Rebecca Makkai, Author of "The Great Believers"
[0:10]This is Ivey Owens from Moms Don't Have Time to Be Books, the podcast for busy people who don't
[0:15]have as much time as they would like to read. I have conversations with writers of all types
[0:20]to help you save time. Today's episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books is sponsored by
[0:25]Bobo Botanicals, BABO Botanicals, Organic Solutions for Sun, Skin, and Hair for the Whole Family.
[0:36]Rodeka Makai is the author of Three Novels, The Barrowers, The Hundred Year House,
[0:41]The Borrower, The Hundred Year House, and her most recent book The Great Believers, which
[0:45]just came out on June 19th. She also wrote a collection of short stories called Music for War Time.
[0:51]A graduate of Washington and Lee with an MA English from Middlebury. Rebecca was a Montessori
[0:56]elementary school teacher before publishing her first book. She has since taught at Northwestern,
[1:00]the MFA program at Sierra Nevada, and at multiple workshops and writers conferences.
[1:05]She currently lives in Chicago and Vermont with her husband and two daughters.
[1:08]Does that sound right? Yeah, that's right. Okay, so welcome, Rebecca. Yeah, so you've written
[1:18]these three novels and a short story collection that won the 2017 Push Card Prize and have
[1:23]basically gotten like the best reviews ever, from the New Yorker to Othe Oprah Magazine,
[1:27]and even the people magazine I just picked up to read on my flight from LA last week,
[1:31]your books are just incredibly, incredibly praised and lauded by critics. So I was just wondering,
[1:37]what's your secret and how does this make you feel?
[1:43]Well, I don't really have secrets, it's such an addition, but I don't know if it's great,
[1:49]and I think that this book is being read more widely with us about in the previous one,
[1:56]which is very exciting. It's, you know, I was already, you know, incredibly grateful and
[2:02]thrilled for the reception of my previous book, but this was a little different, and, and, you know,
[2:09]I'm really happy and excited. It's been once in a week, but everything's going to happen.
[2:12]That's awesome. Speaking of reviews, by the way, I saw that Othera Priscilla Gilman,
[2:18]who wrote the anti-romantic child, actually blurb your short story collection,
[2:21]and she was also a recent guest on this podcast. So she just wanted me to tell you
[2:25]that she's thrilled for you, and can't wait to read your latest novel. So,
[2:29]cool, cool. So you write with such insight and authority about the gay population,
[2:35]and this latest novel, The Great Believers, you not only depict a mental relationship with
[2:39]tremendous beauty and insight, but you also describe a Chicago 1980s gay culture in great detail,
[2:46]bathhouses and parks to certain bars and parties. I was pretty surprised when I realized you were
[2:51]actually married to a man as a woman. So what captured your interest about this particular
[2:58]population, and how do you write about gay men so well as such an insider?
[3:03]The funny thing about gay men was simply writing about a different time. I was alive in the
[3:14]80s of a kid, and that shift in, you know, trying to remember exactly when certain things
[3:23]had been invented, you know, things like that were actually harder for me than just, you know,
[3:28]writing those characters. I didn't have a, you know, of course, being really active in the art
[3:34]scene in Chicago. I do have a, you know, a huge number of LGBTQ friends, and feel very comfortable
[3:45]in that community, and, you know, love those people, love writing about them. I do always have
[3:50]some trepidation writing as an outsider, and, you know, I was really careful with really
[3:56]concerns about this book that, you know, I could get things wrong first of all, and that I could
[4:02]be seen as, you know, an active appropriation in some way, telling a story that I didn't have
[4:07]to write to tell. But we can talk more about those things if you want to, but you know, I've
[4:13]managed to answer those questions for myself to, you know, to an extent to satisfy me.
[4:18]I think that honestly, I'll say that it's easier for me to write gay men than it is to write
[4:24]straight men. I never know, but straight men are always like scratching their crutches,
[4:28]and I don't know what to do with them, because it's like, no, I've got those, like, I've got those.
[4:32]I have to put the gay men women really well. You know, if you, like, in novels, definitely
[4:38]like, you know, section of the city, you know, they're in star. I think that there's,
[4:43]there's certainly that differences, especially as a pile of differences, but there's
[4:49]ton and comment. And I, as much as I was worried about getting things wrong historically,
[4:56]and, you know, totally anything like that and make sure that people read it for accuracy and for,
[5:02]you know, whether it ring true, the gay characters in the book came pretty easily to me.
