Caitlin Macy, Author of "Mrs."
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[1:22]I'm here today with Kishlyn Macy, who is an amazing novelist, a Yale graduate with
[1:28]an MFA from Columbia.
[1:29]Kishlyn has contributed to the New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and, oh, the Oprah
[1:34]Magazine, among others.
[1:35]Her three books, called The Fundamentals of Play, Spoil, which are stories, and now her
[1:40]recent release, Mises, have received enormous praise.
[1:43]She lives in Manhattan with her husband and two daughters.
[1:45]So welcome to Kishlyn.
[1:47]Thank you so much for having me.
[1:50]So just to jump right in.
[1:51]In the description on your website of your collection of stories called Spoiled, you
[1:56]say you turn an unquote, you turn an unsparing eye on affluent and educated women who
[2:01]nevertheless struggle to keep their footing and their relationships in life.
[2:04]And I feel like this is the overarching theme and so much of your work.
[2:07]How did you grow so fascinated with this particular group of women?
[2:12]So our generation, more than any other that came before, I think, were the meritocracy.
[2:22]And I think it's utterly a generational preoccupation, because so many of us, my peers and
[2:29]I grew up in either modest or straightforward, straight ahead middle class backgrounds.
[2:38]And then through college, through going to elite colleges, I think this is one reason,
[2:45]one reason why our generation is so obsessed with college admissions.
[2:47]The colleges became a springboard for people to jump.
[2:53]Well, let's not say jump class levels because classes, I think more complicated and more
[2:58]of a complicated question, but at least jumped income strata.
[3:01]You know, some people, a couple runs up from their parents, some people, 10 rungs up.
[3:07]And there were so many opportunities for people who were so disposed to, you know, say go
[3:13]to Wall Street, corporate law, Silicon Valley, the tech startups, Hollywood, et cetera.
[3:18]There were opportunities for people who wanted that to go and make money.
[3:24]And so you have women who either through their own careers or through, in some cases, marriage,
[3:34]marrying guys who followed a similar path, find themselves in places that are unfamiliar.
[3:42]And maybe those places have nannies and drivers and private school admissions where they
[3:51]weren't living in places like that before, I'm using places you loosely, obviously.
[3:56]And what I find interesting is not so much the trappings, like the, you know, the black
[4:01]SUV's that's been done, that's been done to saturation and it's, it's, I actually
[4:07]find it time to boring, but this, the way in which the trappings of the lifestyle affect
[4:14]these women psychologically and emotionally, so that when they find themselves in these
[4:19]new worlds, how do they cope with it and some cope brilliantly and, and for some it's
[4:26]quite anxiety-producing.
[4:29]So I think that's why I've gotten sort of stuck there and then folks on that for a while
[4:35]just because of our, our generation's, our generations jump into unfamiliar footing.
[4:45]I think it also, the way you contrast sort of old versus new money, the sort of waspulture
[4:50]in versus new voritian, particularly in misses, which is a story that takes place, we
[4:58]could probably, some paraphrase it better, but a story that takes place on the up-reseider
[5:02]in Manhattan among several different parent groups who come from different backgrounds.
[5:08]You tell it from the point of view of Gwen Hogan, who is sort of an outsider on the outside
[5:12]looking and sort of a scientist dropped in the middle of this craziness, who sort
[5:18]of has a, I wouldn't say a judgmental view, but more of a reserved, well, maybe kind
[5:25]of a judgmental view of the whole New York City scene.
[5:29]And, and then there are these other families, like Jed Skinker, who's owns a bank and
[5:35]has been around forever, and then John Curtis sort of a, a wannabe who keeps making himself
[5:40]over to be different people and it's ultimately kind of a terrible guy shining a light
[5:46]on these kind of worrying factions, these different groups.
[5:50]What do you think does that help sort of elucidate the differences between all these
[5:55]classes or what do you try and how does it take you from there?
[5:58]Yeah.
[5:59]Sorry.
[6:00]No.
[6:01]I mean, I, I hope it, I hope it does.
