Camille Pagan, I'M FINE AND NEITHER ARE YOU
[0:00]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
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[0:34]I'm really excited to be interviewing Camille Pagan, who is the number one Kindle best-selling
[0:38]author of Five Novels, including the upcoming, I'm Fine and Neither Are You.
[0:43]Her novel Life and Other Near Death experiences was recently optioned by Jessica Chastain's
[0:47]production company, Freckle Films.
[0:49]A journalist specializing in women's health, Camille has been on staff at several national
[0:53]publications, and was most recently the health editor real simple.
[0:56]She has contributed to, oh, the Oprah Magazine in The New York Times, glamour, and many other
[1:00]magazines and websites.
[1:01]She currently lives with her husband and two children in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
[1:04]Let's leave you from mom's don't have time to read books.
[1:07]Hi.
[1:08]How are you?
[1:09]I'm good.
[1:10]How are you?
[1:11]I'm hanging in there.
[1:12]We have another snow day, so.
[1:13]Oh, no.
[1:14]Yes.
[1:15]This is day seven.
[1:16]Oh, my gosh.
[1:17]It's not ever like this.
[1:20]I cannot remember a single other year where it's been like this, so yeah.
[1:24]It's snowing here too, but not, I mean, schools are still still on.
[1:28]I'm envious.
[1:31]I know.
[1:33]Well, I'm really honored you're coming on the show.
[1:35]I love your books and, you know, I really just love your whole sort of messaging and
[1:41]everything.
[1:42]So anyway, I'm excited to interview you.
[1:44]Right back at you.
[1:45]I love your podcast and super excited about those.
[1:48]Oh, thanks.
[1:49]So if you don't mind, let's start at the beginning of your fiction writing career.
[1:53]Right.
[1:54]You said on your website that you wrote your first novel, The Art of Forgetting 10 Years
[1:57]ago after your daughter was born, when you had a dear friend battling a terminal illness,
[2:01]which I'm so sorry about.
[2:02]I think you wrote on your website even before I typed the end.
[2:05]I knew I wanted to do it again and again and again.
[2:08]So I'm curious.
[2:09]What was it that made you love writing your first novel so much that you wanted to keep
[2:12]doing it?
[2:13]Well, I always wanted to be a novelist, I think, just from a really early age, when
[2:18]I realized that people did that, it sounds amazing.
[2:21]I think I'd like to be one of them.
[2:24]I studied English and school in college and went into journalism and just kind of put it
[2:29]on the back burner.
[2:30]So I was thinking about being practical and I enjoyed journalism.
[2:35]And I think my friend's illness just reiterated the fact, and it's cliche, but it's true
[2:40]that life is short.
[2:41]And I really wanted to make it happen while I had a chance.
[2:45]And then my friend also, as she was dying, encouraged me.
[2:48]I said, I have this idea for a book and she said you have to go for it like now is
[2:53]this time.
[2:54]And that gave me the fuel to sit down and write an entire draft and I did it in about four
[2:59]months.
[3:00]And it was pretty quick.
[3:01]And it was just so enjoyable to be away from facts for a while, you know, which is what
[3:06]I do all day in my journalism role and just come up with this story in my head.
[3:11]It's unlike anything else I've ever done.
[3:14]And I feel that way every time I write a book, just escapism, but like tapping into the parts
[3:19]of myself that I don't usually reveal.
[3:21]I feel like reading is that escapism for me.
[3:24]So yeah, either writing it or reading it, it's great.
[3:27]Takes yourself out of yourself.
[3:29]Exactly.
[3:30]So you wrote your first novel in four months.
[3:33]It was published.
[3:34]You moved on and wrote life and other near-death experiences after your second child was
[3:38]born.
[3:39]So when did you do that?
[3:40]When are you doing your writing and how do you come up with the ideas for these first
[3:43]couple books?
[3:44]And this book was just optioned by Jessica Chastain's film company, Freckle Films, which
[3:48]is amazing.
[3:49]That's so exciting.
[3:50]Thank you.
