Marcy Dermansky, VERY NICE
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[1:17]Hi, listeners.
[1:18]I am so sorry.
[1:20]I did something wrong.
[1:21]I don't even know what I did,
[1:23]but the sound quality on Lauren Meckling
[1:25]and Marcy Dermanski's episodes
[1:28]is not quite up to par with my normal episodes.
[1:31]Honestly, I've done, I don't know,
[1:33]close to 150 episodes,
[1:35]and this is the first time this has happened,
[1:37]and I am so sorry, I'm not a technical whiz,
[1:40]and I guess I did something wrong.
[1:42]So please listen anyway.
[1:44]It's just not perfect, which bothers me.
[1:46]And now it's also a great time
[1:48]to read the transcripts of these interviews
[1:51]on my website, ziviowens.com slash transcript,
[1:54]which has all the transcripts for all my episodes,
[1:57]including a link to audio, a link to buy,
[2:00]and it's just another great way to get to know the authors.
[2:03]So again, I'm really sorry.
[2:04]Please listen anyway,
[2:06]and it won't happen again.
[2:07]Thanks.
[2:08]I'm really excited to be here today
[2:09]with Marcy Dermanski,
[2:11]who's the author of Very Nice, A Novel,
[2:13]her previous critically acclaimed novels
[2:16]are The Red Car, Bad Marie, and Twins.
[2:19]Her short fiction has been widely published
[2:20]and anthologized in McSweeney's, The Indiana Review,
[2:24]and many other publications.
[2:25]A Fellowship recipient from the McDowell Colony
[2:28]and the Edward F. Albi Foundation,
[2:30]Marcy graduated from Harvard for college
[2:32]and received her masters and arts from the Center
[2:34]for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi.
[2:37]She currently lives with her daughter in New Jersey.
[2:39]True.
[2:40]Okay, I'll get it.
[2:40]Thank you very much to me here.
[2:43]It's so nice to have you.
[2:44]So can you please tell us,
[2:45]Nair is what Very Nice is a bad,
[2:48]and what inspired you to write it?
[2:49]Okay, yeah, I'd love to.
[2:50]I'm very nice.
[2:52]This is a literary soap opera.
[2:55]I started this because I wrote a short story
[2:57]for Lenny Letter, and I wanted to write,
[2:59]I wanted to write about a student teacher fair,
[3:01]which is something I haven't done,
[3:03]I've always just found it.
[3:04]It was like, oh, I got my view.
[3:05]Yeah, I know where you're still going to do it.
[3:07]I saw it, but I've just always been so interested in it.
[3:10]I've kind of, it was like material
[3:11]that other people wrote about,
[3:12]and I was just jealous about it.
[3:14]I was like, maybe I can write it anyway,
[3:15]even though I haven't had this experience,
[3:17]and that's what one of the pleasures a fiction is.
[3:20]And so you can make things up.
[3:21]And once I had this affair,
[3:24]which starts in the very beginning of the book,
[3:26]the daughter takes her creative writing professor's poodle,
[3:28]home for the summer, a standard poodle.
[3:30]And her mother falls in love with the standard poodle.
[3:33]And then when the writing teacher comes to pick up his dog,
[3:36]it becomes really complicated
[3:37]because her mother looks at the professor,
[3:39]and she's interested in him too.
[3:40]And so a lot of melodrama,
[3:42]and it's set in contemporary America
[3:44]in the new administration.
[3:45]And I just had so much fun writing it.
[3:48]It's a really fun to read.
[3:49]It was awesome.
[3:51]No, seriously, I really, really enjoyed it.
[3:54]You mentioned early on that the professor.
[3:57]So he does, yeah, that's a note.
[3:59]I think you are this fictitious name.
[4:01]I said, do I get his name?
[4:02]You got it right.
[4:03]I made a joke about how it sounds like a superhero's name,
[4:06]because I think it does sound like a superhero.
[4:08]I like the stars with the Z.
