Malcolm Mitchell, MY VERY FAVORITE BOOK IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

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

Malcolm Mitchell: I'm excited. Thank you for having me. By the way, I'm a new father. Oakley, my son's mom looked up the podcast and told me I was on a superstar podcast.

Zibby: [laughs] Congratulations on your son. That's really exciting.

Malcolm: Thank you. I appreciate it.

Zibby: How old is he now?

Malcolm: He's going to be six months in a few days.

Zibby: Aw, that's good. You got the smiles going and all that.

Malcolm: Exactly. You have some experience, huh?

Zibby: I have four kids. I'm out of the baby stage, but I miss the baby stage. I love babies, oh, my gosh.

Malcolm: I don't know. I think I'm ready to be out of the baby stage.

Zibby: I love babies, but now I would be happy to hold someone else's baby. How about that? [laughs]

Malcolm: Okay, we see to eye to eye.

Zibby: Sleeping is nice. I don't miss having four babies. I had twins too, so that was really tough. Somehow, the days keep going and they get older. That's really fun.

Malcolm: Moms are incredible too. I always say Jasmine, Oakley's mom, does ninety-nine percent of the work, and then I complain about the one percent I have to do.

Zibby: That sounds about right. At different times, different parents step in. Who knows? Maybe at age five it'll be ninety-nine percent you, or it'll stay the same. Anyway, I'll let you two work that out. [laughter] Congratulations on your book, My Very Favorite Book in the Whole Wide World, which is a fantastic book. For listeners who aren't familiar with this book yet, can you just tell them the basic story of it? Then what inspired you to write this particular book?

Malcolm: My Very Favorite Book in the Whole Wide World was inspired by my personal experience. I grew up a striving reader, struggling reader. I believed some words were too big, some books too thick, some sentences too long and complicated. I was afraid of reading. My hands would get sweaty. My behavior really suffered from that in classrooms. Through my journey into literacy and finding a love for books, I realized how magical they are, how powerful they can be, and how much of an impact they can have on one's life. I committed to making sure kids understood the importance of reading. My Very Favorite Book in the Whole Wide World documents this kid going on this search for this book that inspires him. Through his journey, he realizes that sometimes the best stories can be found inside of ourselves.

Zibby: Love it. I kept wondering the whole book, what's the book going to be? Then you had that nice twist at the end and wrapped it all up with a nice bow. I liked it.

Malcolm: At first when I wrote the story, I said, I don't know, it could come off a little corny. It's such a truth, though. You go on this search for this story or you search for purpose to find yourself. You realize the answer was always there. I guess that's a more philosophical look at it.

Zibby: It's true. That's the way it is with most things in life. The things that you strive the hardest for are often found within yourself anyway. I'll carry the corny theme on extrapolating it to life in general. I read that you were reading at a middle-school level when you got to college. What happened then? Also, were you ever diagnosed with any sort of learning disability, or was it just a lack of education in the reading arena that caused that? What was that about?

Malcolm: Let me start by saying I was not diagnosed with any learning disabilities. I think my community promoted sports and entertainment over education. I was just like every other child. It was no one's fault. It's just the way the community was structured. I had this intense draw to sport and football, which worked out. I was able to go to the NFL, played in a Super Bowl. I had that unworldly experience, but it was really restricting. It kind of placed me into a box only relying on that natural skill set. Once I got to the University of Georgia, I realized how limited my thinking was. My exposure was not wide or broad, and I wanted to change that. I wanted to feel empowered not just physically, but mentally. Through a series of fortunate events, I discovered that if I wanted to be more emotionally intelligent, more cognitive, a better decision-maker, I needed to be literate. There are different signs that I'm more than willing to dive into, if you want, that led me to that conclusion. I started trying to read. When I started, I actually started with this book. It's titled The 48 Laws of Power.

Zibby: That's what you started on? Maybe that was your problem. [laughs] I don't even know if I could get through that book, and I read a trillion books.

Malcolm: I started with this. Of course, I was discouraged. I was terribly discouraged. I put the book down. I said, forget it.

Zibby: For people listening, by the way, Malcolm just held up a thousand-page book with the tiniest font and a trillion words per page called Power which looks incredibly intimidating. Although, I'm sure it's fantastic.

Malcolm: It is fantastic, but it's still intimidating. It took me a year to read that thing. I started off with this. Like I do everything else in my life, I just jump in, had no thought. Got into it, realized it was terribly difficult, kind of shied away from it, but had this revelation that, no, I need to read. I started reading picture books and took my athletic approach of you start with fundamentals. Then eventually, you get better. Then you become your own version of the athlete you want to be. I thought to myself, maybe if I do this same thing with reading, it'll work out. I started with the fundamentals. I went back and started reading picture books.

Zibby: You taught yourself? You did it by yourself?

Malcolm: I'm in my dorm room reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar, writing down notes about sentence structure. I did that with books like The Giving Tree; Exclamation Mark; Cat in the Hat; Oh, The Places You'll Go. Eventually, my theory played out like I thought it would. I gradually got better and better and better. I think I started with self-help because they're really easy to read. Then I moved to graphic novels because they were very simple. Then I moved into young adult. I started with Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. Eventually, I was writing down vocabulary words and such-and-such. Next thing I knew, I was reading The 48 Laws of Power.

Zibby: Wow.

Malcolm: It was a fun journey to even go back and think about. Funny story. I'm glad this is causal because I'm rambling.

Zibby: Please ramble. I'm really enjoying it.

Malcolm: Funny story. I started reading these books. I figured if I enhance my vocabulary, I'd be a better reader. One of my biggest struggles, I couldn't identify the words. I didn't have the skill set of sounding them out. What I would do is I'd read the book. If I came across a word, I'd jot it down. I'd go to Google, let Google say it to me. Then I'd challenge myself to use that word in a sentence three times a day. Now, I'm in a locker room full of other athletes just like me that had similar backgrounds who didn't have this overwhelming appreciation for education. I'm using words like superfluous and evanescent. They're looking at me, what are you talking about? It was a fun journey.

Zibby: That's really impressive. In the middle of college, and you're playing football in college and you're soon to be drafted to the Patriots, you could've been doing anything. You could've just been partying every night. You could've been relaxing, anything. Instead, you've chosen to completely improve yourself in every way by teaching yourself and pushing yourself through all these stages. What was the huge inspiration?

Malcolm: If I go back to the root, it would probably be my mother. I grew up in a single-parent household in a small town. My mother has this infectious way of encouraging and uplifting and empowering. She was limited due to her own personal challenges. She really enforced this unwavering faith and almost blissfully ignorant belief that you could do anything you set your mind to. I adopted that. That's what helped me be a professional athlete. That's also helped me never -- bad sentence structure here -- never stop striving to be a better version of myself even today. I always want to search for more, not monetarily or materialistic, but just trying to really reach my full potential. I'm not sure that's even possible, but my mom made me think that it is. I still believe that, so I still go. When I realized that I would be capped if I wasn't literate, I needed to be literate to stay on track of evolving into a better version of myself. My mom is the answer to your question.

Zibby: Have you told her that?

Malcolm: Maybe not like that. In my first picture book, The Magician's Hat, the forward is, "To my mother for always allowing me to believe dreams can become reality." Then in my second book, My Very Favorite Book in the Whole Wide World, I wrote, "To my mom, my very favorite person in the whole wide world."

Zibby: I know. That was so nice.

Malcolm: Maybe not directly, but indirectly I think I've tried to acknowledge her.

Zibby: You should just call her when we finish doing this and say what you said. As a mom, if my kid were to call me and say that -- I'm sure she's insanely proud of you to begin with. Just to hear it, I bet it would make her day. Just saying, if you have a free minute, you'll make her smile.

Malcolm: For my mom, I have all the time in the world.

Zibby: Aw. Are you an only child?

Malcolm: No, I'm the middle.

Zibby: Did your siblings grow up with the same drive as you, or was it just you? Yeah, same way?

Malcolm: I have an older brother and a younger sister. I'm the middle. I would say they have the same drive as I do. They took different direction, of course. We didn't go all in the same direction. We are all on our own individual journeys, but that philosophy of never giving up and pulling the best out of yourself is something I think my mom instilled in all three of us.

Zibby: You must have hit so many roadblocks in different areas in your athletic career, in your teaching yourself to read, now writing, forming your nonprofit. How do you push past those moments where you feel like you can't keep going and then you do anyway?

Malcolm: I've had several of those moments. In college, I went through a series of injuries that kept me out of football for a year and a half. I went through the same situation once I got to the NFL. I ran into that issue in reading, forming the nonprofit. Problems are everywhere. It's just the way of life. I heard this powerful message this past weekend that said, how can you have victory if there's no battle?

Zibby: That's good.

Malcolm: Right?

Zibby: Yep, that's a good one.

Malcolm: It's the way I live my life. Once it gets hard, it almost energizes me because now I have something to conquer. Now I can get out of bed and say I'm after something. I think that's just maybe a part of my personality. I can't really take credit for it being that way because I don't know how I became that way. It's impossible to be a winner or -- that's a bad word. Let's use a different word. It's impossible to have victory if there's no battle. There has to be some type of confrontation to accomplish anything. I'm sure you've even had your own set of obstacles with this brilliant podcast.

Zibby: Thank you. [laughs] Yes, I've had lots of obstacles and lots of setbacks and losses and things in life that happened that knock you down.

Malcolm: How did you overcome yours?

Zibby: Thank you for asking. That's nice of you. How did I overcome mine? One thing I always try to do is focus on the things I'm grateful for even when I'm going through things that are really awful. It could always be worse. That's sort of my mantra. It could always be worse. Yes, this is terrible. Yes, I'm devastated. Yes, this is awful. I worry about stuff all the time, so then I just start thinking about the eight thousand other things that could be really bad. Then I feel a little less bad about what's going on.

Malcolm: Reverse psychology.

Zibby: Yeah, something like that.

Malcolm: I got you. Cool.

Zibby: That's how I do it. [laughs] I want to talk about your nonprofit, but I have to ask about your career-ending injury because I always wonder about athletes who -- my husband's a football fan, but I have to say I don't really follow football. I didn't know too much about your career ahead of time. He's not even home right now, but he'll make fun of me for this, not that he makes fun of me. You know what I'm saying. Anyway, I didn't know the trajectory of your career. When I heard about your injury, I thought about all these athletes of all different sports who I hear about who all of a sudden, they have an injury and they have to stop. I think, oh, my gosh, how do you deal with that? After a lifetime of training and your body fails you when everything else might be in line, what then? How did you deal with that?

Malcolm: It's heartbreaking. To be honest with you, it's still terribly difficult to get past that emotionally. I'm trying to, for those who are listening, give a good -- it's like you have a fifteen-year career and you wake up one day and someone says, no, you can't go to work. You can never go back to that job. You say, why? They give you this answer that's out of your control. I'm doing a bad job of explaining, but it's kind of like -- I think this is a testament for how difficult it is.

Zibby: It's not a bad job explaining. It's something a lot of people can relate to. It's not your fault. It's not fair, and it happened anyway.

Malcolm: Yeah, but you have to accept it. You have to move on. You can't stay stuck in the mud or life will pass you by. It is really difficult. I advise anyone going through any catastrophic changes to get a counselor and help you work through it. For me, it was just really tough thinking -- I had been playing sports since I was nine or ten years old. I was fifteen years in. I just had no understanding of how the world worked without athletics. Imagine being on a different planet because that’s the reality. I'll be honest with you. The way athletes think, perform, their daily schedule is so different than ninety-nine percent of the rest of the world. When I was done being that athlete, it's kind of like I got thrust in this environment where I didn't even understand it. What do you mean people can't yell at each other and move on? What do you mean you can't tackle somebody if you're mad? [laughs] How do you handle your problems? Handling my problems were in the form of some physical exertion on another human being. You'll go to jail for that. You can't do that anymore. I had never dealt with anxiety because by the time I'd become anxious, I'd go out on the field and make this extravagant play. It's filled with this euphoric appreciation that, okay, I'm no longer sad or anxious or depressed. Now I have to deal with those real emotions. It's like reprogramming or evolving. Depends on how you want to look at it.

Zibby: How is your knee now? Are you functional in your body? Can you go for a run, or are you done with everything?

Malcolm: Yes, I can do basic workouts, but no more cutting left or right. That phase is over.

Zibby: No more Tom Brady catches and Super Bowls and all that.

Malcolm: No more of that. Maybe some backyard catch. I can handle that.

Zibby: So he just has to come to your backyard. There you go.

Malcolm: Exactly.

Zibby: Tell me about Read with Malcom and your whole foundation and how you're helping all these other kids read.

Malcolm: I started Share the Magic Foundation in 2016 as soon as I graduated from the University of Georgia. I wanted to start the foundation because, like many kids in my community, millions of kids around the world don't understand the importance of literacy. I don't think I was an anomaly by any means. I couldn't have been because there are hundreds of kids that I grew up with that thought the same as I did.

Zibby: By the way, nice use of anomaly. Keep going.

Malcolm: [laughs] I went through this transformation through literacy. I had become empowered. I wanted to give that gift to other people. I did not want them to feel they only had these two options of being an athlete or entertainer to live a sustainable lifestyle. In some communities, that’s just what you believe. I'm a picture book author. That's the strangest thing if you go back to my community. That's not even talked about. I started the foundation because I wanted to spread this magic that I had discovered with other kids around the world hoping that I could unlock their potential just as reading had unlocked mine. That's the simplest reason of why I started Share the Magic Foundation.

Zibby: How involved are you? Is it something you do every day, or you just check in on board meetings?

Malcolm: Every day. Every day, I'm doing something to further the mission. Right now, we have virtual reading challenges that go on annually. Our next one is Read Bowl. We get on the phone each morning. We talk about how to make that accessible to kids and communities where it may be tough. We also talk about book ownership, how to make sure kids who can't afford a book has one. That and being an author is what I do.

Zibby: How do you distribute the books? Do you raise money? Then how do you allocate where the books go? I'm assuming that's how it works.

Malcolm: We used to do it through in-school programming. That's been affected by COVID. Now we raise money. We purchase books from third parties. We distribute them into communities that are poverty pockets and book deserts. Usually, it's to a Title I school. We do it through schools versus individual households just because we can do a better job of managing the process. All money raised goes to book ownership and making sure that our virtual programs stay free. That's something that is important to me. I have this belief that necessity should not come at a fee. I'm really bothered that we have to pay for water and food because without it I wouldn't survive. Literacy falls in that category. That's just how strong I believe in it. Without it, you're kind of stuck in the cycle of poverty. You're caged by not having that social mobility that literacy can grant you. That's just as deadly, to me, as not having shelter. It should be free. That's my philosophy with the foundation.

Zibby: Do you teach people with your virtual programs how to read? What if they get the books but they can't even read children's books yet?

Malcolm: We don't do -- let me talk about what we do and not take a negative spin on it. What we do is we provide the tool, which is the book. Then we inspire. We don't have the bandwidth today to productively teach reading. What we do have for now is the financial capabilities to make sure those who don't have a book have one. That's part of the biggest challenge. It's hard to tell a kid or any person to read if they don't have a book or any form of language to read. Then through the sport-like enthusiasm, we encourage. That's what the virtual reading programs are really there for, to encourage reading through this very sport-like mentality that obviously I gathered from years of playing sports. If anyone wants to check it out and get a better understanding and not hear me ramble about it, you can go to readwithmalcom.com, just like it sounds, readwithmalcom.com, and look through it. Let me know if you like it.

Zibby: I want to get involved now. I'm going to donate. I think that's amazing. I connected with this schoolteacher in an underprivileged community in Texas earlier this year. She was talking about if maybe I could give away a copy or two of a book. I donated just to her. I don't even know her. This is probably not the smartest thing. Now we're BFFs. I just wrote her a check. I was like, "Here, go buy everybody some books." She gave all these kids books. She's like, "Some of these kids had never owned a book before in their lives. Now they could bring home a book. They were so excited to own their own book." I was like, that's amazing. That's one of the things that made me happiest this year to do. Put that on a much bigger scale, that's probably a better -- [laughs].

Malcolm: I'm telling you, when we go into these Title I schools in very low-income communities, you give a child a book, they're trying to give it back because no one's ever given them anything. It's astonishing, even what I've experienced coming from a similar community, but there are some communities that are way more needy that what I experienced. Doing it for them is a big part of why I do it. Tell me why you started the podcast. I'm curious.

Zibby: Why did I start the podcast? I didn't even mean to the start the podcast. The short answer is I am a writer. I love to write. I've been writing since I was eight years old. I had been writing, recently, a lot of parenting essays, not how to, like, I'm crying on the bathroom floor, are you doing that too? More like that. My husband one night said, "You should put all your essays into a book." I said, "Ugh, moms don't have time to read books." Then I thought, oh, that's funny. I'll make that my book title. Turns out, publishers didn't think that was funny. The advice I got is that they wouldn't. Maybe I shouldn't have listened, but I listened. Then another friend said, "While you're building up --" I wasn’t even on social media. I had no following. I had nothing, just some freelance articles. She said, "Why don't you start a podcast?" I said, great, I'll use the title for that book, and I'll do a podcast. I was going to start by reading -- I'm always sending articles to friends and things. I'll start by just reading great articles and essays. Then I realized that was illegal. I couldn't do that without permission. I thought, well, I'll try interviewing authors. I knew two authors. I'll see how that goes. I just started. I was like, oh, my gosh, I love this. I love this so much.

Malcolm: That's impressive. So where's your book?

Zibby: I have an anthology coming out in February. I actually have two anthologies and two children's books that I have deals for now.

Malcolm: Congratulations.

Zibby: I'm doing that, but I have lots more writing that I want to do. Now I don't have time. [laughs]

Malcolm: Since I know you, do I get a free book? No, I'm kidding.

Zibby: Yes, you do. I'm giving my book to everybody who's been on my podcast.

Malcolm: Really? That's nice.

Zibby: I'll ask for your address through email later. I'll send you one. If you want to contribute, my next -- it's all written by guests who have been on my podcast, writing essays. I would love you to do my next one. It's not coming out until next November. We're still getting some submissions for that if you have any interest.

Malcolm: I have a ton of interest. That's really cool. Isn't it amazing how that takes place? You start this journey with no anticipation or -- expectation is the word -- expectation to go anywhere. By the time you look up, you're like, wow, I have three books that I'm responsible for sharing with the world. It's kind of cool. I had a similar experience. I self-published originally because I wrote the story in college. I wrote The Magician's Hat while I was in college. Because of NCAA rules, I was restricted from signing with publishers and taking money and stuff like that. That's why I decided to self-publish. I wasn't very patient. I did it with no expectation. I just had this belief that -- I'm an athlete. For some odd reason, people think I have something worthwhile to say, so maybe I should think of something worthwhile to share. That's what got me into writing. It's me realizing where I was positioned in life and trying to find some valuable way to inspire someone else outside of catching the pass.

Zibby: Why have you not written a memoir yet?

Malcolm: I don't think I'm that interesting.

Zibby: Yes, you are. You have a great book in you.

Malcolm: I don't know. I get bored with myself, actually. That's why I do so many different things.

Zibby: I think there's a story in there. It doesn't have to be that long. I'm sure you have a ton on your plate, but I think you should write a memoir. I think it would be really inspiring. It would get more people reading, get more people helping.

Malcolm: Maybe your books will inspire me.

Zibby: Okay, fine. I will let you go. Thank you so much. I will text you about writing for this anthology. Stay in touch. I'll send you a copy of the book. Thank you for coming on my podcast. Now go relieve your partner and go spend some time with your baby. [laughs]

Malcolm: This was fun. I enjoyed it. Thank you for having me. I'd love to stay engaged however I can. This is cool.

Zibby: I love this too. This is great. Thank you. You're really inspiring. You're hardworking and driven. I love it. It's awesome.

Malcolm: Same to you. Give yourself credit. You're doing it with four children. I'm doing it as a lazy dad. More kudos to you than me.

Zibby: [laughs] I don't think so, but thanks a lot. I'll be in touch. Thanks, Malcolm. Buh-bye.

Shani M. King, HAVE I EVER TOLD YOU BLACK LIVES MATTER

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Shani. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." I'm delighted to chat with you today.

Shani Mahiri King: Thank you, Zibby, so much for having me. I completely identify with the title, "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." Just yesterday or the day before, my wife was like, "Shani, when's the last book you read?" I honestly couldn't remember the name of the last book I read. Don't even ask me what the last movie I saw was that is not a child's movie. I have no idea.

Zibby: As of yesterday, we're trying to go through the entire Home Alone -- it's more than a trilogy. There are like five of them. I don't even know what you call that, quinci... I don't know. We're working our way through the kids' movies as well. Yes, one byproduct, unfortunately, is sometimes less time to read. I'm bringing books like yours, which are quick to read, yours, not always, on this podcast to people who -- or maybe they wouldn't have discovered them otherwise. I only have a PDF version. Do you happen to have your actual book, or not?

Shani: I don't happen to have my actual book. Part of the reason is I'm in São Paulo right now, so it was be a heavier lift to get me an actual copy of it. Like you, I've just seen the PDF version.

Zibby: Well, it looks great. [laughs] Tell me the whole backstory of this children's book, Have I Ever Told You Black Lives Matter. Tell me about the illustrations, the people you profiled, how you came to do it, the whole story. How did this come to be?

Shani: Zibby, all of my books begin from the same place. They begin from conversations with my kids. I wrote a book before this, Have I Ever Told You?, that is really a book that is what I did say to my kids and what I wanted to say to my kids. That last book I wrote about four ago before the last election. I just felt like there was a lot of political discourse that my kids were, in different ways, exposed to. I didn't want that discourse to diminish who they thought they were. That's why I wrote Have I Ever Told You? This book, Have I Ever Told You Black Lives Matter, comes from a similar place. It involves, in part, some conversations that I have had with my kids, but also conversations that I've wanted to have with my kids. For a long time, I've wanted my kids to be aware of all of their history. I'm African American. My wife is Nicaraguan. I'm Jewish. My wife is Catholic. I was born in the United States. My wife was born in Nicaragua. We've moved around quite a bit.

My kids have a lot of history, which is part of the palate from which they can draw their own identities. For a long time, I have wanted my kids to know more about all of their histories. One of the histories is black history, is African American history. My kids are six and eight. I'm not sure, Zibby, how old your kids are. My kids don't usually like to just sit and listen to history monologues by their daddy or by their mommy. Occasionally, I'll talk to them about history when I pick up books. It was always challenging to me to try and figure out how to expose kids to their history unless we happened to go on a trip to Nicaragua, for example, or a trip to a particular African American heritage site. The Black Lives Matter movement happened. It's happening. It was just a reminder, a similar kind of thing, that I really want my kids to be proud of who they are, and so I wrote Have I Ever Told You Black Lives Matter.

There are two parts to the book. The first half is really an inspirational narrative of a speech or story that you may want to tell your kids or they want to read. The second half involves over a hundred biographies of people mentioned in the first half which gives really curious and inquisitive kids the opportunity to ask questions and get them answered about people mentioned in the first half. Another feature of the second half of the book is that there are quotations from each of the people mentioned in the back, each of the people in the biographies, which allows kids to be inspired by these people in their words. They're really people from every field and endeavor, anywhere from science to athletics to sports. It's not only historical, but it's contemporary. You have anyone from Charles Hamilton Houston, whose grandfather was a slave and led the legal fight against segregation, to Jay-Z and Beyoncé who are modern-day -- there are lots of names that you could give them, but business moguls, entrepreneurs who inspire people in their own way.

Zibby: Wow. Yes, that's all amazing. My kids, by the way, are also -- I have a six-year-old and a seven-year-old and then two thirteen-year-olds. I'm in it with you with them not particularly wanting to sit down for a history lesson. I feel like unless it's a holiday, I can't really get them to focus. Why are we celebrating this? Wait, you mentioned that you are Jewish also. I haven't met, I don't think, any African American Jewish people before. Tell me about that.

Shani: I was basically raised by my mother, by a single mother, since I was four, so my entire memory. She's Jewish. I actually don't know what religion my father was. He wasn't really involved. My mom's Jewish. My biological mother is a white Jewish woman from Revere, the Boston area. If you hear her speak, you will know that she's from Boston. The phrase that we've taught our daughter is, I park my car on Harvard Yard. My mother has a very, very strong accent. I'm not exactly sure why I don't. I'm not particularly religious, but I was raised Jewish, culturally Jewish. We celebrate the Jewish holidays. In our household now, my wife is Catholic, I'm Jewish, so we celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas just because that's what I did when I was growing up. I celebrated Hanukkah. My wife celebrated Christmas. We do that for our kids to expose them to both religions.

It's interesting. We were just speaking with both our daughter and our son yesterday. The topic of religion or God or the afterlife came up. I told the kids my view. Gabby, my wife, told the kids her view. My daughter, she just had this look of sort of frustration on her face. We're like, "Suriyah, what's wrong?" She was like, "It's just confusing." I was like, yeah. [laughs] It is very, very confusing. One of the points that we wanted to make to her was that no one knows, from our perspective ultimately at the end of the day, what the real story is, what the real answer to fundamental questions -- is there God? It's a belief. What the fundamental answer is to what the religious history of the world is, no one knows. What's important is that you can believe whatever you want to believe. You shouldn't judge someone else for believing what they believe. That, I think, got across to her and to Matias as well. Whether there's anything deeper than that that got across to them, I don't know.

Zibby: I guess we'll find out what actually stuck in twenty, thirty years, something like that. We can circle back then. [laughs] Coming from a mixed-race family, do you feel that you also need to tell the story of the Nicaraguan history to your kids? Will you be getting to that book, or is it because this is so of the moment and, of course, there's so much national, not even national, just worldwide focus on making things more in common parlance and all the rest?

Shani: I have a couple of thoughts, Zibby. First of all, I've always wanted to, as I mentioned, teach our kids African American history. I always felt like I'm proud of all of my heritage and who I am. I want my kids to have an opportunity to be proud of who they are. There are some children's books that talk about different aspects of African American history. I wrote this particular book because I hadn’t really seen a book that covered it in exactly this way, this breadth of coverage in both the digestible way in terms of first half, but also a deep way in the second half that allows kids to explore and can even be a resource for educators. The Black Lives Matter movement was a reminder and helped, but it's something that I wanted to do anyway and I've wanted to do for a long time. Also, it's a time during which our kids, as you know being, among other things, a mom, our kids really need us. It's challenging. It's challenging to be the same kind of solid presence for our kids when we're dealing with this craziness and this pandemic among other things too. For a lot of reasons, it's a time where our kids need us. I wrote it not only for my kids, but because I have the opportunity to write it for other kids as well.

In terms of the Nicaraguan history, yes, we have made many stops on that train. My wife is a very proud Nicaraguan, as is her mother. Her mother, my suegra as we would say in Spanish, or sogrina in Portuguese which I'm learning now, is also a proud Nicaraguan. We eat gallo pinto. We eat queso frito. We eat nacatamales. Yes, we are exposing them to Nicaraguan culture as much as we can. One of my wife's biggest, I don't know if it's a frustration, but I think something that makes her a little sad is that we can't travel as freely as we would otherwise be able to do. So far in our lives, we've been very fortunate to be able to travel. One thing that we haven't done is we haven't taken the kids to Nicaragua. Nicaragua really is a fundamental part of who my wife -- she spent a lot of time there. She's very close with her Nicaraguan family. She's fluent in Spanish. That's something that we would like to do more of when we have the opportunity to travel more than we can now. We want to expose our kids to all of their history. Then like you were saying Zibby, ultimately at the end of the day, who knows what they're go be like? Who knows how they're going to identify? We just want to give them the opportunity to explore aspects of their identity.

Zibby: Very true. Not that this is any of my business, but I'm wondering, how did you meet your wife?

Shani: It's interesting. Whenever somebody tells us their story of meeting, they're like, I saw X from across the room, and it was love at first sight. They have these amazing stories. My wife and I don't have that kind of amazing story. We met, actually, at work. I had been working in private practice as a lawyer in New York. Then I moved to Northern California. My wife was born in Nicaragua but moved here when she was four and reared in Oakland, California. I had been in private practice. She was working at a not-for-profit organization that represented only children in different kinds of substantive proceedings and dependency proceedings and education proceedings and immigration proceedings and guardianship proceedings. I had reached a point in my legal career where I had always wanted to do this, but I reached a point where I could. I was moving to California. I just thought it was a good point to switch gears, to switch from private practice to representing kids, to child advocacy, which is something that I'd always wanted to do. I interviewed at this not-for-profit. I got very lucky and got a job there. They were fantastic people, fantastic lawyers. That's how we met. We were friends, and that's all she wrote. That's where we met. Then we moved to Florida when I got a job as a law professor at the University of Florida. We moved to Gainesville, Florida, which I had never thought of at all before moving there because I grew up in the bigger city, Boston, and then moved to New York. My wife grew up in Oakland, and so I had never really heard of Gainesville other than the Florida Gators, the football team. I didn't really know much about Gainesville. Then we moved to Miami. Now we're in São Paulo for the time being.

Zibby: Wow. That's a journey. I love it.

Shani: That's how we met. She's great. She's much smarter than I am. She is an incredibly kind person. One amazing thing about her is that she's really busy. She's a really busy lawyer doing high-stakes and complicated litigation, but she has an unbelievable ability to be emotionally available to our kids. As is the case for many parents, you work. It's impossible.

Zibby: That's how you met your wife. That was a great story. I also wanted to know, what plans do you have for more books? and how you're doing this with your regular job. You already have a lot going on. This is such a service you're doing by combing through all these biographies. If the fonts were different, this could've been a huge biography, middle-grade type of project. The bios were smaller at the end. Tell me about your upcoming stuff.

Shani: The way that I usually write -- I don't know how other people do it. I'm sure it's different for everyone. The way that I usually write my children's books is I just sit down when I happen to be thinking about something and write a draft. That's how both of these children's books worked. The second one involved, you're right, considerably more research than the first, but it was really even rewarding personally. I knew many of the people in the book, but I didn't know everything about every one of these people in the book. What's next? A couple of things that are in the conceptual drafting stage. One is more Have I Ever Told You? books from different perspectives. This happens to be a book about African American history, but there are many different kinds of Have I Ever Told You? books that could provide access to kids to different histories. You mentioned, do I plan to expose my kids to all of their different histories? Yeah, and I'd like to write more Have I Ever Told You? books.

Another project is slightly different. I mentioned to you, Zibby, that I think that my kids are, even though they complain sometimes, maybe a little bit too much, I think they're very fortunate kids in so many ways. One of the ways they're so fortunate is they have gotten to travel more than I could've ever imagined. Last summer, because of my wife's job, we spent about a month in Panama. The summer before that, we spent about seven weeks, eight weeks, in Buenos Aires. Another conceptual project is a project that is a children's book that explores the story or path of children who are from traditionally underserved populations traveling to these different locations and how they experience them. I never thought about traveling in the way that my kids travel. One thought was to provide a window and access to the experience that my kids are having to other kids through a children's book. Those are a couple of things that I'm working on. In terms of how I find time to do it, it's really so much fun for me to do. I feel like particularly during this time when there is so much going on and we really need to be there as much as we can for our kids, it's the least that I can do to try and use this platform to try and speak to kids.

Zibby: That's amazing. I can't wait to see what comes next. It's so funny, in The New York Times today, there was a whole thing -- you know that At Home section? I don't know if you read The Times. They have At Home. Today, it was like, you're at home with your kids for the holidays. What are you going to do? If you're the type of family who used to love to travel, you can do these things. I was reading it like, what? What am I going to do? [laughs] There were all these resources to pretend as if you're traveling with your kids. They all seemed pretty shoddy, but having a book like yours would fall into that great category.

Shani: I do read The Times. My wife and I had the exact same -- right now, our kids' school has -- wait for it -- a five-week break. We have five weeks. We had received recommendations from the school as to things that they should do. For one of my kids, for my older kid, it's thirty minutes of reading three days a week and this math program which probably takes her about ten minutes. Then for my son, it's about fifteen minutes of reading. Now, I'm not a mathematician and I haven't done the exact calculations yet, Zibby, but that leaves a lot of hours during the day.

Zibby: For Roblox? [laughs]

Shani: For what? I really appreciate people working hard to try and help come up with ideas. I think there are things that will take up the time. Maybe we'll do some baking. It's a challenge. My wife and I were talking about it. One of the approaches that I take is that this is really an unprecedented, at least in my lifetime, time during which some of the rules that we normally have I think are just going to have to be off the table. Ultimately at the end of the day, my wife and I will do the best that we can to give our kids some stimulation during the day. At the end of the day, they're not going to have as much as we would like. We're not going to be able to do the things that we would normally do. As long as they're relatively happy, they're going to be okay. This is one of those situations where I think my wife and I just have to continually remind ourselves that, you know what, let's just put one foot in front of other. We're going to do our jobs. Our kids will get some stimulation. If they watch their iPad a little bit more than normal, it's okay this time because they're going to be just fine. Listen Zibby, I know that I spent a lot more time in front of the screen when I was a kid.

Zibby: Me too. I'm always saying that. I'm always referencing commercials and shows from the eighties and whatever. At one point, I talked to my mom. I was like, "Did I watch TV all the time?" I do remember reading a lot, but there was not a show I appear to have missed. Honestly, all the kids are going to be fine. We're all going to be fine. Actually, it might even lead to some course correction on the overparenting front because we all see that, you know what, they're fine. They're in the other room. The world's not coming to an end.

Shani: You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of when your kids are little and -- I don't know if you did this. You read all of these parenting books and blogs. People have such strong opinions about what you should do and shouldn't do and how things will ruin your kid if you do them or don't do them. Should you let your kid cry? Should you not let your kid cry? At the end of the day, all the kids are fine. They're just fine. It's the same thing now. I really do wonder if this will result in a course correction because the kids are going to be just fine.

Zibby: I say this all the time, but the more kids I have, the more I realize that I have nothing to do with how they turn out. All I can do is mess them up, but they are who they are from day one. I'm just like, who did I get? [laughs] As long as I love them and make sure that there's some boundaries and I'm not mean and I'm a loving parent, the kids are going to be okay. All this philosophical parenting talk, I didn't see this coming. Thank you for coming on my podcast. Thank you for your book. I can't wait to get a hard copy to read to my kids who, despite all their time on screens, somehow don't like to read books on screens, of all the things. I'm jealous of you being in Brazil. I hope you survive these five weeks.

Shani: You too, Zibby. Thank you so much for having me. If it makes you feel better, yes, we are in Brazil, but just like you, I am inside. We could be anywhere right now. Good luck to you in this next five weeks. Thank you so much for having me.

Zibby: My pleasure. Thanks for coming on. Take care. Buh-bye.

Shani: Bye.

Liz Tichenor, THE NIGHT LAKE

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Liz. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" to discuss The Night Lake.

Liz Tichenor: Thank you for having me.

Zibby: Your subtitle is A Young Priest Maps the Topography of Grief. When I saw this whole cover and subtitle and everything, I was like, oh, my gosh, I have to read that. That must be really amazing. It was. Can you please tell listeners basically what it's about, the period of time, and what happened? What made you turn your experience into a book?

Liz: I had been moving towards being ordained as a priest for a long time. When it actually came to pass, when it happened, my life was a really different landscape than what I had imagined it would look like at that point. My mom had been sick for a long time. She struggled with alcoholism for many, many years. It was just a couple of months before I was ordained as a priest that she died. She died by suicide. It was just awful and unexpected that it would end that way. Then a few months later, I was ordained. It was an unusual setup in some ways. I had decided to take an extra year in graduate school. I was ordained and then was continuing the academic year studying more. I began my first call splitting my time between a parish and a summer camp and conference center. My second child, a son, was born about maybe three months after I began at that parish. I started and was just getting my feet under me in this new job and not just a new place, but my role in doing that work. You learn everything in school, but it's pretty different when you're actually out trying to do the work and discover how you're going to do that work. I went onto maternity leave.

Then forty days later, our son, Fritz, died suddenly, totally unexpectedly. He'd been this huge healthy -- everybody said, he's so big. Then all of a sudden, I was the parent of a dead baby. There are statistics, but I was young. I was healthy. I don't think I had ever really considered that that would be the shape of my life, and maybe especially because my mom had just died. One of the things that people said to me, wait, but you just went through that. How can you be going through this now? It was not even a year and a half later. When I went back to work, it was maybe a month later after he had died. I was still learning how to do this job. There are a lot of different ways to inhabit it. It hasn’t been that long, really, that women have been ordained. It's still a job, a role, that is so influenced by the many centuries of male-dominated leadership. What I came to see pretty quickly was that I actually couldn't separate my grief and what I was doing there with authentically showing up. Yet my job was to lead people towards hope and to look for how the moral arc of the universe is bending towards justice and where we might find good news together. In some ways, that felt so at odds with the really dark and desperate place where I so often found myself in those days.

As I began sticking my toes in the water a little bit, I discovered the more that I showed up authentically, the more I was honest about where I was wrestling, the more it seemed to work, what I was trying to do in my job. The book is a sort of winding road through that process of grieving these two beloved people, of trying to discover how to survive that. There were times when I wasn't sure I was going to come through on the other end or what that would look like. Then trying to both lead a community and also parent -- my daughter was two and change when our son, Fritz, died. Wrestling, do we do this again? We wanted to raise siblings. How? How do we do that? It's a story of, what is too much? and how we try to rise to that and live through it anyway. To the second part of your question, why I decided to write the book -- I looked it up the other day. I was curious. Brené Brown's book, Daring Greatly, was published about two weeks after my mom died. There was this surge as that got traction. I found that book. A lot of people found that book. There started to be more conversation about this intersection between leading and being vulnerable. It's not something that I saw a whole lot of. I was not taught to preach vulnerably. We're taught to be really careful not to use the congregation as your therapist, and I totally support that. The other adage that I heard which I, to a certain extent, agree with is to preach from your scars not from your wounds. Don't go up there and bleed all over everybody. That makes a lot of sense to me.

It breaks down when you're in the midst of life. Life is happening. All these people knew that my mom had just died by suicide. They knew that I had just lost our baby totally unexpectedly. For me to get up there and unpack our sacred texts or try to point to different ideas leading us forward and not bring myself into it, it felt dishonest. Somehow, to the concern of some more traditional folks, I started doing that. I started being just real and sometimes raw in what I shared. It wasn't for everybody. Not everybody is ready for that. The folks who needed it, the response was really stunning. I remember one day several years ago, someone who's now a friend came to me after hearing one of these and said, "Okay, so when are you going to write that book?" She had been through some really tough stuff too, just a terrifying diagnosis and life unraveling and then coming back together on the other side of that. I couldn't really get away from it. It felt like it needed to come out of me.

Zibby: Wow. This is such a powerful story. How did you maintain your faith in God after everything that happened to you?

Liz: [laughs] It was really hard, honestly. There were some pretty bleak days and seasons. I think some of what made a difference for me was that my faith is not a one-on-one kind of thing. It's not just me, Liz, and God, and we go back and forth and it all depends on that line. I believe that this happens in community. That's a way that I have tried to engage it for as long as I've been part of a faith community. I found my way into the church as a teenager when things at home had gone really sideways. We had briefly plugged in as a family when I was eleven or twelve. Then my parents divorced. Everything sort of unraveled. I went back when I got my driver's license and found this group of people who were ready to show up. I looked rather different then. I had, in various turns, a shaved head and bright green hair. They said, "Welcome. We're so glad you're here. Here, would you like to step up and lead this part? Do you want to come to this class?" It was amazing. That continued for me, especially in college. There was just an amazing crew of folks. We chose to be kin together. We could do this work of seeking, of wrestling really big questions that don't have answers, of trying to discern what to do with our lives. We could do that in community.

Both when my mom died and when Fritz died, those were the people that showed up physically and also finding really creative ways to be with us from across the miles. They showed up again and again and again not with platitudes, not with, God needed another angel and blah, blah, blah, not any of that, but just, we're with you. We're letting our hearts break with you. We're going to stay alongside. How I ultimately held onto my faith was allowing these other people to have that faith on my behalf when I couldn't. There were longs periods of time when I felt like, maybe I want to pray or connect or listen, and I have no idea how to even begin to do that. I don't know what those words would be. I knew that there were other people joining me there who could and would, who were doing that on my behalf. I think that's ultimately how we can make it forward. We take turns. We don't all have to have it figured out or steady every day all the time, but we can carry each other in that. I think that's really what carried me through.

Zibby: Wow. It speaks to the power of community more than really anything. That image you just struck up of your walking through the door and feeling welcomed, I feel like at its core, that is what we are all looking for. Whether it's online or in a church or in a recovery group, Weight Watchers, people are just longing for connection in any way. The fact that yours had the perk of having God attached is --

Liz: -- Bonus.

Zibby: Yeah, bonus group member there. I think that’s beautiful, what you just said about being close to people who can maintain the faith when yours waivered. It's just beautiful. I bet those people, now that you're not necessarily on the other side but in a different place than in the depths of despair, must feel so proud of you that they’ve helped pull you through. I bet you'll turn around and, if you haven't already, you'll be the one pulling them through whatever life throws their way.

Liz: I hope they know that. The key people who show up in this book have read it. I ran it by them. I wonder that sometimes. The ones who are especially generous and loving and just so thoughtful, they're often also the ones who end up being the most humble. I wonder sometimes if they know how critical they were, how much of a difference it made. For me, there were times when I couldn't respond. I couldn't receive it. That was about as much energy as I had. I wonder. Sometimes you send things out into the void. You hope, maybe it'll make a difference. You don't know. I hope they know that.

Zibby: First of all, you can now play them this podcast when it comes out. Second of all, you should set aside half an hour this afternoon and just send a few emails or texts. Just tell them because I bet it'll make their day. Not to give you more work.

Liz: That's good work to do.

Zibby: Good work to do. There were so many parts of this book that were just beyond beautiful. I also loved the whole tradition you had of folding up the notes and then as the book went on, pulling out the little scraps of paper. Can you just explain that a little more and talk about the power of these little thoughts that women in your life had to impart over time?

Liz: Fritz was our second child. We had everything we needed. We did not care about dressing a boy in girl's clothes. It was a baby. Whatever. At this point, we were living at the camp where we were working at Lake Tahoe. It was right on the shore of Lake Tahoe. We were living in a cabin that was, I think it was 340 square feet including the outside shed thingy that was attached. It was very cozy. We also really didn't need more stuff. We did not want a baby shower. One of our neighbors who lived at the camp there just felt like, ritual matters. We need to mark this. We need to celebrate and welcome this baby. No, we don't need to give you more things, but we need to do something. She gathered the women and girls who lived at camp. It was me and my best friend, Lori, who's the chef there, and her two daughters -- I'm not going to get their ages right; they're maybe seven and nine, pretty little still -- and my mother-in-law. We gathered in their home. The sun was setting over Lake Tahoe. Ate all kinds of wonderful food. The girls really sloppily painted my fingernails and my toenails.

What they decided they wanted to give me was not onesies and pacifiers, but their well-wishes and their intentions and their love in the form of these little notes. They were maybe three by two, not even that, two by one, very small pieces of paper. They wrote these wishes for me with the intention that I open them while I was in labor with Fritz and that that would give me strength and encouragement. I'd know they were with me and all that. They gave me them in this little bottle. Fritz was really late, really, really late. We tried, oh, my goodness, everything. I walked so many stairs with that baby trying to get him out. We were in Nevada, the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe where, at least at the time, there was not a whole lot by way of regulations. We were planning a home birth. Alice had been born at home with a midwife also. We came to the very last day that, even in Nevada, they would let us do this. He was twenty days late. As a last-ditch effort, I drank castor oil and the next morning woke up in just roaring labor. He was nine and a half pounds. It was wild. There was no stopping to read notes at that point. I don't know if they even crossed my mind. Then we were in the baby fog, newborn, chasing a toddler, all that.

