not watched Five Feet Apart. I am going to do that.

Mikki: You should.

Rachael: Something to do today.

Zibby: I'm so excited. Kyle and I are going to do that. That's my plan. I'll just call him and let him know. [laughter] I should've done it before we talked.

Mikki: We weren’t talking about that one. This one was more important today.

Zibby: It was so good. I'm so excited for you guys, All This Time.

Mikki: Thank you. Thank you so much, Zibby.

Zibby: It was great to talk to you.

Rachael: Thank you so much for having us on.

Mikki: Nice to meet you. Thank you so much.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Mikki: Bye.

Rachael: Bye.

Bill Clegg, THE END OF THE DAY

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Bill. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Bill Clegg: Thanks for having me on.

Zibby: It's my pleasure. I was just telling you, but just to showcase my Bill Clegg fandom over the years, Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man, which was so amazing. Now I know everything about this period of your life, as we were discussing.

Bill: I'm so sorry. [laughs]

Zibby: Did You Ever Have a Family, everybody is like, "This is the best book ever. Oh, my gosh," everybody I talk to. Then The End of the Day which of course has just come out and which is absolutely beautiful and I was so privileged to have read. I'm so happy to be here talking to you.

Bill: I'm happy to be here too. Thank you.

Zibby: Let's just talk for sec first about The End of the Day even though it's not the end of this day. What inspired you to write this book? What's it about? Why this book? Why now in your life?

Bill: Oh, the easy questions.

Zibby: Just all that. Then we're good to go.

Bill: The End of the Day, when I'm writing, there's usually some other secondary writing that's going on to the main thing. It's usually when I hit wall. I'll just go to that other thing that doesn't have any booby traps or problems associated with it. I am of the "go where it's warm" philosophy in writing. If it gets too tortured or uncomfortable or just isn't coming, I'll move off and go write something that feels easy, and that will be fun. Then I'll hit a wall there and go back to the problem that I couldn't solve before and it will seem, usually, much less difficult to solve. With The End of the Day, one of the central characters is a woman named Jackie. She actually appears for a moment in Did You Ever Have a Family. She's the mother of the caterer who is a minor character at the beginning of that book who tells a story to lay the groundwork of the scenario of that novel. She appears in the driveway in a housecoat. Her porchlight is on in the middle of the day. Then she's gone and you never see her again. When I was writing that book, she interested me. I just kept on coming back to her. I didn't know it at the time, but I kept on writing her backstory of her childhood, this important friendship she had when she was a kid.

Then it became clear that she and her entourage were not going to be central to Did You Ever Have A Family, but I just kept on writing her because she was interesting to me. Then when I finished Did You Ever Have A Family, there were all these pages without really an organizing center to them. Then I overheard a story about somebody who was in [indiscernible], Connecticut, which is near where I grew up. This is many, many years ago. He was telling the story of how he was at a picnic. It was holiday picnic of some kind. I don't know if it was the Fourth of July. He had gotten up to run an errand and went to the store to get something. There was some group of New Yorkers who were hanging out. They invited him basically to come party with them. They went up this mountain, and he didn't come back for two months. He had left his family at this picnic and he just disappeared into this. I was interested in that for a lot of reasons. Namely, I identified with it because at a certain point in my life that might have been something I would've done. The fact that he had a family and that he had just left them and then he came back down the mountain and faced this family -- the marriage survived, apparently. That was a very captivating scenario. I was imagining into that quite a lot. Then it somehow merged with this whole story of this woman in this small town named Jackie who had been born of this other novel. Suddenly, the book became clear to me, what it was going to be. That's how it started.

Zibby: Wow. This is proof that if you don't use the pages in your novel, you can save them and maybe them another time.

Bill: Exactly. Nothing should be ever wasted.

Zibby: Don't waste it. Start a new Word document. Who knows? It could end up as this.

Bill: Maybe it's because I have so little free time that anything that would exist that could be used, I think of as potential. It was inert. It was this pile of -- it just didn't quite -- then this other random element came in and activated it and made it a story that I could lay my mind around.

Zibby: I'm glad you didn't toss it because it was beautiful. Your writing, first of all, is just, as you know, as you must know, it's just so beautiful, the way you write, the way you tell stories, the way you even paint a picture of the room. You can feel yourself in it. It's such a gift. It's really awesome. Obviously, it goes from such extremes. In your memoir, you're shaking and waiting for your crack dealer to call you and losing forty pounds. Your life is crazy. Then you go to this elderly woman and waking up in her bed with the light streaming in. It runs the gamut. It's amazing the way you can take the reader to all these places. I guess that's writing in and of itself.

Bill: It somehow makes sense to me, maybe not from a distance. Crack dens of New York, the country bedrooms and women waking up and pondering the morning, they don't obviously connect. Somehow to me, they seem like there's a direct link.

Zibby: How did this whole writing side of your life get started? When did you know you were a writer? Is this something you've always done? Was Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man your first book, or do you have novels stashed away somewhere?

Bill: No, that's the first thing I had written since college. I kept notebooks in college and then in my early years in New York. It was always like, I just wrote impressions of things. I've looked at some of that stuff. A lot of it is me coming home a little bit tipsy and wanting to record something that felt very urgent or important to transcribe. Usually, it was just the Brooklyn Bridge and the lights of the city. It's so cliché and so bad. I did write. I worked with writers. I came to New York. I started working at a literary agency. Honestly, me writing didn't even enter a real consciousness. Underneath everything, of course that's what I hoped would happen, but I'd never named it to myself. It seemed beyond me. Then after I got sober, in early, early recovery, I was writing stuff down because I thought that I would forget it. There was a lot that hovered in this gauzy space of, did it happen? Did I imagine it? I wrote it all down. Some of those details were incredibly vivid. I thought that if I just wrote it down then, that later I'd be able to make sense of it and it would all became clear. It didn't, not really.

Zibby: This is back to your saved pages writing theory again.

Bill: Exactly. Nothing is wasted.

Zibby: Or nothing is new. [laughs]

Bill: It just gets repurposed. Then I put those pages down. I went back to work after getting sober for a year. I had a lot of damage to clean up and a lot of relationships to mend. I had to learn how to live my life sober. That took me time. Then at one point I went back to those pages and just looked at them. It unlocked something. Now I look at that time period, I just started writing what had happened. It came somewhat easily at the time. It really came out like a gusher. I felt like I was catching up with it as I was typing. Then the book came into being. After I'd finished it, it was like, oh, I can write a book. I loved the experience of being alone with pages and the sentences and just the project of making a story that's here, putting it here. Now since then, it's just become a regular part of my life. My main job is as a literary agent. When I can, I write. There's always something. Even if it's several months between writing sessions, I'm still puzzling through stuff a little bit in the downtime.

Zibby: How does your experience as a writer then affect the books that you gravitate towards, or does it not at all? Do you pick books to publish similar to your style of writing? I saw your list. I've had some of your authors on my show and everything. How does it relate?

Bill: In the main, I'm more attracted to writing that I can't imagine myself doing. There's recovery. There's things that involved themes that I've explored. In the main, these are writers who I'm in awe of. I'm trying to, at first, figure out what it is they're trying to do and then ultimately when I get to the edge of that, trying to help them get that writing in the world. Usually, the things that don't occur to me are the things that excite me the most. There isn't that kind of overlap. It's changed over the years too. People will ask, what are you looking for? My answer, which sounds so trite in some ways, is it's sort of the thing that I didn't expect is the thing I'm looking for. If you've seen it or if you've read it a lot of times before, it's not necessarily the thing that you're going to be the most excited to engage in. When I come up to this house that we now live in all the time because of the coronavirus -- we used to only come up maybe two or three weekends out of the month. I would come up for a week and pull up the drawbridge and write. On the other end of that week, I'd be so desperate to get back to other people's writing and out of the head of my own. Setting up those kind of reunions with the job and the writing, it's just been a nice balance for me. I am always looking forward to the thing that I'm heading toward. Nothing ever feels too oppressive or too much. Even though the agenting takes primacy in the days and the weeks, I'm thinking about what I'm writing, usually. It's on the horizon somewhere even if it's months away.

Zibby: Then in addition to reading for your work as an agent, do you read for fun on top of that? You must not have time for that. Do you?

Bill: It's hard. You know what's really helped me with that? Audiobooks. I'm kind of late to the table, I think, but I've discovered them. When I work out, I listen to audiobooks. If I'm lifting weights or if I'm doing something, I listen to audiobooks. I have now become kind of an addict. I am addicted. Along with pizza and donuts, there's audiobooks. It's great. I love them. Some of them are so well-done. I just listened to The Dutch House, which Tom Hanks narrates. When I first approached it, I was kind of skeptical because that felt a little too Hollywood. He's amazing. He reads it and really delivers a major performance in the reading. It's great. If you haven't listened to that, I recommend it.

Zibby: That's a great suggestion because I've been meaning to read that book. I've had it right here for so long. That will be a great way. I also have recently gotten into audiobooks. Being out of the city, there felt like there were more opportunities like taking long walks and long drives. I wasn't going to listen to an audiobook in a taxi or something. Although, I guess I could now, not that I'm in a taxi that often.

Bill: I also recommend City of Girls, Elizabeth Gilbert's. That, it's Blair Brown. Do you know who she is? She was in a television show in the eighties called The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd.

Zibby: I remember that.

Bill: Then she's doing a lot of theater and stuff like that. Based on this performance alone, I think she's one of the best actresses on the planet. It's the story of this woman's life. It's really the whole sweep of a life from teenage years into her seventies, eighties maybe. It's epic and brilliant. It's one of the best novels ever. The performance that she gives in the reading is memorizing.

Zibby: I like also reading memoirs when the author narrates themselves because then I feel like you know them even more intimately. Jodie Patterson's The Bold World, she did such a good job reading that. I just read Jill Biden's. I just had her on. She read her memoir. I just felt like by the time I talk to them, I've already talked to them for eight hours or whatever it is.

Bill: I listened to Michelle Obama's. That was actually the first one that I listened to in March in quarantine. I thought it was great. I looked forward to it every morning when I would go down to the basement and work out in the cobwebs. Michelle Obama made it possible. It's such a good book.

Zibby: Who narrated your audiobooks? Do you have audiobooks?

Bill: I agree with you. I think having the authors read makes it better. In my case, I've read them, and I can't say that I've made them better. I'm not that good at it. In fact, on The End of the Day, I was supposed to read the audio of The End of the Day in New York at a studio. Then COVID happened. We were up here. Somehow, they figured out a -- it's like this converted barn that's a recording studio, but mainly for musicians. In fact -- oh, gosh, I'm going to forget his name. There's a popstar, Shawn something, who's dating Camilla Cabello.

Zibby: Now you're going to embarrass me, [indiscernible].

Bill: I should know this. Anyway, he had just left after recording his new album. Then I turned up. It was literally five minutes down the road. I would go for an hour and a half a day and just read a little bit. I did it over the course of two months. I shouldn't probably say this, but I don't think it's the best. I did my best.

Zibby: I'm sure it's fine. At least you knew what you meant. At least the intonations are what you had in mind when you wrote it versus somebody coming into it who might misinterpret or something.

Bill: Yeah, but then when you listen to somebody like Tom Hanks read The Dutch House, it's so shaming because there is a way to really embody the dialogue. I just don't have the skill set.

Zibby: That's his whole job. He's been doing that forever.

Bill: I know. I know.

Zibby: If he tried to be a literary agent for the day, he might not do a good job. That's his job. This is your job.

Bill: True.

Zibby: These glimmers of ideas that you still have, are you always writing a book? Are you in the middle of one now, or are you just going to look for more scraps? I feel like you should go through your junk mail and find whatever you can.

Bill: Oh, yeah, this loan offer is a novel. Possibly. I'm definitely working on something right now. It's going to be the third of what is unofficially a kind of trilogy of these books that take place in the fictional town of Wells, Connecticut, which is where Did You Ever Have A Family and The End of The Day take place. This is one that I've been sort of circling since the first one. There's a character that I've had in mind. I had the title a long time ago but didn't have the book. I had the character and the title, but I had no idea, really, what the story was going to be. Now I'm coming into it a little bit and just typing toward it.

Zibby: Do you discuss your work with some of the writers you represent or just friends? Do you keep it all under wraps?

Bill: In the beginning of this, I was like, church and state, oh, no. The thing about working in book publishing and working in literature and probably any creative field where the medium is something that matters to you a lot, I represent these writers who are also big readers. We talk about books. We talk about their books. There's an intimacy that develops, and especially with some of them, over time. With a few, my writing's come into it kind of against my urging and certainly better judgement. A couple of them have been really good, have read stuff, and even early. We talk about it. Some, but not that many.

Zibby: Can you give a little glimpse of more of what Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man was about? I know this is from a while back. It's about your life. I thought it was just so good. I've remembered it all this time, not that it was that long. Was it ten years ago or something? How long ago was it?

Bill: 2010, it got published.

Zibby: That was good. I didn't research that. [laughs] Anyway, share a little bit of your life story from that time and how you made it through. That's the most inspiring type of story there is, going through the worst and coming out better for it on the other side.

Bill: That memoir chronicles a period of time. The foreground is a couple of months that I spent really in a freefall of crack cocaine addiction. I had, for over ten years, had an active crack addiction that I had kept secret. I was a heavy drinker. I'm sure that there was some people in my life who thought that I was an alcoholic. Nobody had confronted me about it, but I'm sure I didn't give them a lot of room to. In terms of the crack cocaine addiction, my boyfriend at the time knew, who I lived with, but that was the only other person. If you know anything about addiction, particularly with crack cocaine, it becomes less and less manageable. At the point that it became completely unmanageable, I just walked out the door of my life on a bender that I had intended to end in death. On the other side of that, I ended up in treatment. Because so much of those two months were -- a lot happened in that time. When I was getting sober, I was trying to make sense of what had happened. It's a very close look at those last two months of my active addiction. Then it panels back to when I was a kid to lead up to the period of time that that two months commenced. It's sort of like, how did you get here? I think I'm still puzzling through that. I'm still engaged in that.

That book is a kind of representation of what my engagement with that puzzle looked like at the time in 2008, is when I finished writing it. I was lucky. I went to treatment. I found other alcoholics and addicts in recovery. I realized after relapsing a fair bit in my first year of sobriety that I couldn't stay sober without other alcoholics and addicts in recovery. I needed them very closely and actively in my life. Some of the people from that period of time in 2005 and '06 when I was first getting sober, those people are still active in my life. I let go of everything I thought I knew about how to live my life. I'm sober today. If there's a reason, it connects to that. I had a lot of ideas about how I should live my life and how I could navigate the problems in my life. I had to throw all that out to get sober. People in recovery taught me how to live, how to be honest, how to be accountable, how to be responsible, and how to be useful. Growing up before that, the North Star was, am I going to be happy? How can I be happy? I let go of that in recovery.

What became clear is that if happiness was ever going to come into it, it was because you were living a useful life where the focus of self isn't the primary objective of the day, but really focusing on others, which parenting is very helpful with. [laughs] The crisis of taking care of somebody immediately takes your mind off yourself. That's also been helpful. There's no finish line in recovery. It's been a lot of years since then, but I'm not standing on the other side of a finish line. It's something that I have to engage with, always. Happily for me, I love the rooms of recovery. I love the people in them. I love sober alcoholics and addicts, their stories, their sense of humor about the worst thing. I identify with them. That’s kind of it. There are people I know who have leaned into it and followed a very similar path to mine who haven't gotten sober. On some level, it's a mystery. It really gets a little woo-woo for me. When I look at the videotape, I'm kind of shocked that I am sober and that I was able to navigate that period of time, especially in early recovery. It's somewhat of a mystery still.

Zibby: Do you feel like part of the being useful was contributing your own story through your memoir and the novels that came after?

Bill: Writing the books kind of felt like not a choice. It really became this puzzle that I needed to see through. Having it be published was the choice. The only way in which it made sense was if it could be useful. You've talked to a lot of memoir writers, so you know this. You're bringing in other people's stories by telling your own, and so there's a cost. There's a complication. It really had to be something that -- there's a discomfort too of just taking those parts of your life that are, for a long time, the most shameful, the ones you would do a lot to keep hidden, and then you're actively putting them forward. The reason to do it was to have it be useful. Probably anybody who's written a memoir of their experience, even of experiences that aren't as dark as my own, when people identify with your story -- I still get emails and DMs and all sorts of communication about people reading those books who have identified, who say it's useful. That's been helpful to make peace with whatever the discomforts have been for me, and especially with the people in my life who those books have involved.

Zibby: I know we were joking before we started recording about how your neighbors, they find out about your book and maybe they don't want to send their kids for a playdate right away. [laughs] I'm kidding.

Bill: Bring the kids over. [laughs] To my face, I don't get much of it. I can't imagine the conversations. One of the things that I have found, which was not my experience when I was younger, is that stories like mine aren't that unique. It seems ultra-unique as you live it. It feels terribly singular and not knowable. Addiction and alcoholism seem to cut through even the most serene-looking lives. I find more that, as I navigate the world, people who I meet confess to me more easily about what's going on in their life. It's overwhelming how much it affects people.

Zibby: That just hits on the whole point of books, really. When you're going through life, these experiences all make you feel that way. Then as soon as you read someone else's or you put your own there, you realize that you're just one. This is just part of the collective experience. That's what's so great about it.

Bill: I think that's true. In the literature of recovery, there's one phrase that really caught my attention early on. There's a description of getting sober as an end of isolation. That was a hundred percent my experience, which is going from this secret, shameful, tortured existence into a community of people who had had very similar experiences. Many of the feelings they would even describe in the same language that I would use, which shocked me to my bones. Also with books, I remember reading books when I was young, identifying with experiences, and just connecting to the world. I grew up in a small town, at the end of a long driveway, before social media. Books were also just a way of seeing what was going on in the world, but also recognizing certain feelings and circumstances. It had this connecting effect. It ended isolation, or it tempered it in some ways, made it more bearable. Certainly, recovery was the extreme version of that for me.