[4:09]I can affinity the N.E.D.D. very good.
[4:11]Oh, Z.
[4:11]Yeah.
[4:12]Yeah, that's why.
[4:13]Or just randomly, everything's receiver.
[4:16]So he has written a book in the beginning of your book,
[4:21]which had received a lot of literary acclaim
[4:24]and attention and people throughout the book
[4:25]are like, oh my gosh, your book.
[4:27]And what is lentil?
[4:29]It just tastes like, but what I thought was really interesting
[4:33]is you said that to read it, the sentences were so long
[4:36]in-depth that the mother of Becker had trouble reading it
[4:39]and other people are kind of ashamed to admit
[4:42]that it was a little bit dense for them.
[4:43]And your book had like very short punchy, quick sentences.
[4:48]So did you do that on purpose?
[4:50]Well, that's actually, that is how I write.
[4:52]I've always read it in this style.
[4:53]So it's not unusual.
[4:54]I like short sentences.
[4:55]I like repetition.
[4:56]So I will have short sentences that often reflect out, well,
[5:00]it's just said in the sentence before.
[5:01]And sometimes people are like, oh, she did that again.
[5:03]I'm like, it was on purpose.
[5:06]But I also do feel like in the literary world
[5:08]that the more complicated something is, the denser
[5:10]it is, the longer the paragraphs, even the longer the book,
[5:13]people just think, oh, this must be good.
[5:16]And so maybe that's almost a chip on my shoulder
[5:19]where I feel like if you write that way,
[5:20]that's how you're going to win awards
[5:22]and that's going to have your having praise.
[5:23]And so I'm sort of, I do mock the writing world
[5:25]a little bit in this book, which is sort of funny
[5:27]because I want to be part of it and I love writers.
[5:31]Well, it's true.
[5:31]I mean, I feel like there's a disconnect on us
[5:33]between some of the, I want to say,
[5:36]hyper-literary productions and the people who read them.
[5:40]Yeah.
[5:41]Because unless you have endless amounts of time,
[5:43]it can take a while to get through some of these.
[5:46]It makes really, really true.
[5:47]Yeah.
[5:48]And you're like supposed to love that.
[5:49]I know.
[5:49]And you're not supposed to admit when you don't love that.
[5:51]Right, right.
[5:52]You just buy them and that gives you, you know,
[5:54]you have it on your shelf and you can say that you've
[5:56]started to read it.
[5:57]That's all you need to do.
[5:58]OK.
[6:02]So you told this story from alternating viewpoints.
[6:05]Yeah.
[6:05]So you kept like breaking it.
[6:06]I was like, we're watching it.
[6:07]I guess there's so bad, but it was.
[6:08]Yeah, I think it's an idea.
[6:09]I was going to say, it's like watching a movie.
[6:11]How did you decide to structure it from all those different
[6:14]viewpoints and to add in all these little coincidences?
[6:16]Yeah.
[6:17]I mean, the funny thing about how I write is I don't have
[6:20]an outline and I don't know what I'm going to do
[6:22]before I do it and everything just happens.
[6:24]And I basically wrote the short story and I had so much fun
[6:27]writing it and then I'm done.
[6:29]That's the problem with short story.
[6:30]It says, you write 15 pages and then you have to start
[6:32]something new and I hate starting with things.
[6:35]And I have a friend who teaches writing and she's like,
[6:36]well, why don't you just write from another perspective?
[6:38]So it was like she gave me an assignment.
[6:40]So I wrote from the mother and then when I finished the
[6:42]mother, she's like, oh, all right.
[6:43]From the professor's point of view and that was fun.
[6:46]And out of nowhere, I still don't know where she came from.
[6:48]I ended up writing from the writing professor's subletter.
[6:51]Like she's so random, like how does she fit into the story?
[6:54]But once she was there, I just wanted to keep her.
[6:56]So I kept making coincidences to make her belong.
[7:00]So that Chloe, the subletter of that he's a partner.