[6:04]It's, it's, it's a funny moment because I love, I love the phrase, New Vowry, straight
[6:10]because it kind of reminds me of the 80s and the fun of the 80s and so on, but it's,
[6:13]it's all but dead, right?
[6:15]I mean, for those people who, who have money, at this point, most of its new, we're not
[6:21]living in a, a Wharton world of, you know, sort of dominated by generational family
[6:27]fortunes and so on.
[6:30]And so it's, I think I'm sort of tolling the death now of that, that world that sort
[6:39]of, I don't know, for lack of a better word, Wasp aristocracy, right?
[6:44]Because back in, I mean, in, in Wharton's novels, you had the, the 400s say, and then
[6:51]there'd be one outsider coming in who, who chafed against the societal rules or who
[6:58]wasn't quite on and, you know, disobey and disobey in the rules or trying to get out or,
[7:03]uh, in some other way posed a challenge to the society.
[7:08]Whereas now, I, for instance, I've noticed on Instagram this hashtag of, uh, which, I don't
[7:14]know, if you, you yourself use it, but of, of hashtag native New Yorker.
[7:18]And it's just that hashtag actually, it's, it's interesting to me because it's clearly
[7:23]it's a badge of honor, right?
[7:24]It's a point of pride.
[7:25]And I think what that says, I mean, if, if we had hashtags in Wharton's time, nobody
[7:29]would, everybody would be hashtag native New Yorker.
[7:32]They wouldn't really be there except for that one character who sort of shows up and,
[7:36]and turns, that turns the tables and given that that's now a smaller group to, to, to
[7:42]the point that it's a point of pride for people on Instagram and social media.
[7:48]I think that speaks to the fact that most of us are outsiders now or, um, I, I mean, I
[7:54]always feel like I have one foot in, one foot out.
[7:56]I don't know where, where, you know, where you draw the line and who's an outsider, who's
[7:59]an insider.
[8:01]But, um, so this moment is, is a very different moment for Wharton.
[8:06]And it's also, I've been thinking, as I'm sure we'll have the last day of a lot of
[8:10]Tom Wolf.
[8:11]And it's even a very different moment from Bonfire the Vanadies, because there, there's
[8:17]a really great article.
[8:18]And I keep quoting it and I am not totally sure of the source.
[8:21]So I need, I need to Google it, but I believe it was James Walcott writing in Vanity
[8:24]Fair.
[8:25]But he wrote this fascinating article, one of those things that you're sending in the
[8:28]doctor's office and you pick it up and then it's seminal and you just think, what if I
[8:31]never sat in the doctor's office?
[8:33]But, um, he wrote this piece, uh, unless I'm misattributing it, about how Bonfire was
[8:39]pre-contonian.
[8:40]In other words, you know, Bill Clinton obviously, the ultimate example of my, my, my
[8:44]talk to you, right?
[8:45]He grows up poor in a small town.
[8:46]He, he skyrockets because of, uh, education, you know, gets to Yale log, gets a roads,
[8:53]we have his president.
[8:54]Um, and, and it was, it was fascinating to me, because I never thought about Bonfire.
[8:59]As historical, to me, I was thinking, Bonfire is still current.
[9:01]You know, more or less.
[9:02]I hadn't read it.
[9:03]I'd read it in the 80s and then I hadn't reread it, but he points out that there isn't
[9:07]this meritocratic person.
[9:09]You know, there's the, there's Sherman McCoy, the sort of, the, the, the, the, wasp aristocracy
[9:14]and there's the scrappy Jewish lawyer.
[9:17]But there's, there's not the person who we all know who I would say most of my peers
[9:21]put into this group who just got educated and then, and then decided to get some sort
[9:25]of corporate job and, and, um, and live in New York.
[9:30]And, um, so anyway, I, I, I, I think at the same time, I think I have a little bit of affection,
[9:35]a little bit of nostalgia for that, that old world, because probably because, um, it's,
[9:39]it's all personal, right?
[9:40]It's always all personal.
[9:41]My dad's family had been sort of prominent in the 19th century.
[9:46]And then my dad's father at the beginning of the 20th century lost all of his money.