I don't really remember, but I don't think I really thought about them or noticed them until he died. He died at night. Getting up the next morning, there's light everywhere, and there's no baby. I just thought, how the hell am I going to do this? How do I even do this first day? I saw this bottle, this little green glass bottle sitting on the shelf next to the plates and stuff. I took it down and pulled a note out. I read it. I'm not going to remember. It's in the book, which came when. I decided I was going to open one a day until they ran out. It got me through the first week. Then I strung a thread through them and taped them up in the window. They're totally bleached out now. You can barely read the words anymore. It was just this connective tissue between the life that these beloved women and girls had wished for us and sent towards us and then unfolding in this entirely different way, but trying to trust that the love they offered to me and this child was still there.

Zibby: It's so beautiful. By the way, I think that's a really nice thing to do even for people who have lost someone recently. Maybe this will get you through a week. When you're in that frame of mind, that's basically as far as you can even see. Even that feels insurmountable. For everybody who's like, "What can I do to help somebody who's grieving? What should I say? What should I do?" putting like seven scraps of paper in a box might just be the most helpful thing you can do.

Liz: It's a start to get you through those first days.

Zibby: It's like the jumper cables on a car. It's not going to fix the car, but it'll get you to the shop.

Liz: I love that.

Zibby: Tell me a little more about writing this book. How long did it take you to write it? When did you find the time to do this? Where did you do it? All of it, the process.

Liz: Oh, geez. It had been sort of kicking around, that nagging that doesn't go away. It was December 2017. I emailed a friend who has written many books and said, "Jane, okay, I'm ready, but how do I do this? Where do I even start?" We got together. She said, "How you start is, it's way past the deadline, but I want you to apply for this writing fellowship anyway. Just do it." It felt totally just, fell from the sky gift. I was able to join this writing fellowship. It's this bizarro artist farm thing up between Palo Alto and the sea, this old ranch converted. I went that January in 2018 for five days with maybe ten other writers. I worked through all my old journals and made lists and started writing some of it. Then the shape of the program was that month by month I was supposed to turn in pages and get feedback back, which was so incredibly helpful. Writers who are listening, if there's any way to build some kind of accountability in, month by month or whatever interval, that felt just incredibly helpful to have to put it out. I worked in whatever bits and pockets of time I could find that winter and spring. At that point, I had -- let's see, can I do math? Alice was six. By that point, we had had another child, Sam. He was turning three, so a seven-year-old and a three-year-old. I was working full time.

I remember hearing an author describe her process. Her way in was she had this amazing and elaborate ritual to get ready to write. I don't know what it involves, a particular food and a way of making tea and some exercise and setting her -- it took like two hours, she told us, to get ready. Then at that point, she had invested so much time in getting ready that she was compelled to write. That worked really well for her. Her book is incredible. It is so gorgeous. I was sitting there with a couple other moms listening to her describe this and trying so hard to be gracious and supportive because it was beautiful. It was really clever, frankly, how she worked this out. I was thinking, oh, my goodness, if I had two hours uninterrupted, I could write so much just in that time. I tried various things. I tried making recurring times on my calendar. I tried hard to write five days a week. Sometimes that would be for fifteen minutes. Sometimes I would get an hour. Sometimes I'd get nothing for weeks. It would be really hard to reset, but coming back to it again and again. Then, really, what made it possible was that summer in 2018, I had the gift of a sabbatical. I'd been in my new position for four years at that point. It was just a gift. I spent ten weeks. We traveled to spend time with various people that we love dearly and don't see enough of. My husband, Jessie, would run with the kids in the morning. I would write in the morning. Then we would adventure the rest of the day.

I think especially because I had those chunks of three or four hours each morning and was not trying to produce creative work for my job, it was just gold. It was such amazing time. When we came back at the end of the sabbatical, I had a first draft. Then after that, it was just totally catch as catch can. I took a couple of weeks of vacation to charge through edits. There were a lot of late nights. It was a little over a year ago I got the book deal. There was some more rounds of edits. I had received the tentative schedule of how things were going to be going back and forth. I took a new job around this time last year. In April, we moved just a half hour away, but to a new house. I think it was actually on our moving day that I received the copyedited manuscript back and the request to turn it around in two weeks. [laughs] I think I laughed and cried at the same time. We were just moving. Of course, in the depths of pandemic, there was no school, no childcare at all. I guess I'm not really going to sleep a lot. I wouldn't recommend that as a sustainable practice. Once in a while, that's how it happens. You find the time where you can. You get it done.

Zibby: Two hours uninterrupted for a mom is like striking gold. It's amazing. I hear what you're saying.

Liz: Last weekend, I had two hours. I was only interrupted every seven or eight minutes. Even that, right now, it was the best.

Zibby: Amazing. Do you have any advice to aspiring authors aside from finding two hours of uninterrupted time?

Liz: Yeah, good luck with that. Even ten minutes, take what you can get. What feels most live for me to share or to encourage is to write what you can't not write. If there is something that you really feel you have to put down on paper whether or not anyone else ever reads it, write that. If you understand why it matters, it matters. Find the people who get it. This probably won't surprise you, but there are some people who really did not think this book was a very good idea. It was way too much sharing or way too sad. Who wants to read about a suicide and a dead baby? That's fine. They don't need to read it. I'm okay with that.

Zibby: I do.

Liz: [laughs] That's what I thought. I thought, well, I think most people actually are handed, at some point, loss or grief or confusion that is just beyond them. What do we do with that? Can we talk about that? I'd say try to find the people who understand that and are ready to run with you in bringing it out into the world. They're there. Just ignore the people who aren't ready for it. That's okay.

Zibby: Amazing. Liz, thank you. Thank you for sharing your painful yet inspiring story of survival through the depths of despair and keeping the faith and just all of it. Thank you for your time and for your beautiful book which I truly -- I feel bad saying I enjoyed it because it was so --

Liz: -- No, you can.

Zibby: It was so upsetting too, but it was very meaningful to me and memorable. Thank you.

Liz: Thank you for having me.

Zibby: My pleasure. Take care.

Liz: Take care.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Ashley Audrain, THE PUSH

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

Ashley Audrain: Thank you, Zibby. Thank you for having me. As I was telling you before we started recording, I am a huge fan of your podcast. I love it. I listen to it every day. I don't know how you do it, but the content you put out for us, for all of us listeners, we just appreciate it so much, especially during these COVID days when you just need something to get through the day. You're always there. Thank you.

Zibby: Aw, thank you so much for saying that. It really, really means a lot to hear, especially from an author whose book I so enjoyed. To know that you are out there listening to other interviews, it's awesome.

Ashley: I have to start by telling you a funny story. I listen to your podcast a lot in the car when we're driving to school and driving home from school. My son, who's now five, he humors me and listens along with me all the time to your podcast. He always, especially when he was bit younger, he would hear your opening and he would say, "Mom, why is this lady saying you don't have time to read books? She's saying you can't read books. You don't have time." It's just so funny, trying to explain to him what it means. [laughs] He's always very concerned about the title of your podcast and what that means for me. I've assured him I read, so it's okay.

Zibby: Maybe I should put a disclaimer that it's just a joke. I read lots of books. I love reading books. I have an almost-six-year-old, but he's still five. The other day, he was in the corner. He was holding up some little toy. He's like, "Hi, I'm Zibby Owens from Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." [laughs]

Ashley: They're always listening.

Zibby: Always listening. Five is the cutest age, by the way. I'm really sad that it's coming to an end having lived through it now four times. Anyway, can we talk about your amazing book, The Push? which is alternately chilling and life-affirming and worrisome. I just wanted to run out and find a therapist to throw in the pages. I was like, oh, my gosh, now she needs a therapist. Wait, now she needs a child psychiatrist. Wait, now. Oh, no! Then last night, literally in some scenes, I have to close my eyes. Tell listeners, please, what The Push is about and what inspired you to write it.

Ashley: The Push is about a woman named Blythe Connor. She comes from a history of women who have struggled deeply with motherhood in various ways. She's quite determined that her experience is going to be different and that she's going to be this warm, empathetic, present mother that she never had. She and her husband have their first child, a daughter. Her name is Violet. At first, Blythe goes through the various typical early days of motherhood that we can all relate to, tired and just overwhelmed. Then as Violet gets a bit older, she kind of starts to realize there's something wrong with Violet. There's something different about her. She's quite aloof and doesn't really express much emotion. She's not very attached to her mother. As she gets a bit older, she starts to witness some behavior that she feels is malicious towards other children. The problem, of course, is that her husband cannot see this. Nobody can see this. She's really the only one who believes this about her daughter. They try to move on in their marriage and have another baby, Sam, who's born shortly after. In Sam, she finds that connection that she had hoped to have as a mother with her child until something very tragic happens in the family and they're all forced to face what has happened and who their daughter and who Blythe herself is. The rest of the novel looks at that unraveling of the family from there. That's sort of what happens without giving too much.

Zibby: I have to say, the whole time I was reading the book, I kept flashing back to your opening scene of the book which makes you wonder, how did they arrive there? I don't think I'm giving anything away because it's the opening scene. You have the mother in the car looking in through the window. You're wondering why. What is going on? How did she end up there? As you go, you still don't know. What is it? How is this happening? It's almost suspense, but it's not a thriller. How would you even describe? I don't view this as a thriller. It's more like a psychological drama of sorts. Yet there's this element, this big question mark hanging over it.

Ashley: It's interesting you say that because a lot of people have described it as a thriller. I didn't really set out to write a thriller. It wasn't what I had intended. I love, like a lot of us, just a page-turning book, something that you want to find out not so much what happened, but why. Why did that happen? Why have we got there? It's funny. One of my editors described it as emotional suspense, which I thought was maybe a better description for it than thriller. I think people who enjoy thrillers will hopefully enjoy this book because of the pace of it, but it's really more emotional suspense than anything. It's really more of a family drama, I think, than a straight thriller where you're trying to figure out what happened.

Zibby: You can definitely tell in the writing just how close to early childhood you are. You can tell in some books, maybe this author has young children. Maybe she doesn't. With a galley, you never really know how old anybody is. I'm not looking at the author photo. I don't have any context. I just always am diving in. In this book, I was like, this author definitely has had children recently. You remember all of it. I started finding myself wondering what your view on motherhood was because there seems to be so much ambivalence on the part of the characters. Did you feel that way? Then I was thinking, if you didn't have any of these ambivalent feelings, how would you have put these characters together, and even just the inherited trauma of generation after generation of mothers who are disappointing their children? Tell me about where this is coming from for you.

Ashley: It's interesting. I started writing this book when my first child, my son, was six months old. When he was born, he had some health challenges that we didn't know about. We didn't expect them. It puts you in this situation where you're planning for a baby and you enjoy your pregnancy and you have this healthy pregnancy, and you think everything will be fine. Then when he was two weeks old, we discovered it was not. We were going to be spending a lot of time basically living in a children's hospital and trying to get him better and figure out how to manage the problems that he was having. We know how hard those early days of motherhood already were. At two weeks old, two weeks in, to have everything completely change and flipped upside down was very challenging. I loved him. I loved being his mother, but I just didn't know -- I guess I was learning how to mother within the walls of a hospital and with nurses helping you instead of your family members. It was very challenging, obviously. It just really made me think a lot in those days about those expectations of motherhood. Society sort of teaches us to think that it's going to be a certain way and that we're going to feel a certain way and it's going to look a certain way. Then when it isn’t, it's very isolating. It's a very isolating experience. You really don't feel like you can really relate to anybody. I remember all my friends having babies at the same time, which at first, seemed like such a wonderful thing. Then when my experience ended up being just so different and so far from the experience they were having, it was hard.

Those are the things that I was mulling over in those days. Then having the mind that I do, taking it a bit further and wondering, oh, my gosh, this was not experience with my son, but what would happen if it was even worse, if you didn't like your child or you couldn't feel like you loved your child or your child did something that you couldn't forgive or you really regretted having that child? What would that feel like? Those were the things I started writing about. The stuff I was writing about was so much darker than what I was going through. I was going through a hard time, but the stuff I was writing about was darker. Maybe that was a way of working through or coping with I was going through at the time. It's just exploring that.

Those were the seeds of thinking that grew into the character of Blythe and her daughter, Violet, and the story that became The Push. Then once I started exploring Blythe and figuring out who she was, especially through revisions, I started to understand that I couldn't really understand Blythe without understanding the women that she came from. That was when the backstory started to develop, which is basically the story of Blythe's mother and Blythe's grandmother and the challenges that they went through. I was very much interested in that idea of inherited trauma and what we carry from the women before us and how much of that is this maternal anxiety and how much of it is true, literally in our DNA, in our genes. That really interested me. Although, I feel like I must disclaim this on every interview I do that my mother is nothing like the mother in the book, nor is my grandmother. I feel like I owe her the service. [laughs]

Zibby: I had a feeling this was coming. I could tell you were going to that place. I do not blame your mom. She is off the hook. You seem pretty normal from our little limited interaction. [laughs]

Ashley: It's really funny because I didn't talk to my mom, my parents, or really anybody much when I was writing this book about what it was. It was internal and living within me. Then when I realized that this was going to happen and the book was going to be published, I had to tell my mom what the book was about. She was like, "Oh, wow, interesting." It was a lot for her to take in.

Zibby: It's interesting, too, how at one point you have Blythe go to the support group for mothers whose kids have done sort of unpardonable offenses. I always think about that when I hear about the mother of this shooter or the mother of this. How does that mother feel? Of course, the mothers of the victims. You do your best with your kids. As parents, I know I've had moments where I'm like, oh, my god, I cannot believe my child did that. Then it reflects on me or reflects on my parenting. What does it say? Then you wonder, like you did, let's extrapolate and make this the biggest mess ever. Then what?

Ashley: It's so funny. I always think that too. When you hear something in the news or see something that's happened, I always think of the parents, if the biological parents were the people who raised them and were involved in their lives. My mind always goes there to think also, what did the parents know about their child? Did they ever suspect? Did they ever think that something like that could happen? Did they believe the humans they were raising capable of that? If they did, did they say anything to anybody? Would you say anything to anybody? It kind of comes back to that question that I tried to explore in the book. Ultimately, what do we owe our children? What do you owe them? We, in many cases, birth them and raise them. What's our obligation in helping them to live in this world? It's really interesting. A lot of it comes back to just the nature versus nurture argument, of course. It almost goes further than that, asking yourself, what are the lengths that you would go to? It's really more of an ethical debate. It's funny that you say that because my mind always goes there too.

Zibby: There was just in the paper this week -- this episode will come out not this week. Now we're in -- I don't even know what we are. November, pre-Thanksgiving. There was just, on the New York Post, some man pushed a woman onto the subway. He had done so also in January. The mother had said, "Don't let my child back out on the streets." They did. He did it again. She was like, "I told you." It's her face in the paper. He was adopted, not that that matters. It's so on the theme we're talking about, not necessarily all the themes. Wait, so let's go back to the fact that you had a six-month-old son and decided to try to write a book at that point and that the book ended up becoming this, which is a good book, not the tired musing of a completely stressed-out new mother. Tell me about that undertaking and how you did it.

Ashley: I think it did start as the tired musings of an overtired mother. It's gone through a lot since then. It's gone through a lot of revisions since then. It's interesting. I had always wanted to write. I was writing. I was taking writing courses at night and writing on weekends. I had another full-time job and career. I couldn't afford to do an MFA when I was in school. I honestly felt like I couldn't really afford to pursue writing for a lot of my life because I needed to go to university and work part time to pay for that and then get a job that could pay the bills when I left. Writing just never felt attainable to me, writing as a career, and so I didn't pursue it that way.

Zibby: What kind of jobs did you have?

Ashley: I worked in public relations agencies. Then after working in agencies for a while, I did move over to publishing and worked at Penguin Canada as a publicity director. I was just really focused on that and writing when I could even though I would've loved to be a writer full time or to consider myself that or be published. When I had Oscar, when I had my son, I realized I wasn't going to go back to work after that because, I mentioned, he had these health challenges. Life felt different. I just couldn't really see myself being able to balance both of those things. It was around that six-month mark where we weren’t spending as much time in the hospital. I was home a bit more. We were lucky to have a bit of babysitting help through the week. I used those hours to write. It's funny. You had an author on your show, Rumaan Alam. Yours was such a good interview. I thought he put it just perfectly. He talked about when you have children, sometimes it can really clarify for you what you really want out your life and who you want to be and who you want to show up as in the world. Who do you want to be for those children? Who do you want to be for yourself? Your time becomes so limited when you have kids.

I really started thinking about that limited time very differently. I just thought, I need to do it now. This is when I need to pursue this because this is the time. Yes, I was tired and exhausted. It's very hard to write during those months. It is a privilege to have help with childcare. That is for sure. If I didn't have help with childcare those few times a week, I wouldn't have been able to do that, I don't think, because that's really how it started. Our babysitter would walk through the door, and I would run past her with my laptop under my arm running to the coffee shop on the corner trying to get in as much as I could while she was here. It wasn't easy. I think without help, it is very, very difficult. There was just so much on my mind then too. It's funny. A lot of writing advice you get is, write the story that's just burning inside you or you feel like only you can tell. I did have a bit of that. I had this creative energy around that time that I just felt compelled to do it. Looking back now, of course, I'm like, I don't know how I did that. I don't know if everything were to happen all over again, if I could do it again. It just felt like what I needed to do at that time, if that makes sense.

Zibby: Can I even ask, how is your son? This might be personal. Is he okay?

Ashley: He is. Thank you for asking. That's so kind. Yes. He has a chronic illness, a chronic condition. He will have that forever, but it is very manageable now. He is thriving and is just the most incredible five-year-old, almost-six-year-old like yours. Now those days feel so far behind us when things felt so much worse because he's doing so well. We've learned how to manage it. It does get better.

Zibby: I know you said earlier, I can't remember if we were recording yet or not, that he was upset that I was always talking in your car radio about how moms don't have time to read books. Tell me about your reading life. Are you reading a lot around the house? Do you have books everywhere? What's your relationship to reading like these days, or do you just not have the time?

Ashley: We read a lot in our house. We do. We do read a lot. My kids love books, which is great. I'm definitely a nighttime reader. I have a hard time reading during the day, but I read every night. It's amazing how fast that can add up if you just commit to doing it at night. I love to read new releases. I love to read debuts. I love to read whatever the newest book -- which is probably why I love your podcast because you have many authors whose books are just coming out. It's such a nice pairing with reading what's publishing at the moment. We do read a lot. I always make sure my kids know how much I'm reading. Even though I'm reading at night when they're asleep, the books are piled on the bedside. We go to the library a lot and buy books a lot. I hope that my kids grow up with that. We'll see.

Zibby: It's so funny because I didn't set out to do books that were coming out now. In fact, I remember at the very beginning when I was trying to get an author on my podcast, the response was, "So-and-so doesn't have a book coming out." I was like, so? It never occurred to me that authors would only be interested in doing publicity around new books. It's become this because that's what the authors need the most, but I never would've thought. I was like, I'm going to work my way around my bookshelves. Luckily, most of those authors end up coming out with new books. Then I'm like, let's talk about your new book, but really, I want to talk about the old one from ten years ago. [laughs]

Ashley: It's funny, isn't it? I would've thought that too. Now that I'm writing, I sort of get it a little more because it's hard to talk about one book and be writing another book. You have these two totally different worlds in your head. I think a lot of it is people needing to kind of shut out the world and dig into the next project. You can't even let your mind go back to the other book. Maybe that's part of it. It is funny. There's something fun about always wanting to dig into whatever’s new and whatever's out. I'm definitely a news junkie. I love reading the book that's everyone's talking about. The reviews are happening. I just find that adds to the whole experience of reading for me.

Zibby: There's some books, though, I know they're going to be big books, but I know I wouldn't have bought it. This is my big thing. I'm always like, I was pitched that, but I didn't do it. My husband's always like, "Maybe you're passing on way too many books." I'm like, "I just have to stay true to the books I would want to read. Maybe it's going to win a huge prize, but I'm not sure I would want to read it." I don't know. I have to want to read it.

Ashley: I'd still have to want to read it. It still has to speak to you in some way.

Zibby: Not that I haven’t read tons that don't go beyond my comfort zone. I am so grateful for them. If it's just a little too -- I don't know. I don't even know why I'm talking about this.

Ashley: I know what you mean. Books still have to speak to you. I don't know about you, if I'm not enjoying a book, I will put it down. I will never force myself to finish a book because that's just not what reading is to me. Reading's just about being swept away and enjoying it, enjoying every page and enjoying every minute that you're devoting to that book. If I'm not in love, I usually don't finish it. I get it. I totally get it.

Zibby: As a big book lover, tell me about the thrill of the publication journey for you then from when you were starting to write and then editing. Then what happened? Tell me about what happened.

Ashley: It was really crazy. It was a wild ride, for sure. I worked on the book for about three years from that time I was talking about when I first started to get it to where I felt like it was maybe ready to go out there in the world. Because I'd worked in publishing for a couple years, although I was on the editorial side, I was on the publicity side, I think I had an idea of how things worked and going to agents. Even though you have that knowledge, you still don't know what you have. I hadn’t shared it with that many people. As I shared with a few, had got a few more readers, I started getting more comfortable with going out there with it. Again, because I worked in publishing, I kept friendly with -- it was Penguin Canada at the time; this was just before the Penguin Random House merger -- with the head of Penguin Canada, Nicole Winstanley. She and I would meet a couple times a year for tea or whatever just to keep in touch. I met with her. This is when I was just working on my query letters getting ready to send it out to agents. I met with her for tea. I was so anxious to meet with her because she didn't know that I was writing. When I worked there, I never talked about wanting to write a book or publish a book. I didn't tell anybody that I used to work with that I was doing this because it just seemed like such a pipe dream and was so interior, living within me only.

I thought, I want to just get her advice on agents. I had this list of agents I wanted to go to and would love her opinion on it. I sat down with her for tea. I said, "I have something to tell you. I'm nervous to tell you this." She interrupted me and said, "Let me guess. You've wrote a book." [laughter] "Was I that transparent? I thought you would never guess that I would do this." It was kind of funny. She gave me some good advice. Then it was out to agents. From there, it was really a whirlwind. It was life-changing. I will always remember and I always save that email back from my agent, Madeleine Milburn, she's now my agent, just her reaction to it. It's really incredible to see this dream, to see something that you've worked on for so long that you just don't know if it will ever be anything. Then to have these people take a bet on you and have this kind of reaction to your work, it's a very magical thing. I will never forget it. I don't take it for granted. I feel very lucky to have had that experience. Then from there, it very quickly went out to publishers and went out into the world, and we're here. Magical is kind of a funny word, but that's just how it felt. It felt kind of magical, kind of incredible.

Zibby: That's amazing. Are you working on anything else now?

Ashley: I am. I'm revising the second novel now, which has been a really fun process. The process of writing it has been very different than writing the first one just because life looks a little different now. I have two kids. They're a little bit older. We're in a pandemic, obviously. That's another challenge. I've been working through that now. I'm so new at this still. I still am just trying to figure out how to write a book. This is the second one, so just working my way through it.

Zibby: Can you give a glimmer of a plot, or not really? Is it too early? If it's too early, don't worry. I don't want to jinx it or anything.

Ashley: I feel like it's for the same readers of The Push. I feel like it's for those same kind of readers. It's family drama. It's emotional suspense. It's motherhood and female friendships and marriage. I'm really excited about it. I'm enjoying writing it.

Zibby: That is a combination that I would be like, yes, sign me up. Pre-sale, pre-order, okay, you sold me on that. That's good enough. I will definitely be reading that book. Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?

Ashley: After I just said I have no idea what I'm doing? [laughs]

Zibby: I don't believe that at all. Scratch that and be honest.

Ashley: I have advice for new mothers who are writing because I think that's my experience. That's the place where I can offer advice. It's two-part advice. The first part is that it's okay to ask for help to write your book specifically. It's so hard to ask for help, period, as a mother, we know this, or as a parent, especially when your kids are super young because you just have so much anxiety about other people caring for your kids and all of that. Something that I had to learn with the first book when my son was so little was that it was okay to ask my mom or have a babysitter or obviously my husband, whoever, to say, I need help for two hours and it's because I'm going to go write this book, and making that really a priority, showing people that writing a book is a priority for you and that writing is as important as the things that my husband got to go out to do like go to work, where I was home. Making it a priority, committing that time, and letting other people know about it. Giving yourself permission to make that as important as doing the errands and going to the grocery store and everything else. That was my number one.

The part two to that advice is that everybody says, so many writers, accomplished writers, say you have to write every day. I really believe that when you have little kids, you cannot write every day, and it's okay. I did not write every day. It took me longer to get this book done, but I could not write every day because I was exhausted. I was overwhelmed. Babies get sick. Things pop up. Some days, I just did not have it in me even if there was a blank slate for the rest of the day. Some days, I just could not rally to write. I think if you're a new mom, throw that advice out the window. Just do your best. Write when you can. When you can get those windows of help, write during those windows of help. Something I could do every day, which I do recommend doing every day, is think about the book. You can think about the book even when you're not sitting down at your computer to write it. I would think about the book at the park or think about the book when I was walking or think about the book when I was bouncing the baby or whatever at night.

It's funny. I won't say which writer it is because I don't want to freak her out, but I live across the street from an accomplished Canadian writer, which is kind of funny. She has no idea who I am, so as I said, I won't mention who she is. I remember -- this is with my second. I was going through revisions on The Push. My second baby, she was such a bad sleeper. She was up. It took me so long to get her to bed. I remember standing in my house rocking her and bouncing her from the witching hour until the wee hours of the morning and looking out across the street and seeing this other writer's office light on and just thinking, oh, my god, she's in there writing. She's in there writing her next book. She's able to write for hours on end. I would just sit there and bounce my daughter and think, I wish I had that. I wish I could do that. It made me so anxious thinking that this woman across the street had all this time and I did not because I had this crying baby. I couldn't write every day, but I could think about the book every day. I could make notes. I could come up with ideas. I could feel committed to the project every day in other ways. That is my best advice. Don't worry if you can't do it every day.

Zibby: By the way, some people find having too much time to be a paralysis of sorts as well. If you just have blank pages in front of you and endless amounts of time, I find it harder to get anything done than when I have like two seconds and so writing is an Instagram post. I'm like, well, that's all I got. I can't even remember the last time I opened up Pages or Word on my computer. Anything I "write" now is in the body of an email or it's a post or it's something. I'm like, you know what, it might not be this way forever, but this is what we got right now. [laughs]

Ashley: That's what you have at that time.

Zibby: You got to go with it.

Ashley: Being a mom is hard. You got to do whatever you can get done. You can't live up to other people's expectations of what it looks like to write a book.

Zibby: Whatever you're doing, you look amazing. [laughs] I say that because I'm particularly disheveled. You look so put together like you're Kristen Bell on her way to the Oscars or something, and I'm just like, oh, my god, with this great book. For all the drama, from the outside, it looks like you have it made.

Ashley: That's very, very sweet. Thank you.

Zibby: I'm really excited for you. I can't wait for this to come out in January. I'm just so thrilled. I'm so thrilled for you. Thanks for our little intro pre-recording and the conversation and the hours I got to spend with your novel, which were great.

Ashley: Zibby, thank you. That means so much coming from you, truly. Thank you so much.

Zibby: Thank you. Let's stay in touch. Buh-bye.

Ashley: Bye.

Jen Sincero, BADASS HABITS

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

Jen Sincero: Thanks so much for having me. I love the title of your show.

Zibby: Thank you. I love the title of your books. I feel like you are single-handedly responsible for getting the term badass into mainstream culture. That's quite an accomplishment.

Jen: Thank you very much.

Zibby: No problem. Your latest book tackles habits. Thank you for that. There are so many habits I feel like I want to change. I didn't even know which one to write down in all capital letters as you suggested. I know this is one of many extensions, including how to be better with your money and other things where you can apply the badassery, if you will. Why habits? Why did you pick that to tackle in this book?

Jen: I feel like the first three books, You are a Badass, Badass at Making Money, and You are a Badass Every Day, they're about taking action, but they were really about getting the mindset pieces down and to really wake up to all your screwed-up thoughts and beliefs and actions and words. I felt like habits was the awesome follow-up to those because you could really start implementing some of the stuff you were learning in those books and make them habits. We don't even realize how habitual everything is. The way you think is habitual. The things you talk about are habitual. We're riddled with habits. It was time to really get into that.

Zibby: That was one of my favorite points of the book. You're like, we don't even congratulate ourselves on the habits that we don't think about, like, hey, congratulations, I put my underwear on every day, or all these things that we just do. Your whole argument is we can do anything we want as long as we get in the right mindset, which I felt like was so freeing. It's not hard to make habits. It's just the focusing on them. Getting the right mindset to do it is all that's required, really.

Jen: There are certainly little tricks you can do to make it easier, but yeah, that's really it.

Zibby: I loved your framework. You basically outlined -- by the way, I also loved when you said how to catch yourself from wandering down Woe-is-me Lane. I am totally going to use that because I'm always like, I hate to say woe is me. Woe-is-me Lane, I can see a whole board game with Woe-is-me Lane. Here are the pitfalls. Maybe there needs to be a Badass board game or something.

Jen: Oh, my god, that's an awesome idea. It's a good pandemic project.

Zibby: Pandemic project, there you go, with Woe-is-me Lane in Badassery Village. Anyway, you work on that. In the meantime, you have all these stages like the trigger, the sequence, repetition, ease, patience, and identity which make up habit forming. Take me through this general paradigm. How did you come up with this?

Jen: I started looking at why we behave the way we do. The first thing we do is we unconsciously participate in "reality" because we believe that money is really hard to make or we think that we suck at relationships or we talk about how there's no good men or women out there. We get into these patterns. We unconsciously just take them as truth. It's once we wake up to what we've got going on and question our beliefs and our thoughts and our words and be like, why do I believe that? There's plenty of people doing A, B, C, or D that I have decided that for myself it is impossible and unavailable. The first step is always awareness and always catching yourself in whatever your stories are that are not serving you. That really is the first part. I just outlined that. Then with the triggers and the sequence and all of that, there is very concrete way that habits happen. The trigger is you want to take your dog for a walk. The sequence starts with you putting on your shoes and putting the leash on the dog. Then you go out for the walk. We're unaware of so many of these trigger sequences, things that we've got going on. For a lot of people, a negative habit is -- the trigger is, I'm having a cocktail. Now I got to have a cigarette. Becoming aware of the triggers and the sequences that follow them allow you to unhook from them. It's almost like stepping outside of yourself and watching yourself behave. Then you can be like, you know what, that's not how I want to show up. That's not who I want to be. Then that empowers you to make different choices.

Zibby: That was the other thing I thought was so great, was how to identify a habit worth breaking. You outlined a couple steps, four different parts of this, which made it even harder for me to pick my habit. You said, "Pick habits, one, would give you a sense of being the person you know you're meant to be, a sense of empowerment, an improved quality of life, and a sense of accomplishment." Some of the habits, I was thinking before I started reading this book, are not that important to who I'm meant to me. How I eat is not who I'm meant to be. I would like to stop snacking at night, but that's such a minor thing. It wouldn't make me feel accomplished or proud.

Jen: Think about that, though. Think about that. You have one body that you travel around in for your finite experience on planet Earth. Your body is the most important thing you've got going. Changing how you eat and how you treat it and giving it what it needs to thrive and feel good and stay healthy is epic. That little shift of not eating late at night means your little body that does all these amazing things for you doesn't have to work really hard when it's supposed to be in this regenerative mode of sleeping. It really is all about perspective. Give me another one. I'll knock it down. [laughter]

Zibby: I really said that so that I could continue snacking at night, so if you wouldn't mind taking what you just said and we'll pretend that never happened. Also, developing a habit of writing regularly. I'm so busy. I love to write. I feel like I squeeze my writing into posting on Instagram or little snippets. How great would it be if I could make time to do it? That, I feel like, would give me more of these things than something like working out.

Jen: Back to the body again. [Indiscernible] I'm going to go there.

Zibby: That's a lost cause. Let's go back to try to fit writing in. That's something that people might want to start doing, not changing a bad habit, but just introducing something new into the regular rotation. Tell me a little about that because they're different.

Jen: First, I would start out with busting yourself on why you haven't done it yet and your beliefs and thoughts and words around how hard writing is, about how you don't have the time, about how you've tried before and you failed. Get mighty clear on all the many, many reasons that it hasn’t happened yet and why you think you're going to suck at it because they exist if you're not doing it yet and it's something you want to do. Write them down. It really is about specifics. Write them down and be like, oh, hello. Then question them all and counter them all because they all have counters. You've created this belief system. A lot of the times, it's so subconscious. You've just taken it as truth. I'm a mom. I got a podcast. I got a job. I got a blah, blah, blah. I don't have time. It's true. It's true. It's true. Is it? Could you fit in a fifteen-minute writing session somewhere? Could you set up a boundary with your family to be like, "Listen, you're out of luck. I am writing."? I always talk about how we talk about how we don't have time to work out and treat our bodies right, but if we get sick and go to the hospital, we have time to go to the hospital. We are in the damn hospital. There's suddenly time for that. Time really is, as Einstein -- was he the one who said that it's a concept? It really is a concept. You can't wait for time. You have to make time. Make it happen for yourself because it is there if it's important. It really is.

Zibby: I try to say that about reading. I feel like I've gotten that in. When I talk to other people who say -- hence the name of the podcast -- we don't have time to read or this or that, I think about all the things we do make the time for every single day. Why? Why those things? It's not the same, necessarily, as a habit.

Jen: You're right, though. It's true. You get into the habit of surfing the internet for shoes or whatever you do. It's about the awareness. We just get stuck in these patterns of unaware -- they say that if you've got a job that you go to for eight hours a day, you actually spend about three hours of those days actually working. Then you're just screwing around the rest of the time. We spend a lot of time screwing around. Listen, I'm a big fan of screwing around and doing whatever you want to do, but if there's something you really want to do, you have time. You've just got to really make the time and consciously decide to make the time.

Zibby: Do you feel like you've put all this extra pressure on yourself now that you came out with a book about habits? Are there any habits that secretly you still haven't really nailed and now you can't admit it because the book is out?

Jen: You should do a podcast with my friends who see how I live my life. [laughter] Plus, we're in a pandemic. I am in my sweatpants right now. Totally, come on. Yes, I have absolutely succeeded at so many habits. I actually open the book in the introduction talking about, who the hell am I to write a book on habits? I still love fried food. Eat it all the time. I can coach you through. I know what to do. Whether I do it or not really doesn't matter as long as I tell you how to do it.

Zibby: I think it matters a little bit. Not that you have to hold yourself to that standard. Is this like a those who can't do, teach type of thing? [laughs]

Jen: Totally. No. My point in the beginning of the book was I am focusing on all the habits I suck at. Meanwhile, I have absolutely rocked some very hard habits for me to change. Nobody's perfect. We're all learning and changing and doing it.

Zibby: You've rocked the habit of becoming a best-selling author and writing more and more books. That's pretty cool. You're also doing these really awesome seminars, a $97 class to write a book proposal. I saw that all these people were selling books because of your coaching with them. That must make you feel amazing.

Jen: It's funny. I have a little pod here now with some people staying who fled the city. I was saying now I'm back on book tour because Habits has come out. I was like, god, and especially during the pandemic where I haven't left the house and I haven't done a damn thing. I'm just slothing around reading books, hanging out. That's right, there's this whole other world out there of the Badass people and all my readers. They're so amazing. It's been so nice to ramp that back up and be in that world and to remember that there is all this change going on and that people are just doing incredible things. It's so inspiring. It really, truly is.

Zibby: Wow, how great for you to help them, though. That's great. What is next in the Badass hopper? What are the next couple books? What's the plan?

Jen: You are a Badass at Taking Naps in Your Sweatpants. [laughter] You know, I don't know. I got to be honest. Each book is a birth. It's rather epic. I just birthed Badass Habits. I'm just going to enjoy my new little baby and celebrate it and parade her around and see what comes out of that and what I feel drawn to do next.

Zibby: The board game, that's what you're going to do. [laughs]

Jen: I will be contacting you to give you your ten percent when the board game comes out because that's such a good idea.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. One other thing that I thought was so great in the book was when you divided people about their boundary bungling, which is so great. I hated to even admit where I would fall short on this, as I'm sure most people reading the book would. You have too yes-y, too much no, and too control-y. You even have a huge section on if you're trying to launch a podcast about music and how you would have to put other things on hold. I literally was doing this, and obviously, this isn't about music, but I was like, she's talking to me. These are all the ways you have to make time in your life if you want to have a podcast. I'm looking around like, thank you. [laughs] Tell me about how important it is to maintain your boundaries when you're trying to form some habits.

Jen: I have to be honest. When we came up with this chapter for the book, I was talking to my editor and I was like -- I'm fifty-five now. When I hit fifty, man, I got so good at setting boundaries. All of a sudden, all these insecurities fell away. I was just kicking people out of my house and not inviting you to a party if I didn't want you to come. I don't care. I mean, not completely. We all have stuff to work through. It was so different. I really did. I remember my dad saying, "I don't know if you get older and wiser, or older and more tired." I was like, he's right. I don't have the energy to deal with people I don't want to deal with. I don't have the energy to say yes when I really want to say no. It's such a gift. I was like, I would love to write this so that the youngsters who don't -- you don't have to wait until you're fifty. You can actually start really becoming aware of your boundary issues and putting them into place and decriminalizing boundaries. I felt this was so important. When you set a solid boundary, you're not a mean person who's cutting off other people and not helping out other people.

You're actually informing them of what you're available for so that they know what to expect. Then you're not all caught up in this passive-aggressiveness and resentment and obligation and all those really fun things. It really serves everybody. No one's walking around on eggshells. I was super excited to write all that. Then I was talking to my editor. She was like, "Of course, for habits, if you're going to shift who you're being in the world, you're going to need totally new boundaries." You're going to have to set up boundaries around time that you need to implement these habits. You're going to be shifting who you are. If you are starting the habit of not drinking anymore, you are unavailable to go to bars with your friends. You are setting up that boundary. It's all about boundaries. It was really fun to write about this topic that I was so excited about and thrilled to be quite an expert on because I'm old and possibly very much more tired, but also to relate it to habits because I don't think that that comes into a lot of the books and discussions around habits. It's super important.

Zibby: I totally agree. It's more like complete behavior modification. It's an interpersonal coaching of finding what's important to you.

Jen: Exactly, and specifics and getting clear.

Zibby: Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Jen: Let's see. Writing equals ass plus chair. That's the big mysterious equation to writing a book. It is about just staying. I'll tell you the thing for me. I am a really reluctant writer. I have to drag myself kicking and screaming. It's really painful for me, actually. I've heard that from a lot of writers too. I have a friend who can't wait to sit down to write. I'm just like, I hate you. She's actually my writing partner. She's always excited. I'm always trying to get out of it. That's another story. What I do is I chunk it down. Chunking down has saved my ass when it comes to writing books because I'm so squirmy and I so just, [makes noise]. What I do is I chunk it down into twenty-minute writing sessions where I am unauthorized to pee, to answer the phone, to go on the internet. Twenty minutes, I set an alarm. Then I'm allowed to have a ten-minute break or a five-minute break or whatever. I'm really serious about it because I know myself. I know by minute ten, I'm going to be squirming and coming up with excuses. Once I've set that timer, I know that it's not just about this twenty-minute writing session. This is about my career. This is about who I show up as in the world. I've got to get this done. Making that commitment is manageable for me. It's not the whole, I'm going to spend five hours writing today, which will be really a half hour. For me, chunking stuff down is extremely helpful. I highly recommend it.

Zibby: Excellent. That always helps. Isn't it like the whole quote, a journey of thousand miles begins with a single step? Something like that. I don't know.

Jen: Well done. You'll be done before you start if you start out with overwhelm. That's why that one day at a time is such a brilliant theory. It's just one day at a time. Just relax. We're so drama oriented.

Zibby: It's so true. Awesome. Thank you so much. I have loved our conversation. Your book was fantastic. I am going to keep it close by, especially during this holiday time when everything that is a problem becomes a really big problem. [laughter]

Jen: Thank you, holidays.

Zibby: Exactly. Thank you so much, Jen. Thanks for all your time.

Jen: Thank you. It was great talking to you.

Zibby: Have a great day. Buh-bye.

Jen: You too. Bye-bye.

Sabaa Tahir, A SKY BEYOND THE STORM

Zibby Owens: I did this Instagram Live with Sabaa Tahir for the Good Morning America Book Club Instagram page, @GMABookClub. You can watch it there, I'm sure it's saved in their Instagram archives, and is also up on my IG TV as well if you want to watch it, plus, of course, YouTube and everywhere else. Here is her bio. Sabaa Tahir is the number-one New York Times best-selling author of the Ember in the Ashes series which has been translated into over thirty-five languages. She grew up in California’s Mojave Desert at her family’s eighteen-room motel. There, she spent her time devouring fantasy novels, raiding her brother’s comic book stash, and playing guitar badly. She began writing An Ember in the Ashes while working nights as a newspaper editor. She likes thunderous indie rock, garish socks, and all things nerd. Sabaa currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family. I was really excited to talk to her about the number-four book in her series called A Sky Beyond the Storm. By the way, Sabaa is one of the few Pakistani America authors writing speculative fiction. She brings a unique perspective to the fantasy genre. I really loved talking to her.

Hi.

Sabaa Tahir: Hello. How are you, Zibby?

Zibby: I'm good. How are you?

Sabaa: I'm doing well. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Zibby: Congratulations on book four of the series. So exciting, oh, my gosh.

Sabaa: Thank you. It's very exciting. It's crazy.

Zibby: I read many times over that you said you were not a crier, but that finishing this series made you really cry. Tell me about what that was like.

Sabaa: I think I didn't anticipate how characters start to feel like friends. Especially, I've spent thirteen years with these characters. I started writing this series in 2007. It took me seven years to have the first book published. I just didn't realize that it was going to be so emotional. I sort of compare it to when I was a little girl and I was afraid or nervous or whatever, I'd go hide in the laundry basket. I would sort through my thoughts there and everything. These books and these characters ended up kind of being my adult laundry basket. This is the world where I would hide when everything got to be too much or I just needed an escape. Now my laundry basket's gone, so I'm like, I'm so sad. [laughs]

Zibby: Sabaa, I am going to FedEx you a laundry basket from Amazon. You can have one.

Sabaa: Aw, thank you. Zibby, it's going to need to be really big so that I can fit in it. [laughs]

Zibby: Maybe we could put two over your head. Maybe you just need a laundry room. I don't know, something.

Sabaa: Something. Maybe I just need a laundry room. There you go.

Zibby: So many people depend on characters and story to get them through everything. When it's your own and you're creating it, I imagine that's just a millionfold. What does it feel like to hold the torch as one of the first women Pakistani American fantasy writers and how you got to represent a whole new cross section of people, I should say, in both the protagonist and the villains and every character in your book and the community in which you're writing and how you basically went from feeling bullied in the motel your parents had you living in with eighteen people or something growing up to being a number-one best-selling author? I know that's a big question.

Sabaa: It is a big question. One thing is I try really hard almost not to think too much about it, not to look too directly at it because it does feel so big sometimes. I think what really helps me is to focus on the art, to focus on the writing because ultimately, it's so important to me to tell these stories for every single one of those young adults from all over the world who send me messages. They're like, thank you for telling this story. I really needed to see myself. I needed to see my family. I needed to see my friends. I really try to focus on that because that allows me to put the art first. I feel like you're only as good as your last book to some degree. It's very important to me that that's my focus. Then I have two little kids. I think that they don't let me focus on anything other than them. [laughs] It's one of those situations where anytime I might be like, I'm really cool, they’ll be like, Mom, you did A, B, or C wrong, or I just dropped everything on the floor and I don't know how to clean it up, or whatever the case may be. It forces me back to down to earth.