[5:09]That's great. You definitely made them super real. I felt like I could, you know, spot Yale on
[5:14]Street after reading your book. So, and I was actually going to ask you already about how, you know,
[5:22]many of your works have multiple storylines in different time periods, like not only in the
[5:27]great believers from, you know, going back and forth from 1985 to 2015, but also in the 100-year
[5:32]house, how you went from 1929 to 55 to 1999. So tell me a little more about that. Do you
[5:39]enjoy that process of bringing different periods of time to life for readers? Is it more a structural
[5:45]element that you think helps you tell your story or is it just a coincidence that you do it
[5:51]often? I mean, I felt like it was great how you reference such time-specific details, like listening
[5:55]to the acoustic version of Simon & Garfunkel's America and saying that, you know, they listen to it
[6:00]right after Reagan's re-election, like just all those details are so spot on.
[6:04]The pure party isn't necessarily in the detail, although they are fun, but what I think makes me
[6:16]play with time and write about multiple time periods is that's what gives me writer goosebumps.
[6:23]The span of time and the traumatic irony that it makes it possible, right, that like
[6:30]the traumatic irony that people who aren't up on their, you know, middle school English or
[6:36]whatever the lesson that was mentioned would be like, wouldn't we know more than the characters?
[6:40]And that can seem really heavy-handed sometimes in fiction where it's like, oh, you know,
[6:48]there's someone waiting around the corner and they don't know it yet. But ready with a gap in time
[6:54]allows us to use that traumatic irony, you know? Like, if we're going back and forth between the
[6:59]80s and 2015, when we end up knowing more about the 80s and the characters in the 80s now,
[7:07]you know, we know what's around, you know, what's coming. And that becomes really interesting
[7:13]for me to play with, structurally, and I just find that exciting on a writer level, I think.
[7:20]And I think I like, you know, I also like reading stuff like that, which is always a good fun.
[7:24]Me too. By the way, just for one detail that I just wanted to tell you how much I liked,
[7:30]we have Charlie apologizes to Yale and the great believers after their fight when they misinterpreted
[7:35]the events at their friend's memorial service. He writes the words, sorry, out in M&Ms on their bed.
[7:43]That was so really definitely going to have to steal that idea. And I was wondering, has someone
[7:47]done this for you? No, someone could do that or the awesome. But yeah, I know, no. That was,
[7:56]that's kind of a leader addition as like, I kind of was working on their relationship a little bit
[8:01]more. And I, I wanted to include that and also it was a great excuse to include the pan M&Ms that
[8:07]you want to cook anymore. Totally. I love this. I also grew up in the 80s, so I remember sorting
[8:14]all those little colors out in the light brown and the dark brown. Yeah. Yeah. So in the bar
[8:20]where you wrote about an accidental kidnapping, and I understand it took you about nine years to finish
[8:26]that book. And I was wondering if you could tell me more about that process. And what made you
[8:30]keep coming back to the book over and over again? Did you ever want to just throw it out and start
[8:34]again? Or? Yeah, I did throw it out a lot of turns actually, right? I abandoned the
[8:39]temporarily a lot of time. Yeah, I think I think there are many writers whose first books take them
[8:45]around eight to 10 years. For several reasons, but because it's a little bit wrong, right? But um,
[8:52]you know, probably because you're probably working a full-time job during that time without
[8:57]the promise of this book ever getting published. You don't know if you're deluding yourself. You
[9:02]don't know if it's just a weird hobby you have. So try to prioritize it. And then also you're
[9:08]still learning how to write a novel. Um, you know, you might have written a bunch of different
[9:12]short stories, and you could write them in a day or two, but um, and then you get good at,
[9:17]you know, get better at the short story, because you've done it a lot of times. But first novel,
[9:22]you know, it is at least going to take you a few years. And my, and you know, this is your first time
[9:30]up to date, and then you're trying to write something published fall. It's funny because I think
[9:34]people get people who aren't writers, there aren't long-term writers. I think you get
[9:40]um, a little confused by that whole nano rhino thing, that national novel writing month,
[9:44]which is a really cool idea. It's a great way for people to get some stuff down on the page.
[9:48]It's a great way to get teenagers involved in writing. But it takes a lot more than a month to
[9:53]write a novel. So, um, you should think, you know, about three or four years, feeling further,
[10:00]So during the two years, I abandoned that project several times.