[9:51]So my dad sort of went, he experienced the highs and the lows and ended up, he grew up
[9:58]in, you know, big house in Azimim.
[10:00]York with pretty much raised by servants.
[10:03]But then when his father lost all his money,
[10:05]he marched him down to enlist in the Air Force.
[10:09]So he went into the Air Force and to the Armed Forces
[10:11]as the loneliest of the lows, which was an enlisted man
[10:14]having grown up with showfares and governesses and so on.
[10:19]So he experienced both sides.
[10:21]And so my dad, I certainly associate in some ways
[10:24]with that lost world.
[10:25]So that's probably in there too.
[10:26]And I think Jed Skinkers in there just
[10:28]is to sort of note the passing of that world.
[10:31]He's the last gasp of that world, I'd say.
[10:35]That's so interesting, that you're
[10:36]that's the vantage point that you're coming into this.
[10:38]I was trying to figure out what is her fascination?
[10:41]How come she keeps writing about all this?
[10:43]Like what is it?
[10:44]There's usually, I feel like when writers keep going
[10:46]after the same subject, there's some personal, obviously,
[10:49]connection, so anyway, I think that's really interesting.
[10:52]Where did you grow up yourself?
[10:54]I grew up in Groton, Mass, where the boarding school is.
[10:59]So that was another element.
[11:01]I mean, I ended up, I did go to boarding school,
[11:03]but I didn't go to Groton, but my sister went there
[11:05]and interestingly enough, my husband went there.
[11:07]So there was also that, there was that world
[11:11]that my parents weren't faculty, but in some ways
[11:14]they had friends there and so on.
[11:16]So I spent a lot of time at Groton when I was young,
[11:19]because a number of my friends were fact-breaths.
[11:21]And so there was another glimpse into this world.
[11:25]And then I had the funny experience of going to boarding school,
[11:29]as did my husband, actually, both of us,
[11:31]I think were the only people in New York
[11:32]who went to boarding school, but on financial aid.
[11:35]So it was this funny, again, this funny and young
[11:37]of having a foot in two different worlds.
[11:41]So yeah, I think that it started,
[11:43]it certainly was, there was a personal investment
[11:47]in the theme.
[11:50]You capture in misses, in particular,
[11:51]you capture some really funny elements of the Upper East Side.
[11:54]Like, I'm trying not to take a fence.
[11:56]Like, I'm not sure if you meant it.
[11:58]I was like, maybe I'm having Kaitlyn on the show
[12:00]and she hates me, but she hates people from the Upper East Side.
[12:03]Like, maybe I shouldn't let her in the environment.
[12:04]No, I'm kidding, but you definitely capture some
[12:08]of the idiosyncrasies.
[12:10]Well, maybe not just to the Upper East Side,
[12:12]but certainly into this sort of culture,
[12:13]but this one quote you have.
[12:16]So one of the characters, Marnie, has a dramatic
[12:20]sort of play date at the main character,
[12:22]Philip Eliza, as you say.
[12:23]I cannot explain the effect Marnie's recounting
[12:26]of the play date had on us, except to say
[12:28]that while we thought we would be happy
[12:29]to get the details, we were not.
[12:31]All the fun had gone out of it, not just out of gossiping,
[12:34]but out of getting and spending.
[12:37]Perhaps a better way to put this is that for a couple of weeks,
[12:39]we all stopped Googling Hampton's real estate.
[12:41]Which I like laughed out loud and I wrote that.
[12:43]That's so funny.
[12:44]I mean, some of the things you talk about
[12:46]are not even things necessarily
[12:47]that people talk about.
[12:49]I mean, I feel class is a very almost taboo subject
[12:53]that you sort of confront head on.
[12:56]And so you kind of unearth all these unspoken differences
[13:01]or things.
[13:03]Anyway, you do a really, your keen observational eyes
[13:07]is pretty good.
[13:08]Anyway, I particularly enjoyed,
[13:10]although I find it just in talking to people,
[13:16]and I don't know if you find this too.
[13:18]For so many of us in New York,
[13:19]there are very few people who don't occasionally
[13:22]think about leaving.
[13:23]Like, it runs like, well that, I love New York,
[13:25]but maybe I'll just look in Connecticut.