I didn't really consider the impact that Ember would have until a couple of years after it was published. I started really seeing people reading it and saying, this is the reason why I'm a writer or this is the reason why I believe I can be a writer. As book four has come out, I have gotten hundreds of those messages. It has blown my mind because I didn't know when I wrote it that that's what it would be. I was just trying to write a story where I could see myself, where my sons would be able to see themselves one day, where my niece and nephew would be able to see themselves one day, and where the problems that people whose ethnicity is from my part of the world, which is Pakistan or South Asia, the Middle East, North Africa -- a lot of these places with the mythology that you see in An Ember in the Ashes and a lot of places that are going through some terrible things right now, I wanted to see that in a story. I hadn’t seen that in a story. I felt very erased. That's why it was important to me to write these. It really has only started sinking in recently.

Zibby: There's certainly nothing like kids to make you feel like you're two inches tall instead of -- [laughs]. In fact, you even wrote the most beautiful dedication that I had read at the beginning of your fourth book. You said, "For my own children, my falcon and my sword, of all the world wherein I dwell, yours is the most beautiful." That is so nice. It just sets such a tone for the poetic, lyrical way you write in general. It hearkens back. I know it takes place five hundred years ago, but it definitely hearkens back to another era and another time of life and is just completely escapist. I feel like particularly now, everyone needs that.

Sabaa: I hope that the book provides an escape. I really hope that it allows people to feel some measure of hope. That's what I need right now. That's the books that I'm turning to, the ones that even if something really harrowing and stressful is happening, there's hope in the book. That matters to me so much. I wanted to give that to my readers. I worked on that. Dedications are always so difficult for me because it's the first thing people read. Some people just skip them. Generally, I think people read dedications. It's the very first thing they see that I've written. This is for my kids, so I was like, this has to feel good when they're twenty-five. Hopefully when they're much older and I'm gone, I want them to be able to open this book and feel that love coming from me. It took me months to actually figure out that dedication. I wrote it. I rewrote it. I read it to my husband. I was like, "Is this good?" He was like, "No, write it again." I read it to my mom. She was like, "I don't know about that." It was a process. I'm glad I got there in the end.

Zibby: You totally got there. Check plus. Loved it. Maybe you should compile all the discarded dedications. Maybe they'd want to see that in twenty-five years too.

Sabaa: I should totally do that. I had one where I was like, "To my falcon and my sword, you're the reason I almost didn't finish this book." Then I was like, ha, ha, ha, I'm not going to put that in.

Zibby: For the people hanging from my ankles who are not letting me do this, do my job, thank you. I did it anyway. [laughter] Do you read fantasy yourself? Are you a huge fantasy fan? How did you learn how to write like this?

Sabaa: I am big, big fantasy fan. I've been reading fantasy since I was ten, eleven. The very first fantasy book I got was The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. It was written in the seventies. It's all dudes. It's a very classic, old-school fantasy. I just loved that book. It took me away from my troubles. I was in middle school at the time. Everyone knows middle school's awful. It was just a wonderful escape. That was really my gateway book into fantasy. Then after that, I started reading a lot more. I found that I really connected to these characters and these places that didn't exist. As I grew older, I got into literature, more literary works, that kind of thing. Actually, that's what I was working on. I was working on a memoir. I was twenty. I don't know what I was going to write about, the motel. My mother was talking to me on the phone. I was complaining yet again about how I was having a difficult time writing this book. I was just doing it in my spare time as I was working.

She was like, "Why don't you write a fantasy? You love fantasy. You read it all the time." As per usual, she was right. I started working on it. Then in terms of training, it was really working at The Washington Post. I was an editor there. I was a copy editor. I worked late at night. I worked on headlines and captions and did the last edit on a story. I learned so much about the building blocks of writing from reading all these incredible reporters at The Washington Post. I always recommend to young writers that if you are struggling with the form, you're struggling with making your sentences beautiful or making them something that you feel like convey what you want to convey, read a newspaper every day for a year. The economy of language and the way that stories are structured that you can learn from a newspaper is so helpful.

Zibby: That’s great advice. I thought you were going to just tell everybody to try to get a job at The Washington Post.

Sabaa: I mean, it's a great place to work. [laughs]

Zibby: That might not be the most easy thing for everybody to do. It's nice to throw it out there as a suggestion. I want to talk a little more about your relationship with your mom because you obviously are very close. You said in one of the interviews I read about you that you were going to kill off one of your characters. She said she wouldn't cook for you anymore if you did that. That's not even passive-aggressive. That's just outright, on the table, controlling. [laughs]

Sabaa: She threw down the gauntlet. We were talking about the book. She's really funny. She'll always try to get me to talk to her about it. She'll be like, "What's going to happen? Who's going to end up together?" She's very invested in these characters. I told her, "I'm thinking about killing this character. These are the reasons why." She just looked at me like I wasn't her child anymore. She was like, "Don't you dare. What are you thinking? No." Then there's this Pakistani bread called paratha which is a deep-fried bread. It's so good. She was like, "I'll never make it for you again." That's a serious threat. That's the rest of my life not having it. I had to capitulate. I was like, okay.

Zibby: Gosh. If I knew deep-fried bread was on the menu as an incentive tool for anything, I think would have to veer in that direction. Now that the book is out, what has this week been like? How are people even responding? I know it's probably too fast for people to read, but you have so many fans from the whole series. Now you have the ending of it. What is it like now that it's out there?

Sabaa: It's a relief in many ways. It feels like sort of a weight off my shoulders. It's out in the world. I can't change it at this point. It is what it is. That's really wonderful. I've had an overwhelmingly positive response. My readers are so sweet. So many of them have actually said something that I think is very selfless as a reader. A lot of them have said, no matter how it ends, no matter what you decided, I want you to know that these books have meant so much to me. That's such a sweet and beautiful thing to say to an author because it really shows faith in my skill as a writer. They're basically saying, hey, we trust you. We trust what you did. I've had a couple of people who were like, how dare you? [laughs] For the most part, it's been overwhelmingly positive.

It's been a weird week, Zibby, because usually I'm traveling. I'm going to bookstores. I'm going to schools. I'm meeting readers. It's really cool. It's something you look forward to almost as a way to acknowledge that the book is done and it's out in the world now. It doesn't belong to you anymore. It's sort of like a weird ritual, I would say. I've kind of turned it into that. That's not happening this week for obvious reasons, but I've still managed to have these events. I have a bunch this week and next week where I'm talking to a friend or a follow writer about the journey and the process and then doing these one-on-one meet and greets after that are really short but really lovely because you just get to talk to readers face to face. That's awesome. We live in time where it could be so much worse. I think that if this was ten years ago, that wouldn't be an option. We would just be like, sorry. Book is out. Find me on Facebook. Tweet at me if you want. That's kind of it. The fact that we could do something like this is really wonderful. I found it to be lifesaving as I go through this week because it's really allowed me to connect to the readers. I love that part of writing. It's one of the best parts.

Zibby: I think it's been lifesaving for so many people for the whole year. What would we have done? Every so often, I'm like, what if it disappears? What if Zoom crashes? It's great because I'm sure hearing from the fans directly is part of the reward in and of itself like you were saying earlier with people writing because of you. At least you still can access them somehow, which is great. I was watching the trailer for your first book. I was like, wait, is this is a trailer for a book, or is this a movie that I didn't know was a movie? Then I was like, why is this not a movie? What is the deal? Is this going to be a movie? What's the story there?

Sabaa: It's going to be something, but I can't say anything about it because the producers will find me and kill me. Maybe they won't kill me, but they won't be very happy. It is in development as something. It's iterated a few times, as fantasies often do in Hollywood. This iteration is one in which I'm more directly involved, which is awesome and I think makes a really big difference to everything about it, being able to make sure that the cast properly reflects the book and being able to make sure that the story properly reflects the nature of the actual book. All of that is really important to me. That's all I can say about it. I'm really hopeful and crossing my fingers. I hope everyone else does too.

Zibby: I won't ask anymore. We'll see. We'll all be just waiting and watching. I'm sure whatever form it takes will be fantastic. What are your writing plans going forward? You finally have put a capstone on this whole collection. This is a lot of pages, and this is still missing the most recent one. What's next? Are you going to start a new series? What's the plan?

Sabaa: I have something coming up. I can't say much about it again because my publishing house this time would yell at me. It is very different from anything I've written before. At the same time, it has the hallmarks of a Sabaa classic book, which is very harrowing and very stressful. [laughs] I will probably be announcing that next year. I'm really excited about it. Then after that, I'm really considering what I want to do. I think there are so many stories left in the world of Ember. I have absolutely left that door open in the hopes that I will be able to return there when I'm ready and when readers are ready for that. We will see. I don't think we've heard the last of these characters.

Zibby: I feel like you should pull that memoir back out. Maybe now with the vantage point of all of these experiences and being a mom yourself, I feel like maybe there's something there.

Sabaa: You might get your wish.

Zibby: Maybe I read your mind. Awesome. You've already given a little bit of advice, which was fantastic, that aspiring authors can read a newspaper every day for a year, which is really so important anyway. I feel like I'm one of the last people who reads paper newspapers. Do you read paper?

Sabaa: I read online mostly, but I do buy the actual physical paper occasionally, not so much anymore. Before, I would try to get it. At least once a month, I try to pick up the papers that are available to me, which is usually The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. I try to just grab a copy and read it. I really think there's something for reading it end to end. I always would find something that I wouldn't anticipate. I feel like when you read it online, unless you're very methodical and going through each section, it's a little bit more difficult to do that. It was such a beautiful ritualistic thing to have your paper with your coffee and read through it, especially on Sunday morning. That’s what I would usually try to do, is grab that Sunday New York Times and just enjoy it.

Zibby: I have to say, I get them every day. I get The Times and The Journal and the New York Post every day. I have to read it. Sometimes they stack up for a week. I'll say to my husband, "Oh, my gosh, did you know this happened?" He's like, "It happened a week ago." I'm like, "Whatever. I'm catching up." I'm with you. I love to read the papers. I think it's great to also just train yourself based on a certain type of writing. What other advice do you have up your sleeve? You don't have to. You already gave great advice, but if you happen to have more writing advice as somebody who can obviously -- how do you keep your focus and just keep churning out words? Do you have days where you sit down and you're like, I really don't feel like doing this or I can't think of anything?

Sabaa: Absolutely. I have days where I don't feel like writing. I have days where everything I write is garbage. I have days where I'm supposed to write, but like I said, I have a family and I have children. That takes precedence. With everything that's happened with COVID, I've actually found that my hours have been significantly cut because I have to educate my kids in the morning. Then my husband will usually take over for a few hours in the afternoon. That has really had a huge impact on my ability to write. Look, I started writing when I was working at The Washington Post. Then I continued writing through the infancy and toddlerhood of two children. I was a stay-at-home mom during that time. I found that I had to write very much as Toni Morrison once described it, in these slices of time. I call them elbows of time. It's not really about getting a ton done at once. It's about just taking any little snippet and finding some way to make it worthwhile in terms of writing. I would talk into my phone. I would be holding my baby. I have a nice big hand, so I'd be holding my baby with a bottle. [laughs] I'd be talking into my phone to dictate part of a story or talking into a recorder way back when to dictate part of a story. I would steal an hour whenever I could to start scribbling and working on it.

For the first couple of years, that's how I wrote. Sometimes I had help, but it wasn't really dependable, regular, and it wasn't a lot. Sometimes it was family. Sometimes it was someone I hired. I just was clawing away at this book. It added up. That's what I would love for writers to know, particularly writers who are parents or who are caretakers or who have really demanding jobs. You don't have to write all day every day to finish a book. If you can write a page a week, then over the course of a few years, you will have a book. Like I said, it took me from, when I started writing it to when I saw [distorted audio] was seven and a half [distorted audio] for An Ember in the Ashes. It's a long time. That's true. I know that a lot of people would love to just write a book in six months and then see it on the shelf. If you don't have a choice, if you really can't quit that job or you can't become a full-time writer, this is a way for you to claw away at it little by little and just get a little bit done. That's really my advice for writers. You don't have to listen to people who are like, you must write every day. You must write for four hours a day. You must have your own room to write. None of those rules apply to you if you don't want them to. Writers write. Ultimately, they can find a way, usually. If you're lucky, you can find a way to write. That's my advice for writers out there.

Zibby: I am ridiculously impressed at the visual of you dictating while dealing with the baby and the bottle. My thoughts were so incoherent at that time. Even if you weren’t holding anything, that you could dictate and it could become -- I feel like when I speak, as is evidenced right now, it doesn't always make sense. When I write, it's clear. I can go back. If it comes out, that's just super impressive.

Sabaa: It never came out well. It was always like, and then my character runs away because they're scared. Later on, I would sit down and be like, how do I turn that into something that I want to read and that doesn't make me want to run away? It's also about iteration. I think a lot of people think that the first version of a book that writers write is perfect. You know what? If you're that author, that's awesome. I am not that author, Zibby. My first drafts are so embarrassing. It's shocking. I think that if people read it, they'd be like, how did you become a writer?

Zibby: I'm sure that’s not true.

Sabaa: You just iterate. It's gets better and better with each iteration. I must have had like fifty drafts of Ember. The first one was something completely different. The last one and the one you see is the work of just little by little making it better, one paragraph, one page, one chapter until the entire book is better.

Zibby: Wow. That's very inspiring. You should also write a children's book, while we're talking about all the things you should do. I feel like you can bring it down to a kid's level, especially just how you want to represent different backgrounds and everything. I feel like you need to have a children's book in the mix at some point.

Sabaa: I would love that. I will now keep note of that and tell my agent.  

Zibby: You get on that. Thank you very much.

Sabaa: Zibby [indiscernible/crosstalk] write a children's book.

Zibby: Just put me in the acknowledgments somewhere. That's all I need. [laughs]

Sabaa: I got you.

Zibby: Sabaa, thank you so much. This was so much fun. My son is going to dive into this whole series. I'm hoping this gets him off the video games for a few hours. Thank you for taking the time to talk and coming on GMA Book Club. This will also be a podcast on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" so my listeners can hear as well. Thanks for chatting and all that great writerly advice. It was awesome.

Sabaa: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. I really appreciate your time. It was wonderful.

Zibby: Thank you. Congrats on your book.

Sabaa: Take care. Thank you. Bye.

Zibby: Bye.

John Allman, BOYS DANCE!

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

John Robert Allman: Of course. Thank you so much for having me.

Zibby: Thank you for these amazing children's books which are really impressive. You have three. I have three, I should say, in front of me, which are amazing. I particularly love Boys Dance. All of them are through the American Ballet Theatre. I'm sure you can tell me more about that. Then there's B is for Ballet and A is for Audra: Broadway's Leading Ladies from A to Z. Tell me how you became a children's book author.

John: It's actually a little bit of a fun story because it was completely by accident. I was working one job ago at an advertising agency that focused on live entertainment. Most of our clients were Broadway shows. I'm a huge theater fan. Grew up doing theater. Love living in the city to be able to see theater, which has been one of the horrible things about this time, is that none of us can go do that. I thought it was funny that some of my coworkers didn't really know their Broadways divas even though they worked in theater. It kind of was a gag gift. The idea just popped into my head. I ended up writing it out over the course of a couple days to give it to a coworker of mine as a gag, basically. Then that somehow coincided with another one of our colleague's baby showers. I just put two and two together and couldn't let go of the idea. I ended up just chewing on it for a while, telling a bunch of friends about it. Eventually, enough of them had said, "You never know what can happen in publishing. This is so funny. I would love to be able to give this to my friends' kids too. You should go for it."

I didn't really know much about the process or the industry at that point. I did a little bit of research and realized that all you really had to do was pitch it around and cross your fingers. I really went into it totally blind. I cold emailed a bunch of agents. One of them, my amazing agent Kevin, got it immediately and offered to rep it. Then after going back and forth on a proposal over the course of the summer, one of the first two editors that he pitched it to turned out to be a huge theater fan herself and bought it instantly. He was like, "Settle in. It'll probably be a year before this lands anywhere." It was a week into pitching it, it was sold to Random House Children's Books, which was crazy. I still don't feel like that alone is real. I would've written it for free and been so happy for anyone to put it out there just to educate people about these dames that I love so much.

The fact that someone else saw that and then convinced somebody else to see that who had to convince a whole team of people to see that and then put up with having a very surreal, wonderful meeting at one point where we just sat there and went through every diva in the book and decided what show we'd draw her in and what costume she’d be wearing -- it was this business meeting to do that. It was just truly amazing. Then from there, I lucked out. Knowing that I have a background in dance and theater and performing arts, my editor and her team did a deal with ABT to do a handful of books, not all children's books, over a bunch of years and had a couple of ideas that they felt like because of A is for Audra, I might be right to take a stab at. They offered me to noodle on two of them. I couldn't really decide between which one to do because I had just done an alphabet book. Following up A is for Audra with B is for Ballet felt fun. I also grew up doing dance and was very often the only guy in dance classes in Houston, Texas. There was a personal connection to Boys Dance that I felt like would just be too perfect to pass up, so they let me do both. These both just dropped this past September. They're the first two books in Random House's series of books with ABT.

Zibby: Wow. That is such a cool story. I love that. Good things happen to good people. It's really nice to hear.

John: I think it's a very good lesson in just following the North Star of your passion too. I never wanted to be a children's book author, but I love theater. I love musical theater divas so much. The little kernel of wanting to be able to package that up and share it with friends' kids, which I think tapped into something that so many musical theater fans feel which is that it's something that they're passionate enough about that they love to share it, there's never really been something like this that you could give to someone to open their eyes to the breadth of all of these amazing performers in such a concise, kid-friendly way as opposed to the classic taking them to shows, which isn't accessible for everyone and you have to be a certain age for, or listening to cast recordings, which is a little bit of a different experience too. It's cool to have been able to just stitch it all together and package it up like this and be able to introduce people to these ladies that I love. Just sticking to your guns when an idea takes you, running with it, and seeing how far you can take it is definitely something I have learned the easy way.

Zibby: I'm curious, you reference in all the books -- you have more bio information. You mention them, but then you go into more detail a lot at the end, like in Boys Dance for instance. I'm flipping through now just to find you the page. You have all these pictures and bio information on people like Calvin Royal III and Eric Tamm and James Whiteside and Arron Scott, then obviously in A is for Audra and even B is for Ballet. These are hilarious. I love this.

John: Our Sardi's wall.

Zibby: Yes. I'm holding up the wall of the head shots at the back of A is for Audra, which is hilarious. You make it look like one of those signatures outside of a show or in the playbill or something. Did you send these books to those people?

John: We did. Part of the fun of when A is for Audra came out was just crossing my fingers and hoping that everyone in it was flattered and would share it and be an advocate for us. So many of them were. As a theater fan and a huge dork, to have Kristin Chenoweth blurb the book and then Instagram about it and say that it was so cool was just crazy, and two years in the making too. As I'm sure you know, picture books take forever to get done. Not only from the process of writing and then finding an agent and going through the sales process, but once it sold, it was over two years from that week in September that Random House bought it to it actually coming out. That entire time I was crossing my fingers that it would actually even happen and just holding my breath. Then for it to drop in such a big way with all of these women being so supportive was really crazy.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. I feel like that would be such a dream. Maybe I should do a children's book with authors. I feel like those are my heroes the way that Broadway performers are for you. That would be kind of fun.

John: Totally. The cool thing about the back matter for Boys Dance is that -- for A is for Audra and for B is for Ballet, I wrote the bios in the back just to give people a little bit more information, a tiny bit more information about each person. For Boys Dance, my editor and I actually went down to ABT after one of their core rehearsals. A bunch of their dancers stayed around after, their male dancers, and were gracious enough to just talk to us for a couple of hours over pizza and beer about their own histories growing up as boys in dance, how they found ballet, the obstacles they overcame to getting to the point where they are as professional ballet dancers now, and who their heroes were, what their dream roles were. As a dancer casually but not a professional-level ballet dancer, I would never know what turns they were most excited to finally nail or those littlest things like that. We were able to bake a lot of that into the book. Then ABT actually tapped a bunch of them to write their own mini memoirs which are what are in the back of that book. I didn't even write those. They're kind of personal essays on these dancers' backgrounds and their encouraging love letters to young guys who might want to get into dance and haven't had role models before. It's really special. It was just so amazing that they not only gave us their time, but wrote these amazing blurbs for the back.

Zibby: That's so great. In the back of Boys Dance under your bio, it says, "John Robert Allman, he was born and raised in Texas where he was often the only boy in dance class." I was like, that's a book right there. I would like to hear that story, please.

John: [laughs] No story, really.

Zibby: What was it like growing up in Texas and being a dancer? What was your background like? What was it like for you?

John: I was lucky in that I had an incredibly supportive family. I had an incredibly supportive school environment. I mostly did all of my performing arts stuff, for the most part, at school, whether it was school plays or school dance classes or dance concerts or choir or any of that. I was lucky to be in an environment where there was tons of options. It was all amazing. I had these incredible teachers who didn't bat an eyelash at any of my very young theatricality or interest in dance or any of that. I actually dedicated Boys Dance to my two dance teachers from Houston. They put me in class and saw things in me that I kind of knew I could do. I actually met one of them when he was new to our school and choreographed a musical. They gave me a little tap solo even though I didn't really know how to tap. He just worked with me alone and really encouraged me to come out of my shell and master that in a way that I don't think I could have if he hadn’t done that and was just so amazing.

Then from there, it snowballed. He drew me into actually taking class even though I was the only guy in those classes. Ended up doing concerts at the end of the year where, again, I was always the only guy in front of the entire school. Then eventually, we did a student choreography showcase. I think because I just really wanted to be him in a way, I choreographed a piece. I set it on three of my girlfriends who were also dancers for this student choreography showcase and then ended up -- for some reason, one of them couldn't do it in this big end-of-the-year performing arts celebration. I ended up dancing it with them again in front of the entire school and just loving it so much. Then went to college, and I didn't major in theater, but I choreographed four shows at school. Now in the city, take dance class every now and again just to take up space and feel big and use my body in that way and see dance all the time. It's really turned into a real lifelong passion of mine. It's all because of Aaron, my dance teacher from freshman year.

Zibby: Aw, that's so nice. I feel like teachers need to know, especially now. I feel like teachers are just at their wits ends having left my remote school in the other room with the littlest guy to come in here and do this podcast. It is tough what they're doing with all of this remote, and to know that no matter what they're reaching these kids and making a huge difference for the contributions in the world. You and I wouldn't be talking. I wouldn't be holding these books. All these things would've been different. I wonder how many of the books around me wouldn't have been written if people hadn’t had encouragement, or the books that are lingering inside people who haven't yet had someone give them the boost that they needed.

John: Totally. I was insanely lucky.

Zibby: That's so nice. It's amazing. What other projects do you have in store now? I can't imagine you're going to stop, right?

John: It's funny because I really never set out to be a children's book author at all, but something about the seed of being able to share my passion and introduce young people to different areas of the arts I think has struck a little bit of a chord in me and also in people who want to be able to do that as well by giving books like these to young people. We are working on a few more in that vein. I don't know that I can say what they are specifically yet because we're still gestating on some of them and haven't announced anything officially. We are doing a couple more, knock on wood, that'll continue to flesh out just a little bit of arts intros for young people that I'm very excited about and feel very fortunate to be able to do.

Zibby: Did you feel like when you moved from Texas to New York that the world opened up in a whole new way for you with the live access to all the performances?

John: Yeah, kind of. Being a patron of the arts was always something that I was able to do even in Houston, which is where I grew up, mostly. It's a huge city, so there are amazing arts organizations. I grew up seeing pretty much every show at the Alley Theatre, which is Houston's Tony Award-winning regional theater that does incredible, first-class productions of plays and sometimes musicals. The Houston Ballet is obviously a world-class ballet company, where I saw my first ballet. I was fortunate to be immersed in it and have access to it then. It's definitely clicked into a new gear when my family moved to New York City. The year that I went to college, actually, my parents moved to New York just by coincidence. I was going back and forth for breaks and at Thanksgiving and all of that. I was coming back from Chicago to New York and able to see like ten shows in five days. That was all I would do. It would be like, bye guys, and meet up with my friends in midtown or wherever and see as many shows as we could cram in before going back to school. That has stayed a huge part of my life. I was just reminiscing about how crazy it is to not have been in a theater in so long now when I probably hadn’t gone longer than a week before in eight years. It's just crazy. I feel very lucky to have been able to see as much as I saw when they first moved and been able to make that such a big part of my life.

Zibby: Have you been watching any virtual things like the Hamilton thing on -- the virtual productions versions?

John: Yes. There have been some amazing moments, especially early on, where I feel like all of us were so shellshocked that being able to kind of commune together and watch some of these virtual events was such a needed faux substitute for the feeling of being in an audience. You'd be online tweeting with people about what was happening in real time. It just felt similar to a big lightning rod moment like when a show opens and everyone's chattering about it. There was a Sondheim Birthday Concert early on where they had all of these incredible Broadway actors and actresses performing from home in a series of Zoom performances. Then obviously since then, there have been so many amazing workarounds for being able to share live theater and arts during this time, including Hamilton on Disney+, which I loved. Actually, just last night I watched -- City Center's gala this year is a brand-new concert that they filmed in the theater with Audra McDonald. It was so crazy and kind of jarring. As a substitute in between these events that have been produced for this moment, I've been binging older canned performances from people every now and again just to feel something and feel like I'm watching a live performance.

She programmed the night and chose her songs and wrote her banter for this moment. All of a sudden, after months of really not seeing anyone in concert like that, you have Audra McDonald opening her concert with a song called "Solitude" and speaking to the moment that we're all feeling of being so alone right now, and then shifting gears and doing some other rep, and then coming back to it and doing "Some Other Time" from On the Town, which is this gorgeous song about catching up down the line since we're out of time now, but I'll see you later, or "A Place For Us" from West Side Story, these amazing standards that take on such a crazy new meaning in this context. To see her perform them so beautifully and really cater the evening towards an audience that's all over the place, at home alone or with their families, was just really special. I highly recommend it to anyone. I think it's available for another week on New York City Center's website.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh, I'm going to have to go do that with my daughter.

John: Hopefully, they do something else with it. It's stunning. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Zibby: Wow. Have you thought about teaching kids dance or teaching kids about this whole world in any other way?

John: You know, I haven't. I work in TV by day. I'm in marketing. I've been thinking a little bit just with how much is blowing up in the content space across all of these different streaming platforms about what it could be like to look at some of this through a lens of kids' TV sort of like CBS Sunday Morning for kids that teaches them about all of these different arts areas and people. I don't know. We'll see. It's fun that it's such a ripe area to have tapped into and be able to explore in different mediums. I haven't thought too much about anything concrete beyond the books.

Zibby: I know a school where you could get involved in [indiscernible/laughter] including a couple of mine. Maybe you could start by rolling it out on Zoom.

John: Totally. I did choreograph a few musicals for local elementary and middle schools growing up. I would love, if I ever had the time and could be there during the day, which is tough on a nine-to-five work schedule to do something like that again, just to move around and be able to share a love of performing with young people in the same way that it was shared with me.

Zibby: My two little guys are doing an after-school Frozen II Zoom class, which has been very tricky to get them to focus on the computer and having them say their lines. They're six and seven. It's really cute. They have their whole dress rehearsal and then performance next week.

John: That's amazing. They're putting together the whole show on Zoom?

Zibby: Oh, yeah.

John: Wow.

Zibby: It's been a semester-long project.

John: That's incredible. The creativity of the way that folks have been able to use that to string together really, really phenomenal programming has been blowing my mind. That's amazing.

Zibby: I'll send you the link.

John: Please do. I would love to see.

Zibby: John, this is amazing. I'm so impressed with you. I feel like you should be running a theater and you should not be in marketing for TV. I want to guide you to the calling that you probably [indiscernible/laughter]. I'll stay out of your business. You should certainly be on the board of a theater or something.

John: I don't know about that, but thank you.

Zibby: All right. Well, I'm going to follow up with you about this. I feel like there's such a, not waning interest, but so much of the theater-going population pre-COVID was becoming a much older audience. I was actually on the board of Lincoln Center Theater for the young people when I was young, trying to counteract the aging thing and inject some life and excitement into younger people to go into the theater. Not that you need that. You're obviously totally on board. To spread that contagious joy and excitement, it would be awesome.

John: It's definitely an energy like none other for me. I feel like if anything, if these books encourage anyone to go take a dance class or to listen to a cast recording for the first time or to see a show, I feel like even one, then my work here is done.

Zibby: I'm about to stand up and dance right now. Watch out. [laughter]

John: Not to get overly sappy about it, but I think now more than ever, really, we're a society so in need of empathy. I think live performance and theater especially are so uniquely positioned to foster that if you're open to it. Just getting more people into seats to experience things live and communally and to let them chip away at them a little bit, it's just so important. I'm very hopeful that we can start getting back to that as soon as we can.

Zibby: Yes, sounds great. Do you have a favorite play or anything, favorite musical, just to leave us with? Can you pick one?

John: I hesitate to because I feel like it just ebbs and flows with my mood. I love so many for so many different reasons. If I had to, Gypsy is probably my favorite show. I'm a sucker for a good diva turn. I'm also a sucker for theater about theater. I don't think either of those things get better than that show.

Zibby: Awesome. Fantastic. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming on this podcast. Thanks for all the books. I'm just so excited to have connected.

John: Of course. Thank you so much for having me. Ditto. It's been a pleasure to chat.

Zibby: My pleasure. Take care.

John: See you. Bye.

Cait Flanders, ADVENTURES IN OPTING OUT

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

Cait Flanders: Oh, my gosh, thank you so much for having me.

Zibby: Adventures in Opting Out: A Field Guide to Leading an Intentional Life, this is so timely. I feel like we have all sort of opted out of everything not, perhaps, by choice, but here we are. Everyone's taken a new path from what they thought. Yet here comes your book. Tell listeners a little about what made you take a new path. What did you opt out of, and why? I'd particularly like to hear more about -- this is like a hundred questions in one. I really want to hear more about quitting drinking. You talked a lot about that in the book. I feel like that was a whole other book waiting to happen.

Cait: You're right that we have all unintentionally opted out this year. I think that we are forced to opt out of a lot of things that we used to do. The book is about making intentional choices, so deciding that something is no longer working for you or even just -- one of the things I like about the book or just the idea is you don't always have to make a different decision because something bad has happened. Sometimes you make a different decision actually when everything's kind of okay but you're still noticing that you just want something different. There's something that you've been curious about, and it's time to follow that path or just see where your curiosity leads you. Things that I've opted out of in the past, drinking was the first one. In terms of timeline, I stopped drinking in 2012. I was only twenty-seven years old. If I was a little older, it might not seem as big of a decision. I think quitting drinking in your twenties, it changes a lot about your life. It changes a lot about your lifestyle and who you connect with and how you spend your time and also how you, at least for me, how you deal with things.

I'll just list things that I've opted out of, drinking, I would say shopping. There was a year, actually two years, where I didn't buy anything except for a few things if I absolutely needed them, shopping, that consumerist lifestyle. I've changed career paths multiple times, so originally being someone who -- I'm from a government town. The story is truly, once you get in, you're in for life. You're set. My parents both worked for the government. To say one day, actually, I'm going to go to the private sector, that's actually a big deal. Then eventually leaving that to work for myself. Then even within that, within working for myself, switching from being a full-time freelancer to now being a full-time author. There's a whole bunch of changes in there. Then I've also moved multiple times, decided to live in different cities. The last or biggest move that I made was at the end of 2018. I gave up my apartment so that I could travel full time, which looks a little bit different this year. [laughs] That was the last one.

Fundamentally, deciding to stop drinking taught me everything that I would need to do the other things, being that it teaches me still, but taught me how to be comfortable being the only sober person in the room, so essentially being comfortable being the odd one out and choosing that, choosing to be different from most of the people that you're around. It meant that I had to change my coping mechanisms because drinking was something that got me through, whether it was awkward situations, social life, certainly my dating life, and got me through tougher moments. I don't think that I had identified that, really, until I stopped, but I really was someone -- I didn't and still don't identify as an alcoholic because I wasn't chemically dependent on alcoholic, but I used it to get through everything. Any bad, negative feeling that came up, I used drinking as a coping mechanism. To wipe all of those things out has been a lot over the years. Not drinking anymore has taught me everything that I need.

Zibby: Were there any moments -- I know you reference some of them, especially as you tried to stop drinking where you would go a little bit and then you'd kind of regress and have a bender of a weekend and things like that. I know you're not identifying as an alcoholic, and that's cool. Just as getting rid of any coping strategy, was there a moment that was like, you're hitting bottom where you're like, I better stop the drinking? It could've been, I better stop the X, Y, Z at that moment. Tell me your deepest, darkest, worst moment that made you change your life.

Cait: [laughs] There's two things. I don't identify as an alcoholic, and I actually think that there's something interesting about that. Things don't need to be the worst in order for you to want to change it.

Zibby: That's true. You're right. Sorry.

Cait: No, I'm more saying from the intentional side of things. I think that what I've done with drinking and all kinds of thing is, I'm looking at, what are the results of my actions? Which ones don't actually feel good? Drinking was one, though, where I did think about not drinking multiple times. I think the first time I very seriously considered it I was probably twenty or twenty-one. I will say this. Basically every time I drank, I got blackout drunk. That could look different every time. Maybe I just lost an hour of the night. Maybe I lost everything after the first hour of the night. I was twenty, twenty-one. I remember going to this party, and then I don't really remember anything. Then I woke up in my bed. I was very confused. It took me four days to piece together what happened, contacting multiple friends and trying to figure out how I had gotten home, and figured out that what had happened was I had called a cab. I had left the party. I guess I was tired. I sat down on the sidewalk waiting for the cab. I must have fallen asleep there. My friends' parents found me. Then they put me in their van and literally carried me into my house. I have no memory of any of it. That was probably extreme, but in terms of the blackout it wasn't. It was extreme in that someone saw me in it and had to help me through it.

Zibby: Just curious here, were you drinking that much, or do you maybe have some sort of reaction to alcohol?

Cait: I was definitely drinking that much.

Zibby: Wow. I was like, maybe there's an allergy. I'll just solve your problem right here. [laughs]

Cait: Oh, my gosh, if only it was that easy, but no. There was this thing about drinking, too, for me where it truly made up a portion of my identity that I was someone who could drink. I could keep up with the guys. I never got sick. I rarely got hungover. It was almost like those were points of pride. Because I wasn't really good at anything else in my teens and early twenties, that is what formed, truly, a huge piece of my identity. Then to give it up in my mid to late twenties was a massive shock.

Zibby: Wow. Also, it's hard when everybody around you is drunk and they all find themselves hilarious, and they're mostly not funny.

Cait: No. [laughs]

Zibby: When you're the only sober person in a crowd of drunk people, it is not that amusing.

Cait: My dad, he got sober when I was ten and a half, eleven years old. I do believe that that is one of the reasons that the topic of sobriety even seemed like something that would be possible because then I grew up in a house where my parents didn't drink. That was my role model growing up. I remember having conversations with him in the early days that I couldn't get on board with. He would say things like, it's kind of funny now to watch other people. I'm like, no, it's not. It's really annoying.

Zibby: It's really annoying. I've been there too. It's annoying. I back you up. [laughter] Luckily, now there are no parties, so it's not even an issue. I didn't mean to focus too much on the drinking. There's so much in your book, obviously, aside from that, and your whole analogy of the two-pronged mountain and coming down and all the different ways from packing to everything where you traverse this path. One thing I thought was interesting, and I guess it's sort of related to this being an outsider now in your friend group with the drinking, is how to deal with the aftermath of making a decision that might be right for you but that sets you outside the comfort zone of your entire life. I was looking at some of the things that you had pointed out. This is sort of like the warning bullet point list. "You might feel as though you don't have anything in common with anyone anymore. You might feel like you have nothing to contribute to conversations. You might feel like you can't relate to experiences." You go on and on. I mean, not on and on in a bad way. You elaborate. This could be applied to so many things. I felt like I could've written that bullet point list when I got divorced as a mom with little kids. Suddenly, everybody else is married. You're like, well, that's not my experience right now. I don't have a husband at home who I'm annoyed with or whatever it is they're complaining about. I think it's interesting because people don't really talk about what it's like in life as adults to suddenly -- I'm envisioning a Jell-O mold and you squish out just enough that you're not really in the mold anymore, but you're still attached to the Jell-O. [laughs]

Cait: It makes me think, one of the pieces around why it can be applied to so many different things is, that was a piece of your identity, which means it was how people connected with you and/or how you connected with other people. Then it's gone. That can be so many different things that we're going through. It can also be bigger things like if you are grieving or just healing from something and you're deep in process. That can be a very isolating period of time. That is certainly something that I think that we've probably all collectively, but at different times, been dealing with this year. It is hard. It is hard to feel like no one sees you or hears you anymore. No one really gets you anymore. It's especially hard when you chose that, when you chose to enter that space. It's not even that I wrote the book being like, here, I have all the answers. One of the main reasons I wrote it was because I just thought, we have to acknowledge this.

There are so many self-help books that just sort of give you ten steps to follow, or here's the goal in making these changes, but I don't often read a lot about just people describing the actual human experience that you are going to have when you decide to change your life. It's not just that you change. A whole bunch of other things change because you have changed. It's not as simple as saying, just let go and it'll get better. Trust me, I'm a firm believer in nonattachment and how that can help us in certain ways. Doesn't mean that hard things don't come up or that you're not going to have to navigate difficult feelings and difficult situations. I thought, we just need to at least be addressing this. If this book is even just a conversation-starter, maybe someone else will write all the tangible ways of how to navigate all of it. I just thought, we have to start acknowledging this. We can't keep writing self-help books that are promising simple solutions and don't talk about the actual emotional ups and downs that come with it.

Zibby: Maybe it could've been called Adventures in Opting Out: What Comes Next or After the Self-Help Book Ends or something. It's almost like a continuation. Okay, you decided you're going to have a big January and stop doing X, Y, Z. Now what? You also have obviously moved so much in your life. I know you talk about as a child how you moved so much with your family and then as a grown-up and now, of course, traveling or whatever. I'm curious what you're doing now in place of being a nomad. I wonder if there's a correlation between kids who moved a lot or military families or just people who have had to have change and the ability to pick up and change again. I would think yes. I would think, well, you've learned to adapt. You know it's possible, and so you're going to try it, versus people who maybe their parents are married and they’ve lived in the same home until they go to college. They go to college, and they come back to their hometown or something. Then they're forced to make a decision like, maybe I'm drinking too much. Maybe then they don't have the mental roadmap, if you will, to put that into place. What do you think?

Cait: I think that makes perfect sense. I think that an extra piece of that would also be around probably relating to people and/or building relationships and also maintaining relationships. I get a lot of questions or just comments from people saying, you seem to have friends all over or friends from all these different periods of your life. I don't think I had ever really actively thought about if that was true or how that was possible. I have reflected on it a bit more this year, obviously, as we're all communicating at a distance more and people are really learning how to check in with each other more. I actually think that also came from moving around all the time and also having a dad who -- he worked for the coast guard his whole career, so he was home for twenty-eight days and then gone for twenty-eight days. I've also learned a lot about how to maintain long-distance relationships, essentially. I do think that you're right. I think that if you have really been raised where things are constantly changing, you do learn just how adaptable we are. I would say that that, the word adaptable, is something that has really resonated for me this year and also has been nice to see other people recognizing in themselves, that they are more adaptable than they thought.

Even I, at the very beginning, had really intense anxiety about what this year was going to look like. Reminding myself, if I can settle into whatever this looks like, let's say, for a year and a half -- we were all promised two weeks, two weeks, and things get better. I just thought, that is not going to work for my anxiety. If I can settle into whatever this life is, this is my life for a year and a half, I will be able to at least get through it. I have to find whatever my base is for this. To answer your other question, I've been at my dad's house this whole year. Literally, what else could I do? We had finished everything for the book. I had a flight booked to go back to Europe where I would've probably spent most of the rest of this year. I would've come home for the holidays. Those were the original plans. It was like, well, what now? We just had conversations. My dad's still gone half the year. It was just like, I'll pay rent. I'm a grown-up. I'm not going to live at home rent-free or anything. I'll pay rent. We'll be roommates for up to eighteen months and see what happens after that. It has worked and also been challenging. It's challenging to live with your parents as an adult. The silver lining of it is I think we'll have a much different relationship as adults now than we would have if I had just left home at twenty and never come back.

Zibby: I see another book in formation here. What do you think?

Cait: [laughs] A Year with Dad.

Zibby: A Year with Dad, yeah. Living at Home: Adventures in Living Back in the Nest or something. A lot of people can relate to that. I actually wonder what it's going to be like when everybody tries to leave again. This whole two weeks, and now it's been -- you said you kind of got used to this eighteen months or longer. I am not allowing myself to look forward anymore. In my head, I'm like, this is life now. It will never change. Then I'll be pleasantly surprised. In actuality, of course, things will probably, I hope, God willing, get back to normal at some point. How are people going to cope with that? Maybe you become so close with your dad and everybody feels a sense of loss. The closeness that we're all having with our immediate quarantine-ers is going to lift. Then we'll all be inexplicably sad while we're out in the world again expecting to be jumping up and down for joy. Who knows?

Cait: Who knows? If people don't stick with it, I think there will be a longing for how slow and present people were this year if that part goes away. We've been forced to look at a much smaller perspective than usual, which is immediate family, closest friends, our home, our hometown, wherever we're staying. We're so localized right now. I do think that when it expands, my assumption is there will be a bit of longing for that.

Zibby: You're probably right. Then we'll all need to opt into that. Aside from my book idea, are you working on any other writing projects right now?

Cait: Kind of. I don't know that either of them are going to become anything. I do have, I don't want to say that it's a novel, but I'm playing around with fiction for the first time since I was probably eighteen. I don't actually know that anyone will ever read it. Even for now, it's nice to be trying something different and something that's a little bit challenging, or a lot challenging. I don't know that I would call this maybe an opt-out, but thanks to COVID and the fact that everything is online, at least here still, I actually decided to go back to school just part time. I'm taking two classes at my local university in January. It may just be two classes and I'll never take any more again. I thought, I have a curiosity. I'll follow it a little bit. We'll see what happens.

Zibby: That's so cool. I love that.

Cait: We'll see. [laughs]

Zibby: In the meantime, do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Cait: Oh, my gosh. I almost feel like this year has shown to not be afraid of whatever your idea is because we do only one chance at it. Even if no one ever reads it, just following it. I didn't actually know that anyone would understand what Adventures in Opting Out was going to be. It does only take one person, whether it's another writer or it's an agent or one publisher. It only takes one person to say that they get it, that they can see it, so just to try it.

Zibby: It's true, and perhaps take a few classes. See what you can drum up.

Cait: Take a few classes.

Zibby: I think another, just to give lessons on your behalf from your book, is that any big life change is also great copy for a memoir. [laughter] You can go a year and stop shopping, and there's your book right there.

Cait: Apparently. That one was really interesting. I wrote about the shopping ban on my blog with no intention ever of writing anything about it after that. I just thought it would be over. I was done. Then other people said, hey, that could be a book. I went, okay. That is true. Also, too, you do not know who is reading your content and who might think that you have more to say.

Zibby: Very interesting. It's a good encouragement for just writing something and putting it somewhere because you never know. If it stays inside you, no one's responding to it. That's for sure.

Cait: Yep, that's definitely true.

Zibby: Basically, I'm just giving my own advice. [laughter] Thank you for coming on my show where I just don't even interview you. I'm kidding. Thank you, Cait. Thank you for your advice, and mine. Thank you for sharing all of your adventures. I can't wait to see your next book about your time with your dad.

Cait: He's going to laugh so much. I can't wait to tell him about it.

Zibby: At least an essay.

Cait: An essay, I could probably do that.

Zibby: There you go.

Cait: Awesome. Thank you.

Zibby: Bye, Cait. Thanks.

Cait: Bye.

Sophie Cousens, THIS TIME NEXT YEAR

Zibby Owens: Hi, everybody. I'm half a minute early, so I won't be too official. I am so excited. Here we go, one o'clock. Hi, everybody. It's Zibby Owens. I'm here from the podcast "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" to have a great discussion on GMA Book Club's Instagram account with Sophie Cousens, This Time Next Year: How Many Chances to Meet Your Perfect Match, a novel, which is the GMA Book Club pick for December. I am so excited to be welcoming her in. I can't wait to talk to her about this fantastic book, especially as New Year is quickly approaching. A lot of her chapters begin with that. Hi.