[3:51]Fingers crossed the middle.
[3:52]See the screen.
[3:53]I had a three-year period between the art of forgetting and life and other near-death experiences.
[3:59]Maybe two and a half, three years, where I wrote a couple other books that were terrible.
[4:05]My agent didn't like them.
[4:07]I didn't like them.
[4:09]And I think after being published the first time, he realized, oh, this is real.
[4:14]And I had an internal self-created pressure to write something that I thought would sell,
[4:20]which is the worst way to write a book.
[4:22]And after writing the second book, they didn't go anywhere I realized that.
[4:26]And that's when I was on a press trip in Santa Monica for a story.
[4:31]And I had a couple hours to help you from my flight.
[4:34]And I was on the beach.
[4:35]And I kind of got into this mental point where I thought I'm just going to give up on my
[4:39]fiction career.
[4:41]And I had the failed, you know, maybe I'll write another book in five years.
[4:44]My journalism career is going well.
[4:46]And suddenly, at that moment of release, I got an idea to write about a woman who has
[4:51]a terminal illness.
[4:53]And her life blows up at the same time she's diagnosed.
[4:56]And she runs away to Puerto Rico, which is a place that's really important to me and my
[5:00]family.
[5:01]And it just came to me almost fully formed this idea.
[5:05]And I ran back to my room and started scribbling down.
[5:08]And really, the next day when I got home, started writing the book.
[5:11]And that became life another near-death experiences.
[5:14]Wow.
[5:15]And then it became like the number one all category Kindle bestseller, which is just so
[5:19]great.
[5:20]So I'm smiling as you say that.
[5:23]I mean, that's pretty awesome.
[5:25]That's awesome.
[5:26]It was such a wonderful experience.
[5:28]And it was neat to see that the book that I wrote really for myself, I just thought,
[5:33]what would I like to read if I went to the bookstore?
[5:36]Well, it would be the thing I'd want to pick up.
[5:37]And I wanted something that was poignant, but funny and tongue-in-cheek in a way.
[5:43]And it was so nice to see readers resonate with that message, because unlike those other
[5:49]drafts that are in my drawer and will never do the way today, I wasn't writing it with
[5:54]a reader in mind.
[5:55]I was just kind of writing for me.
[5:56]It seems to be the secret.
[5:58]But it is.
[5:59]And that's how I've written all of my other books since, because the feeling of writing
[6:04]that way is very different.
[6:06]It's joyful.
[6:07]I think sometimes I don't know what everyone else's process is, but for me, I don't
[6:12]ever struggle.
[6:13]I don't feel like, oh, this is horrible and I hate it when I'm writing.
[6:16]I think this is great.
[6:17]And if it's not good, I'm going to make it better.
[6:20]And I'm always looking for that feeling of joy.
[6:23]If it's not there, that means I'm not working on the right book.
[6:25]Oh, I love that.
[6:26]That's great.
[6:27]And I tried to write a book recently, and I was all, you know, so stressed about it.
[6:32]And I was like, nobody's asked me to do this.
[6:36]If I'm not having fun doing this, just stop.
[6:40]No one, at least I didn't have a highly successful first novel with a second novel, stress
[6:46]attached.
[6:47]This is just for fun.
[6:48]And I'm like, if it's not fun, forget it.
[6:51]Yeah, exactly, exactly.
[6:53]And you said that you write to, I'm going to quote you here, figure out how you feel about
[6:56]the world and to connect with others thinking about the same things and that nothing makes
[7:00]you happier than hearing from a reader who then says, you know, your novel helped me through
[7:04]a tough time or that's exactly how I felt.
[7:07]I feel like that's totally the same way.
[7:09]Like, you know, even if I write an Instagram post and someone's like me too, I'm like,
[7:12]oh, that's awesome.
[7:14]Yeah, I think it's all a format, it's Instagram, social media, blog post, article, novels
[7:20]are just that in a kind of crazy format because you do get so much feedback on reviews
[7:26]and people email.
[7:27]But I think we all have a purpose and sometimes it's easy to forget that when you're
[7:32]writing.