[13:27]Or maybe I'd really love to live in California.
[13:29]Do you feel that way?
[13:30]I mean, it's hard living here, I don't know.
[13:32]Oh yeah, I mean, I met my husband
[13:34]and he actually grew up in Spain,
[13:36]but he's from Massachusetts.
[13:37]His family's from Massachusetts
[13:39]and I just thought, done, we're out of here.
[13:41]That's it, but he would sort of say, gently,
[13:46]and what am I gonna do for a living?
[13:47]I mean, and it's true, I swore I'd never move here,
[13:51]but the jobs are here, right?
[13:52]I wanted to work in publishing
[13:54]and the jobs are here, and then 25 years go by
[13:57]and you realize that you're still here
[13:59]and you're not leaving and it is your life
[14:01]and it's a bit of a surprise for someone who thought
[14:05]that I'd always end up back in small town, Massachusetts, so.
[14:08]And so tell me about your publishing journey.
[14:10]You went to Yale, you got,
[14:11]tell me, since then, what has happened?
[14:14]So right out of Yale, I got a job working
[14:18]for a literary agent.
[14:19]She was a woman who was sort of the doin'
[14:22]of children's book publishing.
[14:24]She pretty much, her clients had started the YA genre.
[14:28]She represented Essie Hinton, Susie Hinton, Paul Zendell,
[14:32]Robert Cormier, all these 70s sort of problem
[14:34]YA novels, Paula Danzegar, her name's Marilyn Marlowe,
[14:39]she was at Curtis Brown, and I was super excited
[14:42]to get a foot in the door.
[14:45]I made $16,500 a year, so I wasn't living large,
[14:49]but again, I was able to have, I had an apartment
[14:54]on the Upper East Side in 67th and 1st.
[14:57]I mean, it was a different times, right?
[14:59]I think I paid $500 for, no, my roommate paid $500
[15:03]for the big room, she was, she was paralleling,
[15:05]and I paid $400 for the small room, but yeah,
[15:09]and then I got a bit lucky, I ended up,
[15:11]the way I ended up paying for my life
[15:14]because I did go back and get an MFA, Columbia,
[15:16]after a couple of years, was that,
[15:18]the woman I worked for represented someone
[15:20]who wrote a series book for middle grade readers
[15:23]called The Saddle Club, and she was looking
[15:25]for Ghostwriter, so she hired me as a ghostwriter,
[15:28]and the funny thing was that I got hired as a ghostwriter,
[15:31]not because she had any idea that I had an interest
[15:33]in writing, but because I'd been a horsey kid,
[15:36]I'd grown up writing, and so I knew how to slot
[15:39]in the right words and talk about Palominos and Martin Gales
[15:44]and things like that, so that The Saddle Club
[15:46]ended up writing 13 Saddle Club novels,
[15:48]and it paid my way through grad school, et cetera,
[15:51]and then had a bunch of different jobs after grad school
[15:55]when I was trying to finish Funnamentals of Play,
[15:57]which I finally sold at the end of my 20s, so.
[16:01]Just piecing it together with various jobs
[16:03]and cheap rents and so on.
[16:06]You, have you seen the movie,
[16:08]you know the movie Tully that just came out?
[16:10]There was one movie, which now I'm forgetting the name,
[16:13]but she released her on, and the same writer and director did.
[16:15]Yes, and she was a ghostwriter for two years.
[16:17]Yes, young adults, young adults, I loved it,
[16:19]I loved it, I absolutely loved doing completely identified
[16:22]with going back to your town and ranging around
[16:25]or whatever.
[16:27]Yeah, that was great, that was a really good,
[16:28]it was a great intelligent movie.
[16:30]Right, yeah, that provoking.
[16:31]Yeah.
[16:33]So in misses, another scene I just want to ask you about.
[16:37]So after hearing mothers complain
[16:39]that their kids wouldn't wear their mittens,
[16:41]you talk about this main character Gwen,
[16:43]who's on the outside looking of the cell scene,
[16:45]you say, she couldn't imagine having that kind
[16:47]of adversarial relationship with her only child.