Sophie Cousens: Hello. Hi, Zibby. How are you?

Zibby: Good. How are you?

Sophie: I'm good, though I've got a bit of a phobia of Instagram Live because the last couple I've done the connection's gone halfway through. Fingers crossed the internet gods are with us tonight.

Zibby: So far so good. I was sure this would be cancelled. There's a snowstorm here in the Northeast.

Sophie: Oh, no.

Zibby: I know. We'll just hold our breath and see. At least you came on and spared me from just talking to myself, which I hate. It's always my least favorite part. I'm like, here I am. [laughs] It's a delight to meet you. Thank you for doing this conversation with me.

Sophie: Not at all. Thanks for having me on. It's been really exciting. The whole Good Morning America thing has been incredible.

Zibby: Let's start with that. Tell me about finding out that you became the GMA Book Club pick for December and your reaction and where you were. Give me the whole thing.

Sophie: I got a text from my editor in the UK saying, "Oh, my god, have you seen your email? Have you seen your email?" I hadn’t seen my email. She didn't say what it was. Then I quickly looked at my email and saw that I'd been selected by Good Morning America. It was just such a game changer moment. When you're writing your first novel, you just hope if even my parents and five other people read it, then that would be great. It's opened the book up to such a wide readership. I've just been blown away by the support from people. It's been a dream come true, completely.

Zibby: Does it hold any less weight not being American yourself, or is it just as exciting? What do you think?

Sophie: I think more exciting. I lived in America when I was a teenager, actually. My parents lived in Virginia for three years. I felt like I absorbed a bit of American culture and got into all the morning TV. I miss my potato skins and bacon bits. Those were the [indiscernible/laughter] in America in Virginia at the time.

Zibby: Next time I see them at the grocery, I'll put aside a pack. In case you get a craving again, you can just text me or something. That's funny. Tell me about writing this book. It's your first book. Tell me about the whole process, how you came up with the idea for the story. What inspired you to write a novel to begin with?

Sophie: I've always wanted to be a writer. That's always been ticking away in the back of my head. Since I was a child, I was always telling stories and writing silly little ideas down. I've been a TV producer for twelve years. In that time, I had the odd lull where I thought, I really should write something now, but those kind of jobs, they're so all-consuming. They just don't really leave much space for anything else. I had tried a few things. I actually wrote a YA sci-fi novel as well in my twenties, but that didn't get picked up for some reason. Who knows why? [laughter] Then I had children. Then I thought, you know what, there's never going to be spare time. There's always something. There's always work. Of course, having children, there is no spare time. I thought, if I want to do this, you just have to make the time. I had a job at the time. I had two children under four.

I was like, I'm going to really commit to finishing a book and giving it a go properly. I love rom-coms and humor, so I thought this is the area I should be focusing on. Then the idea for the story, I've just always loved the idea of first impressions not being what they seem. I think that especially in this story, Quinn, you look at him from the outside, and he's got everything. He's very good looking. He's had an amazing job. He's very successful. I really liked the idea of exploring that that just isn't usually the case with most people. Nothing is as perfect as the veneer the exterior might convey. That was the seed of the idea. Then the structure of basing it around New Year's Eves, that's a really good way of dipping into these characters' pasts to see, what were the building blocks that made them the people that they are in the present? That's how it all started.

Zibby: Wait, going back to what you just said about being so busy as a mom and all that stuff, literally when did you do it during the day with the two kids and all the rest? Did you wake up early? Did you do it on a computer? Where and when did you do it? I just want a visual.

Sophie: I basically was working in the day. Then I'd come back and do bedtime, put the children to bed. Then I'd pretty much write between eight and ten at night. I had a deadline because I had a book deal when I was halfway through. I knew I had to write five thousand words a week in order to get it finished. I worked that out as five sessions a week. I had to do a thousand words in each session. Between eight and ten or eleven, I basically had to write a thousand words before I could go to sleep. Strangely, I've almost found that easier than what I've got now where I've quit the day job now. I've got the day to write, which is an enormous privilege. I feel incredibly lucky, but there was actually something quite focusing about that very small window of time after a day with work and children where it just had to get done or it wasn't going to get finished, you know? I'm sure you know. [laughs]

Zibby: I do know. I have heard that from many other authors, that when you squeeze it in -- it's like, give a busy person something to do. You just throw it on the heap, put it on the pile. Then boom, boom, boom, it's done. When you're like, I'll spend all day, then you get two things done.

Sophie: Completely. Also, I think that there's not enough time for procrastination. When you know you have to hit a certain amount of words before you can go to bed, you're much more focused on just getting it done. Whereas now, there's a lot of distraction of just, ooh, let me look on Amazon and see what number my book is or read this article, someone being nice about my book. Actually, it's kind of better to be a writer maybe in a cave and just not look.

Zibby: I think maybe you should keep doing the thousand word a day, five days a week thing. Breaking it down into tiny -- not tiny. A thousand words is not tiny, but into achievable goals and spread it out over time. Even to me, I'm like, I can do a thousand words five times a week. All of a sudden, you have a book.

Sophie: When people ask me, if they want to be writers, what advice I would give, I do think that a weekly word aim is a really good way to go because you just know if you hit Friday and you haven't done enough words, you have to cancel your plans and not go out. You have to write. In the world of COVID, no one really has any plans anyway. In the old days, you would have to cancel your plans to go out to write.

Zibby: Excellent, so this is an even better time to focus on writing since you're not really missing anything anyway.

Sophie: Exactly.

Zibby: How did you come up with the idea of getting stuck in the bathroom at a party overnight? You must have gotten locked into a bathroom at some point. Of course, this is one of the first scenes in the book.

Sophie: I think I have momentarily been stuck. You know when you try the handle and it doesn't click? You're like, hang on a minute. You have that sudden panic in your chest of, I'm going to be stuck in here. I think it was based on that, but it was also just this idea of Minnie has so much bad luck. It was just thinking anything that could go wrong at a party was going to go wrong, so tripping over someone, getting vomited on. Then it's almost like fate really has a sense of humor with Minnie. As soon as she's in bathroom thinking -- she has a little pep talk with herself. She's like, right, I've got this. Stop being paranoid. There's no jinx. Then, of course, she almost looks at the heavens and thinks, okay, you're playing with me now, because it's just another thing in the catalog of problems.

Zibby: I feel like her jinx became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Each year would come around, and then she’d be so worried. She ends up sleeping the whole day. [laughs]

Sophie: Again, this is a theme that I feel like I only scratched the surface of in this book, in a way, of this idea of luck and almost it being self-fulfilling. It kind of feeds into the superstition thing as well. All of us, whatever beliefs you have, everyone spills salt and they're like, [gasp], over their shoulder. There's various superstitions and beliefs that has just crept into all our culture. I always knock on wood. If you say nothing bad has happened so far, I always knock on wood. Where does that come from? For Minnie, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy because for so long her mother has said, "You were born unlucky. Nothing's ever going to right for you on this day." If you have that mentality, maybe it doesn't, or maybe the jinx is real and everyone's giving her a hard time.

Zibby: Or maybe it's having a mother who is telling you that you deserve that bad luck. Really, the time you're born, there are so many factors. Whether or not you win the first baby of the year award doesn't usually have a traumatic effect because you don't know if you've won or not. Maybe it's just the proximity of losing -- I don't know. I think the family lore, the family perpetuating that myth.

Sophie: Completely. I also think that what was interesting to explore with Minnie is this idea of, she has low self-esteem. The book slightly unpacks why she has that low self-esteem. A part of that is definitely her relationship with her mother. It’s the relationship with her mother, but it's also her name, which led her to be teased. I think that if you're teased at a very impressionable time in your life, it can really affect your self-esteem. It’s one of those names that, on the surface, you imagine everyone meeting her and saying, oh, Minnie Cooper like the car. Then you actually think, imagine having that all the time with everyone you meet, and especially how cruel teenagers can be. It just was interesting to me to imagine all these little external factors that had made her have low self-esteem. Then actually, Leila is the friend that comes in that actually helps turn that around for her. The importance of friendship is another big theme in the story.

Zibby: I have to tell you, I almost named my second daughter Minnie. In fact, that was the name that I had picked. She was born. I told my closest friends and family, "Welcome, Minnie." My family staged an intervention. They were like, "You cannot name her Minnie." I was devasted. I haven't even gotten to the room yet. I'm still on the gurney or whatever you want to call it with my newborn girl who I was all fawning over. They're like, "She's going to get teased. What if she's really big?" [laughs]

Sophie: I love the name Minnie.

Zibby: I love it too.

Sophie: My agent's daughter is called Minnie. Then when I was having this joke about Minnie, I was like, "No, no, no, it's a really lovely name." It's just the combination of being Minnie Cooper or, as you say, if you're called Minnie and you end up being really tall. Someone's just asking on the chat if it's available on audio or Audible. It is available on Audible, but it's not me reading it, luckily. I would be like, blah, blah, blah. It's Hannah Arterton, who's brilliant. It is available on Audible.

Zibby: I feel like Minnie was always getting herself into these situations almost in a Bridget Jones type of way. She reminded me a lot of her at various points, particularly the moment -- I don't want to spoil because it's so genius -- when she's traveling in the airport in India and the gift from her friend gets discovered, Leila's gift. She has to confront the security guards and explain this very personal, unexpected item. I was cringing reading it. Then answering the phone and thinking it was Greg, but really, it was Quinn, about the dental stuff. [laughs]

Sophie: That's my favorite bit. You know what's funny? Maybe I'm wrong here, but I think it's quite a British sense of humor thing to kind of enjoy the cringe of a situation. That's definitely what I loved about Bridget Jones. When I read those books for the first time as a teenager, I was just like, this is so my sense of humor. This is so funny. Because maybe the British have a bit of a reputation of being a bit more uptight and a bit more, everything's fine, so that then when stuff is really embarrassing or cringey it's even more just so embarrassing. I really enjoyed trying to put her in situations that you just want the world to swallow you up because it's so embarrassing.

Zibby: What do you think about fate intervening? I know fate is sort of different from luck. This is maybe too broad a question, but just how people's lives can intersect in all these different ways and how this probably happens all the time.

Sophie: I think I read an article that said -- I can't quote it because I can't remember the statistics. It was something about the likelihood of you having met the man or woman that you end up with a number of times in your past. You probably wouldn't have known it. I've actually got friends here in Jersey, they were looking through old photo albums and they found a beach holiday. In the background was his wife.

Zibby: No!

Sophie: As a child, yeah. It was just they happened to be on the same holiday at the same time. I think statistically, it is quite likely. What I quite liked about this story was exploring some of those near misses. Is it just a coincidence, or is it fate that's drawing people together? One thing people have asked me about the book is they said, I would've loved for them to realize at the end and to piece together all of the jigsaw puzzles. I very consciously didn't do that because I think life is not -- there's so many things none of us will ever know about when you might not have crossed paths with your partner. I think with Minnie and Quinn, they would work it out because they'd get talking about [indiscernible] and they'd say, I was there that year. There's enough little clues. They both like Star Wars. That's going to come out. I didn't want to do it completely overtly because I like that touch of the universe will know, but we won't kind of thing.

Zibby: I know. I always wish I could rewind, I could just rewind and get a wide-angle view of all these situations. What would you see? What wouldn't you? But no, not meant to be. [laughs]

Sophie: I know. I love the movie Sliding Doors. You know Sliding Doors?

Zibby: It's one of my all-time favorite movies.

Sophie: I just love that that expression has become like, oh, it's a sliding doors moment. How amazing to come up with a story that then it becomes an expression. It's brilliant. I do love stories that explore the alternate universe of how something might have played out differently. Then actually what's interesting about this time next year is that they missed each other all those times, if that was their one chance to meet their soulmate and they missed it. Maybe the universe works in its way that it'll just find another opportunity and another opportunity. That's actually quite a nice thought that it's not all totally down to being on the right beach at the right time looking in the right direction.

Zibby: You have to sometimes be clobbered over the head by fate. It takes time and time and time again. Then finally, you see the person. Tell me also about the role of baking and the pie business, which was hilarious, and putting recipes in the book and even in your book club guide and everything. Tell me about that and your own personal relationship to cooking and baking.

Sophie: I love baking. I'm more of a cake baker. I'm not very good at cooking, actually, but I do love baking cakes. I always make very elaborate designs for my kids' birthday and stuff. Every birthday, I'll say, "You can choose whatever you want to have." Then I'll try and make it. My daughter said she wanted an armadillo cake this year, which was challenging, but I tried. I do love baking. In this story, it came up because I wanted Minnie to have a job that she was very much helping others. That's the thing about Minnie. When you first meet her, she's a bit bristly and a bit prickly. She's definitely got a chip on her shoulder. You might not completely love her when you first meet her. I wanted to have this contrast that she was a bit spikey, but you could see she was really kind, and the way that she interacts with her friends. Also, she set up a business to basically bring food to people who can't cook for themselves or who can't leave the house. That really came out of a genuine affection for the community. For me, baking for others was a really good way to illustrate her kindheartedness and her love of community. It's also a really communal job. I love that idea of when she's with the friends and her colleagues in the kitchen, it's a very sociable job, sitting around the kitchen kneading dough. It just gave a lot of opportunities for interaction that maybe other jobs would've been harder to find, I suppose.

Zibby: And the disappointment with the burnt pies and all of that and have to restart and all the meaning, the themes of starting over.

Sophie: Exactly. Also, it's the kind of job we can all sympathize. You all kind of sympathize with, okay, it seems quite simple. Bake a pie. Take it to someone. Get paid. Actually, it was quite fun to explore all the problems they have on the way and things that can go wrong. When they're in India as well and her and Leila are talking about this ideal company they'd love to run where they employ people who need a second chance, who maybe have had some issues in their life, then you flash to them working in the pie shop and actually realizing some of these people are making life harder for them. [laughs] At what point does your public spiritedness have to compromise for commercial interest?

Zibby: I loved their relationship. It was such a great example of female friendship, female work partnership, sort of like a work wife trope, if you will, and how they even get annoyed at each other sometimes. I feel like there aren't so many best friend examples in fiction all the time. This is a particularly vivid one. I know you've talked in the past about your own close girlfriends. Tell me about how your own friendships made this one so rich and lifelike.

Sophie: I love rom-coms, but equally, there's so many good ones that have been written that you can find yourself falling into the trope of the kooky best friend and then the inaccessible man. For me, I wanted to write something warm and engaging but that also had a little bit of edge of something a bit different and also slightly playing with undercutting those kind of expectations. Even though Leila is kind of the kooky best friend, I wanted her to have so much more heart and importance in this story than just being a sounding board to Minnie for her romantic life. That's what was important for me as well. The slightly more old-fashioned fairy tales of Cinderella being rescued by her prince charming feel very outdated now to modern readers and modern viewers. I think that love and relationship should be something that is the cherry on the cake of your life, but you've got to have -- look at me, I'm doing cake analogies. This is how embedded in baking -- the sponge needs to be your own self-belief and self-worth, which is, again, about community and friendship and family. Then romantic relationships, in my view, should be the icing on the cake that make your life that extra bit special, but they can't be the thing that you're wanting to fix you or make you happy. That's got to come from something a little bit deeper down. For me, her friendship with Leila, she's known her since she was fifteen. It's really important to her. It's also really affected her life and her journey and her career and her self-image. I wanted Leila to be more than the kooky best friend who just talked her dating, basically.

Zibby: How have your friendships been impacted by both the success of your book and also having kids? I feel like no matter how committed I am to my friends, there's just not enough time to see them, essentially.

Sophie: What's been interesting, actually -- I used to live in London around about where this book is set and then six years ago moved to Jersey, which is a channel island between England and France. That was quite a challenge because most of best friends were my school friends and they all lived in London or the UK. I moved away and then had children and so felt very removed from them physically because it's not that easy to just jump on a plane or jump on a boat and go and visit your friends when you've got a six-month-old in tow. I just got quite good at having people that I call regularly and would do Skype and WhatsApp to. Almost pre-this year where everyone's had to have their friendships like that, some of my best friends, I very much had that going on already. Also, I think your oldest friends, you can not see each other for years, and nothing -- I've actually got a really good friend called Jen who lives in Canada. I went to university in Canada for a year. She was my best friend when we were at Ottawa together. I haven't spoken to her probably in six years. She texted me and said, "Oh, my god, I heard your book was a New York Times best seller. I have to talk to you." I had a Skype call with her last night. We chatted for about three hours, and it was as if it was yesterday, and just caught up. Isn't that what's amazing about life and friendship? You can just pick it up. If you really love someone and know them and know that you like them, then the time and distance can be overcome, hopefully.

Zibby: Yes, I totally agree. I have friends like that too. I'm like, thank god that we can just -- the ones where you don't have that ease of relationship, it's easy to separate the wheat from the chaff, or whatever that expression is, when you have kids or you have a book or something big is coming on and you don't have time. Then to be able to reconnect easily is a hallmark of a really strong friendship.

Sophie: Completely. To be honest, it also sifts out -- when you live away from where most of your friends live, the ones who don't regularly call or WhatsApp you or message you, they are much harder to keep up, these friendships. Again, when you've got little children, sadly, life just gets whittled down, doesn't it? I've made loads of new friends in Jersey as well, mom friends. Life evolves. Someone's just saying on the questions, is this a fictional story or based on true events? It's very much a fictional story. I'll just remind them that is the...

Zibby: Sorry, here's the cover.

Sophie: It's definitely a fictional book.

Zibby: Does female friendship play a role in your next book that you're working on? What's that about? Are you allowed to say?

Sophie: The next book is called The Way We Met. It's all set in Jersey where I live. It's basically about a girl, Laura, who travels to Jersey for work. She picks up the wrong suitcase at the airport. Inside, she sees the contents, and she's convinced that this is the man of her dreams. Lots of the stuff in the case points to the fact that this is her soulmate. She sets off to try and find him. It's very much about someone who, again, believes slightly in fate and destiny and has very strong ideas about romance and [indiscernible]. She really wants to have this amazing [indiscernible]. There's definitely friendship and family that I explore in the book, but slightly different themes and slightly different ideas. It's been really fun to write, actually. I hope people are going to enjoy it when it comes out.

Zibby: Can you share how you met your spouse? I don't know if you're even married.

Sophie: I am married. This is so funny. Someone came over the other day who’d read the book. She met my husband. She said, "My god, you must be so romantic." She basically thought he must be kind of Quinn. I was like, no, he's not. [laughs] We met through, my best friend is married to his best friend. It was kind of a setup in our early thirties. We had lots of friends the same. It's not a particularly exciting story. It’s lovely to start dating someone when you know so many of the same people. We've been on lots of double dates with our best friends together. It's been really nice.

Zibby: That's nice. Awesome. Do you have any advice? I know you already gave some, but more advice for aspiring authors?

Sophie: I would say that sticking to a word count would be good. Then the other thing that really helped me is just applying for lots of competitions. The idea of finishing a whole manuscript can be so daunting, especially if you've just got no idea whether what you're writing is any good. There's lots of competitions for short stories or first chapters or extracts of writing. If you can apply for that kind of thing, it really bolsters your morale and your confidence. I first got published when I entered a competition called Love at First Write, which was for the first three chapters of a romance. Winning something like that can just really boost your self-esteem and make you think, actually, maybe there is something in this. It can also help you get seen by agents and stuff. That would be definitely a tip. Also, get friends to read your work who you trust to be brutally honest. I've got some friends who will read my draft and be like, "It's great. Excellent," which is not really that helpful. Two of my friends, [indiscernible] and Tracey who read my drafts, they're like, "Okay, this is where it's boring. This is where it's slow. I don't like this character." You might not take it all on board, but it just really helps to have someone who will be incredibly frank with you because that's what you need. Someone's saying, when will the new book be out? I think in the US it'll probably be out in the autumn next year. That's the plan. Hopefully, people will still remember who I am by then.

Zibby: Of course, they’ll remember who you are. You're just getting started. Are you kidding? Sophie, thank you. Thanks for doing this GMA Book Club live. Also, this will be a podcast on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books," little double-header situation. Thank you so much. It was so great to talk to you.

Sophie: Thank you so much. It was really fun. This is the first Instagram Live I've done that hasn’t been plagued by technical errors, so yay! Thank you so much for talking to me. That was wicked. Thank you.

Zibby: Good. Thank you. Have a great day.

Sophie: Thank you. Bye.

Zibby: Bye.

Lauren Martin, THE BOOK OF MOODS

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

Lauren Martin: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Zibby: I literally cannot wait. I have been counting down for this interview because your book, which is called The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life, has been the most helpful book I've read. It's not self-help. It's not memoir. It's this perfect hybrid of, here's what happened to you. Here's how I can help you. Here's what you need to know. It's shifted my whole mindset on everything. Maybe you should jump in and just tell listeners what the book is really about, what inspired you to write this book. Then we'll go from there. So much to talk about.

Lauren: I'm just so happy that you thought that because I was worried with the book being published during this crazy pandemic, oh, wait, is this going to seem trivial? Now I'm realizing more than ever, people are kind of locked in their emotions and locked in these places. I feel like we're dealing with such monotony, but also, life has expanded. We need something to ground us. I'm hoping this book is that. Basically, the book started obviously before COVID hit, five years ago. I was living in New York. I was in my twenties. I had everything I wanted. I had a good job at a magazine. I had just moved in with my boyfriend. I was living in New York City. I kept, I don't want to say breaking down, but just ruining my days. I would get in these bad moods. One day, I came home from a really bad day at work. I remember I was in a bad mood. It was a bad commute. I was irritable. My husband was there. He's just always in a good mood. He was making dinner. He was excited to see me. I was just a bitch. I was cranky. I was mean. I was moody. I couldn't get out of it. He poured me a glass of wine. He was trying to talk. Eventually, he just snapped. This was after probably six months of living together. He was like, "I can't do this anymore. I really can't live with someone who cannot control -- it's exhausting, these ups and these downs."

I think when you live with someone, you're forced to look at yourself in a different way. I realized my moods didn't just affect me. They affected him. It's one thing for me to have a bad day or a bad week, but that affects those who you live with. I talk about in the book, mood is energy. Energy's transferable. It just is this snowball effect. That happened. We broke up for a little. I also met this amazing girl, which I talk about in the book, in this bar. She was like, "What's wrong? Why are you drinking on a Monday night?" She said it so simply. She was like, "Oh, you just have moods. Me too." She was one of those women who, I could tell, had a handle on them. I realized, maybe this is something for me to figure out for women. Maybe there's so many more women like me who feel this way who can't seem to get through a day without obsessing over a remark or looking in the mirror and not liking what they see and then just not being themselves and feeling bad. I was like, you know what, I want to explore this. I spent five years studying all my moods, anytime something put me in a bad mood, a comment from my mom, a subway delay. I tried to organize them and evaluate them. Then I started working on things to try and fix them, like things I would read from psychology or spirituality or science. The book is a whole distillation of the best things I learned and the things that worked for me.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. First of all, I am so with you on having moods. I wish that when I was your age -- I'm in my forties now. I wish that back then when I was having so many moods, I had taken five years to sort them all out. [laughs] I pursued different tactics for trying to regulate myself. I think so many people have what you're talking about, which is moods that feel like they take over you. They almost feel out of your control. They can run your life and hurt your relationships. You always feel bad afterwards. I didn't mean to say that. I didn't mean to do that. I didn't even feel like myself. I feel like things like lack of sleep, all these things are triggering factors. Then what do you do? What do you do with this whole composition of characteristics? Your book answered the question in a way.

Lauren: Moods are very individualistic. I'm not going to be triggered by the same things that you are. It's funny. When we hear our friends complaining about their bad moods, it seems so trivial. That's because that's their trigger. The book is broken up by my triggers: family, friendship, beauty. At the core of those is the underlying emotion, which is universal. It's anxiety, depletion. Even though you're seeing my triggers and my stories, I think most people will understand that feeling. What I hope they do is start looking out for their own triggers, which can be kind of fun in a way, and kind of like the love language, find your specific triggers.

Zibby: It's so true. The chapter that I think stayed with me the most -- I shouldn't say I think. One of the most compelling chapters was your chapter on beauty and when you got a zit on your face and you didn't want to go to a party. To be honest, when I read it, I didn't know what you looked like. I didn't even know at first how old you were until you gave it away in the book, essentially how old you are. After I read that whole chapter -- basically, it was you saying you felt so awful about how you looked and that you've always been comparing yourself to other people. You have to come to terms with the fact that you're not a pretty person, and that's okay. Everyone feels ugly from time to time and lets it get them down, but it's okay. You can power through. You come to some state of, really, resolution on it and how to carry those feelings in the world and not let them get you down and whatever. Not to be totally superficial, but then I saw your picture. I'm like, oh, my gosh, what is she talking about? You are so pretty. Then my heart hurt for you even more. Not that it would've been okay for anybody to be beating themselves up over it, but you happen to be very pretty at the same time. For you to be feeling this ugly -- you even talk about being with somebody else who made you feel that way, somebody you idolized. You were like, I can't believe she felt that way. It's almost like everyone's feeling that way. Just tell me more about that whole section.

Lauren: First off, I so appreciate that. Since the book has come out -- I never did Instagram Lives before because I don't like to look at myself. I don't. I talk about in the book, I don't think women see themselves. I think we just look in the mirror and see this compilation of all the things we think are wrong with us. I look in the mirror and, to my husband, he sees something completely different. I've grown up being like, my cheekbones could be better. My lips could be plumper. My eyebrows could be better. I don't see myself. That mood, it's the second chapter because it was a big one for me. Especially living with a man who -- he's confident. He didn't understand. I would have a zit and didn't want to go out. He was like, "Who cares?" To me, it was like, but my beauty is my worth. I think it was coming to terms with my beauty is not my worth and also coming to terms with the fact that I am beautiful, but in my own way. I need to start appreciating that way.

There's this mantra that I talk about in the book. It changed everything for me. It was the whole, you're not pretty like her, you're pretty like you. I found that a few years ago. I made a little sticker out of it. I put it on my phone. Every time I was walking somewhere and I saw a beautiful girl on the street or just was comparing myself, I would look at it. It started to change something in my brain a little bit and really rewire it. Now it's like, I don't know if it's because I'm older or I've just practiced it so much, but I really do feel more confident. I feel like I have these amazing gifts to give. I have these unique things that make me beautiful. I'm going to stop comparing myself to women. Also, when that happens, I think you start appreciating women more. Rather than comparing yourself against them, you can start to be like, wow, this girl's amazing, and I'm amazing. I swear, this book was like -- I was writing through it as I was experiencing it. I let a few friends read it. She was like, "This is a love letter to yourself. This is really beautiful because you can tell you're reckoning with something in each chapter." I really did go through the chapters in real time and have to experience it, which is why I'm glad it resonated with you.

Zibby: Totally. Even when you challenge us, go back and look through photos from three or four years ago. Were you really as bad as you thought? Also, being around older people and having them see the beauty in you as the youth itself, that's something just so intangible. Until you lose it, you didn't even know you had it. You didn't value it. It had no value to you at the time. It was only once you lost it that it takes on its own value.

Lauren: Exactly. There's this amazing Nora Ephron quote that I put in the book. It's like, if I could go back, I would put a bikini on until age thirty-five and never take it off. We just don't appreciate ourselves in the moment. Then I always look back, I'm like, wow, I was so cute back then, but right now, I'm cute. Why can't we just ever appreciate ourselves? I talk about in this chapter, a little bit of the spiritual aspects of washing dishes while washing dishes and appreciating the moment.

Zibby: Yes, I loved that.

Lauren: I'm glad it resonated.

Zibby: That was so great. I'm sorry I'm cutting you off. I'm so excited. I'm not even going to let you talk. I used that the next day. Last night or the night before last, I had this going on. There were so many dishes. Even when my husband was cooking, I was like, "Are you sure you want to make eight things and heat up four things in other pots? That's going to be a lot of dishes after." He's like, "It's great. Everybody's going to want this. It's going to go bad if we don't use it." I'm like, "Okay, fine." Then of course, there were a thousand dishes. Everybody left to go watch TV. That's not true. I had some helpers. Anyway, there I am with my hands in the wet, soapy water. I was like, wait, this is what Lauren was talking about in her book. My kids were around me. Everybody was sort of happy. I was like, you know what, this might be the best moment even though I would normally be annoyed and in a bad mood that I had all these dishes. Is it worth it? Instead, that was like, wow, this is a moment in time. There are actually a lot of great things going on. I was thanking you for that as I got that mindfulness boost from the book.

Lauren: That is the most amazing thing to hear because that's really all I think any author wants from a book, is just someone -- especially with a book like this that's more self-help, even if just one thing sticks with you and that changes the way that you perceive something or live your life, that's a huge feat. That's amazing to hear. I do the same thing when I wash the dishes now. I'm like, Lauren, appreciate this right now. This is a great moment. Stop thinking about the future. Stop thinking about what you'd rather be doing. This is a good thing to be doing right now. Your husband's in the other room. You're washing dishes for the food that you just had. Life is good.

Zibby: You even said something like maybe you're washing dishes and eventually you won't be washing dishes for two. You'll be washing dishes for one. That made me want to cry. The whole thing is such a great reminder of making the best of life, is really what it is.

Lauren: I just felt like my bad moods, I was wasting my life. I was wasting my life in these bad moods. Why can't I be in a good mood more often? I know when I'm in a good mood, I'm my best self. I'm happy and cheerful. My husband said something to me the other day. He's like, "Oh, my god, you're so cute today." I was like, "Why? I'm wearing sweatpants." He's like, "You're just happier. You're happy." Most women, we get so in our heads. We just get so distracted. Then we're not ourselves.

Zibby: It's so true. What is your stand on medication? A lot of people might come back from this conversation and say, maybe she just needs a higher dose of Zoloft or something like that. [laughs]

Lauren: I think everyone kind of wonders once in a while, do I have depression? My grandmother was bipolar. I think everyone wonders a little bit. I have been prescribed Xanax when I couldn't sleep. I talk about that in the book. I think there's a fine line when you know this is a bigger issue than something I can handle myself. In high school, a doctor did put me on Zoloft. I didn't stay on it. I think I was on it a week. I was like, you know what, this is ridiculous. I want to see if I can work this out. I've always had that. I think some people are just born with a little bit more sadness than others, especially artists. I find myself more introspective. I think a lot of women have this amazing quality for empathy and this amazing quality for emotions. We have so many emotions within us. I didn't want to lose that. This book has been my source of help and medication. I do think you know when there is a time and place for you to seek actual help. There's a fine line. I think you'll know when you should speak to your doctor if you are feeling those ways. I hope this helps those who aren't sure, really. Then maybe this could be the last try.

Zibby: Totally. How did you find the actual writing of the book? You loved it?

Lauren: No. [laughs]

Zibby: No?

Lauren: It's not that I don't love it. I talk about it in the book. I think it's the first chapter.

Zibby: How you did not want to do it at all and looked at it like hell. [laughs]

Lauren: I had a breakdown. I was freaking out. I do come from a writing background, but when you're doing it for -- you probably know this. When you're doing it for a publication, you have a deadline. You just get it done. I was writing an article a day. It's just like, whatever. You care, but it wasn't this, wow, this has been my whole life leading up to this book. This is a publishing company looking -- you also understand because I know you're working on a book, not to be creepy. [laughs]

Zibby: It's not creepy. Buy my book, everybody. [laughs] I'm kidding.

Lauren: Just throw that in there. It was so anxiety-inducing because I started worrying so much about, is it going to sell? Is it well-written? I started going to what I always did, which was Words of Women, looking at how other women approached it, and especially writers. I love writing advice. I just love it. I was finding a lot of solace in how other women faced the blank page. I took the best ones and I put them in the book. I feel like writing advice is really life advice. Focus on one word at a time. Just pay attention to what you're working on. Stop getting ahead of yourself. The process started as very chaotic. Then as I was getting into and finding this writing advice, it got much calmer. Then I loved it. I loved every bit of it.

Zibby: People think my podcast is about books, but really, it's about life because that's all writing is. It's all stories and moments. That's what a good book is. It's a way into somebody else's life and into their heads and into their advice and all the rest.

Lauren: Writers are these vessels. We're just trying to explain our life experience and the things that we see in life and interpret out of life. I feel like the two coincide really well.

Zibby: Tell me more, also, about Words of Women. You had all the quotes. That's grown into this huge thing now. Tell me about that.

Lauren: Five years ago, I was obviously in this dark place. My boyfriend and I had kind of broken up. I met this girl. I was really lonely too. I talk about friendship in the book. I was in New York, but I didn't have the college friends anymore, and the high school friends. I had some coworkers, but I felt really lonely. I was seeking, at the time, women with moods and trying to understand it better. I started finding all these amazing quotes that these women were saying. They really made me feel better. I think a lot of pain has to do with the loneliness as pain and how we feel so alienated by it. We must be the only one feeling this way. When I found these other women saying, "I feel this way. I feel anxious. I feel insecure," it would be, like, Isabella Rossellini. I was like, oh, my god, these amazing, successful, powerful women feel the same way I do. I feel not only less alone, I feel really empowered by this. I started putting the quotes onto an Instagram account. At the same time, I was like, I'm going to -- I couldn't get a publisher at this point. I was an unknown writer. It's really hard to get a publishing deal. It's hard to get an agent. I was like, you know what, I'll self-publish one day. I was like, I'll build this account. I'll bleed in what I'm learning from the book and my own words and these amazing quotes. In five years, I'll self-publish. Five years goes by.

I also have a newsletter. This woman reached out to me on the newsletter who worked in publishing. She was like, "I love your newsletter. I love your account. Do you have an agent?" It kind of went full circle. I really believe if you invest in yourself and really -- these quotes that I was putting were things that were driving me to keep going and keep following my dreams. It just grew organically. I think a lot of women like knowing that they're not alone and also like hearing these amazing stories of women. I talk about it in the book. I also wanted to kind of disrupt the feed. I think a lot of our moods and our insecurities come from just scrolling through perfected lives of others, these fake lives. We see, oh, it looks like a beautiful girl on a yacht, beautiful girl, friends hanging out without me. In between that, I really wanted there to be an amazing quote that wasn't cheesy or inspirational, but a really profound quote about life or friendship or just the female condition that made you really stop and forget about the rest and think about something different.

Zibby: Would you do, or maybe you already have this in the works or something, just a quote book, like a beautiful coffee table book with all your quotes?

Lauren: I would love to do that. I had one publisher -- I think my agent's mad at me -- reach out to me about doing it. I'm so particular because I've been doing it for five years. I basically did a pitch to her with all of these quotes I would use and this idea. She was like, "No, I just would rather have it be --" She wanted a Beyoncé lyric for the name of it. I was just like, that's not the vibe of Words of Women. If I'm going to do it, I want it to be done right. I passed on it. I'm waiting for the right opportunity to really do it and do it right, but I would love to do that.

Zibby: Don't wait. You should just send it out now.

Lauren: Yeah, I know. Now it's like, stop waiting.

Zibby: Now's a really good time.

Lauren: You're right. Okay, I'm going to definitely work on that.

Zibby: If you just maybe get your agent on that this afternoon, I bet you could. Call me in two weeks and let me know if you haven't sold it. [laughter]

Lauren: I love that idea. It definitely is on my radar.

Zibby: I was just saying on another podcast, I have this secret, maybe I should have a publishing house myself or something like that because every time -- not every time. A lot of times I talk to authors like you, I'm like, I want Lauren Martin's coffee table book on my coffee table now. Who's going to do it? If I could just make it happen, that would be so cool. I'm not at that point. If I were, I would be doing it myself.

Lauren: Maybe I will wait for that. That's what I mean. I'm happy to just wait for the right opportunity. I'll keep an eye out.

Zibby: Okay, great. I have four books slated ahead of you. No, I'm kidding. [laughter] I'm totally kidding.

Lauren: Fine with me. It'll give me time.

Zibby: No, I'm kidding. What are you doing now? You must have all this press coming up for the book and all of that. Are you still writing? Are you doing it just on the side to keep yourself sane, or what?

Lauren: It's so hard because I'm kind of superstitious. I'm like, I don't want to start working on another book until I feel like I've sold enough of this one and I'm out of the woods. I'm very overly cautious. I do still work full time. I work in marketing. I so want to be a full-time writer. That's my dream. This is my first book. I don't want to jinx it. God forbid I quit my job and -- I know how life works. I know that it can take time. You look at someone like Elizabeth Gilbert and you're like, I'm going to be a best seller like her. Eat Pray Love was her fourth book. It takes time. I'm working. I'm writing on the side. I still write my newsletter. I still run the account, which I love doing. It's an obsession. I have a few ideas for -- I would really love to do a book on female friendship. I think it's not really talked about enough. I think women have a little bit of a warped view of these friendships we should have in our thirties and forties that's not realistic. I feel like it would be helpful to have someone say, look, I struggle with sometimes feeling lonely or maintaining a friendship that I wish I could maintain. That might be something I'm working on next.

Zibby: That would be great. I'm sure you could put some of the quotes in there too.

Lauren: Of course, I'll put the quotes. I'm a quote queen.

Zibby: You could do The Book of Friends. You could have a whole series of The Book of...

Lauren: I love that. My husband and I are currently working on getting pregnant. We had a previous little thing, but it didn't work out. I was thinking when I was pregnant for a little, the emotions --

Zibby: -- I'm sorry.

Lauren: It's okay. I'm so happy more people are talking about it, like Chrissy Teigen and all these amazing women. In the few months I was pregnant, I was like, this is so extreme, these emotions and being a woman and having to just keep going through life but also being pregnant and being tired and being nauseous and having your hormones change. Then I was so excited because I was like, when motherhood comes, that's going to be a whole range of moods that I'm sure I haven't experienced yet, and triggers.

Zibby: Yeah. Hold onto your seat for that one. [laughs]

Lauren: Exactly. That's kind of also in the works, as in getting pregnant hopefully one day. Motherhood would definitely be an interesting subject.

Zibby: You could even call it The Book of Trying.

Lauren: I feel like there's definitely not enough literature out there for women who experience miscarriages or lost babies. You do feel very isolated when it happens.

Zibby: Especially because people say don't talk about it until after twelve weeks. People are much more open. I have thirteen-year-old twins and also a seven-year-old and almost six-year-old. When I was trying to have my twins, nobody was talking about anything. All of a sudden, it's like, don't tell anybody even if you are pregnant for twelve -- I'm like, how could I not tell anybody for three months when I'm vomiting on the street? This is the time that I would want to tell everybody every little detail because it's the wildest ride ever.

Lauren: It's so true. You're kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't. I didn't tell anyone except my parents. I was twelve weeks. Then when I experienced the miscarriage, I had to go out with my friends. I'd been avoiding them for three months because I didn't want to tell them. Then I went out for drinks with them. I had just experienced this intense traumatic experience. I didn't want to tell them because I hadn’t told them I was pregnant. I wasn't going to be like, guys, I'm really sad today. [Indiscernible] so much that's internalized. You're going on with normal life. You're just like, this incredible thing happened to me. This also terrible thing happened to me. I just have to act normal. I'm happy to see more women are speaking about it. I do think we definitely could talk about it more.

Zibby: Especially as you're going through it, even if you're not ready to write a whole book about it, you should be journaling and taking notes on all the feelings and moods. I think that a book like this on that would be really interesting too.

Lauren: Definitely. I've been trying to write about it. I will say, it's been harder. I'll write about it. Then I'll have a drink and start crying later. I'll be like, clearly, that was a very -- I need some time. When I was pregnant, first of all, I just can't get over how tired you are all the time. I was way too tired to even write. I was like, I'll write when I start feeling better and normal. It's an intense experience.

Zibby: I didn't mean to put pressure on you to do it. Not that you need more ideas. You already had a fantastic book. I want to keep reading what you're writing, so that's why I'm throwing out all these --

Lauren: -- I love it. Trust me, multiple people have been like, you should be journaling. You should be writing about this. I know as well. I'm just excited. My first book, it's definitely anxiety-inducing. I'm trying to, as I speak about in the book, change that verbiage from, I'm so nervous and anxious, to, I'm excited. Otherwise, I'll have a heart attack.

Zibby: Even what you said about -- what did you say? It's not stressful, it's a challenge, or something. It's not hard, it's just a challenge.

Lauren: It's been five years, and [indiscernible].

Zibby: I know. I'm sorry. I should've had the quote at the ready. I'm like, can you please quote this back to me?

Lauren: I was actually talking about this the other day with someone.

Zibby: And accepting the inevitability of pain and then keeping going, all of that too, so you don't have to worry so much.

Lauren: Stoicism, yeah. I'm trying to find it as well. Of course, you can never find things when you need to.

Zibby: No. Sorry, this is my job, and I'm not doing it. Anyway, you said something great as if -- it's basically just reframing. You just have to reframe the hard times and see them all as --

Lauren: -- Exactly. Oh, here it is. It's to replace "Calm down" with "I'm excited;" "I don't want to" with "I get to;" "I'm scared," "I'm pumped." It's switching that. That's called anxiety reappraisal, which is obviously a cognitive trick. It really does work because the feeling of nervousness and anxiety is the same as excitement, but the way we label it is the way that we then experience it.

Zibby: It's so true. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Lauren: Yes. One, I just wrote about this in my newsletter, there's always a back door. I think the hardest part about writing, especially if you're kind of unknown and you don't have a large following of anything, you're like, what's the point? I'll never get published. If there's a will, there's a way. This is coming from me. I literally moved to New York when I was twenty-two. I didn't even major in English. My parents wanted me to major in marketing. They're like, "You'll make more money." I just decided, I'm going to go to New York. I'm going to just walk door to door until someone gives me a job. If I'm an intern, that's fine, which I was, worked my way up. Then I couldn't get an agent the traditional way, so I built a social platform. It took five years. If you love to do something, it will come. Have faith in yourself. Have faith in the process. Even if you need to self-publish, I think there's no shame in that. Fifty Shades of Grey was self-published. Even if you go towards your goal that way, don't be daunted by it. Once you start writing, I think the biggest thing is to just have faith in what you're doing.

I literally have a Google Doc which I also might one day publish. I think it's two hundred pages of quotes from writers giving advice. So much of the advice is just get it all out. Get it all down. That's what the first draft is for. Then the second draft, just rework it. I think it's so daunting when you see the blank page. You need to just get it out even if it's not good. Then you can rework it later. The other is Dani Shapiro. I love her. I know you've met her and interviewed her. Her book, Still Writing, is my bible. She has so many good quotes. I just love her "build a corner." That's what people good at puzzles do. They do one piece at a time. They focus on the corner. I think it's just staying calm and staying passionate and not getting discouraged by the process and not getting discouraged by when your friends are getting published and you're not and feeling like it's impossible. Anything worth doing is hard. If you have that burning desire, that's enough proof that you deserve to be a writer.

Zibby: I love it. Lauren, thank you so much. Thanks for this chat. Thanks for your book. Thanks for indulging all my random ideas for you which you don't even need. I'm sorry.

Lauren: No, I loved -- they were all the ideas I've ever had, and someone was just validating them. Thank you.

Zibby: [laughs] Okay, great. Stay in touch. Congratulations.

Lauren: Thank you for having me. Talk soon.

Zibby: My pleasure. Bye.

Lauren: Bye.

Nessa Rapoport, EVENING

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Nessa. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" to discuss your novel, Evening.

Nessa Rapoport: I'm glad to be here. Thanks.

Zibby: First of all, this was such a beautiful book. I loved it. So great. I love your writing style. It's so poetic and just great. I'm a big fan. Then, after I read --

Nessa: -- You can stop now. [laughter]

Zibby: I was going to say after I read it, I started investigating more. I read that it took you twenty-six years, really, thirty years, to work on this book. Tell me the whole story of this book. Maybe also tell a little bit about the memoir you wrote and your first book which I know was a huge success. Give me your whole story.