[7:33]And I realize that you're hearing from readers that my personal purpose is to give
[7:37]voice to some of the things that people think that maybe don't say.
[7:41]And hearing those ideas, however revealing or embarrassing, I mean, I feel like I'm always
[7:46]running around in my underwear when I write a book.
[7:50]Everyone's watching.
[7:51]But it's important to realize that you're not the only one who feels that way.
[7:55]And I think that's how we get through life in a joyful way.
[7:58]That's what my books are for.
[7:59]That's amazing.
[8:00]I love that.
[8:01]I feel like that's the greatest power of writing.
[8:03]And so you don't feel alone.
[8:05]Like everybody has this sort of common experience.
[8:07]Yeah, totally agree.
[8:09]And you do that such a good job of that in your book.
[8:11]I'm fine and neither are you, which was so great coming out in April and speaking of, you
[8:15]know, running around in your underwear.
[8:17]You start this book with your protagonist.
[8:18]Your protagonist will be sitting on the toilet and being interrupted by both her son
[8:23]and then her husband with no toilet paper to be fat, which was such a classic.
[8:28]I was like, I can't believe she's writing this.
[8:29]See, this is perfect.
[8:30]Yeah.
[8:31]It's like so real.
[8:32]It's just so real.
[8:33]Thank you.
[8:34]I think mom's get that, you know, we know what that feels like.
[8:38]And then you wrote about parenting.
[8:40]You said on a day like this one, I needed to remind myself that there was a good reason
[8:43]a sane person would pull herself out of bed at the crack of dawn, it's been all her
[8:47]waking hours tending to the needs of other people and then do it again and again and
[8:50]again.
[8:51]I remember a love or something like that.
[8:53]Oh, yeah.
[8:56]I really had fun writing this character, you know, her name's Penelope.
[9:00]She's a breadwinner.
[9:02]She's working her butt off.
[9:03]She's doing more than she should at home.
[9:06]Her husband's not really chipping in and she feels kind of the way that I think it's
[9:11]easy for anyone to feel, which is that everyone around her has better than she does.
[9:16]You know, people are more put together.
[9:19]They've got to figure it out and she especially feels this way about her closest mom friend
[9:22]Jenny, who just has this very charmed life and long behold for life isn't charmed.
[9:29]And I have to see this, you know, personally, this book isn't about me and I deliberately
[9:34]wrote away from my own marriage because out of respect for my marriage, I suppose.
[9:41]But I've had situations where I've had friends, their lives look so amazing from the outside
[9:47]and even, you know, these are people I was close to.
[9:50]And in two cases, each friend came to me and said my marriage has fallen apart.
[9:54]In one case, the woman was gay and in the other case, I just never thought coming and
[9:59]she said we're getting...
[10:00]and worse, we've been unhappy for years.
[10:02]And you could never have seen that from the outside
[10:05]and it was very important to them to not show those cracks.
[10:08]And it just reminded me that you don't know what's
[10:11]going on with anyone else really other than yourself
[10:15]and to not put judgment on it, good or bad,
[10:17]just observe without drawing conclusions about your own life.
[10:21]What do you think the benefits are of putting up this front?
[10:24]Do you think there's any benefit, like if you are unhappy,
[10:27]like Jenny and her marriage?
[10:29]Do you think this sort of self-protective instinct
[10:32]can help or do you think it just makes a problem worse?
[10:36]Well, I think both.
[10:38]I think that it's helpful to not air your dirty laundry
[10:41]to everyone.
[10:42]People talk, you don't want to run into someone
[10:44]at the grocery store and they say, oh, I hear things
[10:46]are not going so long.
[10:47]I mean, I get not wanting to deal with that.
[10:51]But I think it becomes a habit of sorts
[10:53]where you're so used to saying everything's fine,
[10:56]that you do that, even to people close to you.
[10:58]And those are the people who need to hear things
[10:59]are not fine.
[11:00]These are the people who can help you get through it
[11:03]or just give you the support that you need
[11:04]because it's very lonely.