[16:50]Sometimes she would hear them
[16:51]curiously addressing their nannies.
[16:53]Why is she wearing those pants?
[16:55]What happened to the ones I laid out
[16:56]as if motherhood were a battle
[16:57]which the toddlers were winning?
[17:00]So I have a three and four year old,
[17:02]and sometimes it is easier to just send them in, you know,
[17:06]a two-two, and that leaves you,
[17:09]and then maybe the pants or the skirt that I had in mind,
[17:12]but the tone you have here suggests you might not agree
[17:15]with that decision that how could the kids actually
[17:18]exert that authority, you know, what am I as a mom?
[17:21]Like, what are you saying about me here?
[17:23]Like, let's talk about it.
[17:24]So tell me, you know, and also is this how you feel,
[17:27]or is this Gwen a front for you,
[17:30]or is Gwen the anti-you?
[17:32]Well, it's definitely Gwen.
[17:36]I mean, it's funny, I had someone tell me,
[17:39]now I'm not gonna call you Keishlyn anymore,
[17:41]I'm gonna call you Gwen Hogan,
[17:42]and I was sort of flattered in a sense,
[17:44]because right, I mean, everybody has their sort
[17:46]of morally perfect observational narrator, right?
[17:49]I'm sure Fitzgerald would have loved to be as
[17:51]steamous and correct, and you know,
[17:54]as sort of perfect as Nick Caraway,
[17:57]but in fact, he was sending into alcoholism.
[18:01]And I think Gwen is one of these people who,
[18:05]because she never has that debate
[18:08]that I have two or three times a day,
[18:11]where you're going.
[18:13]My kid needs me,
[18:15]but I really wanna have that glass of wine
[18:17]and finish the crossword,
[18:19]and text my friend 10 times,
[18:21]and sort of do you sort of drag yourself up from that?
[18:24]Yes, what is it?
[18:25]And you go and cope, and we might mine our older now,
[18:28]but I will say my younger one for an entire year
[18:31]didn't believe in putting socks on.
[18:33]So that was that was my equivalent of mittens,
[18:36]but so no, she sort of is this person.
[18:41]I feel like I know people like her,
[18:42]but I will say more,
[18:44]it was more common in an older generation,
[18:46]but who has almost an excess of self-control,
[18:49]and sort of never decides to sit on the sofa
[18:56]with a glass of wine when she should be
[18:59]cleaning up the apartment or helping her child
[19:00]or what have you,
[19:02]but she really suffers from that in a sense
[19:05]because she's unable to connect with the other moms,
[19:07]because how do we connect as mothers?
[19:09]Often it's through shared confusion,
[19:14]and complain, this is sharing her challenges,
[19:17]and admitting how hard it is,
[19:20]and she's somebody who,
[19:22]it's almost not in her code to do that,
[19:24]because the way she was raised,
[19:25]she was raised with sort of a harsh environment.
[19:28]And so she almost is betraying,
[19:33]it is a bit judgy,
[19:34]but I think she's almost also betraying,
[19:37]just sort of this cannot compute,
[19:39]don't understand because she's one of those
[19:42]sort of quietly on it,
[19:43]effective, efficient mothers and people
[19:46]who just sort of get it done.
[19:48]And unfortunately, that makes say,
[19:50]or I mean, I think of her in the book as a good mother,
[19:54]but I try to show different ways of being a good mother.
[19:58]So I also think fell up the line as a good mother.
[20:00]or even though she would maybe be judged
[20:01]as the worst mother of all time,
[20:03]but in fact, truly loves her children.
[20:05]So I think that in a certain sense,
[20:07]frequent is handicapping because she can't reach across the divide
[20:12]to say, oh, my kid through a temper tantrum today.
[20:15]I mean, granted, in the book, she does have an only child
[20:18]and that child is incredibly tractable.
[20:19]So she got lucky with a, you know,
[20:22]you get one of the sometimes you get an easygoing kid
[20:23]who's just sort of willing to comply.
[20:25]But in a certain sense, it's what isolates are.
[20:29]From the fun of, from the fun of the struggle, I'll say.
