Jennifer Weiner, MRS. EVERYTHING
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[0:40]I am so excited to be interviewing Jennifer Weiner today.
[0:43]Jennifer is the number one New York Times best-selling author.
[0:46]Her books have spent over five years on the New York Times bestseller list
[0:50]with 11 million copies in print in 36 countries.
[0:53]Jennifer wrote Good and Bed in her shoes, which became a movie with Cameron Diaz,
[0:57]Tony Collette, and Shirley McLean.
[0:59]The next best thing, Little Earth Greats and many more.
[1:01]Her latest novel, which comes out in June, is called Mrs. Everything.
[1:04]Jennifer has also written two middle grade novels, The Littlest Big Foot,
[1:08]and Little Big Foot Big City, and a nonfiction collection of essays,
[1:11]Hungry Heart, Adventures in the Life, Love, and Writing.
[1:14]She has appeared in the Today Show Good Morning America, including this morning,
[1:18]and many other news outlets.
[1:19]A graduate of Princeton University, she is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times,
[1:24]op-ed, and Sunday review sections.
[1:26]She currently lives in Philadelphia with her family.
[1:28]I'm here with Jennifer Weiner, but I'm going to let her have the whole screen,
[1:32]and I'm going to interview her.
[1:34]I'm at Jennifer Weiner writes, if you're watching this, and you have no idea who I am.
[1:38]I write novels.
[1:39]Hi.
[1:40]She's the number one best-selling New York Times bestselling author,
[1:43]and has a new book, Mrs. Everything.
[1:45]Pleavage.
[1:45]Sorry.
[1:46]Which is coming out tomorrow?
[1:47]Tomorrow.
[1:48]Pleavage.
[1:49]Tomorrow.
[1:50]Preorder.
[1:51]Preorder.
[1:52]Yes, please.
[1:53]Go to Amazon.
[1:54]Go to Target.
[1:55]Go to Costco.
[1:56]Go to your local independent.
[1:57]Go to Barnes & Noble.
[1:58]It's the Barnes & Noble book of the month.
[1:59]Yeah.
[2:00]Hi, people.
[2:01]Hi, people.
[2:02]I see people coming.
[2:04]I have a lot of people now, and stepping.
[2:07]Yes.
[2:08]Oh, and hard coming.
[2:09]Yes, there it is, right?
[2:10]Here's the finished book, Backwards.
[2:13]It's good.
[2:14]Not really.
[2:15]Excellent.
[2:16]Here we are.
[2:17]You're stunning, gorgeous apartment.
[2:18]This is the most beautiful place I've ever been in, and I might not leave.
[2:21]Don't leave.
[2:22]I might just live here.
[2:23]Can we just move on it?
[2:24]Come on.
[2:25]Yeah, why not?
[2:26]Right.
[2:27]So your new novel, Mrs. Everything.
[2:28]Yes.
[2:29]Can you tell us now what it's about and what inspired you to write it?
[2:31]Mrs. Everything is the story of two sisters, two Jewish American sisters, from the 1940s
[2:38]all the way through the present and slightly beyond into a lightly fictionalized future,
[2:43]where there's a woman president's view.
[2:46]It's the story of these two women.
[2:50]There's the rebel and the good girl who sort of switch places, like halfway through the
[2:55]book.
[2:56]And through their eyes and through their experiences, it's the story of women in America.
[3:01]That's what I was sort of setting out to do.
[3:03]I wanted to tell a sister story and a woman's story and an American story, a story of
[3:08]that America.
[3:09]So that's what I hope I did.
[3:10]And I hope it's a great, big, fun, juicy beach read, too.
[3:13]And is it a coincidence that the names are similar to Little Women?
[3:16]No.
[3:17]No, that's a total rip-off.
[3:18]Yes, of Louis and May I'll cut.
[3:20]So in Little Women Joe, the rebel, the sister who wants to be a writer in a world that
[3:25]is not super welcoming to the notion of women writing, ends up married with children
[3:31]to Professor Bear, who sort of makes fun of her mellow dramas that she's writing for
[3:35]money and says they're trash and they're dangerous and you should be doing this.
[3:39]And she ends up running a school for boys to the still fresh disappointment of many readers
[3:46]of Little Women.
[3:48]And Bethie Beth is the sister who dies, spoiler alert.
[3:52]Bethie dies beautifully, tragically, very young.