[10:06]I was working the whole time on short stories, which became my collection.
[10:10]And then meanwhile, I was starting my second novel.
[10:13]I was starting the hundred year house during one of the times when I had abandoned the borrower.
[10:19]But I came back to it in the end, partly because I couldn't really let those characters
[10:25]in the middle of the compelling.
[10:27]And also because at the end of the year, that shit was almost done.
[10:31]You know, I had abandoned that inside of this new book.
[10:34]And as soon as it started getting in trouble, I went back and looked at the borrower.
[10:37]I was like, what was it taking? It's going to be fine.
[10:41]So that was a long-winding note that I think that's not unusual for every novel.
[10:48]And aside from trial and error and just practice, how did you teach yourself at a write-in-level?
[10:54]Or did you teach yourself? Did you take a class?
[10:57]Or did you do it?
[10:59]You know, I think there was a lot of thinking and reading about plot and about structure.
[11:07]It helped me.
[11:08]I also really learned to outline, which I had not done with the borrower.
[11:14]For the bioome, I only outlined.
[11:16]I had like this one pie chart that I drew with like the percentages of time.
[11:20]Different parts of the book or something.
[11:24]But, you know, I really detailed that line.
[11:28]For the hundred years, because it was backwards in time, it was a very intricate plot.
[11:33]It had a really elaborate outline.
[11:36]For the great believer, it was quite a bit looser.
[11:39]But I still needed to have one.
[11:41]And I needed to, you know, to do things like keep track of the things that they would have done.
[11:46]But I was mapping this one in my Google calendar.
[11:49]Which is still in there.
[11:51]I like to go back a few years so that the dates of the week would line up with 1985 and its 86.
[11:58]And then I had, you know, these events that I was putting in there.
[12:02]Because, you know, since it is a novel about AIDS, I needed to make sure that, you know,
[12:08]before between someone taking the test and getting their results, things like that.
[12:17]So, you know, that kind of thing with the first novel.
[12:21]You know, I didn't have a list of, you know, my characters.
[12:25]And how old they were.
[12:26]I didn't have a timeline.
[12:28]And we used a lot of time then going back in and trying to find that information
[12:32]or messing it up and having to redo it.
[12:34]And also just not having a map for what scenes are going to go where.
[12:40]That with the borrower, you know, I was kind of writing things out of order.
[12:44]And then stitching them together like some kind of big patchwork quiz.
[12:48]And then wondering why I didn't have any momentum to my story.
[12:52]And it's like, well, because you wrote it completely out of order.
[12:54]And now you have to go back and do that again.
[12:56]So, there are many things I've learned.
[12:58]And are these the types of things that you teach.
[13:00]And when you do, I know you do love teaching now.
[13:02]And you're just a director at a place called Story Studio Chicago that basically is a, you know,
[13:10]a non-profit writing center for people of all level of writing in all genres.
[13:17]So from, you know, beginning writers through people who have, you know, advanced, you know, prep,
[13:22]an MSA degree in creative writing.
[13:25]And specifically, but I teach myself is a year-long novel workshop where we have people who are working on really incredible
[13:34]novel, you know, application-based.
[13:37]And so often they come in and they're great writers.
[13:41]They often have a pretty great academic background in creative writing.
[13:45]They've maybe published short stories.
[13:47]But no one's had them had a red novel.
[13:50]And it's a totally different ballgame.
[13:53]And so I'm guiding them through a lot of that structure and outlining the practical considerations as well as a really great scene.
[14:04]And that is hard to find out there.
[14:07]A lot of our creative writing education is centered around short story because that's what we have turned to read and workshop and discuss.
[14:16]And so if you had any advice for fiction writers out there who don't have time to take your class or aren't in Chicago, what free advice might you give up?
[14:26]Yeah, there are lots of other writing centers and other major cities.
[14:31]So it helps if you live in a city like Boston or Denver or Seattle.
[14:34]They have great writing centers.
[14:35]And a lot of these places also offer online classes, we do too.
[14:40]But I would also say that, you know, honestly, in the summer super nerdy year,
[14:46]but I think one of the best things you can read about structure is Aristotle's politics.
[14:52]That's so dry. It's not actually kind of funny.
[14:57]You know, it's thousands of years old.
[14:59]And he was talking about Greek drama.