[20:34]Yeah.
[20:35]So you have a sixth grader and a ninth grader
[20:37]and your book just came out in February, right?
[20:40]How long did it take you to write, Mrs.
[20:42]and where did you do it?
[20:43]Did you work at home?
[20:44]Do you have an office?
[20:45]Like what was your routine in writing it?
[20:46]I'm just, yeah.
[20:48]I mean, it seems as if it took forever
[20:49]because I put the book down twice and I just said,
[20:53]I'm not finishing it, it's not going forward.
[20:55]And then I sort of had this flash of insight
[20:58]that originally some of the book
[21:01]was told from the perspective of Philip O'Ligh.
[21:03]And every time I would get to that point in the book,
[21:05]say, 80, 100 pages in, I feel like I was hitting a wall
[21:09]and it was just so deadly.
[21:11]And it turns out that the insight was that
[21:15]these sort of crazy damaged people
[21:19]are not that interesting from the inside.
[21:21]They're more interesting from the outside
[21:23]to sort of observe and remark upon.
[21:25]But to actually go in someone's head,
[21:28]who's crazy and damaged, turned out to be a little bit boring.
[21:32]So once I realized that I had to excise her perspective
[21:35]from the novel, it just started to go so much faster
[21:38]and I was able to finish it quite quickly.
[21:39]But that was after several years of putting it up
[21:42]and putting it down.
[21:43]I did a few other things while I was writing it.
[21:46]And my routine, I would love to say,
[21:49]I've listened to other women on the podcasting,
[21:51]similar, but I'd love to say that I have a routine
[21:54]and I knock out my 10 triple space pages
[21:58]as I just read Tom Wolf did every day.
[22:00]But it's really hit or miss.
[22:02]I mean, some days I feel sort of super professional
[22:05]and I wake up and after a, I think, 15 or 18 year wait
[22:11]I finally got a maids room in our building.
[22:14]We have a pre-war apartment building.
[22:15]I live in a pre-war building that had rents out
[22:17]these maids rooms.
[22:19]And we were on the wait list forever.
[22:21]I figured I'd die before I got one,
[22:23]but then a couple of people moved.
[22:24]And so I set up the maids room as a home office,
[22:27]which has been a game changer.
[22:29]And I'd like to say that I'm down there during school hours,
[22:32]but it ends up being stealing two hours here and there.
[22:34]And then what I usually do that helps a lot
[22:37]is I go up to the society library on 79th of Madison
[22:40]and I go up to the fifth floor writer's room
[22:42]and just sort of stay there for a really long day
[22:44]or two per week.
[22:46]But those are inevitably my most productive days
[22:50]because I'm out of the house.
[22:51]And I saw that article at the time
[22:53]is about procrastinating.
[22:54]I just thought that I didn't just go down the street.
[22:56]I don't procrastinate, but I procrastinate.
[22:58]I just start tidy and I start with kids, right?
[23:02]I mean, with two kids, I can't imagine
[23:03]for it.
[23:04]With two kids, there's always something to do.
[23:05]Whether it's murder, the shoes, or book, the doctor's
[23:09]appointment, whatever.
[23:10]So it ends up being a little bit of just trying
[23:13]to get in a couple hours, but not always making it.
[23:18]That's encouraging.
[23:20]I had Jennifer Wellis on the other day
[23:22]and she gets up at four in the morning
[23:23]and writes before everybody gets up.
[23:25]And every night now, I go to sleep thinking,
[23:27]oh, should I try to do that?
[23:28]Should I try to sit in an alarm?
[23:29]And I'm like, I can't do it.
[23:30]That is so appealing to me.
[23:32]And I flirt with that idea constantly.
[23:35]And I think I've done it twice.
[23:36]And it was amazing.
[23:37]I'm sure it is amazing.
[23:39]It's just hard to stick with.
[23:40]It's four o'clock in the afternoon.
[23:41]I'll be like in the afternoon.
[23:42]Yep.