[3:56]So I wanted to write a story where there would be my Joe who would live in a world that
[4:01]was slightly more accommodating of women's professional desires, but far less accommodating
[4:07]of their sexual differences and my Joe's attracted to women and that becomes a problem
[4:14]for her as she moves through life.
[4:17]And then I had my Bethie, my good girl, the pretty one, the one who's the star of the
[4:21]school plays and everybody loves her and everything she's great ends up in a traumatic
[4:26]situation with a relative that sort of knocks her off course and ends up leading a very
[4:31]different life than probably the one that she'd imagined.
[4:34]So she doesn't die.
[4:35]My Bethie lives, but it's sort of what happens to the good girl, the angelic girl when
[4:42]life has its way with her kind of.
[4:44]So yeah.
[4:45]And the other inspiration for this book was my mom.
[4:47]My mom liked Joe, married a man, had four kids, lived a suburb, got divorced, and then
[4:53]fell in love with a woman.
[4:55]And I watched to the shock of her, then young adult children.
[4:58]You know, I still remember like getting that phone call, like sitting in the newsroom
[5:02]of the Philadelphia Inquirer and my younger brother calling me and just be like,
[5:05]you know, there's a woman living in this house, you know, and I'm like, what am I supposed
[5:09]to do?
[5:10]He's like, find out what's going on.
[5:11]So I call my mom and I'm like, Fran, what's going on?
[5:13]She's like, nothing.
[5:14]I'm like, you know, nothing new, nothing about tell me.
[5:16]She's like, no.
[5:17]And I'm like, Joe says there's a woman living in the house and my mom takes a beat and then
[5:21]she says, oh, that's my swim coach.
[5:23]And I'm like, your swim coach, I'm like, Fran, it's not an Olympic year.
[5:28]So like, what is going on?
[5:29]And she's like, all right, you know, her name's whatever and we're in love and she's
[5:34]living here.
[5:35]And you'd buy.
[5:36]And I'm just like, what just happened?
[5:38]Then I have to call my brother Joe back and, you know, and tell him the whole thing.
[5:43]You know, yes.
[5:45]And, you know, we laughed about it a lot.
[5:49]And it was sort of one of these, like, laughing to keep not from crying, I think, but
[5:56]from experiencing the fact that this was sort of shocking and painful because it's like,
[6:01]if your mom is attracted to women or could be attracted to women, like, was she ever in love
[6:07]with your dad and like, what are the four of us doing here?
[6:11]Like, where did we come from and what even happened and what's the whole story?
[6:15]And it was, it was very disorienting.
[6:18]I think that's the word I will use.
[6:19]It was disorienting.
[6:21]And so some of my long time readers might know that in good and bad, there was a character
[6:27]based on my mom who was like, very much a punchline, like, very much played for laughs.
[6:32]And I always had that character in my head somewhere.
[6:38]And I always wanted to come back to it and sort of like, say like, okay, now that I'm
[6:44]a mother myself and I'm not just this, like, 28 year old who's trying to figure out
[6:49]her own life and also is trying to figure out her mother's life.
[6:51]You know, I want to really go back and consider like what the world must have been like
[6:56]for my mom and for all of the women like her who couldn't live as their truest and most
[7:01]authentic selves because of homophobia and prejudice and fear.
[7:06]So before your New York Times article came out this weekend, that was wondering, did
[7:10]your, what did your mom think?
[7:11]Did you really hurt?
[7:13]Then you have this whole thing.
[7:14]I hand it over to Anna writing my mother's sexy and my mother's sexy and there it is.
[7:21]It's like, gave my mom the book and I was working on this book for a long, long time and
[7:27]I would call her up and I'd be like, you know, tell me about your street in Detroit growing
[7:32]up in your elementary school and you're synagogue and she'd be like, Jenny, what is this
[7:36]for and I'd be like, they're just researching and just asking questions and so, you
[7:41]know, finally she sort of got the notion that this book was like about two sisters and
[7:46]one of them is gay, you know, and so I like put it off as long as I couldn't I finally
[7:51]she came to my house for Passover, you know, we do the sadder and there's like piles
[7:55]of the advanced readers copy so I like give her one and she starts reading and I'm like,
[7:59]I'm thinking like, please go home, please just go home, do not be here when you read that
[8:03]for sex.
[8:04]I cannot deal with that right now, but so she goes home and then she texts me like
[8:08]a couple of days later.