[7:03]Suddenly we find out that she's working for his students' father.
[7:07]And later on we find out that the woman that she's had a crush
[7:09]on her whole life, her babysitter,
[7:11]well, her babysitter is a he's editor.
[7:13]And it just gets more and more entangled.
[7:15]And the story just sort of developed on its own.
[7:18]And one thing for people who are aspiring to write,
[7:21]when you write alternate points of view,
[7:23]you instantly have a structure.
[7:24]You suddenly realize, oh, I have these four characters.
[7:27]I have an order.
[7:28]So once you finish one point of view,
[7:29]you go to the next character and the next character.
[7:31]And so the story just builds because you're jumping
[7:33]to what's happening to them.
[7:35]But I did cheat a little bit in this book in that.
[7:37]The father comes in and he only has his PV twice.
[7:40]And so the good thing about writing fiction
[7:42]as opposed to like building, building, or science,
[7:44]or a chemical structure is you can just break your form
[7:47]out a little bit.
[7:47]And it still works.
[7:48]So how together?
[7:49]And so, totally yeah, thank you.
[7:52]And so what was funny in the beginning
[7:56]was how when Rachel comes home for the summer,
[7:59]Rachel is the daughter, the professor's student.
[8:01]She wasn't expected to go home for the summer.
[8:03]And she decides to go home and her mom, Becca,
[8:07]has recently been left by her husband.
[8:10]Her dog has recently passed away.
[8:11]She's not in the best mindset.
[8:13]And so it was mentally prepared to have the summer
[8:15]to herself.
[8:15]So then Rachel always said, and she was up on her doorstep.
[8:18]And she's not sure how she feels about it.
[8:20]So she says, later, like, I felt happy now
[8:23]that Rachel was home.
[8:24]I had thought I might resent her presence.
[8:26]But I didn't.
[8:27]I genuinely liked my almost adult Rachel.
[8:29]I had been allowing myself to fall into a lazy kind
[8:31]of depression left by my husband, dog, dead.
[8:34]And then Rachel came home with her laundry
[8:36]and this constant need to be fed the minute she walked
[8:38]in the door.
[8:39]And I got to mother, her.
[8:40]And I liked mothering.
[8:41]I always had.
[8:42]Great job.
[8:43]So tell me more about this feeling that she had in that.
[8:47]I mean, it's a funny thing about mothering
[8:48]that you're not supposed to admit to.
[8:50]I don't think you're not supposed to admit.
[8:51]Oh, my God, I don't want my daughter home for this summer.
[8:54]There's all these contradictions
[8:55]where you love your child so much,
[8:56]and then they go off to school.
[8:57]You're just so grateful.
[8:58]And they're gone.
[9:00]So I was really playing with that in this book
[9:02]because I have a nine-year-old daughter.
[9:04]And so in the novel, Rachel's much older, she's 19.
[9:08]But I feel like I can still understand
[9:10]what it would be like to have an older child.
[9:12]And I also used my mother as a model because I know
[9:15]there are weekends where the family comes over
[9:17]and the grandkids come over.
[9:18]And she doesn't say so.
[9:20]But I feel like, oh, she would really have been alone today.
[9:24]And so I'm kind of using all this material
[9:26]from my life and my experience in watching mothers and daughters.
[9:29]And then kind of writing a truth
[9:31]and giving it to another character.
[9:33]Have you ever asked your mom?
[9:35]Oh, well, it's just obvious.
[9:37]She's definitely obvious.
[9:38]It's definitely obvious.
[9:39]Thank you.
[9:40]And I'm other things, and she's like,
[9:41]well, you should ask me, because actually it's not obvious.
[9:43]That's also true.
[9:44]Well, that's interesting, too.
[9:45]Something like my mom.
[9:46]I love my mom.
[9:47]I love my mom.
[9:48]I love my mom.
[9:49]So my mom listens to this.
[9:50]She will let you know.
[9:51]Or sometimes she just doesn't want you to come over.