Zibby: I feel like a lot of moms use Facebook groups as their recovery vehicle. I'm not even kidding. What you're talking about with community and all that, I've never been a big message group user type person, but so many people, that's what they need. That's what they're hooked on. It provides them some sort of solace for when they go back in the middle of the night and the kid won't sleep and blah, blah, blah. There's all these groups.

Bill: Life is hard. Anytime that you can connect in any way, even if it's not explicitly to connect about what's hard about life, just not to feel alone in it is buoying. It helps you survive it. It helps you navigate it.

Zibby: Very true. Do you have any advice to aspiring authors? as our last question. I've kept you for too long here.

Bill: Just write, and write more. Read a lot. Reading is one of the most important things that a writer can do. Do both. Write without an expectation. A lot of the time, some of the best work that I've read, when I find out later from the author how it came to be, a lot of it, it happens first without a shape in mind. It comes from this amorphous feeling. All the writers I work with know that I quote this line from the poet WS Merwin. He wrote a poem about writing a poem. He says, "Any day now, I'll make a knife out of this cloud." I think of that cloud as the idea or the inspiration, feeling like something should be written down. The writing is making that more specific, more purposeful, more deliberate. Sometimes it just needs to be a cloud for a while, and just to luxuriate in that and to explore that. Usually, along the way, a shape or a pattern or a purpose emerges. Then you write toward that. I think there's so much tension that arrives at the blank screen and thinking that you need to know what it is exactly before you begin. Just write. Just start. It's like analysis. I don't think people are in analysis anymore. Once upon a time, people would sit for hours just rattling off stuff. Little patterns would emerge from what they would say. Then meaning would be gleaned from that. Then a story gets shaped. Then something really meaningful happens and shapes, but over time. It takes a time.

Zibby: Sort of writer as sculptor whittling it down. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you so much for chatting today and for coming on my show and sharing all your experiences and writing all your fantastic books that have really made a big difference. Thank you.

Bill: Thank you. I appreciate it. Take care.

Zibby: Bye-bye.

Ken Follett, THE EVENING AND THE MORNING

Zibby Owens: I was so honored to interview Ken Follett who is one of the world's best-loved authors, selling more than 170 million copies of his 32 books. Follett's first best seller was Eye of the Needle, a spy story set in the second world war. In 1989, The Pillars of the Earth was published and has since become Follett's most popular novel. It reached number one on best-seller lists around the world and was an Oprah's Book Club pick. Its sequels, World Without End and A Column of Fire, proved equally popular. The Kingsbridge series has sold more than forty million copies worldwide. Follet lives in Hertfordshire, England, with his wife Barbara. Between them they have five children, six grandchildren, and two Labradors. His new book is called The Evening and the Morning.

Ken Follett: Hello, Zibby.

Zibby: Hi, how are you?

Ken: I'm good. How are you?

Zibby: I'm good. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Ken: It's a pleasure.

Zibby: I have to tell you that I grew up with your books all over my house. I called my dad. I was like, "Dad, guess who I'm interviewing?" He was like, "Those are amazing." He read almost all your books and thought they were fast paced and thrilling and amazing. Now that I have your new one, I can't wait to give it to him. I'm thrilled.

Ken: That’s great.

Zibby: How do you do it? How do you keep creating these new worlds and writing for decade after decade in such a powerful way? How do you come up with all these ideas?

Ken: Well, I don't have to do anything else. [laughter] I sit here all day and come up with ideas. It's not like I'm trying to fit this in. It's been my job for forty-five years. Of course, like all authors, I was born with a vivid imagination. Nobody becomes an author without that. It's sometimes hard for people to understand. You asked me the question that we're always asked. Where do you get your ideas? It's hard. The point is that they come to us all the time. When I was a boy, I was never myself. I was always a pirate or a cowboy or the captain of a spaceship. I spent my childhood pretending to be somebody else. Now I've spent most of my working life imagining stuff. It comes. These ideas come sometimes when you don't want them. You're having a nice conversation with somebody and you think to yourself, what would happen if there was an earthquake now? What would we do? Where would we go? The answer is, they come easily. Of course, the trick is, the more difficult thing is to share them with people. That's important. That's the craft. That's the skill of what we do, to write things down in such a way that when people are reading them, they can enter into what we've imagined and it will be vivid for them and they’ll care about it.

Zibby: Wow. How do you do that? [laughs] How did you hone your craft? When you started at the very beginning of your career and you tried doing this, did it come out like this? Do you feel yourself getting better over time? Did it all come naturally, or did you have other tricks and tools in your toolbox that made it what it is today?

Ken: I think for all authors, you learn nearly everything that you need to know by reading. All of us, I never met an author who wasn't a voracious reader from a very young age. I learned to read when I was four years old. I made my mother teach me to read because I loved stories. I was always pestering people to read to me. I can remember this. It's my earliest memory, actually. Both of my parents, all four grandparents would read to me. Both my parents come from big families. I had lots of uncles and aunts. There were loads of people to read to me, and it was never enough. I'd say, "Read me another one." They'd say, "No, that's enough for today, Ken." I'd say, "Please, please." You can imagine, can't you? I desperately, desperately wanted to learn to read. I learned to read young. I've been doing it ever since. By the time you get to your early twenties and you sit down to try and write some fiction, you know a heck of a lot. You know what a sentence is and a paragraph and a chapter. You know about dialogue. You know about describing landscape and describing people because you read so much of that. Of course, it's not enough, but it's most of what you need to know.

If anybody ever says to me, "I'd really like to be a writer. What advice can you give me?" I always say, "Do you read much?" If they say, "No, not really," I say, "I'm sorry." If you want to be a concert violinist, you cannot start at the age of twenty-one. Something similar is true of being an author. If you haven't read a few hundred novels by the time you get to your early twenties, it's too late. That's a big thing. On top of that, I could do action. I could do dialogue. There were some things I had to learn. When I started, I wrote ten unsuccessful books, by the way, before Eye of the Needle. Even though I knew a lot, I clearly did not know enough at that point in my life. I had to learn to emphasize the emotion. I could do two people having an argument, a quarrel. I could write their dialogue, but I wasn't good at saying how they were feeling about it. That was something that I had to consciously concentrate on. Don't just tell the reader what happened. Tell the reader how it feels.

Are they angry, indignant, scared, resentful, all of these emotions? Of course, I now know, but I had to learn it, for the book to be successful, the reader has to share the emotions of the characters in the story. When a character is scared, the reader is like this. Something sad happens in the story, there's a tear in the reader's eye. This is a miracle, of course, because the reader knows that this story was made up. Follett made it up sitting in this chair in this room, but it doesn't make any difference, does it? If the scene is well-written, the fact that you know it never happened makes no difference. If somebody's bullied in the story, you feel indignant. You want to bang the table and say, hey, that's not fair. The reader's emotional reaction to the story is paramount. If you can do that, you've got a successful book. If you can't do that, it won't be a best seller. It might still be a good book. It might be clever. It might be witty. It might be brilliantly well-written. It might be informative. But it won't be a best-selling novel if readers aren't moved emotionally by it.

Zibby: Interesting. Here's the whole secret. This is great.

Ken: I think so. I think that's the basic secret.

Zibby: I'm a little discouraged because only one of my four kids seems to be really into reading. Now I feel like I have no shot at having perhaps one author among them. That's it. [laughs]

Ken: It's like that, though, isn't it? I've got some grandchildren who are absolutely, as I was, fascinated by stories from a very young age, and others who would rather watch TV. I've got a son actually, a stepson, who never read at all as a boy. He is a very successful film editor. All that time he spent in front of the TV, I thought he was wasting his time. I thought he should be reading a book. I was wrong. [laughs] He got to the age of twenty-one and he understood the grammar of television the way I understood the grammar of language. It's the joy of genetics, I suppose, that your kids aren't necessarily like you.

Zibby: It's true. I feel that way when my kids say they want to watch TV, this and that. I hear about people like Simone Biles, the Olympic gymnast, who would watch hour after hour of gymnastics on TV. That's really how she was teaching herself. Then I'm like, oh, no, thirty minutes today. What if? What if they could be Simone Biles if I just let them watch more gymnastics or something? You never know. My husband is stepdad to my four kids. I know he's always looking for advice or a friendly ear for other stepdads. Since you referenced your stepchildren, I was wondering what you think some of the hallmarks of success of being a good stepdad might be so I can give him some pointers?

Ken: My philosophy was, you don't need your stepchildren to like you, but you want them to trust you. You want them to see you as the person they can go to and say, "I've got a problem." You don't want to be their friend. Of course, they become hugely important in your life and you love them and they love you, but you don't try to be their friend. You don't say, "We're going to be pals, son, aren't we?" That's crap. You need to have the Advil. "Ken, I've got a headache." "Try taking a couple of these. Then if it doesn't go away in about half an hour, we'll think again." That’s the kind of thing you've got to -- you’ve got to have the cold remedy. You've got to have the tampons, actually. When they're teenage girls, things happen suddenly or they’ve forgot to bring any. "What am I going to --" "Okay, I happen to have some in my suitcase." [laughs] All of that, condoms, I'm afraid. You’ve got to be the go-to person when mom isn't there. Of course, they’ll go to mom. You've got to be the go-to person for a problem. You’ve got to be equipped for that. Anticipate. Make sure that anything that's likely to go wrong and they come to you with a problem, you're going to be able to help. Without even thinking about you, that's how you sort of grow into the parental role with your stepchildren, which isn't about being liked. It's about being trusted.

Zibby: Who knew? Wow. I feel like as a mom I'm a total failure. I don't always have all those things on hand. Well, certainly not the latter. I guess it's good to defer that to somebody else's responsibility tree, if you will. I had a question, actually, about the beginning. It's not even technically the book. In the beginning of The Evening and the Morning, you say, "In memoriam: EF." I was just wondering, who is EF? Why dedicate this book to this person?

Ken: He was my son. He died. He died two years ago at the age of forty-nine. He had leukemia. This is the first book that I've published since his death. That's why it's dedicated to him. It is the worst thing that can happen to you, to have a child die. You know your parents are going to die. You expect that. It's sad when it happens, but it's not a shock. When a child dies, it's an absolutely terrible thing. I didn't want to make a big fuss about it, but I did want to dedicate the book to his memory.

Zibby: I'm so sorry. That's terrible. I'm so sorry. Did you find it hard to get back into writing? Is it more that you're so used to doing it, this is just what you do? Was it an escape for you? Did it help?

Ken: Work is an escape for me. It's always been like that. If anything is going wrong in my life, then I can lose myself in the imaginary world. It's some kind of relief and consolation. Of course, you never get over the death of a child. It's with you. It's always with you. I was nineteen when my son was born. I was a very young father. He's still in my life. I think about him every day. I hear a pop song on the radio and I think, he'd like that. He and I would talk about what the chords were, that kind of thing. All the time, that happens. He's still in my life even though he's passed.

Zibby: I'm sorry. I recently lost -- not to compare in any way, but just grief in general. From COVID, I recently lost my mother-law-in and grandmother-in-law both this summer. My husband, whose mother it is, and his sister, they keep reaching for their phones and trying to call her. It's only been a couple weeks for us. Everything he thinks of, he wants to tell her. That's the most frustrating, maybe not, but it's not high on the list of frustrations for him, the not being able to reach her anymore and just thinking of her constantly. Losing a child, I'm sorry. Do you feel like your personal things going on in your personal life, do you have that seep into your characters in some way? Do you channel those emotions? You said that was something you struggled with earlier. Obviously as life has progressed, you've developed more and more experiences and emotions yourself. Do you feel like you now infuse your characters with even more of that just because of life experience in a way?

Ken: I think that does happen. I don't do it consciously. I don't consciously use things that have happened to me. I find that almost without my noticing it, parts of my life do creep into the story. For example, when I first married Barbara, which is now thirty-five years ago, I had never before been in what we now call a blended family. I married Barbara and she brought along with her, three children: two teenage girls and a little boy. This was a new experience for me. Soon afterwards, I wrote The Pillars of the Earth. Tom Builder has a blended family. It wouldn't have occurred to me to do that earlier until it had happened to me. I suppose I could've made it up, but it just didn't cross my mind that that would be an interesting thing to do and an interesting kind of family to have at the heart of a story. Once that had happened and I knew about some of the challenges and joys and disappointments of that kind of family, then I could put one in a book. Yes, they do. These things creep in. Eventually, every major thing that happens to you will end up in some form in a book, maybe heavily disguised and quite possibly in a form that nobody else will recognize. As the author, you'll think to yourself, I know why that occurred to me. It's because something similar happened to me.

Zibby: I know that there are a lot of authors who have a lot of success at the beginning of their careers and then feel this pressure to continue churning out just as great product as in the start. Sometimes that anxiety, I feel like, gets in the way, even from a big successful first book to a second book. How do you manage all of that? Do you ever have a morning where you're like, that's it, my talent has run out, this book's going to be terrible? Do you ever have that self-doubt inside?

Ken: Touch wood, not yet. Certainly after Eye of the Needle, my first success, I thought about that a lot. I really wanted to have another success. I was aware, of course, that quite a lot of people write one good book. I knew that Eye of the Needle might have been my one good book. I really didn't want it to be the one. I wanted to spend my life doing this. I liked it so much. I was aware of that danger. Then Triple was a best seller, but I thought, yeah, but people bought that because they liked Eye of the Needle. I thought, I'll believe it if the third book is a best seller. The Key to Rebecca was very successful. At that point, I said, okay, I am going to be a writer now for the rest of my life. That's going to be my career. It's going to be my life. I was very glad because that was what I wanted. There is a certain amount of pressure. I don't mind it. It's good pressure. It's the thought that occurs to me if I'm tempted ever to be a bit of a slacker, to say, that seems not really very good, but it's good enough, if I'm tempted to think that, then I think of all the people who really liked my last book and are looking forward to the next one.

I think, am I going to risk disappointing them? No. It makes me be more of a perfectionist than I might otherwise be. I'm never oppressed by it. It takes a lot to discourage me. I'm an optimist. My inclination, always, is to say, oh, let's not worry about that. That’ll be okay. Don't worry. With my stepchildren, they soon learned. They came to me and said, "I don't feel good. I think I should go to the doctor." I would say, "You'll feel better in the morning." Of course, they would then go to Barbara and she would say, "I'll take you to the doctor." [laughs] My inclination was always to say, no, it can't be that bad, it can't be that bad. The idea that I've got this responsibility, which I do have, all those readers looking forward to the book, all those people in the publishing houses all over the world in all the different countries, all of those people, all those booksellers who are thinking, great, we've got a Ken Follett to sell this Autumn, that’ll help, all of those people, to let them down would indeed be terrible. What I think is, yes, that would be absolutely terrible, so I must make sure that this is a good story.

Zibby: Wow. What would you have done, do you think, if the books hadn’t taken off? What career might you have had? What was your fallback?

Ken: Before Eye of the Needle was published, for a while I was a sort of jobbing writer. For example, I turned a movie script into a novel for a publisher. It was quite well-paid. I think I got two thousand pounds for turning Capricorn One into a novel. That would pay the bills for three or four months. I knew I could do that and I could do it well. I thought I may have to go back to that having taken my shot and written one best seller and unable to do it anymore. Then I could probably still make a living as a writer, I thought. That was plan B anyway, which fortunately never got tested by reality.

Zibby: I know The Pillars of the Earth became this eight-part miniseries and everything. How involved are you in adapting your work? How much would you like to be doing that in the future?

Ken: I'm not very closely involved. They invite me to the set, which I enjoy. It's wonderful, meet the actors. Of course, Pillars of the Earth, I arrived in Budapest, this lot, and there is this medieval English village with a half-built cathedral in the middle of it and all these guys with hammer and chisel pretending to build a cathedral. It was marvelous. It was absolutely marvelous. I loved it. It was a thrill. It was a real thrill. It is that. It's a thrill. You're also very nervous. I've had some bad shows made out of my books, but not many, mostly good. I think there are good authors and not-so-good authors. There are good filmmakers and not-so-good filmmakers. I've got to trust these people because one thing's for sure, I don't know as much about making a television drama as they do, so I shouldn't try and tell them what to do. I should let them do their best and I should just cross my fingers. I tell stories in words. They tell stories in pictures. It is a different skill. That's been my practice, is to say, great, over to you. I'll come and see how you're doing, but it'll just be a social visit. I won't say, no, you can't do it that way. By and large, that has worked for me.

Zibby: That's great. Are you already at work on your next book? How long do these take to write? This is almost a thousand pages. How long does each book take you?

Ken: Three years is the norm. Actually, The Evening and the Morning was a little bit shorter than that. I spend a year planning, a year on the first draft, and a year on the rewrite. That's my normal timetable. People think it's a long time. It seems a bit short to me. It's a lot of work to get into three years.

Zibby: Are you at the beginning stage of the next one?

Ken: Yes. Well, more past that. I finished The Evening and the Morning about a year ago. I've been working on a new story since then. I don't stop. I'm not ready to talk about the new book yet. That's partly because it may well change. The story I think it is now may be something different in a year's time.

Zibby: Have you ever thought about writing some sort of life advice book? You have such great advice and such a wit about you and all that. Maybe you should do a little advice to graduates or to parents, I don't know, something.

Ken: I don't think that's my talent, I must tell you. [laughs]

Zibby: I think it's a hidden talent. You never know. When you're procrastinating from your main work.

Ken: If the novels ever become unpopular and I can't sell them, then I may think about your advice.