[11:06]We're so connected.
[11:07]We've never been more connected to everyone.
[11:09]And yet, we feel very much isolated in our own way.
[11:13]And I think social media contributes to that
[11:15]because you're telling a story constantly.
[11:17]And you don't want it to be a bad story,
[11:19]but it's not the whole story either.
[11:22]And do you think in your book, do you think that Jenny's
[11:26]sort of the trajectory of her life,
[11:28]that the fate that she ends up in?
[11:30]Do you think all that could have been avoided?
[11:32]Do you think if she had shared maybe more with Penelope?
[11:34]She would be in a different place?
[11:36]I do because it's later revealed
[11:39]that she has leaned on her husband somewhat
[11:42]and that didn't work.
[11:43]It wasn't enough.
[11:44]And I think that she probably needed someone
[11:46]like Penelope to say, OK, this isn't working.
[11:50]Let's go to the next step.
[11:51]No, it's OK.
[11:52]You can lean back.
[11:53]You can step away from your blog for a bit.
[11:56]You don't have to be this perfect mother.
[11:58]Let's do this together.
[12:00]And there seems to be so much pressure.
[12:03]There is.
[12:04]And you can buy into it or not.
[12:05]But I think what is kind of not frightening,
[12:08]but what worries me sometimes about social media
[12:11]and makes me step back a little is that it
[12:13]doesn't become a habit of sorts.
[12:15]More you do it.
[12:16]The more normal it is to become someone who just
[12:19]puts out the glossy stuff, none of the real stuff.
[12:23]And I find it's funny because people really
[12:26]seem to relate more to the raw things,
[12:29]to the truth when you're telling the truth
[12:31]about what's going on with you in a way.
[12:33]People are like, oh, me too.
[12:34]Thanks for that.
[12:36]And yet we still feel like we need to put out
[12:38]this really glossy, perfect image.
[12:41]I like how at the end of the book,
[12:42]I'm not to give anything away.
[12:43]But what ends up happening with the blog
[12:46]and how you wrap that up.
[12:47]I don't know.
[12:48]I thought it was, the blog can show the truth in the end,
[12:52]right?
[12:53]Anyway, it was a really great book.
[12:54]It raised so many questions and just hit home
[12:57]in a lot of ways.
[12:58]Especially when I feel like so many people have friends
[13:02]that they feel they wish they could help more.
[13:04]And ultimately, no matter how much you want to help someone
[13:07]if they don't reach out, there's nothing you can do.
[13:09]You can even have more awareness of their struggles
[13:13]and just, there's boundaries.
[13:15]I'm rambling here, but you know.
[13:17]No, I'm totally on the board with that.
[13:19]I mean, I spend a lot of my day interviewing doctors
[13:21]and psychologists and social workers
[13:24]for my journalism job.
[13:25]And the thing that I hear again and again
[13:27]is people do need to want that help.
[13:29]You can't force someone to change.
[13:32]And so, it's complicated.
[13:34]It's really layered to figure out how to be there,
[13:37]but I'll still understand your own limitations.
[13:39]Yep, very interesting.
[13:41]You wrote a really great article on Shonda Land,
[13:43]called Faultlands, which was such a great piece
[13:46]about aging and turning 40,
[13:48]which I did recently, not recently enough, but.
[13:53]Right there with you.
[13:53]Yeah.
[13:54]At the end of that piece,
[13:56]you conclude that the key to aging beautifully
[13:59]is to move forward with passion and purpose
[14:02]and that we're naturally drawn to people
[14:04]who are enjoying themselves regardless of their age.
[14:07]Do you feel you've sort of come to peace more with aging
[14:10]since you examined it closely for this article?
[14:12]Like, do you think this is really the trick?
[14:13]This purpose and passion?
[14:15]I do.
[14:16]I think a lot about this.
[14:17]Maybe not as much as my dermatologist,
[14:19]but it's not my money.
[14:23]And I just because I want to move forward gracefully myself.
[14:27]I don't want aging to be something that limits me in any way.