[23:45]On your website, you had a link to one article you wrote
[23:47]in 1998 in the live section of the New York Times
[23:50]where you wrote about quote unquote babysitting,
[23:53]which you said more was hanging out, basically,
[23:55]hanging out, babysitting for a 15-year-old boy in Manhattan,
[23:59]whose mother was an actress and often at home.
[24:01]And did your experiences with that babysitting moment
[24:08]in time sort of informs more of these class distinctions
[24:12]that you were like, was that your first intro
[24:15]into a specific type of lifestyle?
[24:19]And also, I need to know if you are still
[24:21]in touch with this boy and what has become of him
[24:23]because he sounded like a pretty awesome kid.
[24:27]He was a great kid.
[24:28]So because I had gone to boarding school in college,
[24:31]and so on, I'd obviously like all of us
[24:32]spent a lot of time in living rooms of people
[24:36]who lived a certain kind of a life.
[24:38]What was interesting, I can say who it was.
[24:41]I'm happy to say who it was.
[24:41]I didn't want to at the time.
[24:43]But I worked for Blair Brown,
[24:44]who was fantastic to work for,
[24:48]and what it actually was was an introduction
[24:50]into the theater world, which I loved.
[24:53]And I was always a theater kid.
[24:55]I'd done an admin theater kid when I was little.
[24:57]But Blair gave me the habit,
[24:59]because she was super generous giving me tickets and so on.
[25:01]So she gave me the habit of going to theater as an adult.
[25:04]And so many people with my generation.
[25:05]Now it seems like it's back.
[25:07]I'm maybe because of the musicals, I'm not sure,
[25:10]but my daughter loves going to musicals
[25:12]and then to Evan Hansen and so on.
[25:14]But there was this moment where people
[25:17]wouldn't be caught dead in the theater.
[25:18]I have friends saying, well, it's too staigy.
[25:21]It's too slow.
[25:22]It's too, I can't deal with it.
[25:24]But and so being around theater people
[25:27]and going to plays and so on was a real treat
[25:32]and a real, you know, I think if I could have chosen,
[25:34]I would have loved to be a playwright.
[25:35]I love the idea.
[25:37]Yeah, we have got one in me.
[25:38]I love that idea of just sitting at sardees with the actors.
[25:41]And I loved that whole world.
[25:42]So that was interesting.
[25:44]And Blair herself is just a wonderful person.
[25:49]So she paid me well and she put up with me.
[25:53]I would say it wasn't my finest hour as an employee
[25:56]because I had so much going on.
[25:58]And I was kind of struggling to pay the rent
[26:00]and struggling to write and dating.
[26:02]And in my 20s, post college.
[26:04]And so it wasn't my finest hour and they tolerated that.
[26:09]But I've always sort of felt that if her son wanted
[26:11]to get in touch with me, he could.
[26:13]But I wasn't going to stalk him.
[26:16]However, I did run into Blair recently
[26:19]because she has a house up in, I think,
[26:21]Cornwall, some of them are up in Lidgefield County,
[26:23]and they're where we are on the weekends.
[26:25]And we had a great time catching up and reminiscing.
[26:29]And she's in a bunch of stuff now.
[26:30]I think she was just an orange is the new black
[26:32]and she's doing, she was doing a couple plays.
[26:35]She was at Luma Thurman play, which was a lot of fun.
[26:38]And so it was just really fun to remember that woman
[26:40]in my life because it was sort of, it was two years
[26:43]it was encapsulated and then I moved on
[26:46]and we lost touch and so it was nice to circle back.
[26:48]He was an amazing kid and I'd be really curious
[26:51]to know what he's doing.
[26:52]So if you're listening, do you have any advice
[26:57]to aspiring writers?
[27:00]Yes, let's see, I probably have pages of advice.
[27:03]I mean, I guess one thing that I found helpful
[27:05]was something someone told me
[27:08]when I was having those days where you'd sit down to write,
[27:11]you'd just be completely frustrated
[27:12]because everything was so bad that came out.
[27:15]And the whole idea of the 80% rule
[27:19]where you're going for try to do something
[27:21]that you approve of 80% rather than going for perfection
[27:25]because it can kind of lower the bar
[27:27]and just make you feel more sort of able to take risks.