Nessa: I began this book in 1990. The first chapter came to me in an instant. This has never happened to me as a writer before and certainly not since. I thought, great, this is going to be my easy book. This one's just going to flow out of me. I'm just going to build on that first chapter. I'll be done really soon. For once, writing will not feel as it usually does, like peeling tiny pieces of skin off my body one at a time.

Zibby: That sounds like fun.

Nessa: I would describe my current life as the further humbling of Nessa Rapoport. One instance of that is how long it took me to write Evening. In essence, what happened was I created a setup with a kind of propulsive story. Then I had all these obligations to the story. I had never written a book like this. The opening is, as you know, two sisters, one is grieving for the other. They're in their thirties. Eve, the narrator, has come back from New York to Toronto where her sister died very prematurely. Her sister is the most famous Canadian anchorwoman on TV. She has a devoted husband and two lovely children. Eve is almost deliberately indeterminate. She's endlessly writing a PhD she can't quite finish on British women writers between the wars. She's always lived in tiny rental apartments. She teaches English at a community college to women who come in the evening. Her life drives her older sister, Tam, crazy because Tam is a woosh into the future and Eve is in love with the past, as Tam accuses her.

Throughout the whole book, although Eve has died, Tam is always in her head talking to her and in dialogue with her. In this first chapter, you learn very quickly that these two sisters who have a complex but definitely loving relationship had a stupendous fight two weeks before Tam dies. They never reconciled, which is not only an awful burden for Eve but also against their principles as sisters. As you learn as the book goes on, whenever they had a fight when they were both alive, one would call back into the front door, "I love you. I love you," in case she died in a car accident and never got to reconcile with her sister. So this is bad. Did I know what the fight was about? I did not. That was problem number one, this issue. That thread through the whole book is that, as you know and as readers know, the morning after the funeral, Eve discovers a secret about Tam that upends her view of herself and her future, her sister, her family ecology. I did know what the secret was, but I had no idea how to construct a narrative that would thread that secret through the book and keep you, the reader, engaged as it unfolded. I knew that it didn't matter if you figured it out soon or later.

I think some readers figure it out right away. Some, to my thrill, don't figure it out until the revealing scene. It's not a mystery. It's a novel, so it's okay. If you figure it out early, then you know something Eve doesn't know. That creates its own momentum. If you don't figure it out, then you have the same surprise she has as she encounters it at that moment. That was a real challenge. I was an interior, more Virginia Woolf writer. I started out as a poet. Language matters a lot to me. I felt I had a responsibility to keep this story pushing forward as I shuttle back and forth from present to past in these scenes. I had the great grace to have a mentor named Ted Solotaroff who was a very eminent editor who's no longer alive. Bless his memory. I took him out for coffee early on. I said, "Here's my setup. I don't know how to move forward. I can't figure out how to tell this plot." He said to me, "Plot is character. When you know your characters, you'll know how to do this." That explains most of why it took twenty-six years.

I wanted to tell you, I was not one of these, I love babies, I can't wait to have -- I knew I'd have children. I knew it really mattered to me, but I was not a gushy baby person. I was in quite a bit of shock when I had my first one. I really didn't know how to do anything. The biggest shock was that I couldn't read, that I didn't have time to read. I hadn’t understood that that was my great sanctuary for mental health. When I needed to zone out and get out of my brain, that's what I did. I have three younger sisters. We're four sisters, no brothers. I always say all of us spent our entire motherhood trying to evade our importuning children and get to finish our books. Even on those grounds, I knew I had to talk to you. [laughs]

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. I remember literally pumping in the middle of night with my third kid, I have four kids, and having Therese Anne Fowler's book on the table while I held the things. That was my only time to read, was in the middle of the night when I was pumping. Yes, it's crazy. Now even with remote school, I can sit in the rocking chair, I can read a little bit of your book. They can be on Zoom. It's not perfect, but at least you fit it in at some point. Anyway, back to Evening and your wonderful editor who you were talking about and all of that. Now we have this book in front of us that took you all this time and evolved. I read your interview with your daughter, which was so awesome, I think in Glamour.

Nessa: It'll happen to you. I assume your kids aren't quite as old as mine. This is what happens.

Zibby: I hope so. I interviewed my dad on my podcast because he also wrote a book. That was really fun. I'm hoping someone will interview me eventually. [laughs] Tell me what that was like. Also, tell me about having all of this out in the world and how you relate to your family and how this relates to your relationship with your sisters. This is a very sister-heavy book. Tell me a little bit about all of that.

Nessa: I'll start with the sisters. Having sisters is a thing. We are four sisters within six years.

Zibby: Whoa.

Nessa: Yeah, which was a tribute to my mother. Those were the years after the war when atypically, actually, women stayed home and wanted to be home. It was the great retreat from when women were actively participating because men were at war. In Canada, men went to World War II also. My mother had an utterly exceptional mother. As you know from Evening, the grandmother, who is not quite my grandmother -- it really isn't an autobiography, but little tidbits and tendrils entered. There's always a remarkable grandmother in everything that I write. One of my friends says, "It's one of your signature moves." My grandmother was part of that pioneering generation of first doctors, first lawyers. She was born in 1897. She was the first woman and the first Jew to get a PhD in physics from the University of Toronto. She had five children. She was an observant Jew on top of it all. Plus, she was born in Canada which for Canadian Jewry was very unusual because it's a much newer immigration than here. Of course, in response, my mother who has many aptitudes and is still with me at ninety-two wanted to be married and raise children and have a big family which she went on to do. The thing about sisters is, as my friend Francine Klagsbrun noted, your siblings know you longer than anyone if the creator is good and everybody dies in order. Sisters know each other in a very intimate way. Do you have sisters?

Zibby: I have a brother. I've become very close to sisters-in-law, but I don't have a sister.

Nessa: It's different because you know the center of your sisters. You've stood next to each other in the bathroom. You've exchanged makeup. You've inevitably, if not competed, you compare. Because I was the eldest, I didn't have anyone ahead of me. It took me many decades to understand that my sisters coming behind me noticed and paid attention. I noticed and paid attention too because my sisters were almost my peers at a certain point and then, of course, by now really are. They really noticed. We were in this kind of ecology. It's funny. You polarize each other into roles. One of the things I wanted to show in Evening between these two sisters is that on the surface, anybody would assume, and the people who come to this shiva house for mourning do assume, that Eve is jealous of her sister. Her sister has "everything," and Eve is unfinished. In fact, Eve has never been jealous of her sister. She's aware of her sister. She's in awe of her sister, but she's not jealous. By the end, in some ways, you could certainly argue that it turns out Tam was jealous of Eve, which is one of the reasons she makes such sardonic comments about Eve's lifestyle. As I used to say to my children, a secure person doesn't have to talk like that. Eve may seem to have it all, but she's always sort of harping.

Once you release a book into the world, it's no longer yours. Several readers have said to me that they were alarmed by Tam's hostility, that's the world they used, to her sister. I really didn't experience them that way. I experienced them as sisters. One thing that happens with siblings, I think brothers and sisters, is you each adopt a role. Because you want your own identity within a family, you're pretty protective of your role. You don't actually want to be the other person. One of the amusing aspects of the sister issue is -- my mother's one of five. She's the only daughter. My father was one of three boys. Neither of them had sisters. They grew up in the Depression when you defer to authority and you take on responsibility almost prematurely early. They had these four daughters coming of age in the youth culture where being young is adulated and the economy's good and nobody's thinking too much about responsibility. They were totally at a loss. My mother used to say that she worried that we would want each other's boyfriends. Once you're in a family, you never want the boyfriend of the other one. One of the things that's interesting in this novel is there are two other sisters. There's Nana and her very beautiful kind of amoral sister. That sister, Nell, certainly is impinging on Nana's life and, indeed, on the life of anybody she can. The last thing I'll say about your question is I'm very interested in the role of beauty in a large family constellation. There's always someone or some few people who are exceptionally beautiful. The way the family responds to that is fascinating. I learned everything I know sitting around the kitchen table listening to women talk. I think Evening reflects that.

Zibby: Wow. I'm actually jealous of -- I mean, I love my brother. I love my family. I wouldn't change anything. The unique experience you had growing up with three women and what that does to a person's character ongoing and your other relationships, that's just a gift. That's a gift.

Nessa: As you know and I know and I like to say, if you'd like to mythologize it, great, but of course, it's not like that. It's complicated, loving, but complicated.

Zibby: The fact that one sister dies in this book and yours, thank god, are all living, where did that come from? Is this your biggest fear, is that this would happen? Did it stem from other losses? I know you've written a lot about loss.

Nessa: That is a really good question. Because the setup happened to me -- I'm sure you've talked to so many writers. Don't some of them say, I kind of wasn't in control of my characters, they sort of took over?

Zibby: Yes.

Nessa: I did not understand that. As I have said, I found it a little pretentious until it happened to me. I did lose a friend in her thirties to breast cancer, but I know she wasn't in my conscious thought. I think this book is all unconscious. In some ways, that makes it more autobiographical because it's coming from deep places of collected anxieties, as you note, and impressions that I wasn't entirely in charge of. In terms of the grief and the loss, I have had a very blessed life. At this point, I have lost four very close women friends. At the point that I started and wrote that first chapter, I had lost only one. I'm a porous person. The daughter whose interview you read used to say, "Oh, Mom, you and your morose childhood." [laughs] Writers are dark. I think I wrote to alchemize suffering into something better. I'm a very, very not believer in the silver lining of life. I see no point to suffering. I wish none of us had to endure it. Since we do, I feel I'd like to give something back. What do I have? I have wisdom.

To come back to your first question, the single biggest difference between when I started this book and now is not that my sisters characters changed, it's that I got older. Life became more nuanced. I endured losses myself. I had to come to understand that loss is absolutely intrinsic to being alive. Tragedy, not necessarily if you're lucky, but loss, absolutely. The last thing I'll say -- it's evident in this book. I didn't realize it was a main theme until I started talking to people who read it. I do not believe that when someone leaves this world, you necessarily need to end that relationship even if it was fragmented and really not where you wanted it to be. I think we keep growing. I like to say the only physics I know, compared to my grandmother, is that we're always in motion and that energy doesn't die. It just changes form. I believe that love is a galvanizing energy and that you can heal a relationship that was fraught even if the other person isn't there. I think you see that in this novel. The biggest change is not Tam and Eve. I was fascinated by them thirty years ago. I, luckily, remain fascinated by them. The biggest change is Nessa as I had to encounter so much more complexity in life.

Zibby: That's really beautiful. It's true. I feel like knowing that loss is such a fundamental part of life, it's a shame that we don't do more to prepare ourselves or our loved ones for its eventuality. It always blindsides people because we operate under this delusion of invincibility. We don't want to go there and think about it. I wonder what life would be like if we all checked into that every so often and had some sort of mental preparation other than anxiety. I feel like I am always thinking about the worst case to prepare myself.

Nessa: You're cutting a false deal where it's like an amulet. If I worry about it enough, nothing will happen. It turns out not to be that way. I'm thinking as you're speaking, the strongest indicator of this question is being a parent. When I started out, without even realizing it, I wanted to protect my children from absolutely everything. I'm not of the small children, small problems metaphor. I loved watching my children get older. They're my teachers now. I really learn a lot from my young adult children. I started to realize that it was very important to go to the school of adversity and learn resilience and teach my children that when things happen that were very hard, they had the fortitude to get through it. This was not in my repertoire. As one of my sisters liked to say, the Rapoport women, they get an A+ on the first try or they quit. This is not a good way to live. As a parent, I had to memorize before I really believed it, that understanding. Do you feel that way as you raise your four?

Zibby: I find that the kids who have gone through the most, I feel the -- as with any kids in any family, not to pick out either one, but there's one child who's just had to overcome more stuff than the rest. I feel like that particular child now has a sense of grit. She has something that I couldn't teach. You have to learn it yourself.

Nessa: I'm still learning it. [laughter] The other thing that struck me when you spoke is if you have a childhood as I did that was very interior, addicted to reading, very dramatic inside, being a very intense person, which is genetic, you have the fake understanding that the graph of life will just go up. You're just going to get happier and happier as you get older and older because how could such misery endure as you were so hungry for life and longing for things? There's a lot of true humility about coming of age and understanding that you're going to grow, not quit growing at forty, which is what I had resolved in my thirties. I'm done with this. It's too depleting. You grow until you die if you're lucky. This novel is short, but I tried to show that these people, both Eve who's alive and even Tam, they are always in motion. Their relationship is therefore in motion.

Zibby: It's a comfort to hear what you said about relationships continuing on and love continuing on because I know there's just so much loss these days. To take away that finality of it all is probably one of the most healing things you could say to somebody.

Nessa: You have to get there yourself.

Zibby: I know. You have to get there yourself. There were so many quotes I wanted to read back to you. Of course, I'm not going to be able to find them at the right time. I just want to read at least one example of scenes that I loved. Hold on one second. Oh, I liked this. I like this. I can't say I liked it. It's so sad. When Eve was at Tam's funeral and saying her final goodbyes, you wrote, "People are starting to go, but I cannot turn away from my sister. As if departing from a king, I walk backward from the grave, a solider and an honor guard whose watch is over but who will not relinquish her duties." I can just see that. Those sentences, you can see the cemetery, the walking. It's just amazing. Then this other passage, I loved. This is when Eve and Laurie were having their long-distance relationship back in the day before reuniting at the funeral, which was very juicy. You said, "During Laurie's high school trip to Europe, I was a beggar at the den window pleading with the smug despot of impeded love for the mailman to appear. Only when I gave up did he manifest himself, a potentate in his authority to grant or withhold. However disciplined I tried to be, I could not wait until the letters fell, but opened the door, hand thrust out, speechless." What a way to describe waiting for the mailman. Seriously, this is an exercise in creative writing masterpiece. Tell me about how you honed your craft. How did you learn to write this way?

Nessa: I began as a poet. I went to University of Toronto. Then as soon as I could move to New York City, which I fell in love with, I did. At University of Toronto I won a prize for poetry. I decided then that poetry was too marginal to the culture. I wanted to be more in communion with people. I've written a book of prose poems, as you know. Again, an exhibit here. In addition to the story I had to work out, the other aspect of it, as you said, was language. The last realm of my perfectionism is choosing each word. I jokingly say it's a very bad attribute for parenting. Your children don't care for it when you're a perfectionist. I had to give it up. In one's own work in writing, the only harm is to myself. I wanted to show you, this is the exhibit. This is a thirty-two-page, single-spaced, double-column document of quite literally every word in Evening except for "the" and "and." Going on the basis of my friend Daphne Merkin's aphorism, you can have only one cerulean in a book, so true, I checked every word to make sure it wasn't too proximate. It's a very short novel, and I didn't want to repeat very studded words. I feel that it would be a great diminishment if I did that. Here you have long, long lists by alphabet that sound like this. "Deprived, deranged, deride, descend, desecrated, desire," with how many times they appear and whether I'm satisfied that they're far enough apart that you wouldn't read it and think, didn't she just use that word?

Zibby: Wow. That is amazing. I'm so glad you showed me that. I can't believe that I had not asked that question it would've remained sitting by your side and I wouldn't have known about it. What else do you have over there? [laughs]

Nessa: The only other thing I have is -- my husband is a visual artist. When I first started this book, I was using a computer, but it wasn't really native to us yet. I was still writing some things by hand. This is what it looked like by hand, all these words, before I started typing. He said to me, "I want to frame that. I want to frame that document with how many instances words like light came up in Evening."

Zibby: Gosh, I didn't know it was so intentional. All I could tell was the effect of it. Now seeing the work that went into it and how specific it was, that's really neat. That's also just a really interesting way to analyze anybody's work, how often words come. What does it mean? Which words come more often? I'm sure there's a whole science behind this that I just don't usually do. Very interesting. What's coming next for you now? This one was twenty-six to thirty years in the making. Do you have another one that's been gestating for as long? This is the end? What do you think?

Nessa: I hope it's not the end. I certainly, doing the math and following the actuarial tables, cannot take another thirty years to write a novel. I do want to give a word of encouragement to anybody out there who has a dream of a project that seems as if it's not going to come to fruition. There's a kind of serenity I have from having fulfilled my ambition for this book. Many was the soul who wondered, is Nessa hanging onto this book for its own sake? I wasn't. I knew I would feel that click, and I did. I have these little waves of wondering that could turn into the next book. I have certain experiences that I'm interested in. I, every day, wish it would coalesce into a next project. I was an editor for many years. I used to tell people, when your book comes out, the most important thing you can do is be immersed in another book. I also was thinking yesterday, I just can't force it. I am an excellent procrastinator. I am not in the flow, one of those people that -- I tell everybody else to do this -- sits down, writes every morning, writes badly. I know all the rules, but I don't follow them. I think it's probably a little too early for me given what I gave this book to have something fully born, but I'm playing around. It is play, right?

Zibby: I hope so. It shouldn't only be work. Awesome. Nessa, thank you. Thank you so much for sharing Evening with us, for telling me about your life and the backstory and showing me that amazing document. Now I'm going to go back and read Preparing for Sabbath. This is just such a beautiful book. I love also that you structed it with the days of shiva. I just loved it. Thank you.

Nessa: Thank you for being such a perceptive reader and especially for loving it because that's it, there's nothing better.

Zibby: Thank you. Thank you so much. Hope to stay in touch.

Nessa: Thank you for inviting me.

Zibby: Of course. Buh-bye.

Nessa: Bye.

Paola Mendoza and Abby Sher, SANCTUARY

Zibby Owens: Hi, everybody. Hope you're having a good afternoon. I am really excited to be doing an Instagram Live with Paola Mendoza and Abby Sher. I've been carrying this around in my bag all day, as I often do with all my books. I hope people are going to join or I'll feel really silly. Anyway, first, I am going to talk to Paola and then Abby because you can only have two people on at a time. I'm going to invite Paola to join in a second. I'll just read you this description if you want. "It's 2032, and in this near-future America, all citizens are chipped and everyone is tracked--from buses to grocery stores. It's almost impossible to survive as an undocumented immigrant, but that's exactly what sixteen-year-old Vali is doing. She and her family have carved out a stable, happy life in small-town Vermont, but when Vali's mother's counterfeit chip starts malfunctioning and the Deportation Forces raid their town, they are forced to flee. Now on the run, Vali and her family are desperately trying to make it to her tía Luna's in California, a sanctuary state that is currently being walled off from the rest of the country. But when Vali's mother is detained before their journey even really begins, Vali must carry on with her younger brother across the country to make it to safety before it's too late. Gripping and urgent, co-authors Paola Mendoza and Abby Sher have crafted a narrative that is as haunting as it is hopeful in envisioning a future where everyone can find sanctuary." That is your preview. Now I'll get Paola into this discussion. She can tell us all about writing this book, writing it jointly with Abby, what inspired the book, and so much more. Hi, Paola.

Paola Mendoza: Hi.

Zibby: How are you?

Paola: I'm good. How are you?

Zibby: I'm good. Sorry it took so long for us to connect on this. Congratulations on your book.

Paola: Thank you so much. Thank you so much for reading it and having me here today.

Zibby: You're welcome. It's a chilling thought, what would happen if this was reality. How did you envision this alternate universe? How did you think about it? Then how did you make it into a novel? Which came first?

Paola: I've been working in the immigrant rights space as a storyteller for over fifteen years. I've heard and had the privilege to listen to the stories of immigrants, specifically undocumented immigrants in this country, for a very long time. In 2018, the Trump administration implemented a horrible policy called Family Separation. What that did for those that might not remember is that families across the southern border into this country were ripped apart from their children. Their kids were placed in foster cares. Their kids were placed with strangers in some instances. To this day almost three years later, not all families have been reunited. In that moment of despair and darkness, there was a group of us that started organizing against this policy. We organized marches across the country. The, I don't want to ever say good news, but there was a positive outcome in that the zero-tolerance policy that allowed family separation as we knew it then, it stopped. It was ended within six weeks.

Then I started to imagine what would've happened if we hadn’t stopped that policy. What would that allow the Trump administration to -- what would he have done next? What would've been the horrible thing that he would've done next? I started to imagine the beginnings of the world of Sanctuary. I started to see this really scary, dark, unfortunate place that I didn't want to live in, a United States that seemed possible, but definitely not the future that we wanted. I then asked myself, what's the answer to this horrible nightmare? The answer was Vali, our main character, sixteen-year-old in the book. She's undocumented in the book. She does extraordinary things to protect herself and ultimately protect her community. That was the beginnings of Sanctuary. Then I started working with Abby Sher, who's my cowriter. The two of us really dug deep into the bones of the book and wrote this together.

Zibby: What made you decide to have a cowriter?

Paola: It's a great question. Three things, if I'm being really honest. One, I had written a book previously by myself, and I hated every moment of writing it by myself. I'm a collaborator. I love collaborating as an artist, as a writer, as a director. That process was so solitary and so lonely that I was like, I will never do that again. That's one. Two, also, the Trump administration, working within immigration and telling stories of immigrants, what we've seen in the past three and a half years is that Trump really attacks and dislikes immigrants. His policies are really horrible towards immigrants, and so I knew that I didn't have the luxury at this moment in time to post up in my house for two years and just write a book. I knew that I was going to be needed to do other things on top of writing this book. In order to write this book within the two-year time period that we had given ourselves, I had given us because I wanted it to come out before the election, I knew that I couldn't do it alone. Those are the two real answers. The third answer I would say is that I'm a better artist when I collaborate. All of my previous work, whether it's filmmaking, whether it's visual art, photography, writing, I'm a better artist, I create better, I enjoy the process better when I am collaborating. I feel like my voice is actually much clearer when I'm collaborating. I was excited to experiment with collaborating on writing a novel, which is probably the artistic process that has the least amount of collaborations in it.

Zibby: How did you do it together? Did you each take a section? Were you on Zooms? What was the process like of your cowriting?

Paola: Everyone is very curious about our collaboration.

Zibby: I know. I'm always so intrigued by this. How do people do this? It's like making magic together. It's like a witches' brew or something.

Paola: It is a witches' brew. It absolutely is. We didn't set out with any specific rules in place. It just kind of fell into place. We don't live in the same city. We live close enough, but not in the same city. A lot of the work was actually done remotely. Google Docs were our best friends. We wrote live on Google all the time. We would plan out the story more than just a detailed outline, specifically, all of the action plot points of what was happening when and how the character got here and what they encountered, and the conversation was about this. It was a very, very, very detailed outline, for lack of a better word. We each knew where the story was going. Then that took, obviously, a very long time because it was so detailed. Then we would go and we would individually write. Our strengths revealed themselves. Abby, her strength is in character and in detail. My strength is in plot and in story. We each knew that that's where our mastery was. That's what we gravitated to, though it doesn't mean that we didn't work on other aspects of it because we did. At certain points, the drafts were just going back and forth. We're editing and writing, and editing and writing, and going back and forth with one another. It's unclear exactly who did what because it just becomes this witches' brew, as you said. We were just there stirring the pot.

Zibby: [laughs] It's great you found somebody you could work so well with. That's so great you are great at collaborating. I just feel like it's so easy to find the wrong person. You can like someone a lot as a person, but maybe you don't work so well together. You don't know until you know. Hard to get into that when you're writing a book, I would think.

Paola: It's true. It's true. It's a marriage, but it's a marriage that will last a finite period of time. Hopefully, it doesn't end in divorce. In our case, it did not end in divorce. We're renewing our vows. That is a good thing.

Zibby: Are you writing another book together?

Paola: Yeah, that's the plan. We want to. We want to write the second book to Sanctuary.

Zibby: Maybe if marriage actually was for a finite period of time, more people would be able to be successful at it if you knew. Just saying. Maybe it's time for --

Paola: -- You might be onto something.

Zibby: I don't know. Not that I want my marriage to end. I'm very happy. Anyway, back to the book. [laughs] Tell me a little more about your background in film and photography and how all these creative juices seem to flow in you. How did this all happen? How did you get started?

Paola: I started off as an actress, actually. I have my undergraduate and my graduate degree in the theater, in acting and directing. That was what I wanted to do, and then I realized as I started working professionally as an actress that the life of an actress was not for me because I didn't want to tell the stories that were being told. I had other desires for stories. It was very unfulfilling. I had nominal success. I was a working actress, but it was just not a happy place for me. I decided that I wanted to make a documentary. I picked up a camera. I worked with one of my best friends. He had never made a documentary either. The two of us were like, let's figure this out. We had a lot of filmmaking friends, so we called them. We were like, "We have this camera. How do we turn it on?" That's where we started. We followed a family for about a year and half, really committed to their story, and learned how to make a movie while we were making a movie, both of us did. Then we edited the film, learned how to edit while we were editing, and finished this film.

I fell in love with the movie-making process. I fell in love with the ability to see a story, envision a story, and tell the story how I wanted to tell it. Then I was like, okay, that was a documentary. I want to write a script. Never had I written a script, but obviously had read so many plays. As an actress, I'd read so many scripts. I was like, I'm just going to try. I worked with a friend of mine who had been my editor on the documentary. I was like, "Let's write this script together." She had never written a feature script either. She was like, "Okay, let's do it." We figured it out. It was based on my mom's story when we first came to this country. The film is called Entre nos. I was like, "I want to direct this. Let's co-direct it together." We co-directed Entre nos. That's kind of just been the process. My first book, the opportunity landed in my lap. I was like, I've never written a book before, but let me try.

This idea of experimenting in different mediums comes from actually something that I, when I taught -- I taught quite a lot before I had my son. It was something that I told my students. It's really this mantra that I had lived by as an artist. I would tell my students, don't be afraid to create bad art. We will all create bad art. If you just embrace the fact that what you try and do might be bad, but it doesn't make you a bad artist, it's more freeing. I look at my work and what I'm working on as the entire body of my work that I'm working on for my entire life. That will determine my value personally. I'm not talking about the value to the exterior world, but my value personally as an artist. There might be some work that is way better than other work. There definitely is some bad shit that I've created, but that doesn't determine my value as an artist, nor does the "masterpiece" I might have created determine my value as an artist. It's about the entirety of my body of work. Knowing that, it's allowed me to go out and experiment and try things that I've never tried before and get an idea and be like, okay, let's try it. Let's figure it out. Let's try it and see if I like it and see if it works. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't.

Zibby: Your son is so lucky because that's exactly what they tell you to do as a parent, is encourage your kids just to try and not to worry about if they're doing it well or not doing it well. That's how you end up creating all of this stuff. If you're afraid to try and fail, then forget it. That's amazing and very inspiring. You liked writing, so this is now something you want to keep doing and not just a one-time experiment. Do you prefer different -- which is your favorite if you had to rank them? Just wondering, like film and...

Paola: I think that I am more naturally a director. That is definitely my initial voice. In the past three and a half years since Donald Trump was elected to the presidency, I realized making movies takes years to make, writing a script and getting a movie produced. I tend to work in independent film. It takes a very long time. I knew that I was not going to be able to do that in the Trump administration. I was, again, going to have to be working on a much faster pace. All that to say is that I haven't made a feature film in a very long time, but my heart is pulling me back to that. I feel that that's kind of my natural zone as an artist. To have the ability to experiment in other things is really exciting too.

Zibby: Is Sanctuary going to become a movie?

Paola: That's what we hope, yeah. That's what we're in the process of. Cross your fingers. Lots of things can happen, but that's what we're trying to make happen right now.

Zibby: Amazing. Do you have any advice for people just starting out, writers, creators, anybody who could use your encouragement? You tried, and look how successful you've been.

Paola: I would say, A, most importantly, don't be afraid to create bad shit, bad art. That's really important. Two, tell the story that is keeping you up at night. Tell the story that you can't ignore. Tell the story that, maybe it's lived inside of you for decades. Maybe it just got planted into your heart or just started whispering in your ear. Tell that story because the road to creating art is a very difficult road. It is not easy. Everything in the world will conspire to make you stop. If you have this story inside of you that you can't let go, that you can't ignore, you will be able to push away all the things that are telling you not to do it and get to the finish line and tell the story how you want to tell it. Be very protective and specific with the stories that you invest in.

Zibby: Will you continue to be an activist/creator? Would you see yourself as an activist?

Paola: Yeah, absolutely. All of my artwork is social in its storytelling.

Zibby: I didn't want to label you an activist if you didn't self-identify that way.

Paola: I definitely self-identify as an activist, but I absolutely identify first and foremost as an artist. I'm an artist first and an activist after my art.

Zibby: Awesome. This is great. Thank you. Now we're going to talk to Abby. Thank you so much for coming on and discussing. I'm sorry we can't all do this all three of us. I'm a moron for not remembering that Instagram couldn't be three ways, but this is great too.

Paola: No worries. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. I just want to say that the book is available at all bookstores. You just can click on my link or my name up there. The link is in my bio. Please support women writers, Latinx writers. Please support immigration stories. Go out and vote right now if you can because early voting is happening now.

Zibby: I voted.

Paola: Oh, good. Where do you live? What state do you live in?

Zibby: I live in New York, but I got an absentee ballot because I wasn't sure if I would be in the city. I voted, so everyone can leave me alone. [laughs]

Paola: Wonderful. I'm so glad. Didn't it feel good to vote?

Zibby: It did. I felt a huge relief. I felt like I was happy to spend a month telling everybody that I already did it. [laughs]

Paola: Good. Thank you so much. Take care.

Zibby: Bye.

Paola: Bye.

Zibby: Now we're going to talk to her coauthor, Abby Sher. Let me get her to join. Abby was also on my podcast for Love You Miss You Hate You Bye, which was a fantastic book. Hi. How are you?

Abby Sher: I'm good. How are you?

Zibby: I'm good. Where are you?

Abby: I'm doing something scary just for you, Zibby. I'm doing this from soccer practice for my son. I'm sitting on a public bench, which freaks me out. I thought walking around would be a little bit more disturbing.

Zibby: Did you put something down like newspapers?

Abby: No, it's just me. That's me.

Zibby: It's going to be okay.

Abby: It's going to be okay. I'm just going to wash my butt really well tonight.

Zibby: Get your clothes, put it in the laundry. This is so typical. "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books," you're at soccer practice for your Instagram Live.

Abby: Let's hope no one gets hurt. I'm just going to keep one ear over there.

Zibby: I just talked to Paola. She's amazing. That was so fun. I didn't know her at all, so that was great, or I hadn’t talked to her at all. Tell me your side of collaborating with her and how it went on this book. I know you've written all by yourself and now together. What was it like?

Abby: I have to say, now that I've tasted the juice, it's really fun to collaborate. It really is. Writing is a very solitary sport. I've whined for the past ten years, I just want to do this with someone. It was really dreamy because, as Paola said, I think we just gravitate towards different things. I gravitate towards the character side of writing. She gravitates toward the plot. It's not like we set that out for each other, but it really helped us because she had a vision of where these characters needed to go. Then I would need to get in their brains and be like, why would they -- I was staying up at night going, why would they want to go into a desert? She was staying up at night plotting out how physically they would get out of a desert. Spoiler alert, they get out of the desert, but you know that.

Zibby: [laughs] That's okay. I feel like you have this great skill of getting into the minds of, I guess, high schoolers. I feel like your last book was all about helping a friend through a really difficult time and getting through that period of life. Now we have Vali who's getting through this and dealing with her brother and eagerly sitting there while her mother -- what's going on with her aunt? All that anxiety you feel as a pseudo-adult, tell me about that. Tori O'Connell just wrote, "You're a YA savant."

Abby: [laughs] Tori, that's because I'm stuck at that age. I think I've been told by many a therapist, are you sure that you're in your forties? You act like a fifteen-year-old. I do think that I, in many ways, am emotionally stuck as a teenager. I also think that they wear it all. They have it all happening to them. They don't know how to hide it very well. They put on a good show, but they don't know how to hide their feelings very well. They don't know how to process them very well. It gives me, as a writer, a real treat to try to process it with them. We've been talking to some middle schools and high schools now, which has been really, really fun. We're talking to students who are this age. It's fascinating to see. Vali doesn't want to be an activist. Vali doesn't want to be a revolutionary. She doesn't want to be in the limelight. She's not someone who's even going to go try out for the spring play. She's a thoughtful teenager. She's concerned about friends and lip gloss and things that we all are concerned about. There's no part of her that's like, "I'm going to change the world," when we start the book. She's forced into this role. I think that's how a lot of us learn our skills, is that we're forced into it. I didn't want the circumstances I was raised in. She certainly does not want the circumstances she's raised in. It was fun seeing a class the other day be like, how do you learn how to fend for yourself like that? They didn't know exactly what it meant to be undocumented. Paola's really, really great at explaining it to any age. It was really fun to see how a sixteen-year-old processes that literally right in front of you.

Zibby: Wow. Paola was saying she identifies first as an artist and then as an activist. Where are you on the activism scale?

Abby: I think she's changed me. I didn't start this book thinking I need to be an activist. I thought, moms don't have time to read, moms don't have to time to get out and -- I'll march. I have my pussy hat. I will do all those things that I can, but at the end of the day, I also have soccer practice. I don't know how to do that without somebody really falling through the cracks. Paola's definitely inspired me to take more action. I've brought my kids to a lot of marches. They did family separation marches. Now I just don't even offer it as an option. I just say, "Mom has to go canvasing." If there is an argument, I guess it happens when I close the door. [laughs] That's really great parenting. Don't take this advice.

Zibby: I was sitting there thinking, wow, this is impressive. If I say I'm going to this doctor's appointment or something, they're like, "Why? Why can't you take us here? Why can't you do this?" I'm like, I don't know, I just can't.

Abby: Exactly. There's definitely that. Then the more that they learn, the scared-er they get right now. "Why are you going to a protest? Can people shoot you at protests?" It's a crazy time to be alive. It's a crazy time to be raising children and trying to explain what's going on.

Zibby: Wow. Are you one of these people who's asking everyone if they’ve voted?

Abby: I will be honest, I have not voted yet. I have my ballot. I don't know exactly what I've been waiting for. I think I'm going to be so sad when I let it go. I feel like it's my conch. I have to do it. I've been phone-banking. That's not fun. I hate phone-banking.

Zibby: I know that Paola said she wanted to work on another book with you. That's really awesome. Are you also doing stuff on the side just yourself for your own writing, or are you waiting to do another with her?

Abby: I'm always noodling on something. I've been playing with these characters for a long time. It's an adult book, I hope. Although, I always say that, and then it winds up being a YA book. I'm trying to take it from the perspective of the mom for a change. I have been working with Rebel Girls, which is a really fun company that started Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls. I love the spirit of that whole team. They just had a virtual rally this weekend, which was really fun. People from all over the world joined in. It was led by girls who are young activists. I'm dipping into things. My goal is definitely to write the next book with Paola and see what happens of these movie talks and things like that.

Zibby: Excellent. That's exciting. It's really good to see you again.

Abby: You too. We talked right before this all happened, right before the lockdown.

Zibby: You were one of my last in-person interviews.

Abby: It was another lifetime.

Zibby: Another lifetime. Now through the screens, I've gotten to know a lot of people. Anyway, congrats on this book. Stay in touch. Have fun at soccer.

Abby: Take care. Have a nice day.

Zibby: Bye.

Abby: Bye.

Zibby: Everybody, I know that many people aren't watching right now, but hopefully later, please buy Sanctuary. This is a really interesting book about -- it's basically a what-if for our country. Paola Mendoza and Abby Sher. You can get yours now. Bye.

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Kara Goldin, UNDAUNTED

Kara Goldin: Thank you for connecting. I'm really excited to do this, very, very, very excited.

Zibby Owens: I'm excited too.

Kara: Did you get a copy of my book, by any chance?

Zibby: I did.

Kara: Yay! Awesome. I just wanted to make sure that you got it.

Zibby: Oh, yeah, I devoured it. I read every word. I loved it. I love a good business story memoir. So many of them are by men. This was so great. I just loved it. It was awesome. I can't wait to talk about it.

Kara: It's funny because I didn't know when I wrote this book that there really aren't women's books like this. It's typically women who are no longer CEOs anymore or something horrible happened with their company. There's a horrible story versus saying, yeah, I had some crap that went on in the midst of it, but at the end of the day, if you want to succeed and you want to move forward and you want to learn some lessons -- also, it's funny. So many people who have known me didn't even know I was going through some of those things. It's interesting. It's not like when you bet your company on your life. You've now just made this deal. I think it's more likely that people sort of go into hibernation. They don't want to talk about it. They don't want to have a lot of these conversations. Then they're like, okay, I've just got to resurface and deal with some of this stuff. Even John Legend, who's one of our investors, said, "There were so many things in here that I just have more respect for you saying you were trying and you were busy. We all knew that you were busy, but we just had no idea some of the stuff that you were really dealing with along the way." That is really my hope for this book too, not just to explain myself, but also to share with people that if I can do it, you can do it too. It just got The Wall Street Journal best-sellers list too.

Zibby: Yay!

Kara: I know. Everybody was saying to me, don't count on any of those because during this time, you're not doing big book talks. It's an election. There's a million reasons why it wasn't going to be able to get it. Then it got number seven. I was like, oh, my god. It's crazy. I'm really, really excited.

Zibby: You deserve it. It's a great book, seriously. It's a narrative. It feels like you're watching a movie about it. You're telling it as it comes, but then you have these little tips called out. It's not so much about balancing your life and your work. It's literally the story of building a business, which I find fascinating. I went to business school. I just love entrepreneurial stuff in general, personally. When I hear about some of the things and some of the times you had to regroup like when you started out and there was the mold in the water and you had to figure out what to do about it and when you were having your c-section and how you had to load up the Jeep and you refused to stay home -- you were sneaking out of the house to work. It's awesome. [laughs]

Kara: I still laugh about that. We live in Marin County now, but when we lived in San Francisco, we had this private school right across the street from us. It's called Town School. It was all boys. I knew a bunch of those mothers who were dropping their kids off. I knew that their drop-off was at 8:15. Literally, in the beginning, I would go over there with bottles. I'd be like, oh, my god, I have to get across the street to get to the drop-off because I'm going to give them a bottle and see what they think of this flavor. People were like, uh, okay. I said, because they won't expect it. You'll hand it to them. I'll be like, give me your honest opinion. Oh, my god, this is amazing. The more that I got of, this is amazing, then I would be like, okay, let's move forward with it. Entrepreneurs laugh at that because they're like, oh, my god. The mold story too, like I said, don't get me wrong -- we had this lab in South San Francisco called Anresco. I used to drive down there. It's not in a great neighborhood. It's in the Bayview neighborhood. My husband would never let me go by myself. I'd lock my doors. I'd never bring my kids in the car. I'd drive really fast, little scared. Then I'd drop off these samples just to make sure that there wasn't botulism. We never wanted to kill anybody.

Zibby: Which is nice. [laughs]

Kara: I always say to entrepreneurs, especially in food and beverages, it's amazing how people do not take those steps. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I knew -- there was definitely mold, but we were testing it. There's mold in cheese and kombucha. There's lots of stuff, but you have to make sure that it's not the bad stuff that's going to kill you.

Zibby: And how your husband would drink it in front of your buyers to be like, no, no, no, I'm good. Look at me drink it. The dedication of the two of you and the fact that you could do it together, all of it.

Kara: I know. We're still laughing. We still laugh. Over the years when I've been out public speaking on this too, people are like -- he's from Scarsdale. He's like a Seinfeld episode. He talks, but he's typically not the one speaking on the brand. A couple of times, the two of us have been together and talking. They're like, "What's it like to work for your wife?" I remember when Inc. asked me the first time on this panel. I was like, oh, my god, where is this going to go? He was like, "Don't we all work for women? I have two daughters. If they're not happy, I'm not happy." He'll say these things somewhat tongue in cheek, but he's pretty serious about it. He was like, "Look, we have sixty percent women in our company right now. Like Kara always says, it's because the guys don't want to work for women. She might be right." The people don't show up for the interviews because they're like, I don't want to work for a female-founded company. I'm like, good, don't apply for the job. I'd rather you not show up and apply for this stuff.

He's always like, "But then it leaves the cool guys here that actually want to work with women. They enjoy the thought process." He's hysterical. He just makes me laugh every single day. That was the other thing. He did a lot of the editing on the book too. He was this awesome and still is an awesome intellectual property lawyer in Silicon Valley. All of his friends were like, "What are you doing?" He was like, "Kara is writing $50,000, $100,000 checks off our bank account like it's water. It is water. She can spend money like I've never seen in my life. She made money." Still, he's like, "I don't want to go bankrupt over this whole project. I got to stay close to this and really understand where she's going with this." He's so funny. He was the general council. He's the chief operating officer. He always says, "I can always go back to being a lawyer if I really want to." He realized that he didn't like law. He loves the operations side. He loves the science side of things.

He's automated our whole supply chain. We don't have any people in the room when the bottles are being filled. That was a four-year project for him. He said when we don't have any preservatives in our product, that's where stuff actually happens. That's where bacteria happens. He was working on this project. As of December of 2019, he got all the people out of the room. Again, I would look at that saying, that sounds good, but I'm not going to work on it. You can go work on it. He went and did it. Now with the pandemic, when the FDA was running around the plants trying to figure out, where was COVID in the food supply and the drink supply? we were so happy that we had done so much work around automation. That's the way his brain thinks about things. While he's excited to be working for a beverage company, he does so much other stuff that is so important but so way beyond what a Coke or a Pepsi -- he loves what he does. You can't discount that at all.

Zibby: I think that's something that comes through for both of you and how you keep innovating. One of the parts of the book that stayed with me the most is when you approached somebody who was high up in your company at the time and you were like, "You're doing a good job. You must be bored. Time to change it up. Let's go." He was like, "What?" You were like, "Aren't you bored? You've mastered your job. If you've mastered your job, it means it's time to step up and do something else." That's just so anathema. People don't view it that way. I got good at this; I'm going to stay good at this. You're like, no, no, what else can you do? Even you saying that you don't want to be bored and you want to keep innovating, that's how all the great stuff happens.

Kara: That's the thing. We just developed a hand sanitizer. I don't know if we sent you any.

Zibby: You didn't send me any of this. I went online and bought out your website after reading this book. I was like, I have to try everything that they make. Yes, I have all the hand sanitizers. I have the deodorant. I have the sun lotion. I got everything to try it all.

Kara: It was so funny because I just kept smelling all this hand sanitizer in the beginning. First of all, it was really hard to get in the beginning of the pandemic. Then I started smelling stuff that just smelled rancid. It ended up that a lot of it was. There was a lot of stuff that was recalled. I just started thinking, god, there has to be some better ones out there. Finally one day, I guess this was the beginning of May, a girlfriend and I were hiking. She lives up in Sonoma. She knew this whiskey brand that was really struggling. They were doing hand sanitizers. She was like, "Maybe you guys want to do a hand sanitizer. Can you just talk to them and talk to them about maybe some ideas around direct to consumer and whatever?" I got talking. I kind of did it as just a favor to them to help them. Then all of a sudden, now we're almost sold out of the product. We're trying to figure out how to make more of it.

People were so surprised that the CEO was jumping in on it. I was like, really, I don't want to bog the rest of my team down on this stuff. Then selfishly, that's the stuff that I love to do. I love getting scrappy and roll up my sleeves and try and figure out, could this actually be a big business? It's a lot of what I speak at on that topic, even on college campuses. I used to think that becoming a manager, the important thing was really getting a bigger title. Now the more that I talk to CEOs, they're like, oh, yeah, I got this little project here. It's super fun. Don't tell anybody. It's the secret, but it's the best thing I do in the company. Sometimes it's been philanthropy. Sometimes it's other stuff. I think the more you can do these little things where you are learning -- that's the other thing that I've realized about really smart people. The mecca is not being this boring CEO that is just sitting here looking at a spreadsheet and watching the numbers. Instead, it's, how do we innovate? How do we do other things? That goes at every single level of the company that I've really tried to push on. What else can you be doing that really gets your head thinking about stuff?

Zibby: I feel like I share that. I'm obviously on a much tinier, tinier scale here. Even with this podcast, I've been doing it now for almost three years, so I know how to do it. I love it. I love everything about it. Recently, I started another thing called "Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight." I'm like, I'm cheating on my company. I'm cheating on my number-one priority by doing this thing on the side. Here's my other Instagram account. [laughs] It's so silly. I'm like, let's try this. Let's try that. I love trying new stuff because I'm like, well, I don't know. Okay, looks like that's not working. Let's go with something else. I love that. It's the tinkering and experimenting and finding out what people respond to. It's so fun.