[9:53]Because she might be a little bit depressed.
[9:55]Like this mother might be here just having a bad day.
[9:57]And then when you appear, you can change your mind.
[9:59]Peace.
[10:00]people are so complex.
[10:01]Do you know what I mean?
[10:02]Yeah.
[10:03]So I think it's both.
[10:04]And so I think there's this idea that you have a child and they never grow up.
[10:07]And you're like, oh my god, am I not going to be done taking care of them?
[10:10]But what if you were done taking care of them?
[10:12]You would really miss it.
[10:14]And so it's sort of a pleasure to still be able to maybe your adult child.
[10:17]And so I think it's both.
[10:18]And so I think I was really playing with that and it's great.
[10:24]So Rachel has, there's this whole other element where a student has a gun and takes the
[10:31]gun out on Beckett, the mother.
[10:33]This happens before the story is set.
[10:34]I'm jumping all over with your pod here at the club, then Rachel ends up working at
[10:40]a day camp for the summer and the shoot, the would be shooter sister is one of her campers.
[10:44]So she goes to dinner at their house one night and that mother, the mother, I'm sorry.
[10:50]This is like setting so convoluted.
[10:53]Well, we just asked this guy, so the mother there is talking about what if her son had
[10:57]actually killed Beckett, right?
[11:01]And how horrible that would be.
[11:02]But she wrote that she wrote that she thought, what would our lives be?
[11:06]Amelia's mother said, she was having trouble sitting on the bar stool in their perfect kitchen.
[11:11]She slipped off.
[11:11]She was crazy drunk.
[11:13]We would be ruined, she said, her arm is waving, that's for sure.
[11:16]How could you come back from such a thing?
[11:18]We would not be allowed back into the tennis club, that is for sure.
[11:22]They couldn't believe you had her stay at it.
[11:24]So I had a totally different image of what this family was like until that's up.
[11:28]So tell me about them.
[11:29]Gosh, well, I mean, sometimes when you're not supposed to say that, you're not supposed
[11:32]to say we're not allowed it back in the tennis club.
[11:34]But when you're in somebody's own home, you can say whatever you want and of course Rachel
[11:38]is their witness and then our readers are in the witness.
[11:41]And I don't think she means it, like she does mean it, like if your child does something
[11:47]that horrendous by the way, you are actually kicked out of the tennis club.
[11:50]I'm sure.
[11:51]You are ostracized.
[11:52]They mean your whole life.
[11:53]I mean, when somebody does something as horrific as bringing it back into a school, the
[11:57]ramifications of how many lives they ruin.
[11:59]So I write about this very, very comically, but it's also very, very serious.
[12:04]And so it's a little bit of both.
[12:06]And I think the characters, like that family, the fornons, they're, they're, they're,
[12:10]they mirror on caricature.
[12:12]I mean, this book has a satiric element to it, but I also, you know, she was intoxicated.
[12:18]I make that very clear.
[12:20]So another sort of theme in this book is playing with people in positions of authority.
[12:26]Yes, you have.
[12:27]Rachel was her professor and then you have Chloe with her crush on her former babysitter
[12:32]and sort of, you alluded to what may have gone on in the past, between the two of them.
[12:37]What was that about?
[12:39]It's so interesting because I had, it's funny when I always feel I love when people read
[12:42]my books and they're like, you're ready about people in authority, if I don't look,
[12:45]oh my God, I did that.
[12:46]And it wasn't intentional.
[12:47]But I think, I think that's probably really common is to look up to people who have
[12:52]more authority and who know more and then to sometimes have inappropriate feelings.
[12:57]And so I think that that's what it's about.
[12:59]And so I mean, I mean, it's better like it's also a very timely, like it's been in the
[13:03]news so much lately.
[13:04]Oh, like the gymnastics scandal.
[13:06]Just like so many of these, yeah, I don't know.
[13:11]Relationships that might not have been condoned.
[13:13]Yeah.