Zibby: If you need a backup plan in the next two decades or something. Thank you. Thank you so much for talking to me on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" and for sharing more about The Evening and the Morning which, I know, I'm sorry, we barely even talked about, but readers of yours who are huge fans will undoubtedly enjoy just as much as every other, especially because it's the prequel to one of your most popular books ever, The Pillars of the Earth. Thank you. Thanks for all the advice, even if you don't write a book about it. [laughs]

Ken: It's been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you for having me on the podcast. I hope I'll see you again.

Zibby: Sounds great. Thank you, Ken.

Ken: Buh-bye.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Nancy Jooyoun Kim, THE LAST STORY OF MINA LEE

Zibby Owens: Hi.

Nancy Jooyoun Kim: Hi. How are you?

Zibby: Good. How are you?

Nancy: Nice to meet you.

Zibby: Nice to meet you too. How's everything with you?

Nancy: Good. How about you?

Zibby: Good. I know this is going to sound crazy. I was just at lunch with my dad. He wrote a book called What It Takes, which is a business-type book. It's being published in multiple languages. He said, "Who's your podcast with?" I said, "Nancy." I told him a little bit about your book and your background. He goes, "Oh, my book just came out in Korean." I was like, "I don't think she speaks Korean. She's from LA." He's like, "Maybe her parents." I'm like, "I know her dad passed away." He's like, "Maybe her mom." I was like, "Well, she came here when she was four, but maybe." Anyway, he just gave me this book. He signed it and he said for me to send it to your mom. [laughs]

Nancy: That's so funny. That's great.

Zibby: It's in Korean. He didn't even give me a copy.

Nancy: She'll be the only one between us who will be able to read that. I can't read that myself. Thank you so much. That's so sweet of him. Congratulations to him. That's huge.

Zibby: Thanks. If you're interested, just send me where I should mail it to her. She'll probably be like, what on earth? [laughs]

Nancy: You can send it to me. I'll explain it to her. She'll appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Zibby: No problem. Anyway, thanks for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." I am really excited to talk about your book and your life and all the rest. Thanks for coming on.

Nancy: Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor.

Zibby: Nancy, can you tell people who haven't read your book yet, which is probably most people because it's just coming out, what your book is about and what inspired you to write it?

Nancy: The Last Story of Mina Lee takes place in Los Angeles's Koreatown. It's about a complex mother-daughter relationship between a Korean immigrant single mother named Mina and her American-born named Margot. The book begins with a death. Margot discovers her mother's body in their apartment. The plot unwinds in a dual narrative that alternates between the mother's point of view in the past and the daughter's point of view in the present. During this process, Margot not only learns more about her mother's life, but she learns about her own life and her own self as well.

Zibby: It sounds great. That's the perfect description, uncertainty, a mystery, mother/daughter. It's got all the elements. This is right up my alley.

Nancy: I just really wanted to write about the complex interdependence between mothers and daughters, the ways that they need love and sometimes even resent each other. This premise allowed me to explore all the different nuances of being in a mother-daughter relationship and also having the extra -- the tensions are heightened by the differences in language because Mina only speaks Korean and a little bit of Spanish while Margot speaks primarily English. As you can imagine, as a teenager as she gets older and she wants to describe her feelings and her motivations to her mother, she hits all these blocks. It became extremely frustrating for her.

Zibby: It's hard to imagine a relationship without fluid language between two parties. That's the cornerstone of how you relate to somebody that you love. To have that taken away, especially between a mother-daughter relationship, is for sure worth examining. What's happens then...?

Nancy: There are lines within the book where Margot says things like, "What would be the point of me learning Korean?" She only thinks that she needs it to speak to one person in her life. Yet it requires her mother's death for her to finally realize what that exactly means. Suddenly, her mother dies. Her mother is her only connection to family. She becomes kind of untethered in this world, which is quite devastating for her. We watch her pull through. I think the mystery itself of her mother's death gives her this distraction for her grief.

Zibby: You had a quote in the beginning when Margot is talking to her friend. You say, "Agreeing to the same white lie is what makes family family, he says." She was like, what about if people agree? What if family agrees to two truths? He's like, I don't know, maybe they're scientists. [laughs]

Nancy: That was a little nod toward sometimes the fragility of the stories that our families tell ourselves to survive and the ways in which parents and children, sometimes we keep things from each other no matter how much we love each other because we're attempting to either protect the other person or protect ourselves. That's a very human impulse, in my opinion. Obviously, Margot has a lot of reasons to be angry at her mother for keeping secrets from her. At the same time, as she gets to know more and more the depth of her mother's story and how complicated she was, she could see how her mother, in order to survive, literally had to submerge so much of her history and her past just to get through everyday life. I think it's hard to just be a working-class single mother and imagining how she can work so many hours a day and also attempting to process things with her daughter, explain things to her daughter in a different language, which is almost impossible in a way that's nuanced and complicated. Through this process, Margot kind of forgives her mother in an interesting way. This book is just the beginning of that relationship in a lot of ways.

Zibby: I was wondering with the book, how much this is tracking your own life. You wrote so beautifully about your father and his tragic death on his way home from a hiking accident and your mother and both of their stories and when they came to the United States. You wrote in Guernica and Los Angeles Review of Books. I felt like I really got to know your whole backstory. Maybe you could share a little more about what it was like, your knowing their stories and also even your father's reticence to share his past and the pain that he masked in the past and then how he leaving your family affected you.

Nancy: In a lot of immigration stories, there's so much trauma involved, usually. A lot of times, immigrants are either running from something or running toward something. Even though this novel is not autobiographical, I think that something that I could really relate to are the types of silences that exist within families and how loaded those silences can be and the ways in which daily life won't allow you to access the truths behind those silences until something as horrifying as what happens to Margot, which is finding her mother's body in her apartment, happens. Like Margot and Mina, within my own family, my father spoke English, but my mother, she didn't speak English. A lot of the tensions and the misunderstandings that happen between mother and daughter, that's something that I could definitely relate to. It's very difficult to describe unless you've experienced it. It seems like, how could you live with somebody under the same roof and not speak the same language? It just almost doesn't make sense. Growing up, parents and children, the language that they use is typically elementary. It's things like, did you do your homework? Did you go to school? What did you eat today?

There's this point where Margot just begins to grow separately from her mother as an adolescent. She sort of begins to abandon her past as she gets closer towards going to college and thinking about what she wants to do with her own life. These are all frustrations and things that I could definitely relate to. Mina never really needs to know English to get by. That's one of the beauties of ethnic enclaves, places like Koreatown, Chinatown, where people can come to this country and they can survive. They can work and find basic ways of getting by without learning the language. Pretty much, in Koreatown, you have an accountant. You have a bank. You have a post office. Mina works in a mostly Latinx area of LA. She really only needs a little bit of Spanish to communicate with her customers. As Mina's spending so much time at work and then Margot's focusing on figuring out how to get out of Koreatown, they really split apart. These are definitely frustrations that I think that I can relate to and a lot of other immigrants and the children of immigrants can relate to.

Zibby: A hundred percent. You also include in the book what it was like growing up looking different. I don't know if this was your experience growing up in LA or if this was just fictious for Margot's background, but how she longed to look like all these tall, blond-haired, beautiful, white students. PS, I would also love to look like a tall, blond student myself. [laughs] I think that's a common aspiration.

Nancy: What's interesting is I think the assumption is that if you grow up in diverse places you have exposures to so many different forms of beauty and concepts of beauty. Margot does grow up around a very diverse group of people. At the end of the day, she is very lonely growing up because she has no siblings. Her mother works all day long. She only really sees her mother at night when she's very tired or over the weekends when she's helping her mom at her mother's store in [indiscernible]. She spends probably so many hours of her life watching television. I think that so much of children's formation of how they view the world and how the world is idealized is through TV. I'm imagining Margot growing up in the eighties and nineties. I'm sure there were some forms of diversity on television at that point, but I don't feel like she had a ton of role models. I don't think she necessarily saw herself in a lot of the television or the movies that she was seeing.

There's this sense that there's a gap between her lived experience and what she's seeing in this public and social way, like, if I had those things, that is what success looks like. There's this huge gap, which is actually really sad when you think about it because in many ways Margot's mother, Mina, even if she doesn't fit the traditional standards of success in her country, in many ways she is a successful person. She's a woman who had so little and managed to create a life for herself. She managed to feed her children. She managed to send her children to school. I think being a single mother is a huge accomplishment in and of itself, especially in a country that's so foreign to her. There's this huge gap in understanding where Margot sees her mother as representing everything she doesn't want to be when she grows up. She wants to have a nice at least middle-class life. She wants to have certain nice things in her life. In reality, if she had known more about her mother's story, I think she would've appreciated her a lot more and seen, wow, this woman is actually very heroic.

Zibby: I think it takes a lot for kids to actually get out of their minds and consider their parents to be heroes, especially at a younger age, but even, I would argue, a lot of -- I think it's very hard to be objective sometimes as a child, even an adult child for some people. [laughs]

Nancy: Right, because our parents will always be the people who are reminding us of what we're not quite doing, even if you're in a very loving environment. Obviously, they're doing that for a specific reason. As children, we can sometimes see our parents as the boss, the person who doesn't see me for who I am. There's so many ways that parents and children -- I think that's what makes this book really interesting. It's interested in the nuances of those emotions, even if some of them are uncomfortable or maybe even, I don't want to say embarrassing, but I think they're hard to write about and talk about.

Zibby: Basically, Margot just wants a role on Beverly Hills, 90201. What is she going to do? Instead, she's going home to Koreatown and whatever. She's never going to be happy in that environment. That’s tough.

Nancy: Right, exactly. I'm sure she watched 90201.

Zibby: Of course. Who didn't? Come on. How did you become such a good writer? I really feel like you are a fabulous, fabulous writer. Your nonfiction stories about yourself really read almost like novels and made me so excited to read your actual novel. How did you do this? Tell me about your whole writing history.

Nancy: That's so sweet of you. I've been writing for a really long time. I started probably when I was a kid just playfully, imaginatively. I used to draw these little cartoons and write these little stories. The plants would be characters. The lawnmower was the bad guy. I remember writing these really elementary stories as a kid. Then in junior high and high school, I started writing really bad poetry, which I think a lot of kids at that age write. [Indiscernible] writing bad poetry or writing really melodramatic songs. I definitely had that streak in me. I've had streaks in my life where my work was just too demanding. Writing for me has really just been about practice and discipline and endurance in a lot of ways. I feel like I just put the time in and the hours. I know that's really hard to do for most people. The way that I was able to really complete this novel after so many years -- I graduated from an MFA program in 2006. That was fourteen years ago.

Since then, I've written two novels. This is the only one to be published. For me, what worked is to find the story that literally only I could tell. Once I had a sense of purpose to my writing, it made the discipline required a little bit more accessible, I would say. Writing as a discipline is really hard because I think there's no obvious rewards immediately. Nobody really knows what you're doing. Everybody's like, oh, you're writing a novel. That sounds fun. They don't really get what's going on behind the scenes. There's no real way to explain it very well, also, while you're working on it. It just sounds like some abstract story. You're still figuring it out, so you can't even really talk about it. What helped me was to find the story that I felt only I could tell and to have that sense of purpose behind what I was doing. Once I had that sense of purpose, I was able to muster the discipline that I think I needed to actually complete the book.

Zibby: What was that sense of purpose that you felt? What did you need to get out with this book? What was the driving force?

Nancy: I feel like this book, it's a story that I had never read before. I feel like it's something that captured things that I have always wanted to say to either my mother or maybe to other people and that I could not say in real life. That's the beauty of what fiction can do that I think is really amazing. I remember when I was an undergrad [indiscernible] had given a talk. This was many years ago, probably fifteen, sixteen years ago. Somebody in the audience asked her, they loved the dialogue in her novels, and were they based upon real conversations in her family? She said something like, no, they're conversations that I always wished had happened. The purpose of this novel is in a way to create a kind of impossible conversation that could've never happened while Mina was still living between a daughter and a mother. I feel like to have this sense of purpose of having this extraordinarily important conversation and talk between two people who really love each other but can't quite access each other really focused my attention in a way that narrowed it and made it a lot easier to accomplish as opposed to thinking, I'm going to write about immigration, just to really zero in on something that felt manageable to me. On the way, obviously I would explore all sorts of other things.

Zibby: Wow. Then when you were actually doing the writing in that space where nobody really understands what you're doing, where did you like to do that? Where did you work? When and where? What did you do the rest of the day when you weren’t writing and all of that?

Nancy: I actually began really focusing on this novel during a point of transition in my life. I was living in Seattle working a full-time job. My husband got a job down in California. It allowed me to start all over because now I had to find a new job. I began to put together freelance editing projects and more project-based work so I could work from home. For me, this novel really was written in the mornings before I had to do my regular day job. I tried to put together at least two to three hours per day working on my book. I tried to work on it about five days a week. That's very hard for a lot of people to do. It just is, whether it's because they have children or the demands of their job. I found that working on a book almost every day allowed me to access almost a fluidity or subconscious space where I was returning to something. There's something kind of meditative about it. I think it's probably similar to how professional athletes or certain artists have to wake up and it just requires this disciple where you get into it. It's a little bit easier every time. That was the process for me. I just woke up in the morning, try to get it out of the way first. If I waited until later, life would just take over.

Zibby: That's how I feel about exercise, which is why I basically never exercise. [laughs]

Nancy: It's actually very, very similar. Then for the rest of the day, you feel recharged and you feel like you've gotten something done. That was necessary for me.

Zibby: As opposed to maybe not getting out of your pajamas all day in pandemic mode. What has this time been like for you with your book? When we went into the pandemic mode in March or whatever, I'm sure your book release felt so far away. Now suddenly, here we still are and it's coming out. How has this whole thing been for you?

Nancy: Obviously, there's aspects of it that are so difficult. Nobody imagines this situation when they're thinking of, I've been writing for this long and I'm finally having my first book out. Now I can't even go out and celebrate. There's so much that I can't do that I would love to do. I can't go to my bookstore and see my book on the shelf. That's one of the [indiscernible]. At the same time, I try to just remain grateful every single day. I know that this has been such a huge honor to have a book out in the world. I feel like people who will connect with this book will connect with this book. They’ll find a way to it. The story matters to me. Obviously, I want people to read it. Just that this story exists and is out and there's this possibility of people finding it is really wonderful to me. Every day, I just try to remain grateful for that. I'm actually loving the virtual aspect of things, to be honest, because I feel like I'm able to do a little bit more than I normally would be able to. I'm able to connect with writers in different regions. There's no travel involved. It's kind of fun going to online readings because you don't have to put on shoes. You can turn off your camera. You don't have to put on anything, pretty much. You can still be a part of this community. I do think that there have been some pluses to it in a way.

Zibby: I love going to book readings. I have four kids. It's often hard to get to Brooklyn for seven on a Tuesday or something like that, so I felt like I was always missing out. Sometimes I would go to book readings and there would be like ten people there, which is crazy, even though the authors are super amazing and the book was fabulous. It's hard to get people all to congregate at these appointed times. Now I feel like we can all pop into bookstores across the world if we want. There is a sense of liberation in that.

Nancy: You can have dinner while you're at a reading, which I know sounds weird, but you can. There's fewer excuses, almost. I've been to some wonderful readings. I really miss the live events. There's always the hangout afterwards. There's always the energy of those events. At the same time, I think we're doing pretty well considering the circumstances.

Zibby: Maybe you shouldn't actually eat dinner while you're giving a reading. Maybe if you're in the audience it would be okay.

Nancy: If you're in the audience, I mean.

Zibby: Okay, good. I'm picturing you rolling up with --

Nancy: -- [Indiscernible] fold laundry.

Zibby: It's true. The function of no video always being an option is huge. Who knows what people are doing? I'm sure somebody's done a funny skit about what people are actually doing behind the black little boxes in the Zoom screens. They're funnier than I could potentially ever be. Who knows? Have you found it easy or hard to write during this time? Have you been working on a new project? What's coming next for you?

Nancy: I started working on a new novel which also takes place outside of Los Angeles's Koreatown. It's about the separations, the silences within a family after the mysterious death of the mother five years ago. I'm still writing. I'm probably not as productive as I was before the pandemic, obviously, because so much is going on in our world. It's been a comfort. I love it, just getting back into the pages. This is my favorite stage of the process. I love the early stages when you're just learning about your characters and you're like, oh, my gosh. You get this idea just out of nowhere, or you're in a scene and they say something and it makes you realize, maybe she's suggesting something about her past. There's this really interesting part of discovery that I love in this stage. It's great. I love this part. This is the best part, actually, the beginnings. Once you start revising, it gets so hard.

Zibby: Yeah, because you're out of that same mental headspace that you referred to before. Now you just have to dip into it in certain parts.

Nancy: That's when you start getting really sharp about things and you start realizing, oh, there's this plot line that totally just dropped off. Now I have to remove that and figure out why that was in there in the first place. Right now's a really good time in terms of where I am with my next book.

Zibby: In terms of this book selling and the publishing journey, if you will, what's the synopsis of how you sold your book and how that all happened?

Nancy: It really began with an agent finding me. She actually read that Guernica piece that you're referring to about my father. It's called "Heaven Lake."

Zibby: It was so good.

Nancy: Thank you so much. My agent who's incredible, Amy Elizabeth Bishop, just reached out to me. She said, "Do you have anything?" I was like, "I do, actually. I have this novel that I've been working on for about five years." It was a pretty straightforward experience. I didn't have the same experience with my first novel that I wrote. It went through over twenty rejections. This was a much more straightforward experience. I think it's because of what I was talking about earlier, just having that sense of purpose, that really clear sense of purpose. A lot of people wonder, where am I going to find a story that only I can tell? That sounds like some kind of magical thing that drops in your lap. I think it's more a matter of just finding and being true to what truly keeps you up at night, what truly you want to spend time with, what truly at the end of the day matters to you. For me, it was all about exploring this one complicated relationship between a mother and daughter. The purpose and the clarity was very obvious in the manuscript. That helped it sell, in my opinion.