[15:01]But he was the first one to really sit there and kind of splice that fact, you know, how does plot work.
[15:08]And he says, when they've been, you know, all these people who've been writing great sentence that can't write a great plot.
[15:14]We still have a same issue.
[15:16]And he breaks it down in completely fascinating ways.
[15:21]Some of which are outdated.
[15:23]They apply to Greek drama and don't apply to, you know, the modern novel, but many of which absolutely work.
[15:31]You know, these, you know, these are figuring out the parts of the triangle.
[15:36]And he just figured out the parts of the plot.
[15:39]Well, I'll go on Amazon and pick up some some Aristotle then.
[15:44]I'm going to make it trending after this interview.
[15:49]In your short story collection, these are for wartime.
[15:52]You include a tale about a reality TV producer who manipulates two contestants into falling in love.
[15:57]Well, well, the producer's relationship falls apart herself.
[16:01]My husband is a reality TV producer.
[16:04]So I was wondering if you could tell me more about how that, how you came up with that story.
[16:11]And how you come up with most history ideas.
[16:15]I mean, I come up with a bit entirely different ways, but I can tell you that one.
[16:20]Yeah, really, I love sort of process based reality shows, like top-shaft project runway.
[16:30]And, you know, honestly, I'm always recommending them to writing students just as, you know,
[16:40]it's kind of so we can start it to watch someone else cry about their field art.
[16:45]And to see what they struggle with.
[16:48]And so look at their psychology of like, do they let the criticism get to their head?
[16:55]You know, et cetera.
[16:57]At the same time, you know that they're, you know, actually scripted in many ways.
[17:02]And I became really fascinated with the talking head interviews.
[17:06]And this is way back. I read the story and probably like 2000 while parking there.
[17:16]But I became really fascinated by the talking head interviews and about the skin of who was on the other side of that interview.
[17:26]And what was it asking to get them to say these things?
[17:30]Sometimes it becomes really clear that they're saying who's work or you concerned about.
[17:35]And then no answer with like, I'm really concerned about, you know, and at least there's luck.
[17:40]I don't think you guys are going to like it.
[17:42]And they totally encouraged them to say that.
[17:45]And they just became really interested in that other invisible silent person as a character.
[17:50]It was hard because it couldn't be a made because as you know, if you haven't been working on this,
[18:00]they find these non-disclosure agreements that are pretty intense.
[18:04]So it was a lot of guesswork that then I later had, you know, verified in some ways.
[18:11]But when I did make people who were in reality,
[18:14]this was a fitting the worst, then then ready it down.
[18:17]And then like in some ways, I was right.
[18:21]In some ways, I'm sure I was wrong.
[18:23]But that's a pretty, it didn't have the, you know, commitment to realism that they are that I have.
[18:31]like a book like the Great Believer's where I'm writing about some examples.
[18:34]That was great.
[18:35]That makes sense.
[18:36]I know in an interview with someone who asked you about how you came up with story ideas.
[18:41]And you said, you didn't know, but it was the same as, you know, how do you come up with what you dream about?
[18:46]It just is, right?
[18:48]Right.
[18:49]Right.
[18:50]Is that how you feel?
[18:54]I never understood that question from the longest time.
[18:58]But it's like, well, I just wouldn't mean like this.
[19:00]It just seems so natural to me that you constantly have story ideas wherever you go.
[19:04]And the way that one of you think got idea in the garden to the story.
[19:08]How old are your daughters by the way?
[19:10]Seven in time.
[19:11]Seven in 10.
[19:12]And so how do you manage all the writing and being a mom too?
[19:17]Like when do you write?
[19:18]And how do you involve the girls at all, if at all, with your writing?
[19:23]Oh, gosh, I wouldn't want to involve them with my writing.
[19:26]No, but, you know, they go to school for seven hours a day.
[19:34]That's, you know, pretty full work day in there.
[19:36]But it's time to do other stuff.
[19:38]You know, I do a lot of traveling to promote my work.
[19:43]And they're great about it.
[19:45]They're, you know, really independent.
[19:47]It's funny to go, I get this question over the time when I'm on the road.
[19:52]Specifically for some reason it's, and I think it's, I understand it's a generation.