[8:09]She's like, you know, I didn't drop acid, I'm not Bethie, I don't know what you're
[8:13]talking about so, but of course, Bethie's not the sister she's based on so I think she's
[8:17]okay with it.
[8:18]I haven't heard any complaints.
[8:19]I also have not heard any affirmations so, you know, we'll see.
[8:23]I think it's okay.
[8:24]I think it's okay.
[8:25]You did such a great job though of having the Joe character hide that she loves women
[8:31]and particularly her relationship with Shelley and I was wondering about the kind of,
[8:35]if it was just imagination or if you did talk to people who have gone through that in
[8:39]life or.
[8:40]Yeah, I mean, obviously some of it's imagination.
[8:43]I mean, like every writer's job is to put herself into the skin and into the shoes and
[8:49]into the heart of whoever we're writing about, but I was also very aware that I'm not
[8:56]a gay woman, right?
[8:57]So I didn't live through any of that.
[8:58]I don't know what it felt like and I wanted to be careful and respectful that I was doing
[9:05]justice to this character.
[9:07]So I read, I went back and I read Ruby Fruit Jungle, which is sort of the sort of definitive
[9:14]lesbian coming of age story by Rita May Brown, which I highly recommend.
[9:18]Do we need to get this?
[9:19]Do we need to get it?
[9:20]Nope.
[9:21]There we go.
[9:22]The rabbi calls.
[9:23]Literally the rabbi calls.
[9:24]I might be a big trouble.
[9:25]I might be a big trouble.
[9:26]I told you.
[9:27]I have these permits for me to get it.
[9:28]Yes.
[9:29]Yes.
[9:30]I have a permits that come in 2020, so I'm like right there with you.
[9:35]So what was I saying?
[9:36]Oh, yes.
[9:37]So I read a lot of gay memoirs, blogs, oral histories, women telling their stories.
[9:45]And then I had a sensitivity reader for the, this is the first book I've worked with
[9:48]a sensitivity reader on and it was invaluable because my reader was a buy woman who
[9:54]was able to sort of talk to me about like being aware of the differences and the bodies.
[10:00]and all the stuff that you're gonna experience,
[10:03]hopefully when you read Mrs. Everything.
[10:05]Is that actually a job?
[10:06]Like, can you be a sensitivity?
[10:07]I don't know if he can be a sensitivity.
[10:08]I don't know if he can be a sensitivity.
[10:09]I wouldn't agree with that.
[10:10]For you, for you, right?
[10:11]Yeah, like, I want to,
[10:13]well, I'll tell you what, though.
[10:14]Like, as a plus-sized Jewish woman,
[10:16]like, I can read a book.
[10:17]And if somebody has, like, not thought about, like, things,
[10:22]I'm like, that is not right.
[10:24]Or, like, you know, they just, like, throw
[10:25]in, like, a passing reference to, like, Passover.
[10:29]That's not, you know, that is not authentic,
[10:31]lived Jewish experience.
[10:33]And I wanted to be really careful
[10:34]about the African-American characters,
[10:37]the gay characters, you know,
[10:39]to really make sure that it felt,
[10:41]that they felt as real and authentic
[10:44]and nuanced and detailed on the page
[10:48]as the characters who are like me, you know.
[10:50]And to your question,
[10:51]I do not think that being a sensitivity reader
[10:53]is a full-time job.
[10:54]Like, most people, they're like librarians
[10:56]or they're editors or they're somewhere else
[10:58]in publishing.
[10:59]But I do think it's a valuable job.
[11:03]And I think that there's a lot of debate,
[11:06]as I'm sure you know, about sensitivity readers,
[11:08]like, there's, you know, the Lionel Shriver camp,
[11:11]the novelist who says, you can write anybody you want,
[11:15]you know, you just have to be good enough
[11:16]at imagining things.
[11:17]And then there are writers who will say,
[11:20]the only people who can write black characters
[11:22]are black people.
[11:23]The only people who can write gay characters
[11:25]are gay people.
[11:26]And then there's writers like me
[11:27]who fall sort of somewhere in the middle of that spectrum
[11:30]and believe that any writer can write any character,
[11:33]but it's our job to do it respectfully
[11:35]and to, you know, to be careful,
[11:38]to be thoughtful, to be comprehensive,
[11:40]to not write in stereotypes,
[11:42]to certainly not engage in the kind of broad strokes
[11:46]that are going to get kids hurt or get gay people,
[11:51]you know, ostracized or made fun of
[11:55]you know, physically harmed.