[13:14]This is not, you know, in this book, but I feel like relationships between professors
[13:18]and their students has just been happening to the age old and suddenly, now you can't,
[13:23]now it's a bad thing.
[13:24]And I think that's a good thing, but I know I don't have a problem with that.
[13:27]But I think it's age old and I think it's happened for as long.
[13:30]And I think people are always, I think the funny thing about sex is people want to
[13:35]like, legislate it and make morals to it.
[13:37]And it's just, it's just so messy, you know what I mean?
[13:40]So people just behave really, really badly and they're not bad people.
[13:46]And so, well, except maybe the babies, if they're bad people in this book, but I like
[13:51]them all.
[13:52]That's a funny thing.
[13:53]I write these characters and they really do kind of atrocious things and they don't
[13:55]always treat each other very well.
[13:56]It's strange that I feel affection for every single one of them because I actually do.
[14:01]And so, yeah.
[14:02]Well, they become so real, you know what that sounds cliche.
[14:04]Oh, your character is a cliche, but I mean it, like because I think because they're
[14:08]alive.
[14:09]Yeah.
[14:10]When characters are too perfect and you don't believe them and I think, I mean, with this
[14:14]book, it's all in the first person.
[14:16]So I'm so in their minds and in their heads and so a lot of the writing is sort of almost
[14:21]dream of consciousness.
[14:22]I'm just going in and I'm giving everybody its crazy thoughts and maybe that's so honest
[14:26]and maybe hopefully that makes them relatable even when a mother is trying to have sex with
[14:30]her daughters.
[14:31]Boyfriend is not her boyfriend, you know what I mean?
[14:34]It's always a secret.
[14:35]So it makes things better.
[14:38]Yeah.
[14:39]So Rachel is surprised, so this is more about sort of the dad's point of view.
[14:45]Yeah.
[14:46]So he leaves the wife, leaves Becca, but then he kind of regrets it later and the dust
[14:51]has settled and she realizes that her dad is not so happy.
[14:54]So she goes, my poor dad, it was not what I was supposed to hear from my father, who
[14:59]was always at beat.
[15:00]He was in control of his universities like this big banking guy and successful, whatever.
[15:05]who played tennis and racquetball and running, who made tons of money, were expensive suits.
[15:09]So is the implication that the wealthy, powerful person is not supposed to feel lonely, right?
[15:17]Because you had also said that he was in the second tower when the plane hit on 9-11 and
[15:21]had walked down the stairs and escaped to Connecticut.
[15:24]So it's not like he hadn't been through a lot of stuff.
[15:26]Oh, sure.
[15:27]Yeah.
[15:28]I like you're almost giving him more depth than what I wrote.
[15:29]No, I think it's there.
[15:32]I think there's something about teenagers, about people that they don't really see their
[15:36]parents as real people.
[15:37]And so like Rachel would come home for the summer and give her a mother her laundry and
[15:41]she would act snotty and petulant and be like, I'm in a bad mood and I don't care what
[15:44]you think.
[15:45]And I think it's the same thing with her father and it doesn't even really occur to her
[15:49]that he could have feelings or that he could be suffering or because people are rich.
[15:54]There's just this idea that, well, I mean, I think Rachel is rich too, but that rich
[15:57]people have to be happy because they have everything and of course that's not how it actually
[16:01]is.
[16:02]There's still people with emotions and feelings and struggle and new problems from having
[16:05]money.
[16:06]But I think Rachel just doesn't see him as a person.
[16:08]He's just dad.
[16:09]And I think once you're dad, these are your mother for a younger woman that complicates
[16:12]things too.
[16:13]And so then if you do something like that, if you do something as stupid as leaving your
[16:16]mother for a younger woman, then you at least shouldn't regret it or you shouldn't be
[16:19]happy or you shouldn't expect her sympathy.
[16:21]So she's a little bit fatty.
[16:23]I think, and I like her too, by the way, but she definitely is only thinking about her
[16:27]snotty.
[16:28]That's kind of a ratio.