Kara: I think that's so true. It's funny. I've spoken on so many college campuses and business school classes about this. I think I sort of disrupt the learning a little bit. I was speaking to a whole group of engineers at Berkeley. I'm like, look, if you want to be like Mark Zuckerberg, it's not going to happen if you don't actually go and take classes outside or try and figure out what other people do. Always be learning. It's not a linear thing. The goal isn't to get to the top of the heap and then manage a bunch of people. Yes, you'll do that, but then can you go horizontally? Can you actually come back with creative ideas? Can you actually understand a basic business plan? Can you understand these different things along the way horizontally? That, to me, is the key to the kingdom because it keeps you energized. It keeps you learning. That guy is still at Hint. I point to him all the time as one of our best managers. He's gunning for my husband's job. He is, which is great. He keeps taking more and more off of his plate.

Eventually, if it's not at Hint, he'll go somewhere else and go be an amazing operating officer because he's done exactly that. He knows enough to get him in trouble in all these different -- you get it. People talk about this at business school. A lot of these learnings are there, but it's clearly not how we're teaching people in regular college campuses today. It's not what we're teaching people. If you're a manager, you're great with people, you know your stuff, and then you can teach people. I'm like, okay, but what about that person? There's so many people who just get angry at their company or they get depressed or whatever. I really think it has a lot to do with the fact that they're no longer learning. It's the spice of life too, with marriage too and your personal life. It's part of the reason why I think COVID is so hard for people. You got to switch it up. You got to go find new hiking trails. You got to get out of town every once in a while. You got to do things that are going to allow your brain to create and have new.

Zibby: I think that's sort of an under-discussed contributing factor to depression. People don't talk about how much we crave learning. I used to always say, I miss school. I really loved school. I'm such a nerd. I really loved it. I loved all the stuff I was learning. When I got out into the real world, I felt very rootless. Where is the structure? What am I building if I'm just showing up at work? Anyway, I totally agree with you.

Kara: It really is. Should we just continue on this? Do you want to ask me specifically about stuff?

Zibby: Yeah, let me just ask you a little bit more about your book. What made you decide to take all your experience and turn it into a book, first of all? Why a book? Why now? Why did you do it now?

Kara: It's crazy. I was out speaking about founding Hint over the years at lots and lots of events. Then about four years ago, I started journaling. I was primarily doing it because I felt like I would tell these stories when I was out speaking and then I kind of wanted to hone them in and also think about, if somebody talks about, how do you get started? then I would have, what are the three stories that come to mind that are good examples of that? Then I just kept going. Every time somebody would ask me something kind of hard, I would think about, here's my examples that I can go back to, or whatever. Then I started really hearing more and more from people not just in audiences. Also, they would write to me on LinkedIn and say, things are really hard. I can't raise money. I have so many doubts. This is so much not like you. I'm sure you've never had any fears or failure. You're relentless. You're this. You're this. I'm like, no, I totally had lots of examples of -- I move forward, but I also have doubts, etc. The journal was like six hundred pages about a year and a half ago.

I have friends that are authors. I was like, maybe I should put this in a book because I could actually help a lot more people who are feeling this way that maybe aren't going to reach out to me or who aren't in an audience hearing me talk about this. I got an agent. Then the agent was like, "This is going to take a long time. These publishers are going to want you to write a certain book." There was definitely that, but it got sold in like two weeks. It was really unusual, and I think primarily because I didn't know how to write a book. I wasn't this person saying, one day I'm going to be an author. I'm not going to lie. It feels pretty great to have a published book and be an author and a Wall Street Journal best seller and all that stuff, but I did it differently than most people. Today, so many people are journaling too and trying to feel like, how do I find happiness? How do I be a better leader? or whatever it is. They're writing, but they don't know where this goes. That's another thing that I like to share with people.

This book, my hope is that people will read it and be inspired and put it into their own storyline to figure out where it fits. Even Jamie Dimon, who's kind of been a mentor to me over the years, it's funny, he read the book and he said, "Your story in the Grand Canyon really got me thinking about, what are those really hard things in business that I faced where when I was facing something in my personal life that was super hard, what did I think about? How did I have the relentlessness to just keep going on?" He had throat cancer. He talked about all of these challenging times that he had in business and how he loves what he does. He loves his work, but he was really feeling like that was a challenging time for him. He was able to automatically set his mindset to think, I got this. I can do this stuff. Yes, of course, he remembered his family and all of those things. In addition, he remembered all of the hard stuff that he had been through as lessons to be able to tackle other hard stuff. I think it's fascinating that that's what he picked up on in the book.

Incredibly smart people are picking up things and placing it in their own life, which is helping them to figure out, what did that mean? I'm excited because I wanted to get it out there. Like I said, it got picked up by a publisher pretty quickly. I didn't really know what that meant. I also realize women don't really talk about this. This clearly is not a book about how I was shunned in some way. There's moments in there. I also, hopefully, give people hope to say that there's people like them. I clearly had some tough, tough times. Also, my kids are older now. They look at me and they're like, my mom's a badass. She just goes. She's crazy. Right in the middle of my launch and Sheryl Sandberg's interviewing me, my son's texting me saying, "Can I get those shoes?" Crazy town, right? I'm like, "Stop it," yelling. That's real. It never stops. That's okay that that stuff goes on. I think people think, is this just my life, or is this everyone's life? Anyway, that was really why I decided to ultimately get it out there.

Zibby: That's great. It's a book I want to give to my daughters, when they're older I mean. One of my daughters is seven. It's an example. Look, you can do all this. You don't have to write a book about things you're complaining about, essentially. I think a lot of books right now are what has worked against us as opposed to, yeah, these things were hard, but I got through them. Here's how you innovate. I thought that was really awesome. Once you sold the book, tell me about the writing process. When did you ever find time to do this?

Kara: Because I had really written so much of it, it was a lot easier for a publisher to actually say, let's do this part of the book and these sections. Then I got this editor who's on the inside cover of the book, John Butman. Then my husband, actually, he would remember other parts of the stories and stuff, and so he became sort of like the co-editor. What was so sad is that my publisher -- we turned in everything at the end of January. It was pretty fast. It was from the end of June until the end of January. We talked four days a week, blocked three hours four days a week. We were on it. We just went back and forth on emails. I was doing weekends and nights. I'm still the CEO of the company. I'm still trying to do both of the things. Then actually on March 13th -- do you know who Platon is? He's a photographer in New York. He shot the cover of the book. He had shot me for this Verizon commercial. Just loved him. He's shot Kobe Bryant, that picture that was so powerful. He's done every president. He's just this amazing guy.

Of course, the city was shutting down when all this was going on. I said, "Are you going to cancel on me, on the photoshoot?" He was like, "No, no, no. Let's just do it. Then let's both get out of here." That's what happened. Then I got the pictures back that weekend while we were out of stock on shelves everywhere. There was a lot going on at this time. I remember talking to John on that Monday saying, "What do you think about the cover?" In the meantime, we're trying to figure out, do we close down our San Francisco office? We already closed down our New York office. He was like, "Oh, my god, I love the cover." We put a period on the end of Undaunted. He was like, "I love it. It's exactly how you talk," all of the stuff. Then I get a phone call from my agent a few days later. She's like, "I have something critical to tell you." I thought, oh, god. What else is critical going on in the world? She's like, "John died."

Zibby: What?

Kara: I know. I was like, what? This is somebody that I talked to more than my husband for the last six months. He had a massive heart attack.

Zibby: No!

Kara: I know. It was so sad. He had just bought a house in Portland, Maine. He was super healthy. He was sixty-five years old. I'm convinced that COVID is -- we'll find out years later that -- he didn't have it that he knew of. It was really, really sad. I hadn’t gotten my manuscript back from the publisher. In many ways, because I had time sitting at home and was able to dig through it, and John did such an amazing job to really get it where it needed to be, there wasn't that much editing even that was needed. John, in many ways, I felt like for the process of getting it out there, I could just feel his presence, as crazy as that was, like, you got this. It's going to get out there. It was very, very sad, though, along the way.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. I'm so sorry that that happened. It's terrible.

Kara: I know. Really sad.

Zibby: Do you have any advice for aspiring entrepreneurs and aspiring authors? Now you're both. You can show that off. [laughs]

Kara: The main thing that I've signed up for over the years that wasn't as clear to me maybe earlier on in life is that if you don't try, then you actually won't succeed. I always share with people that no idea is crazy, especially if you just keep thinking about it. If you keep thinking, oh, gosh, I should go write a book or I want to launch this company, you can just take baby steps to actually go and do these things. People are like, I don't know how to write a business plan. I'm like, you just google business plan. You can start to figure this stuff out. It might not be the best business plan in the whole world, but stop putting these walls up in front of yourself that actually prevent you from moving forward. I think that that's the biggest thing. Frankly, that's the biggest thing that I find for entrepreneurs. They think, I haven't worked in a couple of years. I've never worked in that industry. I didn't go to the right school or business school or whatever it is. I'm like, just go. Just go try. If nothing else, you can actually say, I thought about it. I looked at the industry. I wrote a business plan. I talked to some people. That's actually succeeding. That's doing something. You got a little bit further than you were six months ago or whatever it is. That's my biggest advice to people.

When you look at successful people today, they didn't have all the answers. They actually had a lot of failures. They had a lot of doubts. You have to go and just take these little steps and figure out, what are those steps that I can go even figure out whether or not this is worth doing? Really, just live your life undaunted. If you do that, I do believe too that, while it can be stressful at times, it's also really rewarding. Today, we're the largest nonalcoholic private beverage company in the world that doesn't have a relationship with Coke, Pepsi, or Dr Pepper Snapple. That was never supposed to happen. I didn't have the experience. I was just this mom with four kids under the age of six walking into Whole Foods. I was just driving in my Jeep Grand Cherokee. None of this was supposed to happen, but I just kept trying. I was getting educated. I was really intrigued by the fact that originally, I thought these little things were caps, and they're actually called closures. I was like, that's so cool. There's this whole secret, hidden vocabulary out there for these things. I don't know why I geeked out on the fact that those were the things. You have to get confident in yourself that you can go and accomplish a lot. Most people actually can do a lot more than they allow themselves to do. Again, if you don't want to do something, that's a whole other topic. It's really, do you want to get up and actually move forward? That's the biggest question that I think people need to answer.

Zibby: Wow. I feel less daunted, maybe not un. [laughs]

Kara: You are definitely. You're doing lots of amazing stuff too.

Zibby: Thank you. I feel like your book is so inspiring. It's just so important. I think that entrepreneurship right now is sort of the greatest thing we have left in this country. During this pandemic, watching people innovate has been the most encouraging thing that's happened, with your hand sanitizer. There's this company that sent me all these things. What were they called? Something like Scenties, scented masks. You should actually talk to this company. Maybe you should talk to this girl. It's this random entrepreneur. She's making scented masks.

Kara: So fun.

Zibby: All these little things, that's what it's all about. That's how our country can really get better. Anyway, I feel like I could talk to you all day and ask you a million other questions. I'm so glad to have met you, to have read your book. Now I'm drinking all this extra water, which is amazing.

Kara: And getting super healthy. I love it.

Zibby: And getting super healthy. Thank you so much for our very informal chat today. I hope to stay in touch.

Kara: Definitely. I love it. If anybody wants to reach out to me too, I'm on social, @KaraGoldin. Again, the book is Undaunted: Overcoming Doubts and Doubters. It'd make a great holiday gift too. I've been talking to a lot of people who are reaching out to me saying, how do I buy fifty of these? I know a lot of girlfriends or high school kids or college kids that need this book. It's very applicable.

Zibby: Perfect holiday gift. I'm holding it up now. Thank you. Stay in touch. Have a great day.

Kara: Have a great rest of the week.

Zibby: You too. Buh-bye.

Kara: Buh-bye.

Dr. Reshma Shah, NOURISH

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

Reshma Shah: Thank you so much for having me.

Zibby: Nourish, your book, The Definitive Plant-Based Nutrition Guide for Families, you open this book and say, why should there be another book? Don't we know everything about nutrition? What is your big answer to this question? Why take all the time for this plant-based nutritional handbook of sorts? Tell me about it.

Reshma: I think that we're at a really interesting time right now. People are really becoming open and so much more aware of issues that face us as a community in terms of everything that's been happening with COVID and with all the social justice movements. I think that people are really willing to look at the impact of their food choices. The reason that we wrote this book is because -- it's not a call for everyone to be vegan or for everyone to be perfect or for everyone to eat a perfectly clean diet, whatever that means. It's just really an invitation to look at our food choices and what the consequences of those might be. The reason that we focus on a plant-centered or plant-based approach to feeding our families is because research overwhelmingly supports a plant-centered diet as a foundation for promoting health. The first section of the book is all about the big why.

When you look at the added benefits of the impact that our food choices have on our environment and climate change and what we do with factory farming, in our opinion -- I cowrote the book with Brenda Davis who's a phenomenal plant-based dietician. In our opinion, a plant-based approach to feeding our families checks off all the boxes. It supports our health and the health of our family and our communities. It supports the health of our planet. We think of it of as a radical act of compassion when you think about the suffering that we inflict upon factory-farmed animals. Whatever we can do to address those issues is a win. Yes, there have been a lot of books on nutrition. Our perspective is really focused on families. It's focused on all these larger issues, but it's very much intimately connected to our dinner tables because it has to be practical, reasonable, and doable. I've got two kids. I know what it's like to have a busy household. It can't be just an academic discussion.

Zibby: How old are your kids?

Reshma: I've got a fifteen-year-old and an eighteen-year-old. Actually, soon to be sixteen. It's hard to believe how they grow.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. How did you convince them to adopt this? Have they adopted this? Has it been from day one? How did you do it?

Reshma: It's kind of been a full-circle experience for me. I'm Indian. I grew up in a vegetarian household. I grew up eating lots of lentils and beans and all these things, but I was a typical American kid. I definitely ate my share of hot dogs and hamburgers and all those things. All through medical school and residency training, I actually didn't really connect health and nutrition very much because, I'm sure many people can relate to this, doctors don't get a lot of training when it comes to nutrition. When I had kids of my own, that's when I really became interested nutrition and the role it played in our health because all of a sudden, I was responsible for these two young beings. I wanted to make well-informed food choices. The more I started learning about what sort of dietary approaches support health, I kept coming back to this plant-centered, plant-focused idea. One of the reasons I felt like I was very qualified to write this book is because I've made all the mistakes. I was a short-order cook. I did all the things at the dinner table that we ask parents not to do.

My family, in the beginning, I was super aggressive. It didn't really work very well. When you try and force things on people that you love and care about, they don't really enjoy that so much. My family was keen on letting me know. There was a period where I was super forceful. When I realized that it wasn't working, I kind of backed off. The single best thing I did to get my family on board was to -- I just kept cooking really good food. I didn't really focus on talking to them about, this is good for you. You should eat it. This is good for our environment. I just, over and over again, kept cooking good meals. Gradually, they sort of came on board. My daughter who's eighteen, she was vegetarian before any of us were. She was fully on board very quickly. My son and my husband came along much more slowly. Now I would say our household is ninety-five percent plant-based vegan. In the house, that's how I cook. Then we're out and if they want a pizza or an ice cream or something, I don't sweat too much about it.

Zibby: Wow. You're obviously a really good cook. The recipes that are in the back, are these your own? Where did these come from? Which one would you recommend? If I'm going to try to convince my kids to give away their chicken nuggets, I'm feeling like, I don't know, are they going to go for lemony chickpea pasta with mushrooms and broccoli? I don't know if my kids are going to do that. Molasses tahini energy balls, I would. I would do it.

Reshma: One of the things I always say is that this is a guidebook. We're providing you with the resources, but you are the expert of your family and your children. You're going to know what they like best. The recipes are mine and my coauthors. We have slightly different approaches. She's a grandmother. Her kids are out of the house. The way she cooks is going to be slightly different than what I cook because I've got two teenagers who are athletes. Our approach is going to be slightly different. Know your kids. One of the things I recommend is, start with the things that you think are going to be easy and approachable for your kids. Don't start with the hardest things first. If you've got kids that are really into chicken nuggets and that's a thing, you could try a tofu nugget. If you've got kids that are skeptical of tofu and it seems sort of strange, you might start with some of the veggie meats that might be a little bit more approachable. I also think that kids require repeated exposure. Even if they don't like it today doesn't mean they won't like it tomorrow. The more that we can use an approach, inviting them, including them, instead of sort of forcing it upon them, I think the easier it goes. For kids that are really, really picky, it might just be, instead of trying to take things away, that you're just adding things in. Serve whatever you normally serve, and then maybe you'll have a huge kale salad or maybe the lemony chickpea pasta as a side just so that they don't feel like you're forcing this on them.

Zibby: I know. I feel like we do that, and then -- my husband is actually the cook in our family. I can cook, but I have to follow recipes. Then if I deviate, something goes wrong. He'll just throw things together, and it tastes great. I feel like sometimes he'll spend all this time making it, and then none of the kids touch it. He's like, why bother? Why is he going to make the same thing again the next night? I'm like, fine, just give them whatever. [laughs] It's so easy to be discouraged as the person cooking.

Reshma: Yeah, because you spend a lot of time. You spend a lot of energy. You don't want the food to go to waste. One of the things that I did early on that helped us at the dinner table tremendously is -- my shopping day is usually Sunday. That's when I go to the market. That's when I do most of my menu planning. Before I would do all that work, I would ask them, what are your wishes for the week? I would get them involved in the menu planning. If they said, I don't really care, I don't have any wishes, the rule in our house is that I will try to honor your wishes, but once we're at the dinner table, you're not allowed to complain about the food.

Zibby: That's good. [laughs]

Reshma: I spend a lot of time making it. The other is, always try to have something at the table that you know your child is going to like. If you're trying a new vegetable, maybe pair it with their favorite pasta so that there's always something that they're going to enjoy at the table. That's not the time that you want to be arguing, bickering. The average American family spends seventeen minutes at the dinner table. Make those seventeen minutes count. That's a time for connection, enjoying one another's company. It's not the time to be battling about food.

Zibby: I feel like seventeen might be generous. I don't know if we make it seventeen minutes.

Reshma: That’s the average time. Some families are going to be a little shorter. That's the average time.

Zibby: Take me back a little to you and your career up until this point and your becoming a doctor and where you chose to specialize. I heard how this became another interest, but where did you start out?

Reshma: It's kind of a windy path for me a little bit. I, early on, knew I wanted to go to medical school. I can't tell how much of that is -- I definitely wanted to be in a helping profession. Growing up in an Indian community, becoming a doctor was definitely the path to success. I think that was kind of engrained in me. After medical school, I actually started out in obstetrics and gynecology. I did a year training in that and decided very quickly it didn't feel like the right fit. For me, when I don't know what to do in life, I always go back to school. I went back to school and got my master's in public health and then made a shift in pediatrics. It definitely felt like a much better fit for me. For quite a lot time, I'd say for the first fifteen years, I did general pediatrics. I worked in the emergency room. I had my own patients. I've worked with residents and students at Case Western and Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital in Cleveland. Then we moved to California about seven years ago. I decided I wanted to make a little bit of shift. I had done primary care for a long time. I've been working in the urgent care. It's a large medical facility that Stanford residents and medical students rotate through. I have been doing some teaching. Really, for the last six months or so with COVID, life has been so different. I've been focusing on finishing up the manuscript and getting the book out. For me, I really enjoyed teaching and working with the residents and students, but writing has become a passion I didn't even know I had.

Zibby: Wow. How did you learn how to write?

Reshma: I don't really know how I learned how to write. I never thought of myself as a writer. I think at the core of writing is really teaching. Teaching is something that I've always done in some capacity, whether it's working with medical students or residents. I've had the fortunate of doing some talks at Stanford. I think at the core of writing is really teaching. There's something that you feel you want to convey to people that can help them in their daily lives. That's been a long passion of mine. It just overflowed in writing. I was really lucky to have a writing partner. I cowrote this book. There was a lot of collaboration and sharing of drafts and back-and-forth and things like that.

Zibby: Amazing. How did you do that? I always wonder how collaborators collaborate. What system did you use? How did you assign the workload and everything?

Reshma: It's a really interesting story. My coauthor, Brenda Davis, this is actually her twelfth book. She's written many, many books before. When we decided to write this book together, I really drafted out the outline of it. We had certain sections that we were each going to work on. The first section is mine. The second section is her. The third is mine. Then the fourth was a combination. The way that we did it is, we would write a chapter at a time. I would send it to her. She would give me her feedback. It just kept going back and forth like that until we had it the way we wanted. It was really wonderful because I think we each have our own strengths and set of experiences. It was a really beautiful marriage of both our backgrounds, our experiences. We also had a very similar work ethic. I think a writing partner is kind of like a marriage. You don't exactly know what the relationship's going to be like. It ends up being a beautiful collaboration. She has become a true friend through the whole process.

Zibby: That's great. Put your pediatrician hat back on, if you will. Pretend you're talking to kids, my kids, my friends' kids, about the advantages of a plant-based diet for their health, not the environment and not about the animals, which both I think are easy for me explain and which they would get pretty simply, but in terms of what it actually does for you. Why should they give up these other things that they’ve come to like? What are the benefits?

Reshma: When we have these conversations with our children, I think it’s really important to be careful and tender because you don't want to be alarming. Especially in pediatrics, this whole conversation around pediatric obesity has become -- I feel like it's present in every exam room and every conversation. At the end of the day, I always try to focus on health and healthy habits instead of things like weight because that can be a really tricky conversation. One of the things I would say is, for kids, when you look at the longest-lived populations in the world, there are these areas called the blue zones. The blue zones are these geographical pockets throughout the world where they have the highest concentration of centenarians, so people that are living to age a hundred and beyond in fairly good health. They're still working in their garden. They're still part of their communities. All of these communities follow plant-centered diets as the foundation for their diet.

Following a plant-based diet can help you to reduce your risk of developing a lot of chronic diseases like heart disease, type two diabetes, certain cancers, even neurocognitive diseases like Alzheimer's and things like that. I think with those kids, though, those long-term effects can feel so far away. Kids who eat plant-based diets tend to have higher overall nutritional quality. They tend to consumer definitely way more fiber because plant foods are full of fiber. Animal foods contain no fiber. Also, a lot of protective phytonutrients. It gives them all the energy, the nutrients. Appropriately planned plant-based diets are safe for children during all stages of the life cycle. In terms of the specific benefits, there have been fewer studies done on children than there have adults. For instance, some of the health outcomes that we measure in adults in terms of hypertension and diabetes, we just don't see those as often in kids.

One of the culprits in kids' health that we've seen a lot is dairy. Dairy has been linked to increased incidents of colic in babies, constipation in children for sure, acne, and a whole host of other conditions of eczema and asthma and other atopic illnesses as well. Dairy is definitely something to consider. The way I approach it with children is I never say you have to eliminate these things. Let's say, for instance, your child has a lot of acne or has been really suffering with eczema or asthma. One approach could be, let's see how things go if we just eliminate it for two weeks. We don't have to do it forever. Let's just try for two weeks. Sometimes if they see enough of an improvement in their constipation or their asthma or their allergies, they will likely say, oh, yeah, there's so many alternatives, I will gladly forgo the dairy. I don't know if that answers what you were looking for with kids.

Zibby: It totally answered it. Yes, that's great. I feel like when I was little, I didn't quite realize that by shifting all the different levers of what pieces of nutrition I could adjust some of the things with my own body and my own health. I feel like now the focus is so much more in the weeds, not really weeds obviously. I could eat more avocado. I could eat more omega-3s in salmon. That will help my brain. This might help my hair. I just feel like it's important to convey all that. There are these little magic ingredients in every food. Maybe somehow making it seem like a treasure hunt for what your body needs or something like that.

Reshma: I think kids are definitely fascinated by that. If you have a child that's really inquisitive and really curious, I think those conversations can be a lot of fun. You just have to be careful because for some kids, it can cause more anxiety around food. Our whole goal as parents is to make it a joyful, inviting experience. Sometimes overcomplicating the message for children can create anxiety. You just have to know your kid. If your kid is really interested in these conversations, then go deep, as deeply as they want to go. The main focus should be on including a variety of foods. Eat the rainbow in terms of fruits and vegetables. Make sure that the food is really satisfying and tasty. Anyone can do something for a week. If you're in it for the long haul, it has to be enjoyable for kids and families and for adults too.

Zibby: Totally. Yes. Now that you've tapped into your love of writing as a form of teaching, what are you going to write about next?

Reshma: I have no idea. As a first-time writer -- I'm sure you've experienced this with other conversations you've had. You begin to wonder, this might be the only thing I actually have to say. I haven't really let this book fully percolate. We'll see. I would love to do more writing, whether it's as a book or even in other formats. I think it's a really wonderful way to be able to teach. I think it's a really powerful teaching method. This book has been -- it was two years in the making in terms of all the research. It's very evidenced based. We have tons of references at the end. I don't exactly know what I would want to write next, but I would love to continue to write.

Zibby: Maybe you should do a children's book version of it.

Reshma: That's actually a wonderful idea.

Zibby: Even all the colors on your cover, I'm looking, if you had it illustrated and you still called it Nourish. Maybe you have to find this leaf on every page. Make it like a little game. I don't know.

Reshma: That's actually a fantastic idea. I'd never even thought about it.

Zibby: There you go. Get right on that. [laughs] Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Reshma: I would say, for me, having a vision of what I wanted this book to be really helped. Our publisher was very open to a lot of our ideas. For instance, the cover of the book that they proposed, it just didn't fit my vision. I was fairly aggressive in saying, "I don't think this will work." I had to think outside the box. I found my own photographer. I said, "This is what I imagine. Do you think you can do this?" Once I presented the full photograph and everything to the publisher, they're like, "Oh, yes, this is beautiful. This works." I think having a vision of what you want the book to be and just being persistent but also collaborative.

Zibby: Totally. Great strategies. Awesome. I love whatever you did. I know I'm being ridiculous, but you should sell prints of just the photo. You could personalize. It's just such a great picture.

Reshma: I can share with you what the original cover was. You'll see why. I'll send you a copy of the original cover. Again, it goes back to having a vision of what you wanted the book to be. For me, more than anything, I wanted this book to be an invitation for families, not a, this is how you must do it. It's not meant to be prescriptive. It's really meant to be an invitation. I wanted the cover to reflect that.

Zibby: Love it. It is very inviting. Congratulations. Congrats on this book. Thanks for trying to help so many people live healthier, better lives, and the planet as a whole. It's a big mission that you've taken on. It's great. Thank you.

Reshma: Thank you. Thank you for the idea for the children's book. Now my brain is buzzing with all kinds of thoughts. It was such a pleasure chatting with you. Maybe I'll be back on once the children's book is done. [laughs]

Zibby: I would love it. Take care. Have a great day.

Reshma: Buh-bye. You too.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Isabel Wilkerson, CASTE

Zibby Owens: Welcome to "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books," Isabel Wilkerson. I'm so excited that you're here to talk about Caste.

Isabel Wilkerson: Thank you for having me.

Zibby: You must be exhausted. You must be doing a thousand interviews every day. You're on every list of recommended books everywhere. How are you holding up?

Isabel: You just power through because this is what you have to do. No one could've expected how this year would turn out. You just simply could not have imagined. The idea of working on something for so long and so hard and then to introduce it to the world in the midst of a global pandemic, you just never could've imagined. I want to always say, of course, that compared to people who are really experiencing challenges in this world at this time, this is so low on the totem pole in terms of what I'm going through here at all. It's not in the same category of true suffering, but it does create challenges. It can be exhausting, but it's necessary. I'm just glad that we have ways to be able to speak to people and to be able to communicate, as I am here with you. What would we do without it?

Zibby: I don't know. We'd be back in another century. We can dive back into some of your research. We can imagine what it would be like. [laughs] I'm glad you're holding up enough to at least chit-chat a little today. Your book, before I read it, my mother was like, "This is the most amazing book you'll ever read." When I know that, I'm like, all right, I better sit down and button up. Then we have to have a whole talk about it. Obviously, everybody's mother and sibling and everyone has now read this book, which is amazing. Tell me about all the research it took to do this, about the thousands of interviews for both this and The Warmth of Other Suns. Also, what do you think makes a great interview? How do you extract the information you need from other people?

Isabel: Those are really great questions. For one thing, the work that I do is called narrative nonfiction. It combines what ideally would be the best of both worlds, meaning that you have to do a tremendous amount of research in order to find and to be able to determine and excavate truths that are verifiable fact that help explain some phenomenon. Then you translate that into a narrative using many of the tools that novelists would use so that the best of both worlds would be, you're learning something, you exposed a phenomenon you otherwise would not know about, but it's told in such a way that, hopefully, it builds suspense. It's a page-turner. It tells a story. You get involved in the people. To do that takes a long time. I say that I have sort of have a gestational lifespan of an elephant. [laughter] It takes a lot time. The Warmth of Other Suns took fifteen years. I'd say that if it were a human being, it would be in high school and dating. That's how long it took me to work on that book. Then this one, I got a little bit better. It took about eight years of germinating and distilling it and thinking about it. In the course of that, it means that one project leads into the other. This grew out The Warmth of Other Suns, which is where I started first using the word caste to describe the hierarchies built into our country going back to colonial times. I used that word because it was the most comprehensive, accurate way to describe the world that a lot of us don't even know about.

It's a world in which the hierarchy of the American South, for much of our country's history, was so tightly delineated. It was this graded ranking of human value that went on until, essentially, the 1970s, legally, formally, until basically the 1960s legislation, but then didn't take effect until the 1970s. This was a world where it was against the law for black people and white people to merely play checkers together in Birmingham. There was a white Bible and an altogether separate black Bible to swear to tell the truth on it in court. The very word of God was segregated in that era. It could mean your very life if you breached any of the protocols and laws of that system. That's what I was describing in The Warmth of Other Suns. That was the term I started to use, caste. It was more evocative. It was more comprehensive. It was language that anthropologists who had studied the Jim Crow South actually used as well. The second book grew out of the first. What started it was really what happened with Trevon Martin. He was a teenager walking home from a convenience store in a suburban subdivision in Florida where his very image, what he looked like, was viewed as suspicious by someone who stopped and ultimately killed him. That actually occurred in an area, a part of Florida, that -- one of the protagonists from The Warmth of Other Suns was from that same area, so it sparked my interest and attention from the very start. I wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times connecting caste to what had happened to him. That was really the beginning of my thinking that led to this book.

Zibby: Tell me a little bit about when you interview people, what you do to get them to open up. What are some of the things you look for when you're talking to somebody new? What is that about for you? What are some of the things that you've really taken away from people you've met all over the world?

Isabel: That's such a great question because I don't consider myself to do interviews, really. The kind of work that I'm doing takes a lot of time. I both don't have enough time -- there's never enough time, apropos of the title of your podcast. [laughs]

Zibby: Nobody has any time for anything. Yes.

Isabel: There's this Cuban saying. I believe it's Cuban. It says something along the lines of, slow down, I'm in a hurry. I think that's an interesting way of thinking about life itself. Because there's never enough time and yet the work that I do takes time, I end up allowing myself the time to spend with people as opposed to a Q&A because I'm not going to be able to learn what I need to learn if I have a set of questions for the work that I do. The work that I do is attempting to get deep into the heart and the minds of people, into their motivations, into their thoughts, their dreams, their triumphs and their tribulations, what they’ve actually been through. It's hard to even formulate a single question that will elicit from someone, your deepest dreams, thoughts, and motivation. I have to spend time with people. I generally do more closely what we would identify with anthropologists, which is participant observation, ethnography, spending time with them, getting to know them in a more relaxed and hopefully more holistic way. It just takes a tremendous amount of time. It does.

For The Warmth of Other Suns, for example, in order to find the protagonists for that book, I had to go to the places where they would be. I went to -- there were actually Baptist churches in Brooklyn where everyone was from South Carolina. There were Catholic churches in California where everyone was from Louisiana. Obviously, I was writing about the Great Migration of people who went from the South and then spread out to the rest of the country following beautifully predictable streams. That's what I found in the process of that. I interviewed over twelve hundred people for that, basically a casting call. It was like auditioning people for the role of the being a protagonist in this book. That's where I had a chance to meet many, many people. For the most part, I, in some ways, throw out prompts just to get people talking and to see where that leads and to allow them to talk. Whatever it is that can get them to feel comfortable and to talk is what I would do. Generally, it means asking fewer questions than you might think.

A lot of it is responding to what they’ve said to keep the conversation going, to make it conversational, to sort of sit at their knee and to hear their experiences, to make it comfortable for them, essentially, to till the soil to make it receptive to whatever is pouring forth from them. That's what this is all about. It just takes a lot of time. It really does. Some of those people end up telling me things that they hadn’t told their own children because they had been through so much pain and trauma that they didn't want to burden their children with that. They didn't want to revisit it. That was post-traumatic stress for a lot of the people who endured and suffered and survived Jim Crow. They were telling me things that were very, very painful. The most that I can do is be the very best listener that I can be, be encouraging, empathetic, understanding, and to validate their experiences and their feelings. That's what my job is.

Zibby: Once you have to absorb all of that stress and trauma and history and narrative that's very disturbing, how do you then walk away and have a normal night? How do you extract yourself from that intensity and deal with those emotions, aside from obviously turning it into a best-selling narrative nonfiction book? Emotionally, how do you toggle back and forth from that intimacy, really?

Isabel: It's probably one's individual constitution that makes the person more likely to be able to think long term about something. That's how I am. These are huge projects that take a long time. I go into it knowing that it's going to take a long time. I'm going to have to sit with it, live with it for a long time. There's several answers to that question. One of them is that I often focus in on people with whom I already have developed or feel there is some kind of connection. There is some chemistry that makes me feel that I want to spend time with them and they want to spend time with me because this is a long-haul journey here. This is really years in the making. You have to feel that there is connection that can power you through. That's one of them. In the case for the things I do, I end up absorbing myself into what their lives has been. I am, by definition, kind of an empath. I just am, so I absorb it. That's just who I am. Knowing that it's going to be for the long haul, it means that I have absorbed who they are into my being. They become part of me. I just live with it. They become part of me. All of the people that I write about on some level become part of me. I don't view that as draining as much as enriching because I get to know these amazing, incredible people. If I didn't have a chemistry and love for them, then it would be harder for the reader to experience that as well. If I feel this love and connection to them, then reader will as well.

I think that the way particularly The Warmth of Other Suns has been received -- the book has been out for ten years. It was on the best-seller list when it first came out. It's back on the best-seller list again ten years later. It's incredible. I think that that's because people can feel the connection, the love, the empathy. They can see themselves in the people. I say that narrative nonfiction is the closest that you get to be another person. We know that empathy can be elicited when we read novels. Narrative nonfiction allows you to feel that same empathy for people who were real, who actually existed. What allows me to get through it is my sense of connection, compassion, and in fact, love and admiration for the people that I'm writing about. That does not mean that I'm writing about them as if they're perfect. You get to see them in their full humanity. It actually is a disservice to people to overly romanticize a person. I think that a full humanity means the range of emotions and experiences, and so that's what comes through. That's one of the things that powers me through, that gets me through the really difficult aspects.

The other thing is ultimately the reader. I embark upon these projects, these massive research immersions, because I ultimately want to share this with readers. I'm thinking about the reader the whole time. Thinking about the reader and knowing that ultimately whatever it is that I'm having to experience, suffer, go through will reach someone else, that's what inspires me. I love the definition that Tolstoy gives for art. He says that art is the transfer of emotion from one person to another. That's a beautiful, concise description of art, the most beautiful that I've heard. That is what this is. This is literally being the person in between the sender of emotion and experience, and the receiver of that emotion and experience. The sender is the person whose story is being told. The receiver is the reader who is now getting to learn and immerse him or herself in someone else's story. I am the intercessor. I am the interpreter of that experience. That's what I'm thinking about too. It's not complete until it gets out of me and out to the reader. That's what also inspires me and motivates me even for some of the really difficult parts of the work that I have to do.

Zibby: How did this all get started? You referred to your constitution earlier. Were you always this empathic? Give me a picture of you in seventh grade or preschool. Were you always the one connecting everybody? When did you know you wanted to embark on these deep dives into other people's lives?

Isabel: Actually, like a lot of writers, I'm an introvert, probably an extreme introvert. I think a lot of writers are observers. They're people who were always the quiet one with a book in hand, that child in bed with the flashlight under the covers reading a book. That was who I was and am. I was feeling that connection through the stories that I was reading growing up. I was also the person who was usually the quiet one on the sidelines observing all the action that other people might have been in the midst of. That doesn't mean that there weren’t times where I might have been involved. Generally speaking, I'm very content to be the one who's watching, observing, interpreting, examining, and thinking about what is going on around me. The way that it comes out is through the writing. That's how it comes out.

Zibby: I think you can maybe put aside your flashlight. I think you've graduated to perhaps a lamp on your bedside table at this point. What do you think? Are you still hiding? [laughs]

Isabel: No, symbolically, of course. I'm long past that. It's the idea of being able to lose yourself in a story.

Zibby: No, I'm kidding. I feel the same way. I also had a flashlight. Literally, I would hide in my bathroom and read Charlotte's Web. Now my husband sleeps next to me, and the light is on. I'm the same way. I was also very quiet and observing as a kid. I relate to everything you're saying. It's awesome. In your book, you set out, obviously, all these different paradigms for analyzing societies, especially how we've gotten to where we are now through the lens of both cultures in India and the Holocaust and Jim Crow South and everything as to why we are the way we are, and perhaps we should look at it differently. I was just wondering, having gone through this complete analysis of our society as it stands today, how hopeful are you? What would you tell kids who are growing up now in this environment knowing what you know and all you've researched and everything? What would your advice to them be? Do you feel optimistic about where we can go, or not?

Isabel: I wouldn't have written these books if I were not optimistic. It takes a lot of faith and optimism to embark on something that will take years to complete with no guarantee of how it's going to turn out, no guarantee of what the world will be like by the time it comes out. Will people even be interested by the time you finally finish this thing you started? It takes a lot of faith and optimism to even start down the path that each of these books began with. I wouldn't have written them if I weren’t optimistic. Of course, one of the missions and purpose of these books is to help illuminate aspects of our country's history that we otherwise would not know so that we can together find ways to transcend these artificial barriers and boundaries that have been created long before even our ancestors were thought of. This is going back to the seventeenth century colonial America before there were the United States of America. The goal of this is to shine a light on these aspects of this old house that we call America.

I use this analogy, this metaphor, about our country being like an old house that we've all inherited. None of us alive are the ones who built it, but it's our responsibility now that we are in this house. That's the purpose of all of this. The purpose is to somehow find a way to recognize what we have inherited, to really look closely at what we've inherited in hopes that we can make the improvements, make the repairs, the massive repairs that are necessary in order for to be as strong as it needs to be. That's where my hopefulness comes, and also people's response to what happened over the summer after George Floyd. There was a sense of alarm and outrage that was absolutely warranted and that many, many people, not just in our country, but around the world felt and responded to, and a sense that this should not be happening in this country or any country, but especially not in our country given our creed and what we stand for. It should not be happening now. I think that that's where I get a lot of hopefulness, the fact that people did respond, the fact that people did recognize how woeful and how tragic that this is happening in our current era.

Zibby: This is probably none of my business, but when you are not being a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and researcher and of the amazing things that you're doing to help the country, what do you do in your spare time? What do you enjoy doing? How do you use time when you're not at your desk or at your computer? What are some of your things that make you tick?

Isabel: Sadly, for a lot of the last year or so, and especially with what's going on now in COVID, that takes up a vast majority of my waking time because that's what the circumstances require. The question you're asking is almost pre-COVID. So much of my time is spent just absolutely loving being able to travel and to see new and amazing cultures, connecting in that way. That's massively central to who I am, obviously. I love to spend time out in nature in any way that I can, and especially digging in the soil and the art of what can happen when you plant something and have it to grow. I'm such a tremendous, tremendous animal lover, animal rights advocate. I just absolutely can't imagine life without having some kind of animal in one's life. I'm a big dog lover. I love all kinds of animals. What I'm saying is there are many, many sources of joy in addition, of course, to family and friends and what's really important in life. The circumstance in which that we find ourselves now means that the world is the way that it is. That's what's necessary right now. For writers, it's not as difficult to transition to the world that we're in now in terms of being interior, being still engaged with words and engaged with talking about words. That's very, very natural because that's what we do.

Zibby: I was literally just saying yesterday that I couldn't -- I have a black lab that I recently inherited from my mother-in-law who passed away. I have fallen in love. I was like, I can't believe that I have the capacity for this much love for an animal. Every time I'm with her thinking about how much I love her, I'm already thinking, what am I going to do when she's not around? which is stupid. With people, you can fool yourself that they’ll be around forever. With animals, you can't. At least, I've found you can't have that.

Isabel: COVID has been such a devastation to everyone and more particularly, people who have suffered from it directly, clearly. It's been going on for long enough that many things, both good and bad, in life also happened because it's been going on for so long. One of the things that happened is that I lost my beloved westie who was seventeen. He'd made it to seventeen. In the early months of COVID, he passed away. You realize how they work their way into your heart in ways that you don't expect, in ways that humans don't. It's a different kind of love. They're by your side, essentially living for you, waiting for every gesture coming from you. They literally exist for you. They become so much a part of your life that you don't even think about it until they're no longer there. There were two. We had two. Now there's one. He made it to seventeen, and so I can't complain.

Zibby: I'm so sorry to hear that. On the street yesterday, I was walking the dog. This older man came over and was just like, "Can I stop and pet the dog?" Of course, I'm with my mask, like, why is he coming so close to me? He's like, "I lost my German shepherd after fourteen years. It's only been three weeks. I just have to hug your dog." My heart broke. Yeah, animal love. Anyway, last question because I know you have to go soon, do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Isabel: I don't have anything that you haven't probably heard before, so I apologize in advance for not being any more insightful about this. We're often told, read, read, read. Read good things, things that you admire, and things that you could learn from because they're not as good as they could be. There are people who say write every single day. That is true. It's probably a great idea. I, however, believe that there are some of us who -- I actually do better when I am writing because I feel as if I am bursting with something that has to be on the page, where I cannot stop myself from having to write. That, I find to be more productive. When you have to write and you're on deadline, of course you write. I find that, to me, the most inspiring and inspired and effective writing comes from when I feel as if, oh, my god, where's a piece of paper? I need to write this down right this second. I just have to write this down before I lose it.

One suggestion I would have is to always have pen and paper or whatever it is. If you write in your device, have it available. If something hits you, write it down then. Do not assume that it will be there tomorrow or next week or next month. If something hits you, some revelation or some way of thinking about something, some idea, some turn of phrase, write it down right then and there because it may not be there again. The mind works in mysterious ways. You need to capture it while you can. I always have something nearby that I can write on, envelopes. It doesn't matter. Whatever it is, always have something nearby. I would say to be kind to one's self when things aren't coming as you wish them to be. Know that if you've done it before, you can do it again. It will come. Be patient with yourself. I personally, as I said, don't believe in suffering and torturing yourself when it's not coming, when it's not working. I just don't feel that you should suffer. Of course, if you're on deadline, that's a different thing. You've got to get it done. The most beautiful things that are more naturally, holistically emerging from your subconscious will come when you least expect. Be there to capture it.

Also, in terms of being kind to one's self and patient with one's self is to realize that all times when you're working on something, your subconscious is working all the time. It is constantly trying to make sense of what it knows has to come out of you. To know that even when you're not in front of a screen, or for people who -- there are many people who still do write in longhand. I like combining both. Whatever I write in longhand is usually going to be, often, the most powerful, meaningful, oddly enough, well-constructed observation or passage, generally. I don't know why that happens. Maybe there's some direct connection from the brain going through the neck and then through the arms and into hands. I don't know. Maybe somebody has studied that. That's what I find. To know that we are working even when we're not in front of the screen, the subconscious is constantly trying to make sense of it because it knows it has a job to do. It knows that it needs to get this thing written. It absolutely knows it. It's working on it whether we realize it or not. Then when it reveals itself to us and when we sit down to write, then it can all pour forth. That's how I work. That's what works for me.