[11:57]I mean, there's responsibility that goes along
[12:00]with telling stories.
[12:01]And I tried to really respect my job here.
[12:05]I love time in the beginning.
[12:06]You set the stage with the Shabad and making hollow
[12:09]and really, I mean, it was so real.
[12:10]Like you just said, there's like a, yeah.
[12:13]No, I mean, and it was interesting
[12:15]because when I was talking to my sensitivity reader,
[12:16]she's like, you know, food is a place
[12:20]where a culture tells its story.
[12:21]So I want you to think about what Harold's family
[12:24]would have had to eat at Thanksgiving.
[12:26]And like what their traditions would have been
[12:27]and what their wise sayings would have been.
[12:29]Like all of the things that just felt like
[12:31]completely intuitive because I grew up celebrating
[12:34]the Jewish holiday.
[12:34]So I know what happens in terms that I had to really think
[12:37]like, okay, what's Thanksgiving?
[12:39]Like, you know, what are the parties like at Harold's house?
[12:41]And then it was interesting.
[12:42]And I'm really glad I did it this way.
[12:46]And one of the things that happens in the beginning
[12:48]is Joe's mother fires their housekeeper
[12:50]for years to have love and it's like deeply traumatic.
[12:54]She, Joe is friends with Frida, the daughter of the housekeeper.
[12:57]They're like, family almost.
[12:58]Right.
[12:59]And then one day the mother says,
[13:00]well birds of a feather flack together
[13:01]and may just disappear.
[13:03]May just disappear.
[13:04]And Joe eventually becomes basically a civil rights activist
[13:07]because all these marches perhaps inspired by this experience.
[13:10]Right.
[13:11]So how did you think to put in this particular scene
[13:13]or element of the story?
[13:14]Well, that was something that I pulled from my own mother's life.
[13:16]Like my mom, you know, my nana had a housekeeper
[13:19]and my mom used to tell stories about like,
[13:22]she would be in the kitchen
[13:23]because that was where the housekeeper was
[13:26]and played the best music and my mom was the music.
[13:29]And I think it was a lot more comfortable
[13:31]hanging out with this woman than she was with my nana
[13:33]who was very proper and who cared a lot about
[13:36]the performance of femininity, like dressing right
[13:39]and looking right and behaving correctly
[13:41]and my mother didn't want any of that.
[13:43]And so she was like in the kitchen with her shoes off,
[13:46]you know, listening to early Motown.
[13:49]But, you know, one of the threads
[13:53]that runs through misses everything
[13:55]is sort of questions of assimilation versus independence.
[14:00]And like whether becoming an American means letting go
[14:05]of your own culture or your own specific identity
[14:08]or like how much of it do you have to let go of?
[14:10]Like how Jewish can you be and still be a real American?
[14:16]And questions too of ease and comfort versus
[14:23]doing the right thing, right?
[14:25]So, Joe be friends this African American girl
[14:30]and her mother doesn't want this friendship,
[14:32]doesn't want this friendship continuing
[14:34]because basically is saying to Joe like,
[14:37]your life's gonna be hard enough
[14:38]as it is as a Jewish kid.
[14:39]Like, you need to, you need to stay with your own people,
[14:43]you don't need to cross these lines,
[14:45]you don't need to go looking for trouble
[14:47]or making trouble for yourself.
[14:49]You know, and Joe is just thinking like,
[14:50]I wanna be friends with who I wanna be friends with.
[14:52]Like, you know, Sarah saying birds of a feather flock together
[14:55]and Joe's like, well, she and I are the same kind of bird.
[14:57]Like, we both like to do the same things.
[14:59]And Sarah's like, no, that's not how it works.
[15:02]But, you know, in that crucible,
[15:05]an activist was made like that's how Joe sort of got her
[15:09]heart for civil rights and for justice.
[15:12]So, you know, and that was my mom's story.
[15:15]So for Bethie, the sister,
[15:17]you have her go through so much stuff.
[15:20]I like could not believe I was like, not, not at all.
[15:23]I feel like my parents.
[15:24]I will tell you, like, it was worse in like the first draft.
[15:27]Like, somebody was finally like,
[15:29]okay, you have this bad thing about the,
[15:31]or this bad thing, they can't both happen to Bethie.