[14:31]I think it's kind of a self-created problem.
[14:33]It's going to happen, right?
[14:34]You're going to get older.
[14:35]You're going to look different.
[14:36]You might feel a little different,
[14:37]but staying connected to your purpose,
[14:40]for me at least, that's been really meaningful
[14:42]to understand why I'm here
[14:44]and what I'm trying to do that keeps you away from the mirror
[14:46]and just the obsession that's so easy.
[14:49]Like, you start seeing wrinkles
[14:50]and like, everything's not holding up the same way.
[14:53]And it's kind of a rabbit hole if you're not careful.
[14:56]But I like how you sort of turn away from the mirror
[14:59]at the end, right?
[15:01]You're like, I'm going to spend a little less time
[15:02]looking at this and a little more time looking at what's,
[15:05]you know, once I turn away from the mirror,
[15:06]what you have in your life.
[15:07]It's a good, it's a good lesson.
[15:09]Yeah, you're filling your heads with what's important.
[15:12]And for me, that's my family, my career,
[15:15]you know, trying to grow as a person, those things.
[15:18]They can occupy your mind enough that you're not worrying
[15:20]about this stuff that doesn't matter
[15:21]and you can't control.
[15:23]And then you, women last seen in her 30s,
[15:25]your novel sort of came out of this examination of age.
[15:29]Correct?
[15:30]Did it help like tell me more about that book?
[15:32]So I was eight when I started writing that book, maybe 39.
[15:39]And I had an incident in the grocery store
[15:41]where a college age could ran into me
[15:44]and kind of didn't even look at me,
[15:45]even though he hurt me.
[15:47]And I thought, ah, I see what's happening.
[15:49]I'm going to get more and more invisible as time goes on.
[15:52]And it's possible that the guy was just a jerk,
[15:55]but it just reminded me of the ways that society
[15:58]can make women more invisible as they get older.
[16:01]I think that's changing a lot.
[16:03]And I think in politics and entertainment,
[16:07]certainly in the arts, we see more women
[16:09]who are well beyond 40 doing amazing things
[16:13]and being paid attention to.
[16:14]But society puts a premium on beauty and youth.
[16:18]And so I just started thinking about a character
[16:21]who's at a pivotal point in life
[16:24]and realized that again, I wanted to write the book
[16:26]that I'd like to read.
[16:28]And that's about a woman in her 50s
[16:29]who recreates her own life on her own terms.
[16:33]That's how that book came to be.
[16:35]Do you ever factor in some of the feedback you get
[16:37]from your readers?
[16:38]Like I bet people responded to that one
[16:40]in such a, does that ever cause you to write your next book?
[16:43]Do you ever get, does the feedback
[16:44]you're getting sparked future ideas ever?
[16:47]No, it's more like feel to keep going.
[16:50]I think after I finish every draft,
[16:52]I'm kind of like, ah, I don't know.
[16:53]Can I do that again?
[16:55]I love writing so much, but it's depleting
[16:57]to finish a whole book.
[16:59]And then there's this waiting period
[17:01]you're trying to get the publicity together
[17:04]and early readers and it's kind of the scary
[17:06]in-between period after the book's out,
[17:08]I'm always like, okay, but hearing from readers
[17:11]during those times, it's like, oh, I'm doing this
[17:13]on purpose, you know, this is,
[17:15]even if it touches one person, I've done something good.
[17:19]And so it's a worthwhile endeavor.
[17:21]That's great.
[17:22]And when do you actually write?
[17:23]So you do, you still have your whole journalism career
[17:25]and you used to be, you know, an editor in magazines
[17:28]and years.
[17:29]So when are you doing everything?
[17:30]Well, I'm increasingly turning away from journalism
[17:33]only because fiction, it's really now my day job.
[17:36]So I do a little bit of journalism,
[17:38]but I work from nine to five most days,
[17:40]although apparently not this winter.
[17:42]Not today.
[17:44]No pop-o-lips, it's really, it's getting me.
[17:47]And I have a home office and my kids are at school
[17:49]and then they have various after-school activities.