Zibby: Maybe this can be your next book, how the brain and the hand interact. You can go around the country and talk to every writer. I think that would be really cool. I'm sure you have other ideas. [laughs] Thank you so much for your time and for the fantastic contributions to literature and for the conversation.

Isabel: Thank you. I so enjoyed it. Thank you.

Zibby: Have a great day. Buh-bye.

Isabel: You as well. Bye.

Anne-Louise Nieto and Hanna Chiou, HABBI HABBI

Zibby Owens: Welcome to "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." I am so excited. We're going to be talking about Habbi Habbi today, the most amazing wand plus book bilingual combination of board books there are. Welcome. Why don't the two of you introduce yourselves so listeners can figure out who's who as we're talking?

Hanna Chiou: Sure. Anne-Louise, do you want to go first?

Anne-Louise Nieto: You go ahead. Go ahead.

Hanna: Cool. I'm Hanna. We always say Habbi Habbi's made with love by H&AL. I'm H. I am a mom of two. I grew up as your stereotypical ABC. My parents are from Taiwan, and so they speak Chinese. I really wanted my kids to be able to speak Chinese better than I can. That was one of the motivations behind us starting Habbi Habbi.

Anne-Louise: I'm Anne-Louise, the A of H&AL. Hanna and I always joke that we're twins from opposite coasts. We have all of these different funny things that are similar about us from the sports we played growing up to our parents' birthday too. Our brother-in-laws have the same name. We have all of these things in common. Anyway, while Hanna was growing up on the West Coast, I was growing up on the East Coast. I'm a transplant and now out here in San Francisco with my two kids and husband. We both have all these little kids running around. Similar to Hanna, we're teaching my kiddos Spanish. Although, unlike Hanna, I don't speak Spanish at home, so I'm learning with them. My husband speaks some Spanish. It's been a really fun journey as a parent, as a learner, as an entrepreneur.

Zibby: Tell me about starting this company. It's books, but it's also -- not that books aren't a business, but it's a whole dual language, language teaching, not ensemble -- what's the better word? System, essentially. I know both of you explained how it is in your homes and your inner motivations. How did you two pair up? What was it like getting this off the ground?

Hanna: Anne-Louise and I were -- obviously, we've been friends for a really long time, as you can tell, since we first met in 2005. That was fifteen years ago when we first graduated from college and we were in the same company. We've always been in touch. We were bridesmaids at each other's weddings. We were starting to talk about things in our new phase of life being moms. At one point, we were starting a pop-up shop. We were looking at all these different brands. During that whole brand search process, we were trying to choose intentional, thoughtful toys for our own homes and a really nice playroom. That was the same time where our kids were very young. We were going through our own journeys. For my daughter, I was wanting her to learn Chinese. There was this amazing technology that we had seen in Asia where you could tap different things in a book. It would read it to you. I said, this makes language learning accessible.

Even though I grew up with Chinese, I can't read it because it's character based. Whether it's being nonnative, whether you can't read it, basically, it makes language learning accessible. We thought it would be so much better if the books were intentional and had other languages besides just Chinese and things were more accurate. We got really excited about the technology. I just kept talking to Anne-Louise about it. At that time, we weren’t making product. We were just picking some toys. I said, this is amazing. From there, we said, we should make it. We should make it multilingual. We should make it beautiful. We should make it diverse. We should make it inclusive. We should include all these topics that we would love to talk about. We should make language learning, which is so hard for people in Western countries, especially in the US, we should make it more accessible. That was the origination. I'll let Anne-Louise talk more about where it went from there.

Anne-Louise: You hit it. We had this experience as well from doing this pop-up store where we saw these brands from all over the world. Then we were able to see what parents and kids were interested in. We did see a really intense interest in language learning. We also, like Hanna said, had that need at home and wanted things that were really engaging. I see it now. My older one is four. My younger one is one. The four-year-old starts playing with the wand and the books and is just so deeply interested in it and wants to tap and wants to repeat. It's creating those kind of things that are engaging for them that don't have a screen so I don't feel guilty that he's playing with this over and over again. It's fun, but it's also gives them the language learning that we're after. We're trying to build that while they're still young and they're learning to pronounce things and their brains are so flexible.

Hanna: The other thing I'd add is that when we were exploring the technology -- everybody knows conceptually that kids, if they learn when they're young and they get exposed when they're young, it's so much easier. I see these videos Anne-Louise sends me of her son using our wand. The way he repeats back the tones, they're perfect.

Anne-Louise: In Chinese. He uses the Chinese too.

Hanna: He learns it for the Chinese. At some point along as we grow older and we become adults, it's very hard for us to sometimes hear those tones. For kids, it's so easy. One of the big things for us when we made it was we said, how can we get families to have exposure early when kids are not necessarily -- they haven't even started reading. In English language, we just get exposure from people talking around us. How can they get exposure through play? No one's actually intentionally reading. That's why we made every inch of the book tappable and those types of things. We really wanted it to be fun. If they were having fun and they were just tapping all around and they got exposure, then naturally, the learning would just happen.

Zibby: Wow. It's so neat. Also, how you did the books themselves is interesting even if you couldn't tap it. It's the next generation of, what does your mom do for work? It's like, my mom's an entrepreneur. My mom does this or that or she's at home. I'm like, good, you're not just a doctor or a lawyer. I feel like so many books have, here are the two careers for a job. This was so multifaceted. Now I'm, of course, forgetting the ten different careers you profiled. What were they? Entrepreneur and...

Anne-Louise: We had a product manager. We have a chief home officer. She stays at home, but we wanted to recognize that that job is really multifaceted and challenging. We have an entrepreneur. We have an art history professor. We have an investment banker. We have a surgeon. For sure, we wanted to bring up topics that are kind of provocative and interesting. We do find that as the kids are using it, then they ask questions. My son was reading the Global Celebrations book this morning. Again, he can't read yet, but he was tapping it. We picked celebrations from all over the world, not just your typical ones you always see. We picked Carnival in Brazil. We picked Holi. We picked Eid and Chinese New Year or Lunar New Year. He was on the Holi page. Holi, they grab powder and they throw it in the air. It's a celebration of colors and springtime and love. He just started asking all of these questions about it. That's the kind of thing that we want, is that the kids are curious. They're getting the language learning, but then they're also learning about different cultures, different people, what they celebrate around the world. They start asking questions. It tees up the conversation for us as parents, too, to have with them.

Zibby: It's so neat. What is the plan for the series going forward? I saw how they all had arrived. You have a whole bookshelf full already, so not like you have to keep producing. What's the vision? What's the five-year plan you must have? It sounds like you guys are into that type of thinking.

Anne-Louise: I'm like, how do we get to tomorrow? [laughter]

Hanna: There's so many directions where we could go. Like Anne-Louise said, we sort of take it a day at a time with a rough idea of where we would love to get to. We'll see how we get there. The original vision was a global library. If you can imagine, you step into a room that looks like a combination of a playroom meets kids' room meets just a space that you and your kids want to be in. It's just filled, kind of like the room you're in right now, it's filled with books. Maybe there's some accessory like globes and some really nice comfortable -- whatever it is. You just go in and, literally, this one wand, you can tap anything. It's just so easy. You've used it before. We intentionally streamlined the design so that you don't have to toggle between languages. You don't have to set certain settings. You don't have to tell the wand which book it's on. Literally, all you do is turn it on, and you touch anywhere. There's no wrong place to touch. If you can imagine, a kid enters this room, looks up, pulls up any book, turns it on, and just taps anything. We would love to have a global library that's so accessible and makes language learning and the idea of global citizenship come home to families. That would be amazing.

Zibby: You could do a little video of that. Have you done that yet and I just don't know? You need to put a kid -- you need to recreate that in real life now.

Hanna: Yes, yes, we need to do that.

Zibby: You could just have lots of your book. It sounds like a good ad. What's your distribution right now? Where can you buy these? Are they in actual stores? Just online? How do people buy them?

Anne-Louise: Right now, we're online. We sell through our website predominantly, habbihabbi.com. We've also partnered with a couple of ecommerce retailers like The Tot, at Anthropologie, and Motherly as well. We're really choiceful, though, about who we work with. Of course, most of our engagement comes through our site. We have set it up to engage with our community. What we love is hearing from our customers, sharing that back with them. It's not just the transaction. We want to surprise and delight with every interaction we have a with a customer. We do all our fulfillment ourselves. We have a small team. We do our own warehouse. It's all very personal. We pack all the boxes. We always include a personalized note. The way our operations are set up are reflective of the importance of our community to us and the importance of reaching out and interacting with that group and building that community.

Zibby: I feel like you should partner with a place like Literati. They do these book subscriptions. I was recently buying a gift for somebody, a friend who's close to me who just had a baby. I gave them a book subscription from there. This would've been another great gift. Just in case people aren't remembering to go directly to your site, the more you can have an advertiser or something, places where people are already going to look for gifts for babies.

Anne-Louise: I should check them out. I think I get Instagram ads from them. [laughs]

Zibby: They're great. They do a really nice job. There are lots of book subscriptions, some for grown-ups, some for kids. I know this is kind of a toy, kind of educational. It's a hybrid. It's not just a book, but still. It's really neat. How long can a kid play with these books, do you think? What's the target age? I know you had said your kids are one to four. What's the perfect age for people to buy this book?

Hanna: It's so interesting because we have heard such different things from different customers. I think fundamentally, it's because it's a second language. Whether you're a more bilingual household or whether you're introducing it more as a minority language, second language, it changes per family. For the ones where they're like, I want my kids to be bilingual and I want to start early, we find that zero to three is when they start. Sometimes people buy it even before their kids are born. They put it on baby registry lists, things like that. They think about it as either, I'll read it with my child or they’ll play with it, but regardless, I just want more exposure and I want exposure early. They think about it the same as English exposure. Then some would say, while my kids can't tap it, I'm still focusing on English first. They think of the three to six as a very compelling period. I think no matter what, for most families, three to six is very compelling. Then we find that there are probably a smaller number but still a good chunk of people who buy it from six to nine. At that point, kids know how to use it. They're not just playing. They're tapping to read. It's a supplement as more for education. They take a class, and they think that this is a great thing to have at home to supplement what they're learning at school.

Anne-Louise: We often see, too, that because families have multiple kids that are across those ages, we'll see that they might buy a set. Their two-year-old uses it in a certain way. Their five-year-old uses it a certain way. It applies across. Our books, we have simpler books like word books that you just tap the animal name or it's numbers or colors, something very simple, all the way up through more complex sentence and story books that obviously have longer sentences and are, again, more complex for maybe some slightly more advanced kids, not necessarily age based, but more level of advanced.

Zibby: Another thing you could do -- not that you were asking my opinion. There's this company called Thatcher Wine. They do book sets where they design a logo on top of your book. Then they have their own catalogue. It would be neat to have that be one of their offerings too because you already have the spines looking so cool. They do more like spine art in a way, or sets. I'm trying to think if I have the catalogue here to show you. This is completely off topic of your book. See how they have -- I'm showing you. It's a podcast, but they're books that they string together. Then they make them look like something [indiscernible/crosstalk].

Anne-Louise: I've seen those before, actually.

Zibby: Like Little House on the Prairie, they’ll have over eight books or something. You can customize however. The way I keep coming back to this is I love how your books look visually all lined up. To have something on the shelf in a publication that people are already getting, I feel like that would be your audience too. I'm sorry, Juniper Books. His name is Thatcher Wine. Anyway, just another thought. [laughs] I'll stop.

Anne-Louise: I love it.

Zibby: How are you finding running a business and dealing with your families? How are you balancing, especially in pandemic time when we're not necessarily out in offices? I hate to use the word balance. How are you dealing with it, essentially?

Anne-Louise: When I think about my goals for next year, one of my goals for next year is stable childcare. One of the real tough things about this year has been, there's a shutdown and you don't have childcare. If it's a two-parent household and you're both trying to work from home, how do you -- there's been a ton of disruption this year, of course. Part of it is just having really great partners. We're very lucky that our husbands are great dads. They pull their weight. They're awesome. We also have to do a lot of moving and shaking around. I'll tell you all a really funny story. So we have a warehouse. We have a cardboard dumpster. On Wednesday nights, we have to leave the cardboard dumpster out. The cardboard dumpster gets full. I forgot last night. My son was home for Veteran's Day yesterday. He'd been doing the entire afternoon while I was down there. I was like, I'm just going to put the kids in the car and they're going to come with me to the warehouse. They're going to hang out for a second. I'll put the dumpster out. We'll go back home. You just have to be a little bit more flexible. It's not the same as a nine-to-five job where you go to the office and you have somebody take care of your kids. Then you come home. Then you're done. We're always adjusting and making it work. It's not always easy, but sometimes you just put the kids in the car and go put the dumpster out. [laughs]

Zibby: My mom was always throwing us in the car to do anything. Oh, we're going to the window store. I have all these memories growing up of sitting in random stores while she did other stuff. Then I feel like we got to a point where we were all so intentional with our kids' time, maximizing everything. They should go here. They should go there. In a way, it's almost like a throwback. Put your kids in fifty-seven classes and they're going to go with you to the dry cleaner, okay.

Anne-Louise: Exactly. They're not going to go to music class or going to whatever. They’ll be with you.

Zibby: I don't know about you. My kids are super happy to not be running around. They could stay home forever.

Anne-Louise: I'd say the one upshot -- Hanna and I also talk about this all the time. I feel like we do use the outdoor benefits of living in San Francisco a lot more. There are so many parks. There's outdoor activities. Then they’ve shut down all these streets in the city. We used to, maybe on the weekend we'd do a little more. We're in the house. We're doing stuff. We are out. We are outdoors. You are doing stuff. That's been a nice small benefit.

Zibby: How about you, Hanna?

Hanna: I feel every parent who's working at home has their own challenges. I am in much admiration of Anne-Louise. She is the best juggler of all things. The example she talked about last night about -- at one point, she was in LA. I was fulfilling out of my garage. There's just so many stories we could go into about this year. It was crazy. I reiterate what she had said about it's not like there's home life and there's startup life and work life. It just all melds together. When you can do certain things, then you try to make the most out of the time that you have to do that thing. For example, today, Anne-Louise dropped her kids off. She came down. This is one of the first times that we're together besides at the warehouse because we're doing a video shoot. Then she's going to change and go back to the warehouse. At one point, because I live further away, I was going to the warehouse and bringing stuff back to my garage so I wouldn't have to run to the warehouse every day to fulfill. We made a very intentional choice to do this, to take it on ourselves versus raise a bunch of money to hire tons and tons of people. As a result, it is hard to say that there is -- there is balance in a very strange way. It's more just, you make it work. You make it work. You do what you need to do. The good thing about being our own bosses is that we dictate the timeline for ourselves, and the goals. Of course, we have certain expectations for ourselves.

Sometimes we think back and we said, wow, we launched this fifteen months ago. Fifteen months ago, Anne-Louise had her second baby. We had one sample product, one hardcover book. We had a bunch of paper proofs. That's about it. We had no website, anything else. Now today, we have a warehouse. We have a meaningful product library of forty titles. We hired our first person. When we see progress, and we obviously find fulfillment in the types of products we're building, it helps the hard times where you're like, wow, I'm up at all hours talking to -- I haven't pulled an all-nighter in a long time. I pretty much pulled an all-nighter that one night when -- usually, in any normal year, we would go fly to our supplier, check out all the product before it gets approved and shipped. This year, we can't do that. We just can't get on a plane. Countries won't let us in. I was on the phone and on video at all hours of the day trying to make sure that everything was ready. Ports are -- there are so many things this year. Ports are a mess.

Anne-Louise: Ports are congested.

Hanna: Our container costs went up three times because of a combination of the trade war and fewer ships and demand and stuff like that. If we wanted to lay out COVID challenges, there are so many.

Anne-Louise: Oh, my gosh, so many.

Zibby: Wow. Do you have any parting advice to aspiring authors and entrepreneurs?

Anne-Louise: I would say you got to just do it. A lot of people have ideas or things that they want to do. They want to try it. Just go ahead and try. Know that it's not easy. You'll probably do some things wrong. You'll make mistakes. We have this philosophy about just putting one foot in front of the other. We were talking before about what's going to happen tomorrow. Just keep going. Of course, we do take time to step back and think about our longer-term goals. It's just having that stick-to-itiveness. If you're trying to write a book, start writing a page. Then write another page. If you're trying to start a company, just start figuring it out. The other thing I would say is that everyone already has a lot of resources around them. We have built this amazing network of friends and acquaintances and rediscovered friendships from ages and ages ago. People want to help you. Ask them. When we started, Hanna, we must have had dozens of conversations with anyone who would talk to us. If you pair that with the stick-to-itiveness and you keep going and you keep asking, and you keep going and you keep asking, you'll get there.

Hanna: I can't agree with that more. Everybody thinks entrepreneurship is super glamorous and it's all about the ideas. You have a brilliant idea. It's super fun. While it is super fun because Anne-Louise and I work together -- that was one of our primary goals. This needs to be fun. There are more times that people don't see that are unglamorous. For example, Anne-Louise describing going and pushing out the dumpster because they need to pick up the cardboard. If they don't pick up the cardboard, we won't have space to put the empty cardboard boxes. I think people either don't start or they don't continue because there are hard times. We were consultants by training because that's what we started in after school. We loved the job and learned so much from it. There was a lot of strategy in it because we were strategy consultants.

I think entrepreneurship has given us such a deep appreciation for how much execution matters and how execution is just -- when you build an actual business, the ideas are easy. That takes us two percent of the time. The ninety-eight percent of the time is, we know we have to unload the container. That's not hard to figure out. When a container comes, you have to unload it. Troubleshooting and problem-solving and saying, how do you realistically do it -- like finding a supplier. There are a million suppliers out there, but you have to find the right one. The detail and thought and actually visiting them and asking the right questions and seeing their line, those are the things that actually make a difference, not writing on a checklist, find a quality supplier. As Anne-Louise said -- people say, what's your background? Is it writing children's books? Is it teaching language? Well, we're moms. We hope that we can figure things out from our prior learning and jobs. We've asked people. We just basically said, if we need to find a supplier, who can we ask? We start with Google. We start with our friends. Then we just go from there and say, we can solve any challenge. That's how we approached it.

Zibby: That's a great attitude. I think that's the key to the whole thing, is believing that you can do it.

Anne-Louise: And having each other. We're very lucky that we have each other. It buoys you up. It keeps you going. I'm like, I can't figure this out, but I'm sure Hanna can figure it out. If we talk about it together, we can figure -- it just makes it better.

Hanna: Every big challenge or even any chore -- it's funny. We'll go visit warehouses or we'll go pack boxes. We used to call it packing parties even though it'd be like, oh, my god, it's post-black Friday and we need to pack all these boxes. Having each other makes any high seem higher and any low not that low because there's emotional support. I feel like that's so helpful. Otherwise, it can be lonely or frustrating or something like that.

Zibby: I get it. Thank you, guys. Thank you so much for telling everybody more about Habbi Habbi and for chatting with me about your trials and tribulations of being bridesmaids-turned co-business owners and moms and all the rest. Thank you. I can't wait to see what happens with your business. It's so cool.

Hanna: Thank you.

Anne-Louise: Thank you. Thank you for chatting with us and sharing your beautiful library.

Zibby: Thanks a lot. Take care. Buh-bye.

Anne-Louise: Thanks. Bye.

Hanna: Bye.

Paige Peterson, GROWING UP BELVEDERE-TIBURON

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

Paige Peterson: Thank you. How are you?

Zibby: This is so nice for me because you were my first boss ever. How old I was? Eleven or something. I babysat your kids. How old was I?

Paige: I think you were ten. Alexandra was just born.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. How old is she now?

Paige: She's almost thirty-four.

Zibby: Yeah, I was ten. Oh, my gosh, that's crazy. It was so great. I got to spend all those summers and watch Alexandra grow up and then go to school with her.

Paige: We picked Trinity because you went there.

Zibby: I hope she liked it.

Paige: We followed you through your education.

Zibby: This is such a coming-full-circle moment. I'm so excited I can have you on the podcast. Your book is so beautiful and so beautifully written. I have to say -- let me back up. Why don't you start by telling listeners what your book is about and what inspired you to write it? Then I will continue my raves about it.

Paige: [laughs] Thank you. I actually was at dinner in New York with a friend of mine, David Patrick Columbia who has a blog called New York Social Diary. We were sitting together. I was just telling him what my childhood was like. He said, "Oh, my god, you must write about this. This is incredible." The way I wrote this book was to get very, very quiet and to kind of channel that inner child of mine and remember what it was like to be a little girl. I started writing vignettes. I just started writing paragraphs, nothing connected. In the end, nothing sort of connects in the book either because it's childhood memories. They're just capsules of moments. I was extraordinarily blessed. I'm sixty-five years old. In 1955, I was born in Northern California. Belvedere and Tiburon was still a railroad town. It was a rural, wild place. It was great.

Zibby: Your book is such a great combination of your own memories about growing up there and the place itself, but also your childhood and then so many amazing photographs that you have dug up from the past hundred-plus years, which is amazing.

Paige: We took those photographs from the Miwok Indians up. There's an amazing history here, one that America should not be proud of. What the Spaniards and the Mexicans and then the white men did to the American Indians is appalling. This whole peninsula that I live in where I'm talking to you from was just beautiful, peaceful land with Indians. Of course, in a very short amount of time, we decimated them. The missionaries put them in Western clothing and turned them into slaves. It's really an appalling history here. Then we moved forward. I did write about a hundred years of history in Northern California. It's amazing. This railroad town was an amazing place.

Zibby: Your childhood, literally, I was reading it and I was like, this is the backdrop for any movie about America. I felt like I was reading a set for a novel or something. I couldn't believe that's the way you grew up with riding your bikes all day and no playdates and just so many things that you think of as so traditional America, small town, whatever. Yet there was San Francisco right over the bridge too. Crazy.

Paige: It was crazy. You know Zibby, I raised my kids on Central Park West just the way you were raised and you're now raising your children. My childhood was so vastly different. Of course, our parents just sort of said, make your own lunch and leave the house. It didn't matter if it was raining. It didn't matter. We would go to the library. We were told to go. We wouldn't come back until the four-thirty whistle blew. Nobody paid any attention to us. We used to take swings and swing off over the cliff. Nobody cared. More importantly, kids didn't get hurt. I think sometimes the hovering things, kids aren't as mindful as they should be because everybody's always hovering around them. I feel so very blessed to have been raised here.

Zibby: Tell me about this. You put water in the freezer, and that was your water for the day. You would take it out and wait for it to melt.

Paige: Yeah, in a glass jar. We all did it. Collectively, all the kids always had a glass jar in the basket of their bikes. We all used to drink out of garden hoses, which of course now we know is completely toxic and horrible to do. I would never let my child, but we did it. We did it. We weren’t dependent on anyone. By the way, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich was all one needed for nine hours. There were no such things as snacks. It was so simple.

Zibby: There was part of me reading your book sighing with longing as I think about the effort it takes just for me to get my kids to school, and the fifty-seven snacks and water bottles. That's just to literally cross the park. That's a ten-minute --

Paige: -- I did it. I was you.

Zibby: Yeah, I know.

Paige: Just preparing to get out of my apartment, I used to think, oh, my god, I cannot even believe this. My mother never did this. It was a much simpler time. It was really beautiful. One of the things, Zibby, I live on the water. The Tiburon Peninsula has water on three sides of it. There were no life jackets. Kids swam in the bay. Kid swam in the lagoon. We were competent on boats and kayaking. There was no safety of any kind. There were no helmets when you rode your bike. There was nothing. It's amazing. By the way, I don't know any kid that got hurt. There were things that happened later on as teenagers, but it wasn't about playing and being free.

Zibby: You had this great passage. It just stayed with me, one of your many descriptive scenes that takes the reader back. You wrote, "For years, the snack bar at the club only offered bags of potato chips. After some remodeling, the menu upgraded to include grilled cheese, hot dogs, and hamburgers with chips and pickles, mayonnaise and yellow mustard on the side, paper cups for ice water. The thin plywood changing rooms stayed the same for years, lockers and hooks for hanging wet towels, the smell of never-ending dampness. Don't we all have such memory rooms composed of tastes, smells, and textures? They stay with us always." Aw, that is so nice. Then later on, and maybe this goes to what you were saying about the teenage years, you write, "Like any town, we had our share of tragedy. What happened inside the homes of our friends was none of anyone's business. People didn't talk about their problems outside of home. Ours was a culture of silence and secrets. In the 1960s and '70s, at least eight of my friends died before the age of twenty, some from drugs, some by suicide. All these decades later when I see the parents of those children, their eyes still carry sadness. As my grandmother would wisely nod to us, there but for the grace of God go I." Beautiful. You're a beautiful writer. That is haunting, the culture of silence and secrets in this idyllic waterside town. What's really going on inside the homes? This is a novel. It's like a thriller. I don't know what it is.

Paige: [laughs] It's interesting. I haven't heard somebody read that before. I was raised as an Episcopalian, but I went to a Catholic girls' school. It's interesting, this gang of girls. One of them ended up being schizophrenic and jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. Another one died of an overdose of LSD. It was in the sixties and seventies. Drugs were just being introduced to California, free love, and everything else. I think I was saved because I had a very strict mother. I was scared of her, and so I didn't do any of that stuff. I didn't follow. I wasn't allowed to. One of the things I write about, I wasn't allowed to go to Main Street. There were definite boundaries for me. I feel so very lucky and, as my grandmother did used to say, there but for the grace of God go I. It was so sad. Belvedere and Tiburon are two towns. It's divided by a road. It's not unlike East Hampton, one side of the tracks to the other. There was a lot of alcoholism here because of cocktail parties. This is a yachting community. This involves a lot of drinking. I still don't know what went on behind closed doors, but a lot of it wasn't very nice.

Zibby: Interesting.

Paige: And sad. Kids didn't go to psychiatrists. There wasn't much divorce. I was the product of a divorce. My parents were divorced when I was eighteen months old, very, very early on in my life. Most of the people I knew in this community were married and settled. Nobody took vacations because nobody had any money. We just played outside. We were together. Those years were complicated. I bet all over the world people could talk about the sixties and seventies being a hard time for kids in some respects.

Zibby: It seems like the trade-offs -- your childhood sounded just so perfect. Obviously, nothing is perfect. Maybe the secrets in your house do not want to come out either. Maybe you're keeping those locked inside.

Paige: I certainly didn't write about what happened inside the house. That's another book.

Zibby: I want to read that book.

Paige: [laughs] Outside the house, I think I was absolutely -- I look back on my childhood with such delight. I was so lucky. I just was so fortunate. Also, I was open to it and took advantage of it and didn't fight any of it. We were big tennis players. My mother was a professional tennis player. She is ninety-four and in the other room. We were on the courts all the time playing. There was amazing structure in that, being an athlete. Then the freedom that we had was just amazing. I don't see kids here having that freedom at all.

Zibby: Even there? Now I'm feeling all guilty that I have kids in New York City. What is it like for the kids growing up there now?

Paige: I have to tell you, Zibby, I loved raising my kids in New York City. They just had a completely different, wonderful experience. There are nannies holding their hands. There are hovering mothers. You don't see kids off on their own at all. It's just different everywhere. This idyllic time that we had I think was a capsule in time. It doesn't exist anymore. It'll never go back. First of all, the population exploded. We still had lots of empty lots on the island where we did box sliding and made forts and kept all our sleeping bags up there and put them under branches. That can't happen now. We're overpopulated. There's still a sweetness to this small town, but it's different. It's definitely different.

Zibby: Do you think that yields different kids and different grown-ups? What do you think the impact of that is on a societal level when you have a whole generation of people who grew up with all this independence? Now obviously we have these kids who we have to buckle up six ways and sideways just to get around the block in the car seats and everything. What do you think? What type of society does that lead to?

Paige: It's a really good question, Zibby. I'm glad I'm not raising kids. I'm sorry. I just think it's so hard. It's so hard now. I don't know. What do you think?

Zibby: I just think that it dovetails with the increased anxiety everybody has. Kids feel that we're so weary of everything that goes on around them. I think that it creates a population of kids who are not as inherently brave and bold to go forth. They're always looking behind them. Maybe that has some benefits as well. We like to believe in the sense of control and everything. I don't know. I look at you. I remember when I used to babysit. You were always painting these amazing things. You were just so cool. Not that you aren't anymore, but I just thought you were the most amazing woman, and so creative. Now you've written your book about Blackie. You've already written a children's book and now this beautiful book. You beat to your drummer much more so than most people that I grew up with knowing.

Paige: Thank you. You know something, Zibby? I didn't have any information when I was a kid. There was no information.

Zibby: Did you go to school?

Paige: [laughs] Yeah, I most definitely went to school.

Zibby: Okay, good. All right.

Paige: We're stating the obvious. There were no computers. There were no phones. I mean that kind of information. Our lives were so simple and small. Parents didn't talk to kids. In those days, it was completely -- I remember being told once -- I was horrified by it. Not by my mother, but I was told, "Children are to be seen and not heard." We didn't have the kind of information that our kids have now. I think that creates more anxiety for children. I wasn't anxious at all when I was a kid.

Zibby: Are you close to your mother now? What's your relationship like?

Paige: I have a wonderful relationship with her. She's at the end of her life, ninety-four. She's still full of pep. She was a two-term mayor here in Belvedere, so she's very political. My mother was a working person. She didn't have that much time to fool around with us. She played sports with us. She was a wonderful mother. When I look at how interactive the parents are with the kids, I just think, oh, my gosh, give them some space. I don't think children need to have as much information as they're getting. One of things I did is that I just had endless hours of daydreaming. I liked to paint when I was a little girl. I didn't have a scheduled time. Even after school, there was freedom to do nothing. Out of that nothingness came, for me, creativity. I started painting when I was very young. I didn't think anything was impossible. Then when I started reading, I thought, I want to be Gertrude Stein. I don't want Alice B. Toklas, but I want Gertrude Stein's life. I want to be surrounded with writers and painters and creative people. I was very attracted to that kind of world. That's where my creative brain was. I was always painting and writing, not necessarily reading. I was an action person. I was raised in Belvedere-Tiburon with Anne Lamott who was a childhood friend. Annie always had a book in her hand. I never did. I was finding things and making things. I was much more into being more creative.

Zibby: I saw her quote at the end. I read your book online in the PDF that you sent me, so I'm hoping that the final copy has this on the cover or something.

Paige: Yes, it does.

Zibby: All right, great. It says, "I love this new book by Paige Peterson and the Belvedere-Tiburon Landmark Society. Always amazing and meticulous in its discovery and preservation of historical photographs, the Landmark Society has found the perfect narrator for this new collection. Paige is both precise and charming in capturing the wild and natural beauty of our shared childhoods and habitats in Belvedere and Tiburon in the fifties and sixties. She extols the days of getting on our bikes after breakfast and not coming home until dinner, covered in blackberry juice and dirt, scratches and bliss. This combined effort brought me nostalgia and cheer. Anne Lamott."

Paige: Aw, Annie. I was very touched by that. We had the same childhood. She was a great tennis player. We all played tennis all the time together. She was so much smarter than I was. She always had a book in her hand. When you started this blog, I used to think about Annie. Also, Zibby, you were always reading. I remember you as a teenager always reading. As a little girl, you always brought a book with you. This is innately within you. I was not a reader. I was a painter. The other thing I used to do is that I used to make forts. Then I would make houses and play houses. I was much more out there creating things than I was reading. I am trying to catch up with that now. I read more now. Annie was great. You were reading all the time. I was trying to think about something. On your twelfth birthday, I gave you a book by -- he was a Lebanese poet.

Zibby: Kahlil Gibran?

Paige: Yes.

Zibby: Yes, I loved that book, The Prophet. I ended up quoting from it in my bat mitzvah speech the next year. In fact, if you gave me enough time, I would get up and start looking for it because I know that I still have it. I'm going to go search. If it's not in this room, it might still be at my mom's. I will find it. I loved that. I loved it.

Paige: In thinking about you and loving you, I remember thinking, what can I do for Zibby? I thought, oh, god, she loves to read. This is sort of out of the wheelhouse. It was just something different that I had been impacted with. It's wonderful.

Zibby: There you go. It's the power of a book. That book has stayed with me ever since. That's the best gift you could've given me. Plus, you gave me a painting of yours. I had it hanging in my room for years. Those are the gifts that have true meaning. Imagine if you had given me an LOL doll or whatever kids are getting now. [laughs] Thank you. This conversation has made me feel better too because I've been doing a lot more work lately. I'm on my computer more. I'm around the kids. I usually have my laptop upstairs. The kids just play. They play. They draw. They just do whatever. I'm not on the floor with them anymore. That's in part because they're older. I'm talking about my little guys, not my teenagers. I put them to bed last night. I was thinking to myself, oh, god, I worked so much today. I was next to them all day. They would jump on my lap. I'd kiss them. They'd run. Then they'd go do their own thing again. I was like, I didn't really spend that much time on the floor with them, except for the three hours in the morning when they got up at the crack of dawn. We were baking together and whatever. Once the workday started, I was focused. I felt so guilty when I went to kiss them at night. I was like, ugh, I was such a bad mom today.

Paige: You were a great mom today. To just be present and let them be, I think that's the best. That's what my mother was like too because she worked. She had a retail store. She also was in politics. She was available, but she wasn't on us. I think that's a gift. What you did today was great. It lets them figure it out themselves. I see these parents and I want to say, leave that kid alone. Let them figure it out.

Zibby: My mom would always say to me, "Zibby, benign neglect." I was on top of my twins when they were little, literally just like a hawk watching them as they scampered every single second. She's like, "It's okay." Then I watch home movies where my mother is lying on a lounge chair by the pool smoking with her long, red fingernails smoking Vantage Lights with a little plastic eye protector so she didn't get a tan around her eyes. You see my brother and me almost falling in the pool. Then fortunately a babysitter might sweep in and save us or something. Now she's like, "I don't understand what you're doing, the way you parent." [laughs]

Paige: That's really funny. That's really good.

Zibby: Different times. Different times.

Paige: Different times. I'm glad you're giving your kids space to just be themselves. One of the things that I did with my kids, I painted with my kids a lot. I was always doing their homework. They were Trinity kids. God only knows, we were always doing homework. We worked side by side, not necessarily integrated, but side by side. Good for you. I applaud you.

Zibby: Thank you. Paige, this has been so nice, just so meaningful, and so warm and loving. I'm just so happy we got to do this. I'm so proud of for your latest book. It's great. Enjoying this Blackie on my shelf. Congratulations on the book.

Paige: Thank you so much, honey. Thanks for having me.

Zibby: Of course. My pleasure. Enjoy now that I know where you are. I'm jealous. Bye, Paige.

Paige: Love you, honey.

Zibby: Love you.

Clint Edwards, FATHER-ISH

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

Clint Edwards: Oh, hey. Happy to be here.

Zibby: That's when you say, "Thanks for having me."

Clint: That was my que. I missed my que. [laughter] I'm not very professional. People are always like, why don't you go live? I'm like, because I'm so awkward.

Zibby: No, you're not awkward. You're so funny. I started reading this book not in the best mood. You know those moods when you're like, I just don't feel like laughing? I don't want to get out of my bad mood. I just want to marinate in it for a while. I was reading your book. You made me laugh a few times out loud. I'm like, gosh, okay, fine, I'm not in a bad mood anymore. [laughs]

Clint: That's good. That's the goal. I think I'm funny, and that's the most important part. My family, I think they're tired of me. They’ve known me for so long, my siblings and my mother in particular. I love to bring up at family dinners that I'm a recognized humorist. I'll be like, "You guys know I'm a recognized humorist. I'm a funny guy." Everybody at the table just groans. [laughter]

Zibby: You can always trust your family to put you in your place.

Clint: You can really. Yep, your family and your children. Definitely.

Zibby: Father-ish is your latest book, Laugh-Out-Loud Tales from a Dad Trying Not to Ruin His Kids' Lives. You have an amazing blog. You've written other books. You just have this way of making all these everyday moments in parenting life really funny and relatable. You end up really rooting for you. You compare yourself often, in this book at least, to Clark Griswold who was, as a child of the eighties, my dad hero of sorts or something. You're much less awkward, it seems, than Clark.

Clint: It's funny. My blog, it's No Idea What I’m Doing. Across platforms, I'm getting close to a half a million followers, which seems really cool. I still have a day job, so it can't be that cool. What is funny is I often have people say, oh, man, I wish we were neighbors. I wish we could have dinner or hang out. I'm like, you would be shocked how boring I am in real life. I think what I'm good at is just finding the humor in boring things. For the most part, I'm just this thirty-something-year-old dude wandering around in sweatpants. I'm not that interesting. I've just been lucky enough to be able to find some of that humor. I've been lucky my wife is willing to let me do it. She's allowed me to be able to write freely about our kids and her. They're the most interesting people I got, easily. I've been lucky enough to be able to just sit down and be able to find the humor in it.

Zibby: When did you start writing? Did this proceed your kids? Did you write as a kid yourself? Is it something that came up when you just had all this material in your head suddenly?

Clint: I don't know how far back I want to go on this.

Zibby: Go all the way back.

Clint: I was not one of those kids. I graduated high school, and I didn't know how to type. I'd never read a novel. I was a failure of the education system. When I met my wife, I was twenty-one. I told her I wanted to go to college, but I didn't know how to type. She was like, "I'll help you." She actually typed my papers when I first started college. I would handwrite them. My spelling would be so bad and my handwriting was so bad, she couldn't actually read it. I would sit next to her. She was living in this apartment across the street from the liquor store, just this run-down, crappy apartment. I would read the paper to her, and she would type them. That was when we first started dating. I couldn't help but fall in love with her. I was really scared to take English composition and all that sort of stuff when I got into college. Then I finally did. I had a really great professor. I got really lucky. One of the first assignments was to write a humorous essay. I wrote a story about when I crapped my pants my freshman year in PE. Everybody just thought it was so funny. I had so much fun writing it. The professor was like, "This is really unfortunate, what happened to you, but this was really, really funny and well-done."

That was when I got the writing bug. I changed my major from powerline technology to English. My mother was like, "What are you going to do with that?" I just told her, "Homeless." It's what she wanted to hear. It was the easier answer. My blog is titled No Idea What I'm Doing. It's because my dad had a drug addiction and I didn't know him very well. He was in and out of my life. That was kind of how I felt going into dad stuff. Anyway, I started writing a lot of essays that were funny. Then I started writing a lot of serious stuff. Then I eventually went and got an MFA in creative writing. I thought I was going to write this heartbreaking tragedy memoir like Liars' Club type of thing. I finished my MFA. I spent a summer as a stay-at-home dad trying to sell the book. I was rejected by -- I have a whole spreadsheet. It's a spreadsheet of shame. I have two hundred-plus agents and small publishers in there that rejected me. I was so depressed and so frustrated. I thought, you know, I got to do something different. I took the dust off this blog that I created as an undergrad and just started writing about my kids. It was something else. I didn't think anyone would be very interested in my kids, but maybe they would. The first thing I published on there was about being a stay-at-home dad. I think it was read by a thousand people. My head just exploded. I thought, what? A thousand people read this? The last literary journal I was published in was North Dakota Quarterly. How often do you read that?

Zibby: [laughs] Anytime I'm in North Dakota.

Clint: Always.

Zibby: I'll always pick it up.

Clint: Every quarter, it comes in my mailbox. I think the circulation was three hundred. It's a very respected journal and blah, blah, blah, but I'm pretty sure I read the essay, and the managing editor. I think those are the two people that actually read that edition. I was like, wow, a thousand people read it, so I just started posting on my blog every day for five days a week. I was like, let's see what happens. I did it for a year. By the end of the year, I had gotten the attention of the Huffington Post, so I wrote for them. Then I wrote for The Washington Post and The New York Times. I had this one post just explode on The Washington Post. Good Morning America came to my house. It was the worst experience. If Good Morning America wants to come to your house, you tell them no. It's so awkward. They were following me around, and my kids. It was eight hours or something. It was some obscene amount of time. I think I was on the show for maybe five minutes. I thought, okay, I should be able to publish a book. Then I sent it out. I started trying to publish a book about parenting. I got rejected like two hundred times again. [laughs] I have two spreadsheets of shame. I actually self-published my first book. Then eventually, I ended up getting the attention of Page Street which is distributed by Macmillan. That's who published my last three books. Sorry, you said go all the way back. It was a long story.

Zibby: That's what I wanted. That whole thing was really interesting.

Clint: It was a long journey. I'm here now. I just kept at it. I kept blogging, kept writing. Fingers crossed, hopefully, I'll make all sorts of money. I'll be able to be a full-time writer. That's my goal now.

Zibby: You said you have another day job. What's your day job?

Clint: I work in an athletics program. I tell the student athletes to do their homework, so I'm really popular, as you can imagine. I've been there six years now, something like that. It's a good university job. It's fine. I love helping students. I love education. I never really got out of the university once I got into it. At some point, I would love to just flip my desk and peace out and be a writer full time, but that's a lot hard than you think.

Zibby: At least, you have to put it out there. You have to get that goal out there. If you don't have it as a goal, it's definitely not going to happen.

Clint: I'm surprised how many people think I just write full time. They think that is what I do. I'm like, no, that'd be cool, though. It'd be great. Maybe someday.

Zibby: Maybe someday. It is a hard profession in that regard, unfortunately, because the talent is not commensurate with the compensation in the slightest in this industry, I will say. It's funny you talk about how you couldn't sell your book about parenting because I actually had the same experience. I was doing all this essay writing about parenting and all these everyday moments and whatever. I was like, this is great. I'll do a whole book about it. Everyone in the industry keeps saying, no, books on parenting don't sell. It's so hard. Meanwhile, I read books on parenting all the time. I love essays books like this. So do other people. I don't know. I think it depends on the book, like with everything else. I think blanket statements like, books of essays don't work or parenting stories don't work, it's not that. You just have to have the right storyteller.

Clint: I think a lot of people get caught up in the rejection. I'm telling you right now, I was rejected hundreds of times. It's got to be in the thousands by now across periodicals and essays and books and different things. It used to really emotionally cripple me. Now I just wrap my arms around it. I give it a hug. I pull it in. It is what it is. Rejection is a huge part of it. If I had given up after that first rejection or whatever, I wouldn't be selling books and having people message me and say that I helped them with X, Y, and Z. There's really cool stuff that happens with it. We're in a really cool time where, yeah, they say no; okay, cool, self-publish. Put it up on a blog. Put it out there. Keep trying. There are so many avenues to publish right now. It's a really cool time to be a writer. Think about this. I am living in the middle of nowhere, Oregon. I've started a blog, most of the time writing at the McDonald's PlayPlace at five o'clock in morning because there were no kids around and they had diet soda. I could just get jacked up on Diet Coke and write for two or three hours. I don't go there now, but I've been doing stuff like that for years. In the middle of nowhere, Oregon, I've been able to put together half a million followers and have three books out. What other time could you do that? I don't know. It's a cool time to be able to do it.

Zibby: That's true. I like that. It's very optimistic. Yet you also have this same sad side to you as well. I think a lot of humor comes from pain to begin with. You write openly on your blog about having anxiety and depression and even when you tinkered with your meds and even stories in this book about how your dad was there more for your older brothers and taught them to do more of the handy things. You missed out on that, and so you tried to teach your son, which ended up being another hilarious story. There's sadness in all of this. This is your way of challenging it. Yet you also share it, which is very unique for most -- not to make sweeping generalizations, but a lot of men aren't as comfortable sharing all of that. Tell me a little bit about that piece of you and coping with what happened with your own dad and coping with your own mental stuff.