[15:34]Yes, but a lot about stuff happens to Bethie.
[15:36]And she copes with it a lot through eating.
[15:38]She starts off with all of her intensive dieting
[15:41]and then the, the binging and up all of it.
[15:44]I mean, she uses it to numb herself,
[15:46]like all of the, you know,
[15:48]and anyway, all to cope with her feelings.
[15:50]So tell me more about, about that dimension of Bethie.
[15:52]Well, I mean, one of the themes of my, of my work,
[15:56]of my oof, I can say oof.
[15:58]The theme of my oof is women's relationship with their body.
[16:02]So, Bethie has a not healthy relationship with her body
[16:06]because of what's happened to her with this uncle.
[16:09]She wants to shove down her feelings
[16:13]and that's what she uses food to do.
[16:15]But she also recognizes how much of her worth resides
[16:19]in her beauty and in having the right kind of body.
[16:23]So then she diets and she sort of swings from extreme
[16:26]to extreme for a long time.
[16:29]And I wanted to talk about the ways that women
[16:33]live in their own skin where you have Joe,
[16:36]who just doesn't care.
[16:37]Like doesn't care how she looks, doesn't care about her hair,
[16:40]doesn't care about clothes, doesn't care about any of it.
[16:42]And then Bethie who cares a lot, right?
[16:45]Who cares intensely about how the world perceives her,
[16:49]how she looks, how she presents herself,
[16:52]how people take her in.
[16:54]And ending up just at war with her body
[16:56]because of the ways that she's using food
[17:01]as sort of a blanket and a buffer between her emotions.
[17:07]And she doesn't want to feel so she eats.
[17:10]She just, whatever she can get her hands on,
[17:12]she eats and eats and eats and then that doesn't end up
[17:15]working out real well for her either.
[17:17]But yeah.
[17:18]And I love how this sort of debtales with the hungry heart.
[17:21]Yeah.
[17:21]Writing that you did in her way.
[17:23]Uh-huh.
[17:24]You even said how you think you're bad at math,
[17:26]but somehow you're like an expert at the Weight Watchers
[17:28]twice as an hour or two years on the treadmill.
[17:30]That's okay.
[17:32]I read an article in The Washington Post
[17:34]that dealt with this subject where it's like,
[17:37]there's three women in a study group
[17:39]and a guy walks by who's just been to the vending machine.
[17:42]He's like, God, do you guys know how many calories
[17:45]in her Snickers bar and without a beat,
[17:47]all three of them say 280?
[17:50]Like they just know.
[17:51]Like you're just born knowing how many calories
[17:53]or in things as a woman.
[17:55]And of course we're not born knowing that we learn it.
[17:58]And we learn it, you know,
[18:00]we learn it through dieting,
[18:01]we learn it through restricted eating,
[18:03]we learn it through watching our friends go through this stuff.
[18:07]You know, I dream of a day when bodies will just be bodies
[18:13]and they won't be, you know,
[18:15]they won't be sort of evidence of our goodness
[18:18]or our lack of goodness
[18:20]or of our strength of will or lack of strength of will.
[18:24]You know, the same way I want books to just be books
[18:26]and not be women's fiction or romantic fiction
[18:30]or a chick lid or whatever.
[18:32]But I think that that day is a ways away.
[18:36]And I did want to talk in this, in this book about,
[18:40]you know, the diet culture and how pernicious it is
[18:44]and how insidious it is and how it's just forever.
[18:49]It's forever.
[18:50]It's just been with us for so, so long.
[18:53]And you wrote an essay called Take Your Daughter
[18:55]to the Movies Not to Weight Watchers.
[18:56]Yes, I do.
[18:57]We're talking about the Weight Watchers announcement
[18:59]when girls 13 and up could join.
[19:01]Yes, definitely.
[19:02]You said, because what I know for sure is this,
[19:04]I wish I had treated my body with love and respect
[19:06]rather than blowing money I didn't have
[19:08]on a fetal effort to fix it.
[19:09]I wish that I had respected my body's strength and health
[19:12]and insisted that the world needed to expand its views
[19:14]of what was acceptable much more than I needed to shrink.
[19:17]Yes, which was great.
[19:18]I was like, Rara, this is awesome.