Zibby: Love it. That's great. Do you have any other advice? I know that you've already given a lot of great advice to aspiring authors. Any other parting tips?

Nancy: Yeah, I do. I'm not particularly wise. I'm still new to all of this. I would say something that has helped me a lot is I've surrounded myself with extraordinarily supportive people. Through the years, I've had so many relationships that were less functional. This is one of those industries where you need to be surrounded by people who believe in you a hundred percent because there's so much rejection. It's such an uphill battle. I think that really surrounding yourself with people who support you and believe in you no matter what is so important. We can't choose everyone that's around us. My strategy has always been, I've been much more careful about sharing things with those people and really identifying who I can trust and who's going to support and love me through even the hardest parts of this journey. That has made a huge difference. I couldn't have survived all of this without my husband who is very supportive and friends who hadn’t even read my book but who just always gave me the sense that they believed in whatever I was working on and that it was important.

Zibby: That is just all-around great life advice. Surround yourself with the right people. It's true. That really is the secret to the whole thing, is just saying, is this person good for me or not? and figuring out a way to have the strength to say goodbye to the people who aren't.

Nancy: That is really, really hard. Yes, it's super hard. It's something that I'm still learning to do, but I feel like gradually moving in that direction. I am definitely seeing major improvements in me reaching the goals that I need to reach.

Zibby: It's obviously working because you have a book coming out. You're a beautiful writer. Your book is getting on the shelves whether you see it or not. It's like a tree falling in the forest. [laughs] If my book is on the bookstore shelves and nobody sees it, is it really there? But it is, so congratulations.

Nancy: Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. It's been such an honor to talk with you.

Zibby: It's been so fun. Awesome. Thank you so much. Send me your address so I can send you this book.

Nancy: I will. I'm not sure if I have your email, but I guess I'll send it through Justine, my publicist. Thank you again. Bye.

Zibby: Take care. Buh-bye.

Elizabeth Ames, THE OTHER'S GOLD

Zibby Owens: Elizabeth Ames is the author of debut novel The Other's Gold. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, Elizabeth has lived in Seattle, France, and Rwanda since leaving the Midwest. She currently lives in a Harvard dormitory with her husband, two children, and a few hundred undergraduates. At least, it was that way until this year when everything is going virtual.

Welcome, Elizabeth. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Elizabeth Ames: Thank you so much for having me.

Zibby: I'm particularly excited because I feel like we've been trying to plan this for like five years or something ridiculous. This is one of my longest to-do podcasts that I've had on the list.

Elizabeth: I know. My book has been out for almost a year, but I really appreciate your flexibility. I'm happy to be on anytime.

Zibby: I'm sure it was my fault. I'm not trying to say it's not.

Elizabeth: We were back and forth. Obviously, we all had quarantine time. There was sort of, maybe that's only going to last a few weeks. Maybe it's going to last indefinitely. We don't know. I'm just glad we found a time.

Zibby: Me too. I know we're doing video and audio. For the podcast listeners only, you are in this gorgeous library at one of the houses at Harvard. Just tell a little bit about it and about writing The Other's Gold in that library. It must have been amazing.

Elizabeth: People who aren't familiar, Harvard has I think twelve, I don't want to get it wrong, but I think it's twelve undergraduate houses outside of the freshman houses. This is all funny to talk about, or not funny, but strange to talk about now thinking about, how will it be this coming fall? Last year and the year before when I wrote this book, I moved into this house, Quincy House, with my husband and our then six-month-old. I guess I'm taking it too far back.

Zibby: No, go back.

Elizabeth: Okay. I'm in this beautiful library. Every house has its own library. This is the Quincy House cube that I just ducked in for this short time to chat with you.

Zibby: It's beautiful. Wait, keep going back. I like that. So your husband's a professor. You ended up at Harvard.

Elizabeth: He's a professor.

Zibby: What does he teach?

Elizabeth: He's in the department of folklore and mythology. His PhD is in African and African American studies and anthropology. His class this fall is going to be The Art of Emergency: Storytelling in the Time of -- I'm going to get the title wrong, but it sounds like a very timely class. Storytelling in the Time of Trauma? I've got to look at the [indiscernible]. The department of folklore and mythology, I think it's a cool department.

Zibby: Gosh, I want to go back to school. I miss taking classes. Should I learn about this? Should I learn about that? Education is so wasted on the young. At the time, I was like, if I drop French, I can go out Thursday nights. [laughs]

Elizabeth: What time to get up, I know. When we moved here, I had this vantage from this library where the students work. I could look out over the courtyard, which is so idyllic. It's so manicured and green. Students would be walking to class. I always say I love campus novels. I always hoped I'd write one. Then when we moved into a dorm, I thought, this is the time. If I'm ever going to write a campus novel, I have to do it now when I have this really useful perspective for a writer. I'm an outsider in that I'm not a student at Harvard. I don't really have much of a formal affiliation with the university, but I live in one of the buildings and work with all these students and have literally a privilege and a joy to live amongst them while they were going through this really intense time of being away from home. I was going through this really intense time of becoming a parent, living here with a six-month-old. That was what got me thinking about the book. This is so weird to be a new mom amongst all these sophomores. I lived mostly among sophomores. Seeing them be dropped off at school by their parents, and their parents just looking at me with my baby so longingly, giving me the, it goes so fast. I believed that from day one. Also, obviously seeing parents drop their kids off at college is really a -- while you're wearing your baby, if you weren’t already weeping, you will be any minute.

Zibby: [laughs] Oh, my gosh. Tell listeners what The Other's Gold is about.

Elizabeth: The Other's Gold, it follows four friends, Alice, Lainey, Ji Sun, and Margaret, from when they meet their freshman year at a fictional college, Quincy-Hawthorn College. I just mentioned Quincy House. The college is named in part after Quincy House, but it is an invented college in New Hampshire. They meet their freshman year. It follows them from that time to when they start having children or not. It's a thirteen-year time period. It's structured around the worst mistake made by each of the four friends during that really intense and transformative twelve years.

Zibby: I was particularly drawn to Alice and her situation with her brother and the accident and how she talked about it and processed it and wanted to tell her friends but didn't want to tell her friends. How you go through life with secrets, I feel like that's one of the most powerful things in books. What do people do with their secrets? What causes people to do things? Does it matter if you're young or old? What makes something forgivable and not and all the rest? I was just wondering about developing her character in particular, if you could talk a little more about how you decided on her narrative trajectory, if you will.

Elizabeth: I always feel like when you talk about characters you start to sound so nutty. You're like, she came to me. I do think she came to me maybe third or even fourth. How does a character come to you? That's the part that actually feels like magic to me. I think there's a lot of things that you can try to invite characters in your mind, but they just kind of come knocking. Then you start thinking about them. I feel like when you get really into it, then suddenly everything's grist for the mill. You'll hear people talking. I remember at some point actually, speaking of Alice because she becomes a doctor, I was sitting by these two doctors at a coffee shop listening to them talk. They were talking about children and one who hadn’t had children and she had wanted to. They were just having this pretty intimate conversation about their careers and their lives. I was just thinking, Alice, Alice. She's a doctor. She struggles with her fertility. Those were just strangers in a coffee shop. Once the characters arrive at your doorstep, then you start to see them everywhere. They're really present.

Zibby: Did you have a college experience anything like this? Did you have three girlfriends that you roomed with? Did you base the window seat off of a dorm room there? How real to life, if at all, is the book or parts of the book?

Elizabeth: I always say I feel like I could count the actual things that came from my life on one hand. I went to a large state school, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which is a great school. Part of my fascination with small liberal arts schools is probably fueled by the fact that I didn't go to one. The idea of the en suite dorm room and the smaller sometimes claustrophobic environment, I think my curiosity about that partly fueled the book. I've been very lucky with the long-term friendships I've had. I've never been part of a quad like that, of a foursome. I think that partly inspired the book too, was just the curiosity I have about those kinds of friendships where you're living together, taking classes together, eating together, dating, breaking up, sometimes going on to marry each other or not. It's just such an intense time. Your bond is forged so intensely. Then I would see these groups of students just completely inextricable. I was curious about how that friendship forms and then how it's weathered and tested once you're not in the environment that totally supports it.

Zibby: My sophomore year I lived in a room very similar to that. We had a common room. We had two little rooms with two of us each with bunk beds. It was so tight. You couldn't even open the dresser drawer without sitting on the bunk bed. The four of us, we did everything together. I remember my dad got married. I was like, I have to invite everybody I'm rooming with. That's non-negotiable. It is so interesting to see, even if you took this little group of us, what's happened over time. You could take any cluster, really. I think that's what's so great about books like this. My group of friends, it's just a little microcosm. It could happen to anybody because life is so random. Any characters you pick, all these horrible things and great things are going to happen. It's just a mishmash, like a commentary on life. That was a ramble.

Elizabeth: Are you still friends with the three people who were your roommates?

Zibby: I roomed with one girl. Then there were the other two. The two in the other little room went to St. Paul's together, so they had been friends before. I'm still close to them. We go on girls' trips once every other year at this point. Now I don't know when we'll see each other again. One of them lives in Denver. One of them lives in Hong Kong. Then my roommate died on September 11th.

Elizabeth: I'm so sorry. I think I've actually read your essay about that. I'm so sorry.

Zibby: That's okay. It's okay. We were friends after school. We lived together after school. She was twenty-five when it happened. I have so many of those memories and all of us on campus together just totally embedded the way you're saying. If there was a social or whatever, it was us with the guys. It was just that time. To lose someone in the group is also, when you go back, it changes the way you look at everything that had happened. Even when we go to reunions, I'm looking around. It's just not the same. The book kind of took me back to that intensity because you don't get that with anyone, I feel like, at this age other than -- there is an intensity that comes with parenting in the trenches together that's similar because you're in it. You're stressed. You don't know what you're doing. There's too much to do in the same way that I felt like it was at school. I think you do get that with some new parents, especially first time around, but not in that many other junctures. Maybe if you're working in a really intense environment. I didn't really have this big corporate setting where you might bond with people in your class or something.

Elizabeth: I think you're right. I think that's what's interesting to me about that span of life. As adults, it is unusual to have that kind of same intensity of the circumstance. I felt like because I was becoming this new parent alongside these students who were kind of forging their own new families, it did highlight for me the similarities around your identity changing. When you come to college and you're figuring out who you are, so much of that I think is forged as a result of who you befriend, which can be totally random. You're sort of like, I want to be like this person. I want to not be like this person. Then that rachets up through college. The moments I tried to choose in the book around getting married or not, career choices, or other touchstones where you're thinking about your identity -- what does it mean if this person marries someone who I really loathe? What does it mean if my friend chooses not to have kids or another friend can't have kids? or all these times you define yourself against even your closest friends. Like you said, when you're new parents, your identity is -- that's a complete upheaval, the first time especially when you're just -- I feel like for most people I know, that change from not being a parent to being a parent is huge. I felt like those moments bookending leaving your family, starting a family, even though they felt so different, they have some things in common.

Zibby: Totally. I totally agree. Speaking of family, I'm sorry, you can probably hear my son screaming in the background.

Elizabeth: No, you can't apologize for that. That's a side effect of this Zoom life. People have to be aware that children exist in some working people's lives.

Zibby: So you've been up there. Have you been there the whole time at Harvard with your -- well, now he's not a baby anymore.

Elizabeth: I moved with my husband and first baby when she was six months old. Now she's four and a half.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh.

Elizabeth: I know. The students who started when we started, they already graduated. I guess this will be the start of our fifth year and a very strange year. I've since had a second child who's only ever lived in a Harvard house. It's a really amazing community. I always say I was kind of weary about moving into a dorm as an adult with a baby. [laughs] I lived in this apartment in a sleepy, really child-friend neighborhood of Cambridge known for being family friendly. I didn't have kids. Then I moved into Harvard Square. It's family friendly in its own way. It's also more like, you can go out and do stuff that isn't as easy to do when you have a new baby. There are other families. There are dogs. The students are amazing. Talking about it now, I just feel sad because we don't know what it's going to look like this year. Even if there are some students in this house, we won't be eating in the dining hall. We won't be having the kind of casual interactions with students that make it feel so warm and community-like, and with other tutors and other families and pets. So much around education is just a big question mark. I think this is a really special place to have kids. I felt so lucky for the people that my kids have met.

Zibby: I bet they have the best babysitters ever. You have access to the most brilliant, awesome babysitters. I feel like I should just come there to poach some sitters or something. [laughs]

Elizabeth: They're so busy, though. The ones we've had are so amazing. They have a lot going on in the schoolyear.

Zibby: I'm sure that’s true. So when did you write? How long did it take to write this book? Did you outline? I know you were talking about the organic nature in which the characters developed. Did you start with that timeline of the bookends that you just mentioned? Was that a "do not change" type of thing for the outset? How did you start it?

Elizabeth: Actually, it was, again, kind of college-like because it was four years start to finish. I was just thinking about this because I started taking notes, emailing myself, notes app kind of notes, when my first child was born. I just wanted to jot down some of the feelings. It wasn't even fictional yet. It was just like, I got to figure out how to write about some of this, really just intense feelings. I want to write it down now while it's so fresh. Then we moved here. I started really getting to work on it once we started having some childcare. When my first child was eight months old, we had a very part-time nanny share. I did some of the tentative first steps on this book. Then when she was a year and a half, I think she was nineteen months, she started at this little preschool daycare. Then I really got cooking. I had been working on the book but not in such a consistent way, in a very piecemeal way, but always walking around thinking about it but not just actually banging it out.

Then when she started at this daycare, I really figured out how to prioritize my time and be more efficient. I would drop her off and oftentimes go to this coffee shop that was really nearby that has no internet. I would just get to work. It was maybe a year of thinking, a year of writing, and then selling the book and then doing some revisions that year. Then it came out. It was kind of fast. I had written a book before this that isn't published that took a really long time. It was a lot more labored and protracted. This book came much more quickly. I felt a lot of joy, not necessarily with the content, but with the flow, when you really get into a project and you're just feeling the flow. I think that helped make it happen faster, and the fact that I was just so conscious of my time. I always say I closed my tabs sooner. I always have so many tabs open on my browser. Once I was working on this work and knew how precious my time was away from my young baby, I was just like, close these tabs. Open Word. Get to work.

Zibby: Love it. That's good.

Elizabeth: That's such a meandering answer. I'm sorry.

Zibby: No, that was great. I loved that. It's true. I feel like sometimes the less time I have, the more I get done in that time because I have to maximize every second of an hour. If I have four hours, then I might, well, I must have tons of time, I'll go read the paper.

Elizabeth: I heard an interview with Helen Phillips at the Boston Book Festival. She talked about that same thing, how she's had decreasing time with each book, but she feels like she's become a better writer and makes better use of this time. Her writing's become more concentrated and powerful. I'm probably misquoting her. I feel so encouraged when I hear people talk about it in that way. I think, well, you wrote this book, The Need, when you had this little time. You were doing it in these chunks, and it's so incredible. I was sort of totally deluded. I felt like when I was in graduate school at twenty-four, I thought you have to publish a book before you have a baby or you never will. Obviously, there's evidence throughout time that that's not true. I just had this notion that if you didn't publish a book before you had a baby it was all over for you. It's so archaic. I don't know how I got this idea, but it really stuck with me. For me, it was the opposite. I got so much more productive. My career as a writer didn't really take off until after I had a baby. I think it's helpful for people to hear, especially "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books," that it isn't always the derailment that you might fear. I can't speak to this during times of no childcare. Certainly when childcare is involved, people with small children can still do a lot.

Zibby: It's a whole new set of life experiences to draw on and include. The perspective of living through it versus just knowing about it informs the writing in such a richer way. If you can find the time when you're a mom, for sure it's not over. Are you working on anything now?

Elizabeth: Not much. I'm back to emailing myself. Even, it's degraded to texting myself at this point, so jotting notes and things. I need to get more organized. I'm texting, emailing. These notes are everywhere. I got to start pulling it all together. Not too much. I think if we have a little bit more childcare in the coming weeks or months or if I just get more -- people also get up really early and write or they write in the night. It's possible. Also, I've just been so distracted and all the things that we're all feeling during this time.

Zibby: It's okay. I didn't mean that you had to say that you were doing anything.

Elizabeth: I'm working on something, but very scattered. I like to call it the filling-up stage. You're filling up. Then you're going to put it out.

Zibby: It's true. It's so important. How can you make sense of stuff if you haven't processed it? It all is part of it, so don't feel bad. You're like the five hundredth person who's said the same thing, so don't worry about it.

Elizabeth: I know. I listen to the podcast. Of course like all of us, I'm distraught and stressed and all these things. It's a very intense time. It is encouraging. Even prior to this time I felt like hearing from people who talk about the rhythms of their work as being -- some people write every day and are super regimented, and some don't. There's just seasons in your life, as with all things, where you're super productive or you're more fallow. I think that a lot of writers think if they're in a fallow season, well, this is it. It's like new parenting. It's a similar mindset where whatever trouble you're having, especially those early days, your child is having all these sleep interruptions, you're like, this is my life now. I guess I never sleep. I don't sleep. Then a couple years later, or hopefully for some people a month later, you're like, I totally forgot about that time. I think it's similar with writing in the sense that people -- I'm comforted when I hear about people whose books I revere having forgotten how to write a book between books. Each one invents itself. Maybe the difference is just that they did. You know you can do it. You don't necessarily know how, but you know you can do it. Hopefully, you can do it again.

Zibby: I feel like you've already sprinkled in all this advice and inspiration. Do you have any parting advice to aspiring authors?