[20:00]different. Don't meet me at a signing or something and say, who's watching your
[20:04]challenge? And I'll say they're father, they're human father. You know, like, of
[20:13]course, in the minute they'll go into something like that, you're so lucky that
[20:16]he, and then I just kind of let it fly. But it's like nothing to do with that. I
[20:21]never would have married someone who wasn't going to parent their children and
[20:25]let me have my career. Like, you know, he's pretty great, but I'm not
[20:30]going to give him superhuman credit. Like, you know, it's like any other career
[20:36]that you need to balance and in the same way that, you know, this is my
[20:41]thing is, you know, and I understand you're asking me that because of, you know,
[20:44]it's the nature of your podcast. But, you know, I know that as I'm out on the
[20:48]road and they get this question, it's like, you're not asking male authors this,
[20:51]you know, like, that the guy, you know, read this book story last week, you can
[20:56]ask him those comments. But I don't like to ask them. I like to ask them. I asked
[21:02]male authors to when they do the writing, how they got family. I promise I'm not,
[21:07]I wasn't trying to. No, you like, I tried, see I tried. So that's, you know,
[21:12]germane dear podcast. But, you know, this is, it's fun because this is the first
[21:19]book that they really understood what's going on. You know, my last book came
[21:23]up three years ago and they were just so little too young to really get it. And
[21:28]now they, you know, they're, they're excited to, you know, see my book in
[21:32]magazines or to hear where I'm going. And so, you know, no, I'm going to be on
[21:36]radio or TV or whatever. They're pretty excited about it, which is great. And,
[21:40]you know, and since they're girls, too, it's like you want to see them. I want them to
[21:44]see their mom having a, you know, important to feeling exciting career. That's
[21:48]important. I am, I have four kids myself and I feel like even though they go to
[21:53]school, I don't really have that much time somehow to get everything done that
[21:57]I need to. So maybe my best thing is a, yeah, it's selfish and major is a
[22:02]movie. But if, so if your children asked you if they should grow up and be
[22:09]writers too, what would you tell them?
[22:11]Really grateful that in my childhood home writing was seen as a legitimate
[22:22]career. My father is a poet. His mother was a novelist.
[22:27]I was an academic and it advised wisely for employment opportunities. You know,
[22:42]I majored in English rather than creative writing, which that really didn't
[22:46]matter in the end. But, you know, as you said, I've had a one that should score for
[22:49]a while as I was publishing my first work fiction writer. That's not a thing.
[23:02]Read what a recent college graduate thinks about life.
[23:06]A few years out of Jesus probably for a reason. You need to, you know,
[23:15]do a little bit more time passes. You know, I would,
[23:25]children are justly creative. At the point where I would be shocked if they
[23:32]don't have careers in the arts, something would have had to go kind of awry.
[23:37]I think for that to be the case, what's involved in that, but it's not about
[23:48]sitting in a beautiful cabin in the woods.
[23:51]Pretty, you know, it's a job. And so I think they'd be, you know, in many ways
[23:58]well prepared for that life. They certainly have been warned by people such that.
[24:04]And what what's next for you? What do you want to do next? Another novel or
[24:08]more short stories or what's on your? Yeah. Um, I think it will be another
[24:13]novel. I mean, I'm working on short stories that, you know, might appear, you know,
[24:18]one of the time in various magazines. I'll never separate in short stories.
[24:23]But I have, I have like three different competing novel ideas kicking around.
[24:28]And it's, it's a good decision to be in, but I'm so excited about all three of
[24:32]them that I can't commit to one of them. And they can't really coexist in the
[24:35]same novel. So I think I know which one I'm going with.
[24:39]Sounds like a, but I'm really idea, I'm really idea driven. Um, you know,
[24:43]if I get an idea that the short story idea that that's what I'm going to write.
[24:46]And if I get, if I, if tomorrow, I got an idea for a play, that's what I
[24:51]would write. Um, just knowing that my next most compelling idea is a
[24:57]for novels. And I'm pretty sure it's going to be a novel next. Sounds like
[25:00]you need a three books. Yeah, sure.
[25:05]No, that wouldn't have deadline, but I'm happy to pass on that.
[25:10]Well, thank you so much. This room is my questions. And it was really
[25:13]great chatting with you. I loved your book, the great believers.
[25:15]It was amazing. And so just powerful. And I feel like it really
[25:20]took me to another place and time and made me really attached to all
[25:23]your characters. So thank you for transporting me.
[25:27]I really appreciate it. No problem. I take care. Thanks so much. Okay. Bye. Bye.