[19:20]Yeah, I mean, for those of you who don't know
[19:24]what we're talking about here around the time
[19:27]that the movie, a wrinkle in time, was coming out,
[19:29]which of course Oprah started, Oprah owns a large stake
[19:33]in Weight Watchers and Weight Watchers announced
[19:35]that they were inviting 12 and 13 and 14-year-old girls
[19:39]to join for free so they could learn healthy habits.
[19:43]Well, I mean, Weight Watchers is in the middle of this
[19:46]like massive rebranding campaign
[19:48]and they're trying to sort of reposition themselves
[19:50]as like a wellness thing.
[19:52]And it's not about Weight Loss.
[19:53]It's just about feeling good.
[19:55]It's stepping strong, but they're still weighing you.
[19:59]It's still basically playing.
[20:00]to lose weight. I mean, like, let's not kid ourselves. And 12, 13 and 14 year old girls
[20:06]are hugely at risk for developing disordered eating. And that is increasingly true of girls of
[20:13]color, who it used to, the thinking used to be like, bulimia and anorexia are white girls problems.
[20:19]And that is no longer the case. It is, it is all girls problems. And I was as the mother of
[20:26]daughters as, you know, somebody who's like lived in the diet culture for a long, long time.
[20:31]I was really disturbed by the idea that these young girls were going to go to this movie,
[20:38]and they were going to see somebody who they were going to recognize from Weight Watchers ads,
[20:42]which were all over TV at the time. It was like, you know, this, in my opinion, very unfortunate
[20:48]overlap. I mean, I have tremendous respect for Oprah. I think she's done a lot of good in a lot
[20:53]of different places, especially in publishing and in reading and in getting people to pick up
[20:58]books and in getting people to try out different authors. But I think that it's for her,
[21:06]I think that it's always been this struggle. And it's, it's almost this blind spot with her,
[21:10]where she can't see that there's something really damaging about like, oh, 12 year old girl,
[21:16]come to Weight Watchers and we will, or W, W, whatever they're calling it now. And we will teach
[21:21]you about healthy eating. It's like, well, no, what you're going to learn in Weight Watchers is how
[21:26]to hate yourself. I mean, it's already be blunt, but it is what it is. And I wish that it wasn't,
[21:31]you know, I wish that that overlap hadn't happened. But so I have to say I was a Weight Watchers
[21:38]leader. Oh, God. I'm sorry. No, no, I don't do it anymore. No, no, no. I mean, I was like
[21:45]struggling with how to manage my own weight. And I went and I was like, wow, this actually works. I
[21:50]like that I can quantify into numbers and take the emotion out of it. So then I, you know,
[21:55]anything I do, I have to be like, all right, well, now I'm going to be a receptionist and now I'm
[21:58]going to be a leader. Anyway, let's do it for like a hot minute. Well, I don't do that. I don't do
[22:03]it anymore. And I wish, I mean, I wish maybe at age 25, I had the self-acceptance. I have now
[22:08]at 42. But I want to listen, things take time. And I think that, you know, if there was a plan
[22:17]that worked, if there was a way, you know, if there was a diet that people could go on,
[22:22]lose weight, keep it off safely for the rest of their lives, like we all have found it.
[22:25]Right. And we just found it by now. And it's unfortunate that we haven't. And I think that,
[22:30]you know, I would hope that like we could somehow expand our notion of what it is to be healthy and
[22:35]to be beautiful. Instead of like I said in the article, like all of these women trying so hard to get
[22:41]smaller, like as a writer, when you think of the metaphor of that, you know, and when you start
[22:47]to notice man spreading, like the way that men take up space, like all the space and women are
[22:53]just like, you know, we're crossing our legs, we're crossing our arms and we're trying to get smaller.
[22:58]It's like there's something wrong about that. And again, you know, as I have a 16-year-old
[23:05]daughter and I have an 11-year-old daughter and I want them to like take up space in the world.
[23:10]I want them to just like go out there and be loud and be joyful and be confident and not worry
[23:18]about like am I too big? I'm like too loud. Am I too much? I want them to just like, you know,
[23:24]to feel really, really good about speaking up and making noise and taking up space. I think that
[23:30]boys are taught that those things are there right. And I think that we as women are still learning.
[23:36]I think we have this set of books in LA. It says you may be too much for some people. Those aren't
[23:40]your people. Those aren't your people. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So let's go back to the book for a minute.
[23:46]Yeah. How long did it take you to write this book? This is everything. This is everything.