[27:33]I think writers, we sort of have our good taste, right?
[27:36]And I think we start out incredibly judgmental
[27:39]of other writers of ourselves and so on.
[27:41]So I think it's very important to try to turn down
[27:46]the critical voice and just get something on the page.
[27:51]And then the other sort of side of that coin is just,
[27:54]you just can't give up, I mean, that's basically it.
[27:57]So many people, when I was doing the MFA,
[27:58]I think we all came out thinking, oh God,
[28:00]yeah, we're never gonna get there.
[28:02]And then so many people published their books
[28:06]and have continued to publish.
[28:08]And I think the persistence is 80% of the battle
[28:14]to go back to the 80% again.
[28:17]So that's my main advice to sort of try out
[28:20]to be too critical and then to just keep going.
[28:24]I was just saying this to my husband on the street yesterday
[28:27]about we had this interesting meeting
[28:29]and just talking about what makes someone really successful.
[28:32]And it's just doing it, right?
[28:35]Like sometimes I read a book and I'm like,
[28:36]oh, I could have written that, but you know what?
[28:37]I didn't, I wasn't the one.
[28:39]Well, right, I wasn't taking that picture,
[28:41]but you know what, I didn't take that picture.
[28:42]And that's why I have it, so some of it is literally
[28:45]I think is you're saying not that I have done it,
[28:48]but just in getting it done in some way.
[28:51]Well, right and what people don't talk about
[28:53]is there is inspiration, right?
[28:55]You have those great days where you feel inspired
[28:57]and it just flows out of you.
[28:58]But the inspirational moments I find,
[29:02]they don't just hate you walking down the street.
[29:03]You have to be struggling for a few days
[29:05]and then you get a moment, you sort of earn a moment
[29:08]and it's sort of suddenly it's taking off.
[29:10]But I think people don't talk, you know,
[29:12]you sort of feel, oh God, I must be a total fraud
[29:15]if I'm not just massively inspired each and every day.
[29:18]But then the fact is once you're sort of sitting down
[29:20]and trying to do a routine as much as possible,
[29:23]then it sets the stage for inspiration to come
[29:28]and it allows inspiration to come.
[29:30]So I think that was really good for me
[29:33]to observe here and there that, oh,
[29:37]that was such an easy day.
[29:38]I just whipped through that scene or whatever it was
[29:40]because it was because I'd done the preparation
[29:44]to get there.
[29:45]And I think that it's not just,
[29:47]it's not just judge or inspiration,
[29:49]it's sort of bit of both.
[29:52]And what are you working on now?
[29:53]Let's come in next.
[29:54]So I'm working on a couple things.
[29:56]I'm working on a first person novel about two.
[30:00]to female friendship, but it seems like
[30:02]since the Ferrante, that's what everyone's doing now,
[30:04]but I'm jumping right in there.
[30:06]And I'm also toying with a YA novel.
[30:09]I've always, they always,
[30:11]they always want you to write YA because YA sells
[30:13]and so everybody's right away, right away.
[30:15]And I've never had an idea and I just kept saying,
[30:17]no, no, no, I've got nothing.
[30:18]I've got nothing.
[30:19]And then suddenly I thought,
[30:20]oh no, wait a minute, I do.
[30:21]I do have an idea.
[30:22]So I'm sort of, I haven't really started writing
[30:25]but I'm sort of mapping it out.
[30:26]And then I'm working on this first person novel.
[30:28]So it's fun to be back to first person,
[30:31]go back to where I started after doing stories
[30:34]and doing third person and so on.
[30:35]It's nice to kind of go home again.
[30:38]Okay, so, well, I'll be looking for that.
[30:40]I can't wait.
[30:42]Thank you so much for coming on moms
[30:44]don't have time to read books.
[30:45]I really appreciate all your time.
[30:46]Such a pleasure.
[30:47]Thank you, Zivey.
[30:48]And to all the listeners,
[30:49]please don't forget to subscribe.
[30:51]And if you could leave a five star rating or a comment,
[30:54]that would be amazing.
[30:55]Also a reminder that this episode has been sponsored
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[31:11]All right, thanks a lot.