[16:31]But also just this funny part about things you're not supposed to admit, as a mom talks
[16:35]about how she basically does not remember having Rachel as a baby, that she doesn't remember
[16:39]the entire infancy stage at all and Rachel is sort of like, what?
[16:45]And I thought about that.
[16:46]And I thought, the question really resonates with me because this is where there's truth
[16:51]in their fiction.
[16:53]And I'm not pranking etiquette and I have really, really middle class kind of upbringing.
[16:58]And so there's fiction.
[16:59]And then I'm pulling everything into the characters in one time.
[17:01]I think my mother was talking about being a mother.
[17:05]She had three kids and she was wanted to be working and wasn't working.
[17:09]And I think she was a little bit overwhelmed and unhappy.
[17:11]And one time she just sort of said that to me as an offhand comment, she actually said
[17:14]I don't really remember your childhood.
[17:16]She said, I think memory has a way of protecting you from remembering how unhappy you are.
[17:20]Oh, I know.
[17:21]And it's really heartbreaking.
[17:22]It broke my heart.
[17:23]Maybe feels so sad.
[17:25]I was like, you don't remember my childhood.
[17:27]I mean, she does.
[17:28]You know what I mean?
[17:29]For both of you.
[17:30]I know.
[17:31]That conversation was so sad.
[17:33]And somebody tells you something like that.
[17:34]And then like 10 years later, you put it in your book and you give it to somebody else.
[17:39]And so yeah, and I have a wonderful relationship with my mom and I visit her all the time
[17:45]and she's a great grandmother and that was just something, I guess you say something like
[17:48]that.
[17:49]And she didn't, I don't think she was aware of the fact that it was going to hurt me, which
[17:53]was interesting.
[17:54]I think she had no awareness.
[17:55]And so I put it in this book and then Rachel snaps back.
[17:59]And so there's this fun thing that you can do in fiction where you can respond differently
[18:04]to something that happens.
[18:05]You can take a moment or you can take a memory and then you can change it or you can
[18:10]just use it.
[18:11]And so I sometimes actually just in terms of writing, when you meet strangers or people
[18:15]who meet writers, they're like, oh, I hope you put me in your book.
[18:18]And I've never never never wished to be in somebody's book because you never know what
[18:22]a writer is going to do.
[18:23]And so it's so scary when you write because you never want to hurt the people that you
[18:28]love and you never want to go too far.
[18:32]But at the same point, I always, I don't know how people are in my mind by the way because
[18:36]it's true.
[18:37]But as a writer, there's just like if you want something to turn out well, if you don't
[18:42]use your life and your material and your story, then you don't have anything.
[18:45]And so it's really kind of stealing and it's not always that nice and I try so hard to
[18:50]be nice.
[18:51]You asked me this question and I thought, well, let me try to be truthful about it.
[18:54]So yeah, I appreciate that.
[18:56]Oh, can I get it, I don't know.
[19:00]You going back to this gun control situation just for two seconds, because it does come up
[19:05]again at other points in the back and to of course, was that sort of like another grab
[19:11]from the headlines?
[19:12]It was.
[19:13]I mean, there was an interesting thing.
[19:15]I wrote this book after Donald Trump was elected and I mean, every reader can come from
[19:20]a different perspective.
[19:21]But I know so many different writers were we all just sort of stuck.
[19:24]We were just like caught off guard like what can we write that matters and how can we
[19:28]have anything to say at all in the world is so crazy and everything is so different.
[19:32]And so I started to write a literary soap opera.
[19:35]And so what really, really surprised me is when I'm writing this literary soap opera
[19:39]and it becomes political, there's the husband and wife in this book before they were
[19:44]divorced for having fights about whether they like Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.
[19:47]And you were just sort of hilarious, but that was actually true.
[19:50]And I mean, I had friends on Facebook like female friends who stopped talking to each
[19:53]other because they felt so strongly about Bernie versus Hillary.