[23:49]Yes, comes out tomorrow tomorrow. That tomorrow is very exciting. How long did it take? And how does
[23:54]this contrast with some of your other books? I mean, you've written a million books by now, but
[23:58]yeah. Well, okay, so this is my first novel in four years. And I mean, there's a couple of ways
[24:03]I could answer this question. Like, the short answer is it took about two years to write a draft
[24:07]of this book. The longer answer is that I've been working on it in my head and on and off in a
[24:14]document for like 20 years. Wow. This is, yeah. Like, this is this is my Mount Everest. And it took me
[24:19]like, I was I was sitting in base camp a long time, like thinking like, am I ready to make this climb?
[24:25]Because this book, like we said at the very beginning, this is this is a story that covers 70 years.
[24:31]And like, there was a lot of research that went into it. There was a lot of plotting. There was a
[24:35]lot of like looking at outlines and looking at documents and being like, okay, if this happens in
[24:39]this year and then I have to make sure that this happens before this time. So I can reference this
[24:44]event and like getting the details, you know, the fashions and the home decor and the diets and the
[24:50]things they'd be reading and writing and eating and doing and all of that. And it took a lot. And
[24:56]I wanted, I mean, I wanted a couple of things. Like, the first thing that I wanted is I always
[25:01]want to be challenging myself and pushing myself. And I don't want to always be giving readers
[25:07]a variation on the same thing. Like, I want to, it's not always going to be the same.
[25:13]I wanted to to try something different and to try something big and to try something brave.
[25:19]So it took, you know, either two years or 20 depending on depending on which day you get me.
[25:25]And what is your writing process? Like, describe where you write.
[25:28]Okay. So I write in my closet, which I know sounds really like sad and Harry Potter under
[25:33]the stairs ish. But my closet's really big. It's like the, I joke that it's the Carrie Fisher
[25:38]in Sex in the City to closet. But I do not have the Carrie Fisher in the Sex in the City
[25:43]City. Carrie Bradshaw. Carrie Bradshaw. Why am I saying Carrie Fisher? I love Carrie Fisher,
[25:46]but it's Carrie Bradshaw. So giant, giant massive closet that I have filled with books. And
[25:52]there's like a vanity there where like a more fashionable lady would do her makeup,
[25:56]but I don't do my makeup. I sit there and write. And I work most days from late morning,
[26:03]like 10, 11ish to four when my kids come home from school. I get up in the morning, I walk the dog,
[26:11]I eat something, I do my exercise because if it doesn't happen, first thing, it's not going to happen.
[26:16]And then I go and I sit in my, my Clothis, which is a word that I learned. It's a closet office,
[26:20]a Clothis. I sit there. And I type and my dog is usually they're sleeping somewhere near me,
[26:25]snoring loudly. And that's it. And I'm really happy. And I'm going to be on book tour for two weeks,
[26:32]which is like, it's so weird to go from like total solitude and like just disheveled pajamas to
[26:39]like, you know, out in public groomed and being polite to people. Please come see me on tour and
[26:46]tell me how I do. You're doing well. This is great. Thank you. You're a little tiny, tiny,
[26:49]I'm waving. I'm waving people are saying, wait a year, I'm going to wave at people. I'm going to
[26:53]wave at Susan. I'm going to wave at writer to Shirley. And I'm going to wave at Ryan Trio. Yep. Hello,
[27:01]three people who are watching this. Hi. No, they're more people. They're just, these are just
[27:06]the people who wait. Oh, they're just the people waiting. Okay. All right. There's, there's
[27:10]bookworm mommy of three. Hi. Hello. Hello. If you wave away from our fellow, I promise. No,
[27:15]it's not. I don't worry. Listen. So when do you find time to read? I neglect the children in the
[27:22]housework. And I read all the time. I read, you know, before I go to bed at night, I read in the
[27:29]morning. I read when I'm taking a break in the afternoon. I read on trains. I read on planes. I
[27:35]read by pools. I read whenever I can. Like, it's my, my hobby and my escape and my favorite
[27:41]thing to do. Yes. Awesome. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors? I have about 20 pages of
[27:47]advice for aspiring authors on my website, which is Jennifer Weiner dot com. I read all that.