Elizabeth: One piece of advice would be to prioritize your work in the way that it is in your heart. If you can prioritize it that way in your day, that can be really meaningful. I feel like I always put writing below a lot of obligations for a long time, like my day job. Obviously, it's a huge privilege to be able to move writing up the list. If you can at any point -- for some people, that's grad school or a fellowship or just doing worse at your day job. Honestly, just doing a worse job at your day job and better with the thing that your passion is really for, I think that's something that was useful to me. For me, that meant starting the day working on my book instead of getting to it after other things. The other piece of advice that I was thinking -- it's hard to give advice not knowing what someone's doing. For me, having a baby, I would walk around with her so much to try to get her to take a nap. I wasn't listening to my headphones because I felt like she's brand new and I need to be very alert and not distracted. That was really useful for me. I listen to podcasts. I love podcasts. This is weird advice to give on a podcast. For me, finding some time that's generative. It can be walking or even in the shower or swimming, just some time when the voice in your head is the one for your book and not other voices or music or other things. I think that can be an actual practical tip to try. See what happens if you just only listen to your own thoughts for a walk if you're stuck.

Zibby: Sometimes I don't want to hear my own thoughts. [laughs] That's why I like to listen.

Elizabeth: No kidding. I know. I want to these chats.

Zibby: Someone, I can't remember who it was, but somebody said that part of their writing process was that on their commute to work every day, no radio allowed. That was her time to think about what she would maybe want to write at lunchtime. Now I'm forgetting who that was. My brain is just falling apart. It's like what you were saying. She had that protected time. I mean, she was driving, but whatever part of your brain that that uses is only a tiny bit compared to imagination.

Elizabeth: Isn't it wild that that sounds -- I'm like, that sounds so boring. Don't you want to have the radio on? My impulse is, turn it on. I guess that being bored is so crucial for creative work. You have to be bored. We're not bored as much, or we haven't been, maybe, these days.

Zibby: Yeah, it's true. Planned boredom episodes, I think that's our new thing here.

Elizabeth: [laughs] Do you have the time for some boredom?

Zibby: Making time for boredom, there we go. Thanks, Elizabeth. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" and for sharing your experience and for letting me feel like I got to spend a half an hour in the library this morning, which is a huge perk.

Elizabeth: Thank you so much for chatting with me. It was a pleasure. Even though I just spoke out against -- total silence on your walk. I love listening to podcasts. It was a pleasure to be part of it.

Zibby: Thanks. You too. Have a great day.

Elizabeth: You too. Bye.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Sue Miller, MONOGAMY

Zibby Owens: I interviewed Sue Miller a while back. I'm releasing her episode today. Thanks to all of you who listened to my very personal heartfelt episode that I released this weekend about my family's losses. Thank you. I'm sorry I made so many of you cry. Thank you for all the direct outreach as a result of that episode. I had to get it out of my system. Anyway, Sue Miller, critically acclaimed and loved by readers, Sue is recognized internationally for her elegant and sharply realistic accounts of the contemporary family. Her books have been widely translated and published in twenty-two countries around the world. The Good Mother from 1986, the first of her ten novels, was an immediate bestseller, more than six months at the top of the New York Times charts. By the way, I totally remember my mother reading this when I was little. Subsequent novels include three Book of the Month main selections: Family Pictures, which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award; While I Was Gone, which was an Oprah’s Book Club selection; and The Senator’s Wife. Her novel The Arsonist and her nonfiction book The Story of My Father came out recently as did her latest book which we talk about in our interview which is called Monogamy which, by the way, I keep leaving in front of Kyle just to give him nice reminders that it's so important. [laughs] Not that he needs some. Her numerous honors include a Guggenheim and a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship. She is a committed advocate for the writer’s engagement with society at large having held a position on the board of PEN-American Center. For four years she was chair of PEN New England, an active branch that worked with writing programs in local high schools and ran classes in prisons. She has taught fiction at, among others, Amherst, Tufts, Boston University, Smith, and MIT. By the way, we did this interview from her bathroom. I even made sure that she took her shower cap and moved it out of the screen, so we were immediately bonded for this interview. Anyway, enjoy.

Welcome, Sue. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Sue Miller: I'm completely in sympathy with the title. I'm glad to be here.

Zibby: [laughs] It's such a thrill for me because growing up, my mother had your books. The idea that it's come full circle and I get to interview you, I just get such a kick out of it, as does she. Your latest book, Monogamy, was so great. I'm so excited that we're going to do a book club about it. I just fell into these characters' lives. Would you mind telling listeners who might not know what it's about a little about the book and what inspired you to write it?

Sue: It is a character-driven book, completely, as most of my work is. I'm really interested in exploring human nature and human foibles and so forth. We have two main characters in this book. Graham, who's a bookseller, the husband in this quasi-monogamous marriage, an ebullient, enthusiastic guy, he loves good food. He's a little overweight. He loves wine. He loves his wife. He loves books. He needs to have people around him. He needs to have people love him also. He's married to Annie. They’ve been married for about thirty years. She's a quieter personality. She's also much smaller than he is. They’ve gone to a party once years earlier as Santa Claus and one of his elves. She's a photographer. At the moment the book begins, she's about to have a show for the first time in some years and is full of anxiety about her career. She's basically been full of anxiety about most of her professional life. She's particularly anxious now because it's been a while since she had a solo show.

You get, at the beginning of the book, a flavor of their life together and the way they exchange. I move around between their brains, essentially, in third person and enter them and explain them a little bit or have them explain themselves. Then quite early on in the book, it gives nothing away, really, or maybe a little, Graham dies in the night of a heart attack. Annie wakes up and he's dead in the bed next to her. She's numbed and shocked and then, as she must, begins to call other people to whom this will really matter. That includes the other main characters in the book. They get introduced, actually, by being at the end of these phone calls. The first person is her daughter with Graham, Sarah, who's in her late twenties and is in San Francisco. They have a reasonable relationship, but it's a little strained. Sarah has loved her dad enormously, he kind of rescued her through a tough childhood and adolescence, and has a lot more difficulty with this quite reserved and, as she sees it, unknowable mother.

Then she calls, actually, the next person is Graham's first wife, Frieda, who has been, by his wish, very much a part of their marriage, partly because they’ve had a child together who is Annie's stepson and is very much, of course, in Graham's life. She's just a member of the marriage in a certain way, Frieda. Then she, Frieda, turns -- you're with her now. She calls her and Graham's son, Lucas, who's in New York. Basically, the book moves around among these characters and their grief and what his death means to them and then how they connect to each other after the death and what happens between and among them after the death. There's a lot that happens. Graham is not out of the picture in a certain way because his relationship to them and their memories of him and things that happened with him and so forth take up a lot of the energy as the book moves along too. That's the basic way it's set up, I guess you would say, and the people we care about, or I care about and I hope I make you care about along the way.

Zibby: I cared about them so much from the very beginning. You spent so much time orienting us to Annie and Graham that when he died, I was very sad about that as opposed to having it happen on the first page before you get to know him. I felt like you really got us into their marriage and the bookstore and his character and what he was like and them sitting drinking wine. I knew that's what the book was about, but I kind of forgot once I was in it. Then it happened and I was like, [gasp]. I felt a sense of loss, so well done. It was so good. I couldn't help but think this must have happened. You couldn't have made all this up. Have you gone through something or a loss like this? It just seemed so vivid to me, this whole scene. How did you come up with this? Did you lose somebody really close to you? I know about your father from your memoir. Tell me a little more.

Sue: I had a friend a long, long time ago. I was remembering, his wife died in her sleep. He really told me about that, how just incredibly strange it was to wake up and have her dead. I think my father's death informed me a lot too. I was with him as he died over a long period of time, ten days or so. That's it, probably. I've never had anyone that I was in love with die, and especially not in bed next to me. [laughs] Sorry, that's no thing to laugh about.

Zibby: No, it's okay. [laughs] Then I noticed you gave both Annie and Frieda mothers who both were battling Alzheimer's as well in the book. That was one of the common bonds that they had, perhaps with your experience with Alzheimer's yourself or you wanted to just put that in. What was that about? What made you put that?

Sue: It was in part that. I was thinking that there needed to be ways in which they became friends. Annie resisted it very much at the beginning thinking that it was too modern and silly, she thought of it, and a little embarrassing, almost, to welcome this person as a friend who was once married to Graham and had a child with him. Frieda had less trouble because she’d lived with Graham through the whole era of the sixties and seventies when all the rules about how marriages were supposed to work were deliberately broken, at least by people in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as far as I could tell. They needed to have ways to slowly become very close friends, which they do. So I just gave them that. When my father was ill, it was so comforting to me to talk to my husband then, just to talk about what was so funny that had happened that day in his crazy world that I was part of and had to agree to go along with and then, of course, awful things too. Frieda says that that seems to her to be the nature of this disease, that it's amazingly funny and amazingly awful at the same time. That's what they share with each other. Then over the years, they're always together at holidays. Frieda's just always there because Lucas is there, her son. Since they all live in the same neighborhood, it would be strange not to have her there. Graham very much wants her there. He's continued to have a really warm relationship with her, regrets what he did to their marriage and that sort of thing.

Zibby: It was so neat how you had the stepmothers get to know -- or maybe not the stepmothers. Yeah, the stepmothers, get to know the other child by the other -- [laughs].

Sue: Yeah, the children get along better with the stepmothers. Each of them has his or her own reasons for having trouble with his or her own mother. They did this almost trade for a while when they're entering adolescence and then through adolescence. Each of them is more helped by the other mother who's not really his or her own mother.

Zibby: How do you do it? How did you invent characters, particularly Annie but also Graham and I guess every supporting cast member in this book, that are just so incredibly real? I feel like you inhabited this character of Annie more so than almost any other character I've read in every little detail and how she does every little thing. How do you structure that? How did you come up with her? How do you make sure to show the reader so much about her? It seems like magic to me.

Sue: It certainly is in the sense that I really can't account for all of it. I love the close third person. That's the voice in fiction that gives you the most fluid access to a character so that you can sit a little bit away from the characters in the third person and talk about what she's doing. Then you can step right forward into her brain and essentially speak in her voice and speak about her reactions and speak about what she's saying to herself. I think a lot of it is that, the wonderful fluidity of a third-person narration. The other thing is I make an enormous number of notes before I start to write anything so that I could feel that I know the character quite well, just notes, for instance, about what they hate, what they believe, what sort of books they like, or things like that. I've always done that just in very simple ways. I'm not writing a book at that time. I'm just making notes to myself.

Then as soon as I begin to write, anything they say, it's sort of like you feel you know someone maybe if you're online dating or something and you think, this person sounds so interesting, and then they speak and you think, oh, my god, no. This is how I would imagine. I've never done it, actually. Or you think, this is such an interesting voice. As soon as I began actually having them speak to someone, that just does it for me. I invent the voice and that makes me comfortable with everything else if I feel it's right. I love doing it. That's one of the main impulses for me in writing fiction, is to make what I hope are believable characters. My sense is that when you get mostly deeply engaged in fiction is when you actually sort of think these people are real. You know they're not. You know they're fictional. That's what I want to get you very close to believing anyway.

Zibby: It's like when you're in a movie theater and next thing you know you're sobbing. Two hours before, you didn't know who that character even was. Now you're completely emotionally invested. It's a longer version here, more immersive almost. What part of this book was the first germ of the idea for you? Was it Annie? Was it Annie and Graham? Was it the thought of a loss? Was it dying in the sleep? Which was part of it was like, oh, I think I'm going to write about blah, blah, blah?

Sue: It was actually, had to do with my father's death and then the aftermath of that. After he died, I was just swept by grief. It just would not release me for a couple of years. I tried therapy. I tried this and that. I was on antidepressants for a while. I decided I would write a book about him, also about Alzheimer's disease. At that time, the stuff you could read about Alzheimer's disease was either sort of sappy, you've got to get a hobby and you have to be with friends. It just wasn't useful to me. Then the other thing you could read was incredibly technical stuff. I felt I wanted to write a book addressed to the reader telling her or him something about my father and also talking, to some degree, about the kind of moral or ethical issues I felt were raised by my being the one with him. I felt also as I was doing this book about him that I uncovered new information. I talked to friends of his. My sense of him really changed over the course of writing the book. I felt connected to him in a new and different way. That made me feel different myself in my relation to him. I wanted to explore that feeling of contact and change after death with someone and in this case really falling out of love with someone and then falling back in with someone long after he's dead, in Annie's case. That was the sort of feeling I had about that great mystery of death and the way one can change over time, the way one feels about the dead person.

I started with that and then thought it will be Annie. She was the first character. This will be this woman who -- I thought of some things. Then Graham arrived. Once he was on the scene, he made me immensely comfortable with everything else in the whole book because that's the kind of guy he is. [laughs] I was charmed by him. I also wanted to present him as a complicated person, someone you'd have to think, well, that wasn't so nice. You might even feel that he's awful. In some ways, he is awful. He sort of recognizes in himself, this terrible need in his -- anyway, I wanted to make him as complicated as possible while also trying to make you like someone very, very complicated. That was the impulse, really, was to have this whole thing after his death that goes on with Annie in particular. It happens with other people too, a kind of shift each of them feels, each character, about Graham's presence in her or his life, and not always good. In some cases, they're looking at everything with a little more distanced eye too.

I described this before. When I was taking psych classes in college and afterwards, we used to do these sociograms where you make a circle and you put all the people you're considering around the edge of this circle. Someone acts or something happens to one of the characters. You trace these radiated lines, what it means to this person and what it means to this person on the circle. Each of them reacts. Their reaction crosses the circle to this character and this character. By the end, you just have this web of connection and feeling and whatever else is going on, anger or joy. That sort of was what I wanted to do be doing, was to just watch this circle of people and all their connections with each other, the ones that worked, the ones that didn't work, and look at how complicated but try to make it easy for a reader to enter and to look at too. It was a world.

Zibby: Was it hard? Tell me about what it was like writing this book. Could I have a visual? Where did you write it? Was it at home? Did you like to go to a library? Where did you write it? Then because it's so immersive, did you ever have trouble putting the work aside and going back to your real life?

Sue: No, I didn't have trouble like that. [laughs]

Zibby: All right, that's good.

Sue: I wrote it over a long period of time. I wrote it in many different places. Basically, most of the time I wrote it in my office. We have a little place in the country, and I wrote it some there too. I write in longhand, first draft, so I can move around. What I like about it is I can move around the house, one of the things I like about writing in longhand. I write in little books. That was the way I wrote it, essentially, and the places I wrote it. There was a lot going on in my life and in my family's life right then, and so there were periods of time when I wasn’t working at all. Now my granddaughter lives in Germany. She's young. She's twelve. She's sort of also old, but she's young. When she comes to stay, I just drop everything. About four or five years ago, she began to come and stay for the summer. That was just a huge open space in terms of my getting any work done and that sort of thing. I've never been incredibly disciplined about my work, I'm afraid. It took a very long time, this book, and probably benefited from that in some way or another. I had these pauses where I could just stop and think about it and make a few little written notes in my notebook and so forth to think about for the next time I actually sat down. Then I just type all that stuff in and then pull it out and then write over that for the next draft and just type it back in again. I waste more paper. More trees have been consigned to death by me because of all the in and out that I actually physically do instead of just changing things on the computer and not having to use that much paper, which would be much better to do, I know, but that's the way I work.

Zibby: I forgive you on behalf of everyone because at the end of it, then you've got these masterpieces. There you go. It's worth it. Everybody has their own process and everything. How did you get to be a writer at the very beginning? If you go all the way back to the beginning of your career, how did you get your start?

Sue: I always wrote. I wrote as a little kid. I always invented stories. I can remember these little girls down the street a little bit younger than I. I must have been in fifth or sixth grade. They must have been in second or third. They would wait for me to come from down the street to their house. We would proceed on to school together because they wanted me to continue this fairy tale, essentially, that I'd begun with them. Then I wrote a lot all through my childhood, silly, horrible things. I actually won a Scholastic fiction award in high school. A lot of very distinguished writers have won that, Truman Capote and Joyce Carol Oates. I entered this world of real writers in a certain way. I wrote a couple of novels after college, one right away and then one that took a lot of time because I got married and I had a child. I got divorced. I was a single mom and working and so forth.

I never thought of it as a career, somehow. I just assumed I would always do it. I didn't much care about publishing at that point. Then at a certain point in my life, in my mid to late thirties, I began to send out a few short stories that I'd written. It sort of occurred to me. I'd gone to a few writing classes just to make myself finish things, which I rarely did. I just wrote because of the circumstances of my life. I was looking at other writers and thinking, I'm actually a lot better than they are. [laughs] Actually, my teacher encouraged me in that case. I just began to send things around. They got taken, almost everything I'd written from the first story I wrote. They didn't get taken right away. I had to send them to six places or something starting with the places that would've paid me a little bit of money, or a lot of money by my standards then. Then when my son was a little bit older, when he was about ten, I really started seriously writing a novel. I had two unpublished novels that I'd written before then and quite a few short stories.

Then I thought that I would write something that might get published. That was the first time I thought it. I was probably thirty-eight or so, something like that. And it did. It was The Good Mother, which was my first book. It just changed my life in this astonishing way that was really shocking and discomfiting. I sort of thought I was in charge of my life and I knew what it would look like. With the short stories that I'd published, I was able to begin to teach writing here around the Boston area which is a great area to be in for part-time work like that because there's a lot of writing programs and a lot of writing requirements at various colleges. There are a lot of colleges here too. That's what I thought my life would be like. I would write and I would teach and go on living at the same sort of quasi-poor. That was fine with me. There was nothing about that I didn't like. Then suddenly, all of that changed. I did feel for a while, really out of control, that I was not in control of my life, and discomfited by it a little bit. That's the story.

Zibby: Wow. Once you had this major success, did you find it hard to follow it up? Did you feel pressure to perform on your next books? Were there things in the works? How did it affect your writing, this huge success that you had?