Clint: I was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder. I was probably nineteen, I think is when that started to really hit home. Now I think I live a pretty normal life. I was never Jack Nicholson bad in -- what is that movie? As Good as It Gets. I was definitely never Bill Murray in What About Bob? I never got that bad. I definitely had a lot of, and I still struggle a lot with anxiety. A lot of it has to do with having kind of a difficult childhood. My dad was a drug addict. My mom has a lot of emotional problems that she hasn’t dealt with. I ran away when I was fourteen. I was just like, peace out. I left and eventually was raised by my grandmother. It took me a while to be open about my anxiety and my depression and stuff. Some of that's cliché masculinity stuff. It takes a while for you to even understand it yourself. I don't even know if I fully understand it. I will say that I've found a lot of humor in the tragedy. Some of the best medicine you can do is to just laugh at it and laugh at what you're doing, laugh at the anxiety. It definitely takes the power away.

I've been writing a lot more about my mental health and depression and trying to make sense of it. I was worried that people would give me crap or call me crazy or whatever. I already call myself that, so it's easy for them to do too. I've actually had way more people reach out and just say, thanks, I went on medication because of you. I reached out to my therapist because of you. You helped me figure out how to better manage my own anxiety. It's not like I think I'm saying anything really profound. I'm just writing about it and being open about it and being a presence. That really helped. I think that helps a lot of other people. That's cool for me as a writer. It helps me not feel so alone. Of course, this all is about me. I feel less crazy by talking more about my crazy, I guess.

Zibby: Wow. Why do you not have a podcast?

Clint: Why do I not have a podcast?

Zibby: Yeah.

Clint: Oh, man. Listen, I have no desire to hear my voice any more than I already hear it. [laughs] I have no desire to do a podcast. I have no desire to be a vlogger. I went live a few times. I just found it really awkward. I didn't like it. I just want to write. That's what I want to do. I want to write. I like to write. Writing is great for me to help me process the world. Parents listening to this, particularly dads, you want to be a better dad, write about being a dad. Sit down and just reflect on it. Think about it. Take some time to really understand, why is that moment sticking out in your head? Why did you feel like a jerk then? Write it down. You will be shocked how much -- it's been the best thing that I could've done for my marriage and my family, is for me to just sit down and be reflective about it. I can't count how many times I've been writing a blog post and I'll think to myself, man, I don't know why I can't stop thinking about that. Then I'll be like, oh, it's because I was being a dick. Then I'll go and apologize to my kid or I'll apologize to my wife. I was like, "I just realized that I was being a total jerk back then. I'm sorry." I apologize, and I can finish the blog post. Being reflective and thoughtful is one of the best things you can do.

Zibby: That's great advice. Your essay on when the dog was choking on the gingerbread might have been the funniest. It's a David Sedaris-level humor thing. It's true. It's what you just said. At the end, you're like, can you believe I made the dog say you're welcome? or whatever it is you did. Just so funny. The other great thing about this introduction, even, in your book is you say there are no parenting experts. No one is a parenting expert even if you call yourself one, parents who view themselves as one. It doesn't matter how much TV exposure, what you put on the label underneath your title on a book. No one knows what they're doing. That is just the most universal feeling because it's true. Your whole thing about control, we have no real control over these constantly changing animals. I have four kids. It's just impossible. It's always impossible. You have to just buckle your seatbelt.

Clint: We were talking about my son going by the name Flip. Whatever you think your kids are going to do or whatever you hope or if you even think they're going to be interested in anything you've ever done, throw that all out the window. They are definitely their own little people. They are interested in their own little things. Parenting has been the hardest thing I've ever done. It's the most rewarding. I love the heck out of my kids, but they're definitely confusing. I can't figure them out.

Zibby: I also feel that the more kids I have, the more I realize I have not that much to do with even how they're turning out to begin with. They're kind of born the way they are. I didn't know that at the beginning. I thought whether or not I had the kid on my lap or next to me in the music class would actually make a difference in their development overall, and what music class, the fact that I even had them in music classes. Whereas these guys, I'm like, whatever. [laughs] It makes no difference. They're born basically who they are just like you and I were. All we can do as parents, I think, or what I've come to realize, is just not mess them up. Protect who they are. Just try hard not to mess it up.

Clint: One of the things that I've struggled with is for a long time, I would compare myself -- we were talking about keeping the expectations low for this interview. I did the same thing as a father. I thought to myself, I'm doing better than my dad. Well, my dad was a drug addict. He was in and out of jail. The best relationship I had with my dad was when I would visit him in jail because I knew where he was. I knew where to find him. For the most part, he was sober. That's a pretty low bar. It was a while there before I got into it. I was like, why am I still comparing myself to this guy? I should be raising my bar even higher. The thing with this book, too, is so much of it -- the original pitch was a Christmas book. I wanted to do a book all about Christmas. That's why the first several essays are about Christmas. The publisher was like, "I don't know if that's going to work." We eventually settled on a book of fails. Ultimately, this book, it's a collection of all my mistakes. So many of these mistakes, I went into it thinking I was screwing it up and then found out that it actually wasn't that bad. I actually didn't do that bad of a job. I think that's ninety percent of parenting. You think you're screwing up your kids in every avenue. Then you start to realize that you were there and you were trying, and that was enough. That's cool.

Zibby: It doesn't even have to be such a verb, like to parent. Growing up, my mom -- this is back when there weren’t a lot of parenting books. She was definitely more interested in romance, best-selling salacious reads, and all this other stuff. She had this one little parenting book. It was How to be a Better Parent or something. I remember seeing it and being like, what do you mean? You're reading about how to be a parent? Don't you know? Doesn't that just come with the territory? What do you mean you're reading about it? It blew my mind. Then I think about the eight trillion books that I have, which mostly go unread. I like to read the funny things about actual parenting. There's no real roadmap, but here we are.

Clint: We're all lost. It's fine. I like to think that my kids think that I know everything, but I'm just really good at googling. That's really the fact. They’ll ask me questions, and I google them. [laughs]

Zibby: That's true. Now they don't even ask me. They're just like, "Siri..."

Clint: Yeah, that's true. My kids are pretty good at asking Alexa how to help with math now because they know Dad's of no use.

Zibby: Redundant. I might as well not even be around. Anyway, so what are you going to do next? What's coming next? You're going to keep doing your blog. Do you have another book in you that you're thinking about?

Clint: Yeah. My thought right now is I might do more parenting books, but I'd love to write a really funny mental health book. I would love to write something that's a really funny look, just dark funny look at my own mental health and trying to understand. The goal would be to help others know how to overcome this sort of stuff. I'm not saying I'm the best at it. I'm still living with it. I will say that one of the best things I ever did was to try and -- so much of what my father did with his drug addiction -- whenever I discuss him with my therapist, they're always like, "Was he bipolar?" I'm like, "I don't know. He would've never gone to a therapist." There's so many parts, these crazy parts of my life, when I'll talk to a therapist about it, he was probably having a manic episode. Then you get jacked up on pain killers and just make it worse. Understanding how to take those lessons of bad mental health management that I learned from my parents and unpacking it, undoing it, and learning how to have healthier habits. I'm hoping to write something in that vein, but funny. We'll see. We'll see if it works out.

Zibby: That sounds great. Awesome. Normally, I end by asking people for advice for aspiring authors, but you've given so much advice along the way. Give me your last final shreds of wisdom.

Clint: This is the best advice I can give to any writer, and they hate it. They hate this advice. You need to write every day. There are authors that will disagree with you. I can tell you, when I was in grad school, this John Reimringer -- I'm probably messing up his name. He wrote a book called Vestments. It won a Minnesota Book Award. He came and talked to us. He pulled out these calendars. Each day had a couple stars on it. Each star represented an hour that he wrote. He would give himself a star. There were weeks where he didn't have anything. For the most part, he had years of these calendars where he gave himself a star. He said, "I recommend to people to write two hours every day." I remember thinking to myself, that's not even a part-time job. I just dragged my family halfway across the United States to get a creative writing degree, and I wasn't writing part time. It was right then that I said, I'm going to write at least two hours a day. Geez, that's been ten, twelve years ago. I write way more than that now. If you write every day, you'll get somewhere. You're going to write to no one for a very long time. That's just the facts. That's when things started getting better for me. I always would say, if you're married, sit down with your spouse and establish that schedule. I write in the mornings. The whole family knows I write in the mornings. If you bother Dad during writing time, he's a jerk about it. I am territorial. This is my time. I have claimed it. That's when you're going to get the most writing done. Write, write. Figure out a time. Establish it with your family. Then be a jerk about it. You'll get more done.

Zibby: Awesome. I love it. Clint, thank you so much. Thanks for talking to me about your views of parenting and your books and all of it. This was really fun. I can't wait to read your next book and follow along. It's been really awesome.

Clint: Thank you. It was awesome being on here. I appreciate your time.

Zibby: No problem. Take care. Happy Thanksgiving.

Clint: Bye. You too.

Zibby: Bye.

Jarrett J. Krosoczka, STAR WARS: JEDI ACADEMY

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

Jarrett Krosoczka: Thank you, Zibby. Thank you so much for having me.

Zibby: You have written so many different amazing things. I almost don't know where to start. When I first got pitched you coming on this podcast, I was like, oh, my gosh. All of the Star Wars books, my kids have been reading for years. I was like, they're going to think that's really cool.

Jarrett: That's so sweet.

Zibby: Then, as I showed you, the picture of my seven-year-old who was reading Lunch Lady in bed and absolutely loved it. Then I loved Hey, Kiddo, oh, my gosh. I've never really read a memoir in graphic novel before as a grown-up. I just want you to talk about everything, but let's start with Hey, Kiddo. This was really moving and amazing. Your story, I know you've done this TED talk that a billion people have watched. Tell me about this memoir first. That was a long intro. [laughs]

Jarrett: I appreciate all of the effusiveness. Hey, Kiddo is a story about my life growing up. My mother was addicted to heroin. I was raised by her parents who were alcoholics minus the label. I didn't know who my father was. But I had art. I always use art as a way to rise above my situation. In 2001 when my very first picture book was published, I thought, here's the happy ending for this kid who always loved to draw. His mother loved to draw, but she had addictions. She was incarcerated. Then every time I sat down to write what would become Hey, Kiddo, I would stop because I'd find myself censoring it. What is this person going to think about how they're depicted? I realized that if I wasn't ready to be all in and really tell my story, I just wasn't ready to write the book. I went on to write more picture books and then the Lunch Lady books. As I was working on Lunch Lady -- the Lunch Lady was published initially between the years 2009 and 2012, which means in the early/mid-2000s, I was actively making the books. My mind would wander. I would start drawing my grandparents or who I was as a teenager. The idea of writing about my life was always there percolating.

You mentioned that TED talk. Actually, it was October of 2012 when I gave that talk. I was a last-minute replacement. I was home. It was a Friday afternoon, which is miraculous that I was home because I tour all the time giving lectures at schools and libraries. The fact that I happened to be home that Friday afternoon -- my phone rang. Even the fact that I didn't have the number programed into my phone and I still answered it, I'm really putting myself out there. Who is this? I don't know who this is, but it's a local area code. It was a producer at the TEDx talks happening at Hampshire College which is the next town over for me. They said, "We had a last-minute cancellation. Would you be willing to sub in?" I always thought, wouldn't it be cool to give a TED talk? I thought she meant it was next week or the next day. Then she said, "No, it's tonight. It starts in four hours." The thing is, my wife Gina and I, we had planned to go out to dinner. The whole family is constantly sacrificing their schedules for the demands of my work. I said, "You know what? Let me call you back." I said, "Gina, let's talk about this. Should I do it?" Then she got mad. "Why the hell didn't you say yes right away?" like I was dumb. "Say yes to the talk." I committed with four hours to go and immediately began pacing the floor of my kitchen out of, what am I going to talk about? Gina's like, "You're thinking too into it. The story's right there in front of you. You should write about your childhood." I started spitballing. "I'll get up there and I'll say, I love to draw and my mother loved to draw, but she was addicted to drugs." Gina stopped me. She said, "No, your mother was addicted to heroin. You should say that."

I had a slideshow that I had just put together for educators for a sixty-minute talk. Of course, now the TED talk can't be longer than eighteen minutes. Editing it down, jumping in the shower, getting dressed, and then of course our babysitter cancelled on us. Imagine if I had said no and then the babysitter cancelled. [laughs] There would've been no date night and no TED talk. Gina couldn't come with me, which was probably for the better because it was almost easier to be so vulnerable without making eye contact with her and seeing how that story pains her. I arrived at the venue. They said, "There's your seat." I took my seat. The lights went down. The first speaker went up. I didn't even go through that talk ever. I went up there and I talked about my mother's heroin addiction. The talk went viral. The response of kids at schools made me realize, okay, I have a story that I've been trying to write. I used to think I want to write this book. Now I realize I need to. That's something I've truly come to realize. Especially memoir, we don't write memoir because we want to, but we feel compelled to because our experiences can help other people through whatever they're dealing with or understanding other people's path in this life.

Zibby: Wow. After the TED talk when you had essentially outed everything in your history, did it even create a ripple? Did you worry at all about then releasing the book, or was it over?

Jarrett: What the TED talk taught me was how to deal with strangers talking to you about your private life.

Zibby: How do you do that?

Jarrett: It was good training. For me, it was good training. If I had just had the memoir, I think I really would've been overwhelmed by the response. Slowly over the years, I would connect with people. I learned how to also accept people's pain and still remain in one piece for myself. Then anytime something would come up, being an interview or something, there would be another wave of people reaching out to me. I learned how to find the right balance of making myself available to readers but then also exercising self-care. By the time I book-toured for Hey, Kiddo two years ago, I really was prepared for what was to come. There were grandparents handing me photos of their grandkids that they were raising at home. Hey, Kiddo's young adult. It's for ages twelve and up. As you've read the book, I didn't censor anything. My grandmother cursed like a sailor, used to be a trucker. At one of my book events, there was a ten-year-old there. I was known especially as the Lunch Lady guy or Jedi Academy, these young, fun stuff. Now I was really conscious of the fact that there might be someone who thinks this is going to be Lunch Lady, but I'm going to be talking about my mom's addiction to heroin. I didn't want anyone to feel unwelcome. What I would do is I'd have a slideshow of praise quotes. I explained what the book was before the event started. Then that family came up after the book signing. That ten-year-old was there because her thirteen-year-old elder brother had overdosed and died. Those are stories that I'll carry with me for all my days. Those are the stories that validate, for me, why I wrote this, so those young readers and older readers could feel less alone.

Zibby: Do you feel now, a little more pessimistic about how widespread this is as an issue for families in America today?

Jarrett: I don't know if I feel more pessimistic about it. I think people who are dealing with opioid addictions, not fully but more so than when I was young, are really looked at someone who's battling an illness versus having a moral failing. If I was growing up today, I would’ve had more resources to understand that my mother was ill and that she just wasn't a "bad person" as it was always painted for me.

Zibby: Then I read when you wrote at the end that while you were editing the book your mother passed away. That's so awful. Tell me a little bit about the timing of that and how you handled that.

Jarrett: We had been estranged for a couple of years at that point. When my second kid was born, she started getting arrested again. For a number of years, the only way I knew what she was up to -- I had to say, "I have a young family. I have a three-year-old. I have a newborn baby. You're getting arrested again. I can't have this in my life right now," the most difficult thing I could ever do. As much as I loved and wanted to take care of my mom, I knew that my most important role was that of a parent myself. These young children needed me. I couldn't get pulled into a lot of that stuff. We exchanged a few text messages. I saw her a year prior to her death at a different family funeral. We made peace with one another. When I got the news that she had died of a heroin overdose, I wasn't surprised. I was gutted and sad but then also relieved to know that she wasn't suffering anymore. I kind of liken it to when someone's had, maybe, terminal cancer for a really long time. She started using when she was twelve, thirteen years old. She lived well into her late fifties. She had a really long life for someone who lived such a lifestyle.

When I was cleaning her house after she died, I was really confronted the ugliness of her plight. That brought a deeper understanding of what she went through more than anything. When you're a kid and you have a parent who has an addiction, for me, I would always think, and I hear this from other people too, that you chose drugs over me. In seeing what she dealt with right to the end, I realized she only chose drugs once, and that was well before I was ever born. She wanted nothing more but to be a parent and be there and to be a grandmother. Even on my first kid's first birthday, she got in touch with me not to wish my kid a happy birthday, but to ask for money. It was things like that where, I mentioned this at the TED talk, it is like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football. You keep trying because you hope maybe you make contact.

Zibby: You seem to be in such a psychologically healthy place talking about this.

Jarrett: Should I get Gina down here? She could tell you the whole other side of the coin. [laughs]

Zibby: That makes me almost feel better. You mentioned how you wish you had had therapy as a child, but you're lucky enough to have had it as an adult. That was just something your grandparents didn't really believe in and all the rest. You seem like you have made peace with this in such a profound way. Now all you do is basically give back to other people with your books and illustrations and even during the pandemic, all your drawing shows. Is that all because of this therapist?

Jarrett: No, no, no. It was because of my grandfather. My grandfather was a very altruistic man. He never forgot where he came from. He always would say to me, "Remember your station in life. Remember your last name." He grew up with nothing. A place that gave him a lot of opportunities was the Boys & Girls Club of Worcester. He, his entire life, would support them and donate to them. My grandparents raised me. They didn't believe in therapy, but you know what? They always gave me empty sketchbooks and art supplies. They, in their own way, provided me a space to work through a lot of that stuff. I will say, when I finished Hey, Kiddo, that was not closing a chapter, but it was very healing because it was a hard book to write. I liken it to in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix when Professor Umbridge is making Harry write lines with the blood quill and every time he writes "I shall not tell lies" it's getting singed into the back of his hand. That's kind of what it felt like at times.

Then when I finished it, I was like, wow, I lived through that and I'm stronger for it. Then it published, which was this other wave of anxiety and nerves. Weeks before the book published, I thought, I can't ask them not to publish it. I signed a contract. They’ve spent all this time and money to put the book out there. Then again, it's getting those responses from the readers that I say, okay, that's why that pain was worth it. Going through the challenges of writing the book was worth it for that. I was sixteen when I started working at a camp for children with cancer. It was that experience too that taught me there are so many different kinds of pain. I have my pain. These families have their pain. Being of service to somebody, that lifts your spirits more than anything. One of the camps that I worked at was the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp which was founded by Paul Newman. His oft-used quote was that the mathematics of the whole thing didn't really make sense because no matter how much you put in, you get so much more out of that sort of work.

Zibby: Wow, that's beautiful and so inspiring.

Jarrett: And totally paraphrased and butchered. He said it much more eloquently than I just put it. [laughs]

Zibby: No, not that quote. I mean, that's lovely. I just meant the whole story, the way you're able to channel your life into such a giving outcome, essentially. Tell me a little more about the drawing show that you launched recently.

Jarrett: January 1st, 2020, as we all looked to the great new year ahead of us and we think, what do we want to accomplish or what do we want to work on? my new year's resolution was, I would like to do more webcasting. I would like to do more live videos. I'd like to create more videos for my YouTube. Step one is, how am I going to achieve this goal? I have three kids. I thought the only way that I could really make this work would be to carve out a space that would be just for recording. I'm in a room in my basement. It's a small little room. I have my flat files over here. It was just a storage room. I said if I just take this little corner and I have an extra drafting table -- I would go on Facebook Live once a week for the adults. I would go on YouTube Live once a month for schools. Then when everything started shutting down in the middle of March, my mind was rapid-fire like everyone's. What are we going to do? Then also, how can we help? What can I do in this moment?

I have friends who are nurses and doctors and friends who deliver bread to all of the supermarkets in Central Massachusetts. They were all essentially putting their lives at risk not knowing what was going to come of this work they were doing which was to benefit people. I was actually in Pittsburgh right before the shutdown. I was traveling the first couple weeks of March, definitely being anxious. Definitely, I was masking up and sanitizing and thinking, I don't know if I should be here. Then the NBA shut down and Broadway shut down as I was flying home from Pittsburgh. I was staying across the street from where Mr. Rogers filmed his show. Even just driving by there, imagine, he went to work every day, and he walked through that door. That is really neat. That physical space is where Mr. Rogers would go to work every day. I had that in the back of my mind. Then I was at the airport nervously scrolling on my phone before the flight took off. A friend of mine, she pulled her kids before our town officially called it. She had a big whiteboard with the schedule that they were going to keep. It said, "Two o'clock: Art." I said, "I could teach your kids art. You know what? That's what I'll do." The neurons just fired away on that plane home from Pittsburgh.

I said it'll be called Draw Every Day because we're going to draw every day. Everything's getting shut down for two weeks. We'll just do this thing for two weeks. It'll be done. Life will be back to normal. Done. Where I am travelling to next? [laughs] Obviously, you know how that story ends. Over the weekend, we formulated, what would it be? There’d be different segments. I made little animations. I have an overhead camera, so you could see me draw. People were really counting on me. I would receive these messages of gratitude. Then, again, I felt a little bit of a responsibility, so I did it every single day for the next couple weeks and another couple weeks after that. Then I went down to two or three episodes per week. Then Labor Day hit. Summer came. I said, let me just put it on pause, take some time to take stock and reflect and recharge, and also realizing how as soon as the adrenaline leaves your body, you're like a marionette without strings. That's really what happened to me. I took the summer to relax. By relax, I mean stay in my yard with my kids and not go anywhere. [laughs]

Zibby: That's so relaxing.

Jarrett: So relaxing, and not have any childcare help or anything and not be able to see anyone I love. Other than that, it was a great summer.

Zibby: Dream come true.

Jarrett: [laughs] Then I picked it up again in middle of August. Also realizing that with Hey, Kiddo, I have this whole other readership that's older, so I started another web show called Origins Stories where I'm interviewing my graphic novelist friends about how they came to be. That is a show for teens and adults. Sometimes younger kids could -- there's an episode with Raina Telgemeier. That would be appropriate for everyone. I don't want to hold back. I'll be interviewing some other authors who have more older-skewing work. Draw Every Day is about two times a week. Origin Stories is once a week. I record it right over here. I'll turn this around. This is a tiny little room. There are my flat files. That is where I record Origin Stories.

Zibby: Wow. Basically, it is smaller than I even thought, but it looks amazing. It's amazing. It's fantastic.

Jarrett: If I stood up, I'd touch the ceiling, but then you would see my sweatpants. [laughter]

Zibby: That's okay. Nobody's standing up on this call.

Jarrett: That's just the illusion of TV magic. I shared some behind-the-scenes photos a couple months in. People thought I was in this attic with huge windows and skylights. It's a couple of ring lights and a microphone. I was able to do that so quickly because I had the ring light here because I had all of this stuff set up. I think we'll all be traumatized by that pivoting for so long now. I don't think I've even processed it all yet. I'm sure none of us really have, that spring. You know why? Because we're so busy mourning every new thing that we don't have. Now we're in the midst of mourning Halloween and making plans for how we can safely celebrate Christmas with my in-laws and all that.

Zibby: Even the marathon is coming up here. I'm like, even the marathon's not happening? That's outside. I know what you mean, every milestone. I'm in my head like, oh, my gosh, if we hit March 12th again, I don't know what I'm going to do. Are we still going to be in this state with no vaccine and no anything?

Jarrett: Every now and then Gina and I say, we miss the days of just Tiger King and new TikTok. That got us through. If there's a Netflix executive listening, if you could please make a Tiger King: Season 2 for us by March 12th, that’ll be the only thing I'll [indiscernible/laughter].

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. Now what is coming next on the book front for you?

Jarrett: I have a book called Sunshine which is a follow-up to Hey, Kiddo. It's actually not so much a follow-up as much as it's a companion. It totally stands on its own. It's about my time working at that camp with children with cancer. It actually fits into this book. It was originally a chapter from Hey, Kiddo. I'll show you the page. What was once a whole chapter became just this page here in Hey, Kiddo. I needed to explain how that experience informed my motivation to meet my father. You could read Hey, Kiddo up to here, stop, read all 240-something pages of Sunshine, and then come back and read the rest here. That was one of the greatest gifts my editor gave me. When I was writing this, he said, "Don't write this book like it's your only chance to write about your life." It's true because our lives don't unfold in a nice, neat, three-act structure. There are so many different tracks and so many things going. Even as I continue to think about life experiences that I want to write about, there were a lot of parts and things about my grandparents that just didn't fit into the narrative. I have these two wonderful tracks where I could write these heavier books for older readers. Then I could write younger goofy stuff for younger readers as well. I have another series in the works for that Lunch Lady/Jedi Academy age as well.

Zibby: Very busy. That's awesome. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors, or illustrators I should really say, creators?

Jarrett: One of the greatest gifts my grandfather gave me, too, was my work ethic. He grew up during the Great Depression. That's something he always instilled in all of his kids, including me, that hard work is so important. It really doesn't matter what art college you go to, if you even go to college for art. It's just about your craft. You have to work on your craft. It's a constant journey in growth. I could look at any of these books and point out everything that I would want to change about every single one of them, but I can't. They're printed. It's done. I can only take that knowledge into my next projects.

Zibby: That's awesome. I had such a great time talking to you today, especially our little pre-chat commiserating on our dogs' habits and whatever else. You're really inspiring. It's amazing. I love all the good you're doing in the world and the entertainment mixed with emotion. It's really fantastic. I'm glad our paths have crossed in this world.

Jarrett: I am too, Zibby. Thank you. I appreciate you. Thank you for all you're doing as well to throw a spotlight on books that you love. Thank you.

Zibby: No problem. Have a good day.

Jarrett: Have a good day. I'll see you soon, Zibby. Thank you. Be well.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Rachel Bloom, I WANT TO BE WHERE THE NORMAL PEOPLE ARE

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Rachel. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" to talk about your book, I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are, which I feel like I should sing in The Little Mermaid-esque.

Rachel Bloom: Feel free to.

Zibby: [laughs] I won't subject you to that. Thanks for coming on.

Rachel: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Zibby: Rachel, can you tell listeners what I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are is about, what inspired you to write this memoir about your life, and why you did it? Why now?

Rachel: It's really a collection of stories and essays and comedic pieces about my relationship with normalcy. Personal stories are the jumping-off point of each part. Then I extrapolate based on the emotions of those stories to do comedic pieces, comedic essays. For instance, there's the story of the night I won a Golden Globe, but as described by my dog. Even winning a Golden Globe, which is such a societal marker of, you fit in, I want to have some perspective and remember that a dog doesn't care. It goes through my relationship with normalcy through childhood up until now, basically.

Zibby: I appreciated the picture of the dog with the Golden Globe that you included. That was also a nice touch to really ground us in the normalcy, question mark, of that. [laughs] I have to say, your middle school experience gave me PTSD from my own middle school experience. I'm sure everybody has had something happen in middle school where they have felt like they didn't fit in. Everybody has had a moment in middle school where they feel like they don't fit in or they're not part of the group. The boyfriend that you had, or not even really a boyfriend, but the guy you followed around all the time -- this is going to sound terrible. I think his name was Ethan.

Rachel: Yeah.

Zibby: Maybe just tell me the story again from the horse's mouth, as it were, and how experiences like that where you're wanting so much just to have a normal relationship and it backfires -- tell me a little bit more about that.

Rachel: It was the first crush I ever had. I remember my feelings for Ethan being just as real and passionate as any feelings of love or infatuation I had as an adult. I was a dork. He didn't really fit in either. The more I tried to be around him, the lower it made his social standing. He started insulting me to try to just get me to go away and also fit in with the other kids who also thought I wasn't cool. That made me love him more. I can't tell if it made me love him more or if I loved him regardless and I loved him despite the insulting. Either way, it set a pattern for later relationships. [laughs] He was quite mean because I was clearly in love with him at an age when no one was having these intense feelings of infatuation.

Zibby: Where is Ethan now? Do we know? Have you looked him up?

Rachel: Yeah. I had a conversation with Ethan for using his real name for this Vulture Fest. Vulture has this festival of arts and entertainment. We had a conversation. He actually became one of my really good friends in high school. There just wasn't time to write about that in the book.

Zibby: I feel like the dramatic stories are better, sometimes, to read than, and now we're good friends. To fast-forward from your middle school antics to let's just say a section like An Apologetic Ode to my Former Roommates and all of the unresolved issues, which, by the way, I love -- it's like a poem to yourself. You're so funny. I really love how you use lists and different formats and scripts. You're using the book in a whole new way. It is a book, but it's an art project at the same time.

Rachel: I try to vary it up. I don't really love reading. It has to be a really, really famous person or someone I really admire to read just a straightforward memoir. I like reading personal stories or especially books that are very personal where the format is varied up. I wrote the book that I would want to read. Also, I wrote in a way that I would still enjoy writing it. I didn't want to sit down and just write a bunch of personal essays. One of the chapters is a full musical that you'll actually be able to listen along to on my website when the books comes out if you want to listen along and read. That was my way of keeping myself entertained. Then the ode to my roommates, which is this apology, I wanted to elevate my apology. I wanted to make it feel almost mythic because I really was a terrible roommate. I feel like most people come from the vantage point of, I had this terrible roommate, but no, that was me. I feel terrible about it.

Zibby: You are one of the most, I want to say self-critical, but it's beyond that. It's like self-flagellating. You're always so hard on yourself in a funny way, but there's always a little truth to every joke.

Rachel: It's a glass houses thing because I definitely bitch about other people in the book. I don't want to get off scot-free. I, perhaps, at times in the book, overcompensate by being pretty self-flagellating just to make sure. I know that I'm making fun of other people, but I'm not perfect. I always want to play that other side to cover my bases.

Zibby: Is the book reflective of how you think? Is this the way you think? You're always onto this and then another thing, and this is the creative interpretation of that? It's not as linear, like what you were saying, I don't want to just sit down and write a bunch of essays.

Rachel: That is how I think.

Zibby: That's how you think.

Rachel: Yes. There is a smidgeon of ADHD in there, as my psychiatrist has told me. Although, he's like, "Don't get excited. I know you'll get off on a diagnosis tangent." Yes, that is just how my mind works. I think it also comes from writing sketch comedy for so long and coming from that sketch brain of, okay, what's a sketch I could do based on this? is the feeling that I'm having.

Zibby: Speaking of your therapist, would you mind if we talked a little about the OCD and the [indiscernible/crosstalk]?

Rachel: Please.

Zibby: I feel like that OCD has been branded all wrong. People think it has to do only with washing your hands and turning things on and off. Actually, the intrusive thoughts are a huge element of OCD. It would be very easy to misdiagnose someone who's having that symptom as something completely different or not to worry about or even annoying. I want parents out there who might be listening also to know that sometimes the intrusive thoughts that your child is having could be this. Tell me a little more about your experience with it.

Rachel: Especially now as a parent, I'm thinking about it a lot. What happened was basically, in fourth grade, I started getting these intrusive guilty thoughts. I started fixating on things I thought I did that were bad, that I should feel guilty about. It was this gnawing darkness that I'd never felt before. This is around nine and a half, ten. I thought that the only way I could relieve myself of this guilt was to tell my parents everything. It was this series of obsessions, obsessive thoughts, and compulsions to tell my parents everything. At the time, my parents, they just thought it was some sort of quirk of adolescence because OCD was, yeah, you wash your hands or you check the burners to make sure the stove isn't on. It was this very specific thing that we thought OCD was. It's only now as an adult and now consciously that we are starting to realize -- when I say consciously, I think non-therapists are starting to understand, oh, no, no, obsessive thoughts and compulsions come in many, many forms. No one around me understood or could see that I was suffering because it just seemed like I was quirky. I'll hear stories like this in other kids. My kid's having trouble sleeping. They keep bringing this up. It's not just a quirk of childhood or of adolescence. They're suffering. Writing this book when I was pregnant right before I was becoming a parent was a nice reminder that my child's feelings are valid. I can't just brush them away with, they're just a kid, or even, they're just a baby. No, these feelings are real. Just because the person feeling them is little doesn't make them less valid.

Zibby: It might not necessitate the decibel level of screaming that accompanies it as a child, I might say.

Rachel: That's fair. It applies more to the future of when my child is -- my child's seven and a half months old.

Zibby: That's what I mean, the loud, bloodcurdling screams.

Rachel: Look, at a certain point, I have to put a sweatshirt on her. I have to put sleeves on. The bloodcurdling screams are, yes, going to happen. I can't not ever put clothes on her. Yes, true.

Zibby: I think anybody who has had any sort of mental health anything and struggled for a diagnosis and then felt a sense of relief once it had been like, oh, wait, this constellation of behaviors or thoughts or feelings actually falls into this rubric and there's a treatment for it, that's a very great feeling, not to keep harping on this. I'm on the board the Child Mind Institute. I don't know if you've heard of that.

Rachel: I have.

Zibby: Which is great, if you have any interest in getting involved or whatever. It's all about reversing the stigma on childhood mental illness and raising awareness for things like this, like OCD and selective mutism and just all these things that maybe people don't know as much about, and also finding treatments and biomarkers and all the rest. Anyway, not to bring that into it. I just wanted you to know I'm so on the same page in terms of wanting to raise awareness and helping families get through something that can be challenging both for the child and the parents.

Rachel: That's so cool that you're on the board of that. I would actually love to learn more information about that. I wish that had been around or I'd been aware of that when I was a kid.

Zibby: It wasn't around, so don't worry. [laughter] I know that having a child often brings up old stuff in your brain, in your mind, and issues and all of that. How have you adjusted to being a parent? Has it raised any unexpected reactions in you in that way?

Rachel: First of all, there's something freeing about putting her needs and her happiness above my own. It's actually quite freeing. It actually really helps with things like cognitive behavioral therapy when you're trying to just focus on the present and not engaging in anxious thoughts as much. It really helps with that. Around the time I'd finished the first draft of the book, I gave birth. Around the time I was getting induced and giving birth, among everything else that was happening, I was having some intrusive thoughts again. They were kind of unspecific. The thought and the gut feeling at this point are one in the same. My anxiety was amped up, and so it latches onto these little thoughts. It was weird to be writing about that while going through that again during a big life event. Coming out the other side of this one, because I had to be present for a baby but because I was also writing about it, it helped me realize, oh, yep, this is just a part of how my mind works sometimes. I have to be there for her. That’s what matters. I'll just ride this wave. Being a mom is more important.

Zibby: Wow. That's amazing. In terms of writing this book, how long did it take to do? When did you do it? How did you fit it in with all of your other stuff? What other big projects do you have in the hopper? This is like fifteen questions in one question.

Rachel: No, it's fine. I had had a book deal since, it was like 2017. I got it when I was filming Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. I started brainstorming and slowly writing the book for the next year or so, but I didn't really get started earnestly until August, September of last year right when I was pregnant because that's when I had time. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was done. We'd performed at Radio City Music Hall. I'd toured in London. Finally, I was back and ready to write the book. Then I got pregnant. Definitely, the first part of writing the book was also a good distraction from nausea. I wrote it from about September of 2019 until March 2020 with then some significant changes done April, May.

Zibby: Would you do it again? Did you enjoy any of it?

Rachel: Yeah, I did. It was hard. It's hard. It's scary because it's just you. I can't hide behind a character. At least, I chose not to. It's nonfiction. My only cowriter was my editor. Editors are really the unofficial cowriters of every book. Still, it's putting so much of yourself out there. I chose to be so vulnerable. It's putting myself out there in a way no one asked me to do or expected me to do. Plus, it's a lot of words. There were pieces that were cut. When a song was cut from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, that was still a lot of work, but that was maybe fifty words, a hundred words. I don't know. I can't think of how many words were in a song. When you're talking about cutting five hundred to a thousand words, there's a lot of stuff that I worked on that's not in the book. It's hard. Writing a book is really hard. Then as far as other things, working on movies and TV. No more books coming in the near future. Honestly, doing press for a book, especially when I'm not doing a book tour, takes a lot of time. That's what's in the hopper, is doing press for the book. I'm working on a musical using songs from the late nineties, early two thousands to explore nostalgia of that time. I'm pitching a sketch show. Still figuring out this new normal that is both COVID and having a new baby.

Zibby: It's actually, probably -- not that there's ever anything good about the COVID era, but I feel like anytime I had -- I have four kids.

Rachel: Whoa.

Zibby: Yeah, and I'm still standing, sort of. I'm sitting now, but you know what I mean.

Rachel: You look great. Your house looks immaculate.

Zibby: Thank you. Yes, I try not to let them in here. [laughs] No, I'm kidding. You're only seeing this little sliver. Normally, they're walking on top of the couch around there. The shelves don't get touched that much. Why was I saying that? Something about after every kid.

Rachel: Oh, the silver lining. I completely agree.

Zibby: I was completely isolated from the world. My schedule was so different. Everyone else was zoom, zoom, zooming around. I shouldn't have used that word. Everybody else was running around super busy. I was at home. Your being at home, obviously, everybody's at home, so I guess there's some synergies in everybody else's lifestyle.

Rachel: I gave birth in late March, which is when quarantine started. As we went into having a newborn, it felt like the rest of the world also had a newborn. People were talking about how time made no sense anymore. Everything was upside down. That's what having a newborn is. As far as timing, yes, very stressful to have a child during a pandemic, but the aftermath as far as just the schedule of having a newborn worked out very well.

Zibby: I'm sure everybody asks you about this, and so I hate to ask. Just because I don't know a ton of people who have won Golden Globes, I'm just curious.

Rachel: Ooh, ask.

Zibby: I know you wrote about it, thanks to your dog and everything like that. I'm really curious, what happened the next day? What happens the day after you win a Golden Globe? Do you get a thousand emails? Do you feel like life is exploding? Was there any point when you were like, I kind of miss not having all this attention? I know you already had attention because of your career. Do you ever just wish you didn't, or not?

Rachel: The day after is so cool. I've gone through that day after a couple times now with the Golden Globe and then the day after my Emmy win last September. I got a big brunch because I'd been up late the night before. You're hungover. There's always a big brunch, a ton of emails. The good thing is I don't feel like I have to get back to every one of those emails the day of. The day after the Golden Globes specifically, I wasn't filming, but work was still happening. Me getting the Golden Globe essentially saved the show. I needed to at least get nominated, if not win, to save Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. I went to work and I let everyone hold the Golden Globe and take pictures with the Golden Globe and celebrated with everyone at work because it was, in a way, job security for 250 people as well as myself. A lot of gifts, a lot of flowers. It's great. It's overwhelming. I was really psyched. I had two major awards bookending the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend experience.

The Golden Globe happened the middle of season one. It was in the middle of filming. I had filmed not the day before, but two days before. I had to go back to filming two days after. Then I had to fly to New York. There was all this stuff happening. It was all so soon because the show -- I talk about this in the book. The show, I thought it was a dead pilot with Showtime. Then it suddenly got ordered to series. The whole thing was just whiplash in a way for which no one could've been fully prepared and didn't fully sink in. It took like a year for all of it to sink in. Then the Emmy win last September, it was the opposite. I was done with the show. I was pregnant, so I was at home just being nauseous, sleeping a lot. I really had the time to fully soak it in. That was, as opposed to getting the Golden Globe for after the Hollywood Foreign Press seeing eight episodes of the show, the Golden Globe for songwriting was after writing 157 songs. They were actually two very different experiences. The day after is awesome.

Zibby: Wow. By the way, thank you for the layman's interpretation of how to sell a show and the timeline of that. To show people why your timeline was so different, you're like, here's how it was supposed to happen, and here's how it happened for me. It was like two days.

Rachel: My pleasure. I'm still confused by the whole process, so it was good to lay it out for myself.

Zibby: Do you have any advice both for authors and also for anyone who wants to get into your field of songwriting, creating, acting, all of it? People are dying to do that.

Rachel: The only real advice I have involves other people. Find likeminded people. You want to be around people who are doing what you're doing. Try to find people who are better at it than you so that you can watch them do what they do and then also get feedback on your work. I think that's where a writing circle helps. You're around other people doing what you're doing, so you're not writing in a vacuum. You're getting feedback. It gives you a deadline. If you're in some sort of writer's group or writing circle and you say, we're all going to read aloud what we wrote on this date or, hey, I'm going to have a table read of this screenplay I wrote, it gives you a deadline. I cannot finish anything if I don't have something holding me accountable even if it's a little thing like, I promised so-and-so I'd get them the script by this day. Anything you can do where you are forced to write, that is my number-one tip.

Zibby: We'll have to think of ways to bind people to their chairs and not let them up until --

Rachel: -- At least, it works for me because it's the fear of letting people down.

Zibby: Accountability. That's one of those Gretchen Rubin -- you know The Four Tendencies? Have you heard of this book?

Rachel: No.

Zibby: There's the obligers. You're probably an obliger. Anyway, this is ridiculous I'm talking about this.

Rachel: No, I'm going to look this up.

Zibby: There are all these different personality types. I am the same way. I try to finish everything so I would never let anybody down. The thought of missing a deadline for me is like, are you kidding? Of course not. That's one of the personality types. You should check it out. It's fun. Just google it or something.

Rachel: I will.

Zibby: What about getting into being a performer and a songwriter and all the rest?

Rachel: God, there are so many ways to do it. It depends what you want to do. There are so many hubs of entertainment now. Five years ago, I would've said New York, LA, or Chicago. Now there's Atlanta. There's Vancouver. I think first finding a place where you have the freedom to experiment and fail is really important. That's not starting out online because there's no freedom to fail. Once you put something online, it's there forever. I had a college sketch comedy group where we would do shows once a month. A sketch would bomb, and then no one would ever talk about it again. Finding a safe place to stumble and realizing that you're supposed to stumble and you're supposed to fail at first and you're supposed to make a lot of mistakes and you'll always make mistakes, that's really important. Then as far as turning it into a career, everyone's trajectory is so different. That's why I think the community of it all is important on multiple levels. Then you start to see people get agents or sell scripts and you start to figure out how that happens depending on what avenue you want to go down.

Zibby: Just to circle back here to middle school as my last question, do you ever -- I know Ethan and you hung out in high school and everything. The people that you felt sort of alienated from or who were stuffing you in a locker or whatever else crazy stories, whatever happened to your relationship with them? Do you ever want to be like, look, I'm not -- you know. [laughs]

Rachel: Middle school was really, really rough. That was after Ethan. I talk about, in the book, one of the girls who was my main tormentor in middle school. She came to one of my live shows about nine years ago. She took me out for coffee after. We had a really, really vulnerable conversation about how she was just as miserable in middle school. She was afraid of losing her popularity. That's the one really vulnerable, probing conversation I've had with a bully other than Ethan. Ethan became my friend, so it almost doesn't count even though it does, obviously. That's the one other conversation I've had. Then short of that, I posted on my Facebook around the time of this Vulture Fest. I said, hey, did you bully me in middle school or were you popular? I'd love to talk to you. Ethan was the only one who got back to me because we were friends in high school. No actual middle school bully got back to me. I like to think it's because they were afraid. Bullies are scared, yes, but I also think a huge percentage of people who were bullies aren't terribly introspective people. They don't think a lot about the past. A bad part of this country is sometimes we forget history. I think they are those types of people a lot of times, people who just, they don't really think about stuff in context. They're just kind of living their lives, not even in a bad way. They’ve matured since middle school. They’ve grown up, but they don't think about their past a lot.

Zibby: That's probably very true. They probably had their own stuff going on, which is why they were bullies in the first place.

Rachel: Yeah. They should be in therapy to talk about that and process it, but they probably haven't.

Zibby: Not that it excuses it. I'm just saying they probably --

Rachel: -- No, no. I think it's introspective people and not. This woman had been through a lot, that I talked to. She was really introspective and had really looked within. I think that's rarer for bullies.

Zibby: Yeah, you're right. I'm sure you're right. Rachel, thank you. Thanks for taking the time. I know you have so many press obligations, so thanks for stopping in here. I wish you all the best of luck in getting a sweater on your baby and all the things to come. If you do want to follow up about Child Mind, I'm happy to send you information or hook you up with the head of it there. No pressure, just if you happen to be interested.

Rachel: Awesome. That is so great to know. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Zibby: My pleasure. Take care.

Rachel: You too.

Zibby: Bye.

Rachel: Bye.