[27:52]Yeah. But just an extra motion for it. It's the most important thing. I mean, the most important
[27:56]thing I think is to not wait for somebody to give you permission, right? Like, you don't need an
[28:02]MFA. You don't need a fairy godmother to like tap you with a magic wand and say, today you
[28:07]are a writer. You need to just like do it. You need to like sit yourself in the seat and make
[28:13]yourself, you know, if you have to set like a word goal, like I will write 500 words every day.
[28:17]If it has to be like, I will write for half an hour every day. I would say, don't wait for
[28:22]somebody to give you permission. Start writing now and read as much as you can. Read everything.
[28:29]All kinds of books. Read fiction. Read nonfiction. Read romance. Read science fiction. Read horror.
[28:36]Read literary fiction. Read stuff that is in the genre. You hope to write. Read stuff that is
[28:40]out of the genre. You hope to write. Just like read and read and read poetry. Poetry is great.
[28:46]One of my new favorite things is I signed up for the Academy of American Poets. They will send
[28:50]you a poem every morning from like a modern, a new like poet. So I start off my day with a poem.
[28:55]And that's really great. And you get those rhythms into your brain, the rhythms of good sentences
[29:01]and new words. And I, you know, write and read is my short answer if you want to be a writer.
[29:08]Read and write. Write and read. And what is coming next for you? I know you're like coming next.
[29:13]I know it's terribly a terrible question because you just achieved so much.
[29:16]It's like giant massive book tour in the United States starting tomorrow night in Princeton.
[29:22]I have an event at 7.30 p.m. at the Barnes & Noble in Princeton, New Jersey. And then I,
[29:29]is at 7.30 or 7. Wait, my, my publicist is flying in with my, my schedule. If you go to
[29:35]JenniferWinder.com, it's all there, but it's Princeton June 11th. It's a couple of events in Philadelphia
[29:40]on Wednesday, Long Island on Thursday, Connecticut Friday afternoon, Boston Friday night,
[29:46]Cape Cod. I'm doing an event with Ellen Hildebrand like so much estrogen. You guys like
[29:52]everyone might get their periods. I don't even know. But it's all my website. And once I
[29:57]survive all of that, then I'll
[30:00]I'll go finish the book I'm working on,
[30:01]which is a murder mystery.
[30:04]I decided I wanted to like totally change gears
[30:06]and do something like a little light,
[30:08]which is a horrible thing to say about a murder mystery,
[30:10]but it's like a funny murder mystery.
[30:11]The girl in the eyes deserves it.
[30:13]She's awful.
[30:14]But yes, so that's, that's all.
[30:16]Go home and write some more.
[30:18]Awesome.
[30:18]Yeah.
[30:19]Is this gonna be a movie and this is everything?
[30:20]I don't know.
[30:21]I mean, like, the question with my books being movies
[30:24]is like, there's plus size characters in them,
[30:25]so they'd have to like staple two people together to like,
[30:28]stop.
[30:29]What?
[30:29]Like, who is there?
[30:31]Although I have great hopes for Beanie Feldstein,
[30:33]I if you saw both sides.
[30:34]Yes, I thought so good.
[30:35]She's so good.
[30:36]She would be amazing as like a young Joe or a young Bethie.
[30:40]She could play either or she could play both.
[30:42]I'll ball it.
[30:44]I don't know, though.
[30:44]I mean, you know, we'll see.
[30:46]I, you know, we'll see.
[30:48]I'm saying stay tuned.
[30:49]Stay tuned.
[30:50]Well, thank you so much for coming on.
[30:52]This was a pleasure.
[30:53]This was a pleasure.
[30:54]Can I like, I want to see more of this apartment?
[30:56]Yeah, sure.
[30:57]We're gonna, we're gonna go on a tour.
[30:57]So, bye.
[31:01]Thanks again to my sponsor, mermaid pillow co.
[31:04]mermaid pillow co.com slash zibi.
[31:08]And her code zibi for 10% off.
[31:10]Thanks so much.
[31:11]Check out those really awesome giftable pillows and blankets.
[31:14]Thanks for listening to moms don't have time to read books.
[31:16]You can follow me on Instagram at moms don't have time
[31:20]to read books and at zibi Owens and my new podcast
[31:23]at kids do have time to read.
[31:25]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at texture sound
[31:28]for the sound editing.
[31:29]And thank you to morning moon productions
[31:31]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.
[31:34]Thanks for listening.
[31:35]You can always email me at zibi at zibi Owens.com.