Sue: The main thing was I was determined not to do the same thing or even the same kind of book. My first book was narrated in the first person. At the very center of it was a courtroom drama in which my main character loses custody of a child. I just stuck right with her. It was a very dramatic plot, to say the least. I really decided deliberately that I wanted to do something very unlike that because I didn't want to be -- now that I had a publisher who was waiting for it, I didn't want to be doing the same thing and become the person who always wrote that. Although, now I'm the person who always writes about family and domestic life. That's the way I'm categorized. I ended up always writing that anyway. The second book that I wrote, my father is ill and dying during that period of time. Again, I was sort of slowed down. It was about a whole family. I moved around from person to person in the family. It covered about forty years of their life together, a family with an autistic son. Everyone's response to that person in the midst of the family is different and is complicated.

Again, it's like the sociogram, that book was, essentially, all of these people whose lives were connected. There was much more to be really angry about for everybody, or troubled about, in that book. I just wanted to announce, I'm not doing anything you think I'm going to do. I loved that book. I like them all, but that was amongst my favorites. I don't know. I haven't ever organized them, this is my third favorite book and this is my sixth favorite book. Anyway, I dealt with whatever pressure there might have been by just saying, there's not pressure on me. I'm doing what I want to do. There was a little pressure to do something very different, that's true, but I wanted to do it. I wasn't doing it because it was different, a little bit, but not all the way.

Zibby: How do you continue reinventing what you want to say and do? What advice would you have to aspiring authors, people who are starting out who want to have a career like yours, for instance?

Sue: This would not be something I think you could deliberately do, but I think it helped me a lot not to feel I was launching a career. I was doing this thing I wanted to do which might or might not be the center of my life. That made it easier for me to please myself with what I was doing. Also, to just go as slowly as you can. As I say, I had written two novels before The Good Mother. I had sent one around a little bit, but instantly sort of didn't want to do that. I think just to wait until you feel really, really certain of the book that you're sending out, until you love it yourself, it's the very best you can do, and not be so focused on -- I was old for a writer. My first book came out when I was forty-six, my first novel. It's hard to say let time go by. There certainly are people who have written wonderfully very young. I'm not prescribing anything, but I feel like I benefited by being a little bit more relaxed about things. The other thing is just to read and read and be asking yourself all the time, why do I feel this way about this character? Look at what's on the page. Just practice in that way, rob some people technically, essentially.

Zibby: Do you have a type of book you like to read in general or a certain genre? Do you like to read what you write type of books, or totally different?

Sue: Both. I like to read what I write. I also like a lot of other different kinds of books. One of my favorite writers is Alice Monroe. The form she writes in is completely different from mine. She's utterly brilliant. Then the British writer Tessa Hadley, she's much more interested in writing about adolescence and growing up. Although, there are a lot of quite wonderful -- she's a wonderful writer. I really love her work. Some of Brian Morton's work, I just wait for his next book to come out. It's varied. I just read this really wonderful book by the unfortunately named Michael Crummey, he's a very established Canadian writer, called The Innocents. It's just as different as it could be. It's set in Nova Scotia with a few children whose parents both die. They set up living alone in the nineteenth century, I think it is, or maybe the early twentieth, but I think the nineteenth. It's the story of their complete innocence, of their not knowing anything about anything. It's an amazing book. I can't recommend it highly enough. So that sort of thing. I like to read some nonfiction. I move around a lot. I think I'm more judgmental of books like mine, domestic books. I'm more critical of them because it's more like the work that I do, probably. I think [indiscernible] should've done that better than you did.

Zibby: [laughs] You wouldn't want to see the novels that I have stashed in my drawer, then. Anyway, thank you so much. Thank you for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." Thank you for so many delightful moments reading Monogamy over the last couple weeks. I'm excited for you to come to my book club and talk to everybody there. Now I want to go back. I have to read your memoir about your dad because it sounds like such a moving, emotional experience and relationship. Hopefully, by book club I will have read that too.

Sue: Great. It will be good to see you again. I'm very glad to have met you from my bathroom to your bedroom or wherever.

Zibby: Exactly, this is the Zoom universe. [laughs]

Sue: Thanks so much.

Zibby: Thanks. Buh-bye.

Sue: Bye-bye.

Julia Phillips, DISAPPEARING EARTH

Zibby Owens: Hello. Thank you for joining today for my conversation with Julia Phillips who's one of the five 2020 Young Lions Fiction Award finalists. I'm Zibby Owens. I'm the host of "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books," the podcast. Each year, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Awards champions emerging writers and recognizes innovation and excellence in contemporary fiction. This year, the award marks it's twentieth anniversary of celebrating the next generation of outstanding fiction writers. The 2020 Young Lions Fiction Award finalists include Steph Cha, Your House Will Pay; Julia Phillips, who's here, Disappearing Earth, congrats; Kiley Reid, Such a Fun Age; Xuan Juliana Wang, Home Remedies; and Bryan Washington, Lot. You can see interviews with all the finalists at nypl.org/ylfa. Today, I'm delighted to have the opportunity to speak with Julia Phillips who's nominated for her novel Disappearing Earth. Welcome, Julia.

Julia Phillips: Thank you. Thank you, Zibby. It's nice to be here with you even virtually. It's nice to be here on this Zoom call with you.

Zibby: It's nice to be on this Zoom call with you too. Just more one sentence of background about you for people who might not know. This is your bio, which obviously you know. Julia Phillips is the debut author of the nationally bestselling novel Disappearing Earth which is being published in twenty-three languages and was a finalist for the National Book Award. A Fulbright fellow, Julia has written for The New York Times, ​The Atlantic, and The Paris Review. She currently lives in Brooklyn. Okay, that's it. Now we can just chat. Welcome. Tell me about finding out that you were nominated for the Young Lions Fiction Award. What was that like?

Julia: It was so exciting. It was so wonderful. I'm a big fan of this award and this program and the New York Public Library in general. Because of quarantine, I'm afraid I had too much time on my hands to refresh the library's page and Twitter account and think, I wonder when they’ll be announcing that this year, just because. No particular investment or interest for myself, just because. I spent quite a few weeks sort of pestering the account before I got the wonderful, wonderful news that I was on the list. It was so exciting.

Zibby: Aw, that's awesome. The Young Lions Fiction Award is now celebrating its twentieth anniversary. Do you feel like it means even more in the context of being part of the anniversary year? What do you think?

Julia: I would buy that, absolutely. I got very excited about the nineteenth and the eighteenth and seventeenth too. It's hard for me to see that it would mean so much more right now, but actually, I like the way you put that. Maybe it does. It's much more meaningful now, the twentieth. How could you resist that? That number is irresistible.

Zibby: And it's 2020. There we go. It's great. [laughs] I want to talk a lot about your book, but I also just want to ask if you have an earliest memory of visiting a library.

Julia: Gosh. A lot of my early memories of visiting libraries blend together a little bit. A library was a big after-school staple for me of doing homework or being dropped off to do homework and not doing homework and just reading books in the aisles when I was a little kid. All of those sort of blend together in one happy homework-shirking memory that lasted many years. I recently found a newspaper clipping from when I was seven. My public library had a Write Your Own Novel program for kids. We got these blank books that we filled up with our own stories. I wrote a very, very plagiarized novel that I think was the plot of a Christopher Pike book -- I don't if you remember Christopher Pike, loved it, sort of scary teen novels -- about a dead body found in a snowman. I was very supported in that by the librarians and the staff. They were really loving and let me write all sorts of wild, plagiarized, half-baked horror stories. They were wonderful.

Zibby: I feel like I will never approach a snowman in the same way again.

Julia: You never know what's inside.

Zibby: You never know. Terrifying. [laughs] It sounds like they were really supportive of your development. That's amazing. Did they help you find books that maybe set you on this path as well, or was it more of fostering of your love of writing?

Julia: It was a fostering of all of our love of writing and a fostering of whatever creative direction we needed to go in. I think I spent a particular amount of time illustrating the cover and put most of my focus there and wrote about forty words in the rest of the book. I think I lost my steam for the story pretty quickly, probably because it had already been written by somebody else better.

Zibby: It hasn’t stopped a lot of other people. [laughter] Where did you grow up, by the way? Where are we picturing this library that you were in?

Julia: I grew up in Northern New Jersey, in suburban New Jersey about fifteen miles outside New York.

Zibby: Do you remember the first time you want to the New York Public Library? I know I'm putting you on the spot.

Julia: [Indiscernible] first time I went to the New York Public Library, but I have a lot of sharp memories actually in more recent years of going to the library as a sort of celebratory event. It always feels so special every single time. Now I've been in New York for about fifteen years. Still, every time I go it feels like the most special thing in the world. I think it's the lions outside. It makes it feel very, very special every single time. The architecture's so wonderful. Every room is a mystery.

Zibby: Now that you're about to have your first baby, you can discover the children's room which is also really special.

Julia: Oh, my gosh, okay, that is on the bucket list for post-quarantine baby life. Taking [indiscernible] to the children's room, for sure.

Zibby: Now that I know you've been writing since you could basically hold a pencil, tell me about how you got from your first plagiarized novel to your Book Award-nominated Disappearing Earth debut actual novel here in 2020? What happened in between with all your writing and the Fulbright and all the rest that got you here?

Julia: I always wanted to be a novelist. I was a big reader as a kid. I was really lucky to be supported by some of my early teachers. I remember my second-grade teacher especially being supportive. I was trying to write a novel in a notebook about a girl who was raised by wolves. I would take up all her time reading out loud from this second-grader's notebook. She would say, "Keep going. That's great." I really took that "Keep going. That's great," and chose to hold onto it very tightly and always dreamed of writing fiction. I ended up studying fiction in college and also studying Russian which was a big hobby of mine and a language that I love to study. I had been working on a different novel manuscript that I pictured would be my first book. I'm very lucky that it was not and that it went into the drawer it went into. As I was getting to the end of that process, which was quite a few years, I started thinking about what I imagined would be the second book. I thought maybe I can combine this interest in writing and this interest in Russia and set a novel there. With that big plan in mind, I spent a couple years applying for, as you said, a Fulbright, this grant in creative writing that would fund my living in Russia for a year and beginning to research a book of fiction. I got that after a couple years. I moved to Russia and started researching the project that became Disappearing Earth. That whole process started in 2009. The book came out in 2019. It was a really educational and challenging and wonderful decade of work on this book. I'm so glad and grateful to have had this project all this time. It's been a really beautiful thing in my life.

Zibby: Do you think it was those words of your teacher that made you not give up? That's a long time to persist and feel that the project was going to come to a good conclusion. I feel like giving up might have been a tempting option along the way. Instead, not only did you finish, but you crafted this award-winning beautiful novel. What made you not quit? How did you keep going?

Julia: It's interesting to think in the context of the Young Lions award because I've been learning a lot and reflecting a lot about publishing and about writing and about the creative process recently and about youth and the creative process, or speed perhaps. I've been thinking about how in the past when I wanted to publish a novel at twenty-two and didn't publish a novel at twenty-two, I thought, there must be something very, very magical about twenty-two-year-olds who are publishing a book. Maybe there is a magical thing or a magical thing about a thirty-year-old that published it. I've been thinking more and more about how integral support is in creating speed. Everyone's writing incredible books. Everyone can write incredible books. Everyone's doing the work. If you are supported by the people around you, it makes it a lot easier. That's as true as it is in second grade as it is now. When you have people around you who say, "I believe you can do this," it is motivating and really helpful. There are so many folks who do the work with an enormous lack of support. Yet when I look back on my writing ambitions, I really count my blessings in how I felt supported by that teacher or supported by my mom who didn't think it was whacky for me to be studying creative writing. That support was really huge for me.

Zibby: That's so important. It's tough to not be supported in basically anything. Having a cheering squad can't be underrated. That's for sure, especially in writing which is much more of a solitary profession. Knowing that once you look up from the keyboard there are people rooting for you to actually finish, that's a huge help.

Julia: It is. It's a selfish road for me toward arriving at the realization of how important it is to support other -- when you find people that you're excited about or find people that are dreaming of a thing that you're dreaming of or have their own dreams, how little it takes and how much it benefits to say, "Keep going. I want to support you in this. I want to do everything I can to support you in this." That is hugely meaningful to folks. It certainly was hugely meaningful for me.

Zibby: How do you think you so accurately nailed the voice of the sisters in the beginning of the book as they're wandering around the beach and the annoyance of the older sister? All of that was so pitch perfect as a mother of four children including two daughters. All of those dynamics, it just seemed so real. When I heard you were pregnant, I was like, she must have older kids too because she totally nailed this. Not to say you have to have your own children to write children well, but how did you do it so well? What do you think?

Julia: That's so kind. That means so much to me that you say that. That means a lot to me that you say that. There's so much doubt in the process. Certainly, their voices took a lot of revision and a lot of, talk about support again and community, a lot of feedback from more experienced authors and peer writers and friends who are parents and friends who said -- I remember very, very well a wonderful writer named Dionne Brand who I had the good luck -- she read that first chapter and said, "Why don't you go on YouTube and listen to some kids?" The characters are eight and eleven. She said, "Why don't you go on YouTube and listen to eight and eleven-year-olds talking and then revise?" I was like, thank you so much. [laughs] Absolutely trying to channel their voices or get their voices right was a -- whatever result there is, is a community effort, for sure, a community effort to ensure that I was listening closely to how kids talk and express themselves to each other and not just sitting in my own mind fantasizing about a precious eleven-year-old who is never resentful.

Zibby: I am now thinking that maybe there's a marketplace for kids who want to get job experience helping authors who want to perfect their voices. You could search by age and just have a phone conversation with a kid. Look at that.

Julia: It honestly was, upon reflection, pretty troubling how easy it was to go on YouTube and search "eleven-year-olds uncensored." [laughs]

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. When you were actually doing the writing, obviously you did a lot of research to make sure everything was just right, did you have the whole format outlined? Did you have the different people in the community? Did you outline? Did the characters just come to you? What was the driving force of starting this story versus how it ended up? That was a lot of questions.

Julia: I love all of those questions. I tried to make as many decisions as possible about the book and the structure of the book and the arch of the book prior to starting writing. I mentioned that I'd previously been working on a manuscript. That manuscript, I kind of started with a feeling and a tone and a setting and not a story at all, really. I thought, as I work on it, I'm going to come into the story. I'm going to learn what the story is. Seven years later, I realized, not the case actually, for me. That process, at least with that project, didn't give me clarity the more I worked on it. I kind of stayed in the same place where I had started of having a feeling and no concrete decisions around that. When I started this project, I wanted to approach it differently. I wanted to make some really strategic choices around its structure, who would be speaking and why, what information would be conveyed in each chapter, what the point was.

I wanted to have an elevator pitch, which I still practice now. I say the book is about two girls who go missing in the Russian Far East and how that affects the people around them, two girls who go missing in this remote Russian community and how that affect people around them. Over and over, I would say this to myself to try to focus on what the book is about. From the start, I thought, it's going to be over the course a year. Each chapter is a different month. Each focused character is a woman or girl in the community. I really wanted to approach it with as many decisions made as possible. As I got to the end of the writing process, I spent the last six months outlining even more heavily. I was a couple drafts in at that point, or a few drafts in, and yet went back and re-outlined all of the chapters and the whole project to try to get more clarity. I found that every conscious decision I could make really helped the work for me. I find now as I approach new projects, as much outlining as I can do in advance helps me a lot.

Zibby: Then once you sit down to tackle the writing, where is your happy place for writing? Where do you prefer to write when you can? What do you wear? Do you have any traditions or superstitions when you're writing? What does that process look like for you?

Julia: I don't have a desk. I write in bed or on the couch. I handwrite my first drafts. That helps me a lot. That's a superstition, for sure. I find writing on the computer to be a little bit more -- I pay more attention to what I'm doing in some way. It is more tempting to delete or to go back. I'm a big fan of drafting over and over and over again. To just get out that first draft really fast and messy is helpful for me to do by hand. These days, especially a few months into being inside my apartment walls all the time, I've been thinking about what a happy writing place looks like and what a productive writing place looks like. I think how much I've taken from changing my setting before and being on the subway or walking around or having things pop into your head. I've been missing that. I wonder if it is less a specific place and maybe more a state a mind or a feeling of movement of engagement with the world that helps me a lot. I don't know. Still figuring it out, I guess, is the answer.

Zibby: Have you been able to do any writing during the quarantine?

Julia: I've been doing some writing during the quarantine. I've been really motivated and inspired and blown away by some friends who have put together different accountability groups. Every day, morning writing session or a once a week free-writing session together or weekly check-ins. That's been really incredible. That being said, as you mentioned, I'm pregnant. As I get more and more pregnant, I do feel that the fetus is sucking all desire to move out of me. I've been very, very unaccountable these days.

Zibby: I think you have every excuse in the book.

Julia: I love what you're saying because that's what I tell myself in my head as I get very behind on the things I should be doing.

Zibby: Your body is actually doing a zillion different things right now that you just can't put your finger on to build another human being. I feel like if you want to take a week to just let your body do its thing, the work will follow. It's not like you're going to stop writing.

Julia: [Indiscernible] for the past week where I've done nothing.

Zibby: You've done a lot. It's just you haven't gotten it on the page.

Julia: I haven't gotten it on the page.

Zibby: That's okay. There's plenty of time, maybe less time once you have a child, but who knows? Maybe not.

Julia: Different kind of time.

Zibby: Different kind of time. What was it like when you sold your book? What was that moment like after all this time and effort and work? Then you sold it. What was that feeling like? What was that experience like?