[17:52]And I make the most of those hours because I find,
[17:55]I do work in the morning sometimes,
[17:57]I'll get up really early and sit at my desk
[17:59]and do some work, but I can't work in the evening anymore
[18:02]the way I used to.
[18:03]I think I'm just kind of wiped out at the end of the day.
[18:06]I want to read occasionally I watch TV.
[18:08]Yeah, so it's really, I make the most of my nine to five.
[18:12]And have you read anything good lately?
[18:13]Well, I read The Wife by Meg Willitzer and love that.
[18:17]I thought that was really fantastic.
[18:19]It felt like I was the last person to read it.
[18:21]I love Christina Elders, The Bankers' wife.
[18:25]That was so smart and I heard it's gonna be made
[18:27]into a TV show, so I'm excited for her.
[18:30]And what am I reading right now?
[18:32]Oh, I read a bunch of books for blurbs.
[18:34]So that makes the whole lot of my reading time.
[18:36]Oh, wow.
[18:37]Now there's this whole subculture of writers, right?
[18:40]Like you blur each other, you're like,
[18:42]who's blurbing what?
[18:43]It's like a whole thing.
[18:45]Right.
[18:46]It's exciting because it's really nice
[18:47]to get an early look at what other people are doing.
[18:50]Like Tracy Garvis Graves sent me the girl he used to know,
[18:53]which is this wonderful book that comes out on April 2nd,
[18:56]the Day After Mine.
[18:57]And it's a love story about a woman with autism.
[19:00]And it's just so sharp and so smart.
[19:02]And I thought it was amazing that she sent me this early
[19:05]let alone that I got to say glowing things about it.
[19:07]So it's really neat to do that.
[19:09]Yeah, it's exciting.
[19:11]I feel like it's exciting just to even see it
[19:13]like a galley of a book.
[19:14]I'm like, oh, this is so fun.
[19:16]Yeah.
[19:18]So your sixth novel is in the works.
[19:20]It's called This A Won't and Well.
[19:21]Can you tell me more about that?
[19:23]It is.
[19:24]Oh, I love this book so much.
[19:25]I think it's my funnyest in life
[19:27]and other near-death experiences.
[19:29]It's the story of the cynical scientist.
[19:31]Where is that new people?
[19:32]After Beyonce runs after Paris without her,
[19:36]only to find herself entangled with this glamorous
[19:38]new neighbor that moves in and an amateur detective
[19:40]who's investigating the neighbor.
[19:42]And it's really the story of how things
[19:45]our best lay plans go awry.
[19:48]And it's told mostly in emails that's a distillery
[19:51]and there's some other documents in there.
[19:53]It's a new format for me and it was really fun to write.
[19:55]Excellent.
[19:56]Yeah.
[19:57]And do you have any advice to aspiring writers?
[20:00]Oh my gosh keep going. It's the persistence I'm watching. You know not only now I've just finished
[20:06]my sixth book and I'm so excited about that sometimes I'm like oh my gosh I wrote another book
[20:11]but also my peers who are continuing to write and some of them write one book every 10 years
[20:17]and then they write another and some are you know every six months but the common thread for
[20:22]successful writing career really seems to be that persistence the going even when the going is tough
[20:30]you know just to carry on that's great well thank you so much for all your time oh my gosh
[20:37]my pleasure I love what you're doing and your whole sensibility so anyway thank you looking forward
[20:42]to reading what's next and following your career. Thanks Idi I'm gonna have to name one of my
[20:48]characters in my novels after your name is fabulous. It's true for Elizabeth but I haven't been
[20:54]haven't been able to drop it yet since it was six months but go ahead feel free to use it.
[21:00]Fantastic. All right well I hope the snow that's up for you. Thank you thank you for your time.
[21:05]Of course you too bye bye. Take care bye. Today's episode was sponsored by cereal box
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[21:17]or read installments. Thanks to Ryan and Steve at Texture Sound for the audio editing and mixing.
[21:22]Thanks for listening to momstone have time to read books.