Julia: It was the most miraculous experience of my whole life. That feeling really started when I got my agent. With the previous manuscript I'd worked on, I'd queried a hundred agents. I was very focused on the agent hurdle and spent a lot of time thinking about approaching agents as I was working on this book. A lot of the strategic decisions I was making from the start were around, it's important to me to have an elevator pitch because it's also important to put that in a query letter. I was thinking about how I can better position myself in the future for developing a relationship with an agent, I hoped, one day. The experience of my agent taking this book on, I will never forget where I was. I'll never forget how it felt. It was the moment when dream and reality met. I just felt like I passed out of my real life and went into the life I had fantasized about. I screamed, jumped up and down. I couldn't handle it. Everything after that felt miraculous in such the same way. It felt like my agent had opened the door and let me into the life that I had dreamed about. It all felt like a dream. It still feels a dream. After a few months on social media as I was promoting the book as it came out, I realized that I kept using that language over and over again. I kept saying, this is like a dream. This is like a dream. This is a dream come true. This is such a dream. It started to get a bit disturbing that I was sort of saying, help me, I'm totally disconnected from any sense of reality. [laughs] Certainly, a lot of dreams of my life have come true. That has been bewildering and magical and does feel impossible.

Zibby: Aw, that's so nice. By the way, if I were your agent right now hearing this, I hope that whoever it is, he/she is listening to this. I would be swooning. That is so nice.

Julia: Suzanne Gluck, I love her tell and I tell her every second. [laughs]

Zibby: I'm sure she knows. It sounds like you're pretty expressive. Still, that's pretty awesome. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Julia: Yeah, I do. My first advice would be to be patient with how you've heard this before because it's not outrageously novel. My three go-to pieces of advice are three things that I tell myself over and over and over again and kept forgetting to act on sometimes. Upon reflection, I think if I just do those things more, things would be better. Write as much as possible. Read as much as possible. Build a community or embed yourself in a creative community. Writing as much as possible just to practice and lower your own inhibitions and un-paralyze yourself and see what works. Reading is the best possible education in writing for which there is no equivalent. Community, to me, it seems like -- my book is so much about community. I keep on talking about it. To be able to connect to other people and learn from them, learn from their work, cheer them on, be in communication with them about what they're working on, to be part of a creative team -- that can be in person. It can be online. It can be on Twitter. Just to connect with other people in this pursuit of something that, as you said Zibby, can be very isolating and is so personal and so strange, this channel that you're trying to tap into of creativity in yourself -- it's such a bizarre thing. To connect with other people through that is really the most beautiful and hopeful and inspiring activity you can do. It motivates your work and it makes it much better, in my opinion or in my experience for sure.

Zibby: That's the only person I was asking.

Julia: [laughs] The only one you're going to hear from right now.

Zibby: The only one. Who else? Not in my little square. I actually listened to your book instead of reading it. Usually, I read. I downloaded it and listen to it over a series of trying to actually get of my house and run and walk and all the rest. When you have your baby, god willing everything is great, and you go one day on a walk with the baby when everybody's out in the open, I want you to go back and listen to the first chapter. You are going to be filled with this sense of panic that I was filled with, and anxiety. [laughs] That's my little assignment for you post-childbirth.

Julia: In my writing group, that helped me so much with this book. I remember very well a woman in my writing group reading it. At the time, her two kids were just about the same ages as the two sisters who go missing. She came to the group and she slid the papers across the table. She was like, "I think your first chapter is pretty effective. I will not read any more of this book." [laughs] Best possible feedback, thank you.

Zibby: When you do that, you have to DM me or something. Thank you, Julia. Thanks for being a part of this conversation for the Young Lions, the New York Public Library, and all the rest. Congratulations on your nomination and all of your success. Well-deserved.

Julia: Thank you so much, Zibby. This was so wonderful to get to be in conversation with you. Thank you so much to the New York Public Library, one of the best places, if not the best place in the entire world, I think.

Zibby: Thanks.

Kate Riordan, THE HEATWAVE

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Kate. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" to talk about The Heatwave.

Kate Riordan: Yay! Thank you for having me.

Zibby: It's my pleasure. Did you intentionally pick a shirt that matched the cover?

Kate: No, all my clothes are green. [laughs]

Zibby: Good, perfect. Excellent. I just wanted to make sure.

Kate: It's a good idea. I should've gone with that.

Zibby: For people who don't know, could you please describe what The Heatwave is about?

Kate: The Heatwave is about a single mother, a divorced mother, Sylvie, who's returning to the South of France where she's from with her younger daughter, Emma, for the first time in ten years. Ten years earlier, she lost her eldest daughter, Elodie, there. The book really is about finding out what happened ten years ago. It's sort of a suspense novel, really.

Zibby: What is it that inspired you to write this story? I know it's not your first novel by any stretch. How did you come up with these characters? Why this story?

Kate: I first of all really wanted to set a book in France. That was my starting point. I'd been looking for an excuse for years. I went as a child and spent many, many years in France. My French is not actually very good, but my heart's in the right place. I do love it. I always wanted to write a book in France. Then I really wanted to write a book about sibling rivalry. The initial idea was to have it written from the point of view of the younger daughter, the youngest sister, Emma, who's thirteen/fourteen in the book, and have her living in the shadow of this older sister that was killed ten years earlier and how she deals with that. She's half resentful and half adoring. Then I found when I was writing in Emma's point of view, it was a bit flimsy. I didn't feel as though it was coming very naturally. I thought I'd try out writing in Sylvie's voice, Sylvie being the mother in her early forties. It suddenly took off then, the book. Then it became a book about mothers and daughters and a toxic relationship between a mother and a daughter. Then I got really into that. I'd found my book then. It came quite easily after that. There was a lot editing. I'm not saying it was that easy, but I felt immediately as though I'd got the right story when I started writing from Sylvie's point of view.

Zibby: I loved how it wasn't just from Sylvie's point of view. It was almost as if it was a letter to Emma. It's like, you came in and I was giving this to you. As a reader, you feel like you're just sort of listening in on a mother's conversation with her own child telling her this whole story, which was so great especially as things escalated and got very exciting. [laughs]

Kate: I enjoyed doing that. Actually, I had a discussion early on about, do we like this second-person narrative? Is it confusing? I really stuck up for it and thought it made it more intense. It's really an apologia to Emma. Why is that? What's happened? What doesn't Emma know? That was another reason for moving the point of view into Sylvie's head so that she became a more interesting narrator because, actually, the whole point is Emma knows very little. If you as the reader are stuck with Emma for the whole book as someone who's totally in the dark, I was worried that it would become quite frustrating for the reader. Whereas with Sylvie, there are flashbacks in the book. The present day is actually 1993, but it flashes back to the seventies and eighties. That enabled me to let Sylvie in the past reveal clues as to what happened one by one. Hopefully, that draws the reader on and propels the narration along.

Zibby: It was super successful. I feel like from a craft perspective and structure and everything, it was just perfect. Both went in tandem letting us stay in it and yet getting enough of the backstory, just enough at each time to really care even more. I thought it was awesome.

Kate: Thank you. I was just going to say that with the editing, I've got to thank my editor in the UK and my editor in the US, Grand Central [indiscernible]. They really worked me hard to make the book tight and said things like, "She's sitting by the pool again. Things need to happen." I have them to thank for a lot of that. I did the nice atmosphere and they helped me narrow down the action.

Zibby: The atmosphere also was fantastic. I felt like it was my biggest vacation in this whole quarantine time where international travel is not allowed. All of a sudden, I could smell and taste and see and hear everything going on in the South of France. It was such a nice little respite. In fact, I put it in my newsletter this week and said if anybody wants a trip to France, pick up The Heatwave. I have all these people saying, thank you, I got it. I feel like I took a trip with you. That's really great. I loved also, as you were mentioning before, this whole relationship with mothers and daughters and how fraught it is. There's some stuff in here that's very much relatable to really any mother and daughter, and any new mother especially, who's trying to get to know their child. You never know what you get. I've said this before, but before I was a mother, I thought that I would have a lot more control over how my kids turned out. As I've had more and more kids, it becomes very clear to me that I have no control and that they're kind of born the way they're born. All I can do is straighten out the edges, but the bed is made. Here's one quote. You said, "Although my joy is laced with fear, it's the kind every parent feels, the kind that hurts your heart and makes the world seem as amazing as it is hazardous. I am a mother." This is right when she becomes a mother and is trying to figure out how to process this in the context of the world.

Kate: Before it all goes wrong.

Zibby: Before it all goes wrong, yes. Although, it goes wrong kind of slowly, and so you get to go along with her, which is great. Tell me a little about that part of the narration, the relationship between mothers and daughters and your own perspective coming into it. Did you take anything of this from any part of your life or relationships you've seen or friends or relatives? Did any of this germinate in a part of your life?

Kate: The thing that really is strongly drawn from my life is actually Sylvie's relationship with her younger daughter, Emma. In the present day in '93, a lot of that is me and my mom. I'm my mom's only one. My parents split up when I was five. I've got great stepparents and it's all great. Mom and I were very close. That is very much us. In terms of Elodie, who is the difficult child and the child that Sylvie really struggles to bond with, that is very much me having -- well, it sounds bad saying having fun with, but really letting my imagination go. I suppose I've been influenced by other books and other films in that sense. Something like We Need to Talk About Kevin is an obvious example of that, a mother who actually -- my Sylvie started off with a much more idealized idea of motherhood than maybe Eva does in We Need to Talk About Kevin. She becomes more and more ambivalent as times goes on and starts thinking -- there's those questions of nature and nurture. Are the problems with Elodie my fault? Is she born this way? Then what happens is when she, ten years later -- she decides she's not going to have any more children because she thinks she's terrible at it and she couldn't cope, possibly, with another one. Then she falls pregnant again with Emma by accident. Then Emma's really easy. It all slots into place. It's exactly how she dreamed it would be. Then she starts thinking more and more and feeling about this, gosh, maybe it is actually to do with Elodie rather than me.

I think even if a mother has a fairly straightforward relationship with their child, there's always loads of guilt in there and worry that you're not getting it right or that you're going to stir up troubles for your children. They're going to be in therapy forever because of some small mistake you're making down the line. It's probably also interesting to say that I'm not a mother. I didn't have children. It didn't happen for me. That's a whole other story. I felt actually quite liberated to write this in many ways because I didn't have to -- I'm not saying women writer who are mothers shouldn't write a book like this. For me, there were no qualms about writing a book that my child would one day grow up and read and maybe think, did mom feel like this about me at any point? I could just go for it. I felt as though I've got lots of mom friends who, there are things they don't say. There are still taboos. You might say, oh, god, I'm finding it really hard. For instance, I think a lot of moms don't want to admit that it's often quite boring, being a mom of young children, and very repetitive. You feel like you've lost yourself a bit and you've just become mum, or mom. [laughs] I could explore all that and really go for it. I was trying to do a little bit of a service to mothers everywhere in that sense. That sounds ridiculous, but I can be really honest because I don't have children. I think actually a lot of you feel like this sometimes, and that's fine.

Zibby: Thank you. Thank you for the service on behalf of moms everywhere. I appreciate it.

Kate: [Indiscernible/laughter] medal.

Zibby: Medal is in FedEx right now. Thank you. Can you talk a little more about your decision not to have kids? Is it private? You don't have to.

Kate: I'm actually quite open about it. I don't mind talking about it. I actually had loads of miscarriages. I had always been quite ambivalent about motherhood. I wasn't sure it was for me. I need a lot of my own space and time. I'm not good with noise. I was never sure that I would be terribly good at it. It maybe wasn't taken out of my hands. I could've maybe kept going. I had made the decision that I didn't want to try anymore. I felt as though my body wasn't my own. I felt the hormones were making me mad. I just stopped. It was a real relief, actually. I have dogs instead who are much easier, probably. [laughs]

Zibby: I don't know. I find kids easier than dogs. I've had a couple dogs. At least kids, you can reason with them at some point. I feel like dogs, I don't know if they understand me. I love dogs, but I don't have the gift of dealing with dogs.

Kate: I have two rescue dogs. One particularly is completely nuts. I've actually put her to bed in her crate with a cover over because otherwise she would be growling and jumping up and wanting to see who you were and hear your voice. You couldn't do that with a child, probably. That would be seen as a bit cruel to put them to bed and lock the door.

Zibby: That would probably not be a good idea. I would not recommend that. [laughs]

Kate: That's the good thing about dogs. You can do that. It's allowed.

Zibby: That's true. I've realized that the child equivalent of that is basically putting them in a trampoline. They can't really go anywhere. You zip them in. It's contained. There is a noise factor, but it's usually outside. The trampoline as a modern-day playpen for kids up to however old. Sometimes you can just throw your partner in there, zip it all up. [laughter] In terms of the structure of the book again -- I know I'm jumping around here a little. I've always been wondering, when you write two timelines like this and you have such discrete stories going, two at a time -- essentially, you're writing two books at the same time. Then they have to somehow marry at the end. Did you write one of them first and then the other? Did you write them both in tandem? How did you approach the writing process of the story?

Kate: I started off just writing random bits that interested me because I have to coerce myself into writing quite a lot. I really love it when I do it, but I sort of avoid it and I fight it. When I'm writing a book, at the beginning, I write bits that I'm interested in, and so they’ll be all over the place. I actually work with Scrivener quite a lot because I find -- I don't know if you know that program.

Zibby: Yep.

Kate: It means you can move things around much more easily than you could in Word. Often, I'll write sections and then move the order about. With this one particularly, I've written a lot of the more difficult scenes, shall we say, the bits that go in the last two-thirds. The flashbacks are chronological. They see Elodie growing up. I needed more at the beginning. The softer bits, the bits about when she's pregnant and she's still getting on with her ex-husband Greg, a lot of those were actually slotted in and written quite late. If you do that, then you can play around with it. You can also find little patterns. If in a 1993 scene, there's sort of a theme going on, you can maybe have a little hint of that in the flashback that follows that ties those two things together. It might be something to do with the house and a little feature that crops up in the house that reminds the reader that this is the same place. I think that can add to atmosphere and the idea of the place almost being haunted by memories. I do lots and lots of moving about. Even old scenes, I will then rejig and add in different nuance.

One of the main things I had to work on on the edit quite hard was actually to make the more dramatic scenes -- this is hard not to give stuff away with this book. Elodie is a very troubled child. There are scenes where she's being a bad child and kind of scary. Some of that stuff, I had to work on because my editors felt maybe some bits weren’t scary enough. I was actually being too subtle with it, which is interesting to me. I've got a half-brother and sister, but they're quite a lot younger than me. I did grow up more or less as an only child. I was putting in sibling rivalry scenes. My editors were saying, "That's kind of normal," and I was thinking it was really disturbing and dark. I had to up all that stuff but keep it on the right side of -- I didn't want it to get stupid. I didn't want it to become almost farcical and too grim and too gory. With that, ideas of callous and unemotional children who you worry might grow up to be psychopaths, there are a lot of tropes they use again and again. It's very hard to escape them entirely. I didn't just want the neighbor's cat ending up dead. I wanted to do something a little bit different if I could. Working on those bits was fun. I've gone on a massive tangent from your original question.

Zibby: That's all right. I enjoyed listening.

Kate: I don't write in order by any means. I mess around and come back to bits and then slot it all in as a jigsaw at the end.

Zibby: Tell me about how you have to motivate yourself to write. Tell me about that, even though you've decided to be a writer. [laughs]

Kate: I know. I know. I'm a masochist. Yes, I love it. If I've had a good day of writing, I feel so, so calm and lovely and yogic that evening. I think, I'm just going to do that again tomorrow. I'm going to have a proper routine. It all goes out the window. It's really weird. I don't understand that resistance because it's my job. If I couldn't get any more book deals, I'd be distraught. Who knows? They get done. I've written five books. Maybe don't beat myself up too much because they do get done in the end. I never miss deadlines. I was a journalist before I was a writer. I wasn't even on monthly magazine. I was on weekly magazines. That really suited me because I'm quite quick at getting stuff done. I quite like that, doing a little bit of research, write it all up. Then boom, it's done. It's in. It's complete. I can move onto something else. Whereas with a book, it is a kind of, we'll see you in a year. I find that quite tricky to navigate because I've always been a last-minute person. You really can't be a last-minute person if you're writing a ninety thousand-word novel. You'd have a nervous breakdown if you left it until the last month. I have to be consistent. I walk around with a lot of guilt. I'm coming around to thinking that actually a lot of days when I think I'm, we say in Britain skiving, I don't know if that's a word in America, where you're kind of bunking off, these are all really British terms, but when you're shirking and not doing the work you should be doing. Sorry, what was it?

Zibby: Maybe procrastinating where you're putting it off?

Kate: Yeah, that kind of thing. Actually, I think I am doing work in my head. I'm walking the dogs and I'm making little notes on my phone. I do more work than I think I do. Things are percolating all the time, hopefully.

Zibby: We're going to go with that one. Non-stop workaholic. [laughs]

Kate: Yeah, I never stop.

Zibby: Never stop. Slow down already. Come on. So are you already at work on your next novel? What's going on in your time now?

Kate: I'm busy at the moment with stuff for The Heatwave, which is really fun, like this kind of thing. Yes, I've started. I've done about a fifth of a book set in Italy. I was due to go to Italy this summer with my parents, actually, and do some research. I was really looking forward to that. Obviously, that's been postponed. If The Heatwave is about mothers and daughters, this is about marriages. I split up with my husband quite recently, which is totally amicable and nice. I'm forty-two. I think it's an interesting age, early forties, late thirties. You're still very much young enough to start again. Not that being fifty is not young enough to start again, but you know what I mean. You're probably halfway through your life if you're lucky. It's a time where you think, what do I want the rest of my life to look like? Is this enough? It's exploring those kind of things. I keep saying to my ex, it's not going to be about you and me. It's not going to be about you and me. Don't worry. Inevitably, you do draw from your life a bit. I'm really looking forward to that. There's some American characters in that as well who I'm looking forward to writing. Maybe I can do a research trip to the States as well.

Zibby: Totally. Come visit. I had the same thing. I got divorced five years ago. I'm forty-three, so when I was thirty-eight. I'm remarried now. I feel like hitting your fortieth birthday, there's a big shift and recognition you only get one life to live and life's too short to be miserable type of thing, so you might as well. It's still a big step and a big risk. I am really eager, then, to read your next book.

Kate: You might like it. It is a really interesting age. I've got lots of friends who are going through similar things. It's all happened around the same time almost as though it's contagious. Lockdown finished a few friends off as well in terms of their marriages and their relationships. It's just strange times all around, really. I'm hoping I can write something that speaks to people about that stuff. I have written a few books now. I used to write more historical fiction. As I've gone on, I've got more confident and maybe being happier to write stuff that's closer to me. When my mom read The Heatwave for the first time, she said, "This is like you." She didn't mean that Sylvie is me.

Zibby: Uh oh. [laughs]

Kate: Or Elodie is me.

Zibby: Elodie, okay. Good.

Kate: Imagine that. But just that it felt as though it was me speaking. I thought, yeah, that's a confidence thing. I think the next one will be even more that way, maybe. [laughs]

Zibby: That's great. We'll get all the way to maybe a memoir in forty years. Who knows? You'll work your way slowly there. What did you and your ex decide to do about the dogs, just out of curiosity?

Kate: Currently, he's between places at the moment because I've bought him out, so I'm in the cottage. They're with me all the time at the moment. We're going to have a week on and a week off. That will suit me because I like spending some time in London. I've got family there. I live in the Cotswold in the middle of nowhere. I like having that city/country thing. I think that will work well. Currently, I am kind of a single mom to them. It's quite hardcore some days, especially when it's raining and I have to take them out. It's been very nice and very amicable. He's a big support to me, always. As divorces go, it's been a good one.

Zibby: Do you ever feel scared? If I were in a big cottage in the middle of nowhere with just me and my two dogs, I feel like I get scared all the time outside of cities having grown up in New York City. Anytime I'm in any sort of wilderness, I'm like, what's that noise?

Kate: I was like that to begin with. The first night we spent here it was so dark. I couldn't tell if my eyes were open or not. I was born in London. I'm like you. I've got used to it. Luckily, weirdly, it's 1750s, this cottage, but really not very creaky, fortunately. What there is is a lot of spiders at the moment because they're all coming in to mate. Every night I'm having to deal with these huge house spiders. I've really grown up in the last couple of weeks. That bit's not fun, I must say. So fairly soon would quite like another husband.

Zibby: Or perhaps just an exterminator.

Kate: Maybe I'll get a cat or something. They can get the spiders. Apparently, they do.

Zibby: Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?  

Kate: This is also advice to me. Give yourself a break. Don't beat yourself up all the time. I always talk about this because I love Stephen King. He wrote a book, On Writing. It really, actually, intimidated me because he's got this prodigious work ethic. He said if you're not writing two thousand words a day, then what hell are you doing? You're not really a serious writer. You don't, obviously, want it. It really made me not write for ages because I thought I'm just not doing it properly. I would say do what you can. Also, read. Read, read, read. I was a reader way before I was a writer. You will learn what you like and what you don't like and what's effective. If you read a book and you're on the edge of your seat, you can look at why that is. Look at it like a construction. That's the best way to learn, I think. So there you are.

Zibby: I totally agree. If you end up needing to do research on American divorcées, you can just DM or something and we can keep this conversation going.

Kate: That would be great. [laughs]

Zibby: Thank you. Thanks, Kate, for coming on. I absolutely loved this book. I've recommended it a hundred times in everywhere I recommend books. Just the way you write, and I know we talked a lot about structure and all the rest, but your actual writing style is so beautiful. I just loved it. I just loved it. I emailed your publicist in the beginning. I was like, I love this book.

Kate: Thank you. I love that. That's really made my day. Thank you.

Zibby: Good. Have a great day. Stock up on the green shirts for future interviews. [laughs] Good luck with the dogs.

Kate: Thanks so much, Zibby.

Zibby: Have a great day. Buh-bye.

Kate: Bye.

Sheila Grinell, THE CONTRACT

Zibby Owens: Writing is a second act for author Sheila Grinell. She led the team that opened the Arizona Science Center as the CEO, which welcomed nearly 400,000 visitors a year, and by the way, is one of my favorite places to take my kids when we go out and visit my mom and stepdad during the winter months. A graduate of Bronx Science High School and Harvard University as well as the University of California at Berkeley, she currently lives in Phoenix and has written two books, The Contract and Appetite.

Welcome Sheila. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Sheila Grinell: My pleasure.

Zibby: I have to ask first, I read that you were born in a taxi. Is that true?

Sheila: That is true. It even says so on my birth certificate.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. Tell me the story behind that.

Sheila: It's the end of the World War II. My father, who was stationed in the United States, was not present. My grandfather took my mother downstairs into a taxicab. I was the first child. My mother said, "The baby's coming. The baby's coming." Oh, no, no, no. He took her downstairs. It was New York City. They called a taxi. The taxi's moving to the hospital. My mother says, "The baby's here." Evidently, my head emerged. My mother had the presence of mind to reach down and close my nose because she didn't want me to breathe. The taxi pulls up into the hospital yard. My grandpa runs out, gets a nurse. The nurse runs back and completes the delivery in the backseat. Then when I was old enough to understand all this, I said to my grandpa, "Grandpa, what did you do?" He said, "I gave the driver a big tip." [laughter] It wasn't good for my mom because this is a long time ago and since I was contaminated, they put me in a separate room. My mother went to the maternity ward. She wasn't allowed to see me for almost a week.

Zibby: Oh, no. That must have been so hard.

Sheila: Right. I know when I had my baby, I was out of the hospital in two days.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. That's quite a story. I also just read your piece about how you feel now that you're in, I don't know what to call it, assisted living or continuing care.

Sheila: Continuing care retirement community.

Zibby: Continuing care retirement -- oh, right, CCRC, because your husband has Parkinson's, which I was so sorry to read about. Tell me about writing this piece and what it's been like for you having to transition to this type of living arrangement to help with his care.

Sheila: Parkinson's is a very slow, nasty disease. It's not only movement. It's also cognitive and emotional. It affects your seeing and your hearing and your speech, everything, but it is slow. My husband was diagnosed in 2011. It's been creeping up. I got to the point where I knew that something's going to have to change. Everyone says if you're going to move into one of these places, move early so you can enjoy it together before you can't enjoy it together anymore, so we did just about a year ago. At first, it was really wonderful because my husband had some blessings that he hadn’t had before. He hadn’t driven in three years. Here, he could just walk to the bistro and get a burger when he wanted. He could take the exercise classes and chat with the ladies. There are far more women here than men. A lot of them are widows. My husband is charming. He has a great time. We walk together and they all go, "Hi, Tom. Hi, Tom." No "Hi, Sheila." They said, "Hi, Tom." He felt invigorated. I was relieved because there's always somebody around. He has a little alarm button. He presses the button, somebody's here's in five minutes. They have it set up to take care of people who are old and infirm. In the future, I know I'm going to need more help. I'm not going to be able to wash him and move him around. I'm not big, but he's bigger. We're set up. I was enjoying it. Then COVID came. Even though we're an independent living, we're not in a nursing home, there is a nursing home on the campus. They use the nursing home rules for all of us, which meant no visitors at all, no more communal dining. They bring a meal to our door. Somebody drops it off at our door and rings the bell and runs away. They're keeping the disease away, so we have to deal with it. I'm okay. When everything got quiet, I was actually able to concentrate on the next book. I'm writing my next book.

Zibby: Let's talk about your writing. Tell me, now that you’ve mentioned it, what is the next book about? Then let's go back and talk about the previous two books.

Sheila: The next one is a story about a pioneer young woman who comes west, contemporary pioneer. She comes west to find a better life. She winds up in Phoenix where I am. It's post-pandemic. I'm writing it as if it's three years from now. Hallelujah, I hope it's post-pandemic then. People's lives will have been changed. They’ll be expecting different things. My young woman falls in with a real estate developer. That's the name of the game here. For the last twenty years, thirty years, forty years, the whole metro area has grown tremendously. It's real estate developers who have a vision of the future. They decide where you're going to live, what you're going to want, where the transportation is, where the schools are, where the parks are. Are there any other amenities? They decide all that. Some of them do it with a great deal of vision and respect. Some of them are unethical. Some just want to make the buck. Some are cheats. I'm plopping this young pioneer woman into this post-pandemic environment where people are designing the future. We'll see what happens.

Zibby: Wow. Even just the exercise of imagining a post-pandemic world again and how this will have affected things is an interesting exercise in and of itself.

Sheila: Yes. That's why I'm only going three years out because I think beyond that is beyond me.

Zibby: Now let's go back to The Contract. Tell everybody the plot of that book as well. What inspired you to write that story?

Sheila: It's about a bunch of children's museum designers, Jo and Ev, man and wife. Jo is around forty-eight. She says, I've got to make my mark now. She thinks that if they're invited to bid on a contract in Saudi Arabia, in Riyadh, she thinks, this is it. I'm going to go for this. It's going to make my name. He is a different kind of person. She's got all the balls. He's got the soft side. He just wants to stay home and make things. They go. It doesn't turn out the way she thought. She learns a lot about her culture, about her work, about her marriage, and about herself and what she can tolerate and what she can't. That's why I wrote the book. In this day and age, I was mulling over, how do people become tolerant? Shouldn't they? When? What makes it happen? What are the impediments? This was in my back of my mind. I wasn't even quite aware that it was in the back of my mind. Then I met my friend, name not to be announced. I met a friend, wonderful woman. She's a professional, kind, generous, very thoughtful. Her sister came to visit. The way she talked to her sister shocked me. She was completely contemptuous. I said to myself, wouldn't you have learned by now to tolerate her? Then I realized, oh, I can use my experience in Saudi Arabia. If I'm going to write about tolerance, that's one extreme. Jo and Ev, my designer couple, they live in Oakland, California, so I have both extremes.

Zibby: You've had a whole career in museums and a whole museum life. You were able to bring that in to inform all the details of this book. What made you start writing to begin with? I know you have another book as well. How did you transition or how did you incorporate this element of creativity into your professional life?

Sheila: The Contract had to be set in the museum world because my own experience in Saudi Arabia was the museum world, and I had to make it real. You can't make up stuff about Saudi Arabia. It's just too far out. Back to, how did I become a writer? Well, I didn't. [laughter] I have to take you back to the beginning. I had a whole other life for forty years.

Zibby: Let's go back.

Sheila: The beginning is in high school. I had a marvelous teacher. I hope you had the one teacher who changes your life. A lot of people have them. There's one math teacher, Dr. Dotti, I had him for three years. I went to college thinking I'd be a mathematician. I got there and they had made me take physics. Mechanics was okay. Then when they got to electricity and magnetism, I didn't know what was going on. I said, I can't do this. I have a scholarship. I have to do well. I'm going to have to go home. A friend of mine said, "What do you like?" I said, "I like my English composition class." She said, "So major in English." So I did, not being so intellectually greedy. Then I went to graduate school and I got a master's degree in social science and sociology. After my education, I was prepared for everything and nothing practical. I was in Berkeley, California, at the time. This is 1969, which is a time of great social unrest like now, only very positive. It was free speech and anti-war and the beginning of women's liberation. It was an exciting time. Alternatives were big. I ran into a physicist who was starting a science museum. He wanted it to be an alternative, not telescopes and steam engines behind glass cases, but light and sound that you could actually play with. I thought, sounds great. It's math and science. It's humanities. It's an alternative social institution. I'm going to do this.

I started my first job. I joined Frank Oppenheimer. We built the Exploratorium, which has been widely emulated around the world. My first job turned into a career. I worked in it for forty years. It was fabulous. I helped start museums in different places. I wrote a book about museums. I instructed people all over the world. Then I moved to Phoenix in 1993 for one last shot. It was really going to be from scratch. I really liked the from scratch, starting things up. I moved here, got the Arizona Science Center up and running, made it a little bigger, mentored my successor, thought about things. Then suddenly, it was forty years and I was done. It was like a little switch. I'm done. This institution still needs to change and become even more contemporary, but it doesn't need to be changed by me. It needs to be changed by a digital native. I'm done. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew I needed to change. I started consulting. Then the universe intervened.

My mother had a stroke. She was living back east with my sister. I went to visit her. I saw her first in April. I said, "Mom, you don't seem to really know who you are anymore." As the stroke multiplies, she was really losing her personality. "Mom, you don't know who you are anymore. Do you want me to tell you your story?" She said yes. I said, "Okay." So I told her her life story in forty-five minutes. I cleaned it up. I finished. She said, "That was interesting." I said, "You won't remember, but I'll tell you again." In May, I go to see her. "Mom, would you like to hear your story?" "Yes, I would." I started to tell her story, but she couldn't pay attention for forty-five minutes, so I told her a few chunks. She said, "That was interesting." I said, "If you won't remember, I'll tell you again." I go to see her in June. I start to tell her her story. She couldn't even put the chunks together. She was out of it. I took a walk. It was like somebody stabbed me in the belly. I said, I have to write her story. In retrospect, I was mourning her in advance. I was trying to keep her because she was going away. I came back to Phoenix. I wrote her story. I went to the Piper Center here and got an editor. I finished it. I shared it with a few friends. Then I realized I wanted to write more. I think the old English major came back.

I enrolled in community college here. It was such fun. It was so different from everything else I had done for my business life. There were sad, lost twenty-year-olds and a bunch of other older people trying to recharge their batteries. I had a wonderful time. I kept taking classes. I'm in my third short story class. I'm looking at the story in my hands. I say, "It's too big. It's not going to fit in twenty pages." The guy sitting next to me said, "So write a novel." I went, "Okay." That started me on the journey on my first novel, Appetite. I didn't have writer's block, which was a tremendous blessing. I think it's because I already had a successful life here. I was already an asset to the community. So if I screwed up, it wouldn't matter. At least, that's what I told myself. It worked. I worked away at it. It took quite some time because I was still consulting. Then got it going and realized this is really what I want to do and I'm continuing to do. There's a bunch of advantages to having another career besides just having the freedom to fail. I realized that a lot of the skills from my past lives still pertained. I know how to commit myself to a five-year project with an uncertain outcome. I know how to stick to a schedule and budget. I know how to stop second-guessing myself all the time. I knew how, when I was in over my head, to go get some expert help. All of this was kosher. I used all those skills in my writer life too. The big disadvantage about my second life is that it's going to be shorter than the first one. I've got to hurry up and get more books under my belt. I don't think that way. Every project, every book is its own thing. You just live in that book for the years that you're in it. Then the next one comes up.

Zibby: That's amazing. How did it feel to publish a novel? How old were you, if I may ask? You don't have to answer, but when Appetite came out. You don't have to say it. You don't want to say it. It's fine.

Sheila: Very old.

Zibby: Very old, okay.

Sheila: Zibby, I could be your mom. I started writing in my sixties.

Zibby: That's fine. Started writing in your sixties. Then you had a novel published. What did that feel like? I know, as you've said, you've accomplished so much professionally in other areas. By the way, I love the Arizona Science Center and have been there many, many times. Love it. How did it feel when it first came out or you first saw it on a shelf? To have that happen and feel that, what was it like? I can only imagine.

Sheila: I was living in a different world. When you're writing, you're writing. I'll give you an example. If you know Phoenix, maybe you know Changing Hands, wonderful independent bookstore. I had the launch there. Just before the launch, I was so nervous. I had called a friend of mine who's a personal trainer. I said, "Work me out." In my other life, I would stand up in front of a room full of 1,500 people and by force of will, make them shut up. It’s not possible in the new life because it's different. When you're standing up talking about science museums, you have the museum, you have the board and the donors and the staff and the visitors. You have all these people behind you. When you're standing up to talk about your book, it's just you. Art is so much more personal. I had to make a shift from a more public persona into a private one and revealing that private one. That was different, exciting, and a little scary. Now I'm much more used to it. I think it's a privilege to be able to plumb your own depths in a way that makes sense for other people.

Zibby: That's amazing. I love that. Having gone through this journey, what advice would you have for aspiring authors at any age?

Sheila: Most people, when they start something, think about the reasons not to. There are reasons not to. They're probably valid, but ignore them. There are reasons to. The main reason is because you don't lose your old skills and your old personality, but you can exercise it differently. I feel like I'm still engaged with the world, but I'm exploring it in a different dimension. That's how it feels. My advice would be, go for it. Whenever I give talks or readings, people come up to me afterwards. You can tell by the look on their face that they're want-to-be writers and they're looking for help. They say, "I had this great story. I had this wonderful and fantastic experience. I just can't seem to get to it." I say, "Make yourself a promise, twenty-one days. One hour a day for twenty-one days." Science says that twenty-one days is what it takes to form a habit. Also, my other piece of advice is to work on your craft. If you can't massage a sentence into what you want it to be, you won't really be able to tell whether you're expressing your story or not. Work on your craft. You can take classes at a community college if you have one. I was lucky enough to have one right by. You can find a critique group. Go online. There's tons of them. Do whatever you do, but write. Work on craft. Then see what you have to say.

Zibby: Wow, that's so inspiring. I love this. It's so encouraging. It's just so encouraging. You take everything, every skill in your brain, and you melded it all together. Now you're producing in little installments, novels and delight and entertainment for so many other people. It's really neat. I'm very impressed.

Sheila: I hope when you read the next one that I've got it right, that it is accurate post-pandemic, but also, delightful.

Zibby: I can't wait. Thank you for sharing all your stories and for coming on my podcast and for all your great writing. Thank you.

Sheila: Thank you so much. Zibby, I have to tell you, you must be the nicest person in the world. What you do for books and readers and writers and stories is just splendid. Thank you.

Zibby: Aw, you're welcome. Thanks for saying that. Take care, Sheila.

Sheila: Bye.