[19:56]I mean, it got nuts where people stopped being friends for a short period.
[20:00]time, which is just not. Doesn't make sense. But, but with the whole idea of gun control,
[20:05]like I just kind of wrote that in as, as a detail. This is part of my writing process
[20:09]and then I don't have outlines and I don't plan. But I just like the idea of this mother
[20:14]having saved, um, having saved a boy or like not have, there's a gun incident in my
[20:20]book, but nothing bad happened. So that's a spoiler. Okay. Okay. I can give another spoiler
[20:24]to the dog. People worry about this dog. Just completely unrelated. Nothing bad happens
[20:28]to the dog. All right. Rest assured. I mean, nothing bad happens to this boy in
[20:35]the gun. But once like, once you put it a gun and you put a child entering into a school,
[20:39]you can't just be haphazard. It has to matter. You have to work with it. And so once
[20:43]I put that into the novel, I had to go backwards and kind of write it in and make it part
[20:47]of the story and think about it and hope, yeah. So that's, there's also a checkout quote
[20:52]about, you know, I mean, if you have a loaded gun, it has to go off in a book. So where did
[20:56]you write this book? Where did I write this book? I envision you like at that cafe that
[21:00]you had back out with the dog when you got this up and after a cafe, like in Connecticut,
[21:05]this would be like like lovely, please, but maybe we're doing it like in the middle of
[21:10]midtown or now that that's a good question. And so the funny place, because I actually wrote
[21:14]this in cafes. It's funny. It's a book setting Connecticut where I'm not from. I have friends
[21:18]from Connecticut and I have an envy issue and I've been into homes like this. So I'm like,
[21:22]oh my god, they're so nice. So that's another thing about fiction that I put my characters.
[21:25]They got some of the house I don't get to live in. But I wrote this book in cafes a month
[21:29]Claire. Like so I did, I wrote all of it in cafes, which they're very strange places to write.
[21:34]I don't know if you try it. They, they can be great. They can be terrible. You can, you can
[21:38]not get the table you want. They can be crowded. People can get loud. And you're so deep inside
[21:42]your head and you're writing. And so that's what I did. I had this like memory. I had one time
[21:48]I was writing a scene where the parents were fighting. It was just really intense scene and I got
[21:51]up to move because of people were too loud at me at the table next to me. So I moved to another
[21:56]table and the people who work at the cafe just said, oh, you can't sit there because that's a
[21:59]table where you can't have computers. And so it was a strange process. And I wrote, I wrote a
[22:06]sex scene in a cafe where we really, really crowded. And I didn't know that I was going to be doing
[22:11]it. And I felt my face just turning bright red. And I just kept on going because I gave myself
[22:17]sort of word count limits. And so it was an odd writing experience. Yeah, I love that. That's a
[22:23]thing. My issue with writing in cafes, which I do, like I, I was doing a lot of writing a couple
[22:28]years ago. Like this one pancake to the end on the upper right side. Yeah. And like I had the
[22:32]place I like to go and whatever. But then when you have to like go up and use the bathroom,
[22:35]I never know what to do with all my stuff. And then I do have to bring it. And then I lose my
[22:39]table and have like been paid. And then I'm like distracted from what I do, which is not that I have
[22:45]all over you. And then we do there for hours or whatever. Even too, you know, I usually leave my
[22:50]stuff. And I kind of look at the neighbor like, well, you watch it. But how do you know they're
[22:53]not going to leave? It's just, you have to just put trust into the world. Yeah. I have to say
[22:57]mature. But I don't mind writing in like a ladder environment. Yeah. I think it's someone just,
[23:02]I mean, if you have the perfect environment, it's just so precious. And everything is just so nice
[23:07]that you're like, it's too much pressure. And so, and I also, I mean, I do a lot of writing in the
[23:12]summer. And I know that summer, I applied to to to a lot of residencies and residencies in the
[23:17]summer. Everybody wants to go in the summer. All the professors want to go. And it's just the ideal
[23:21]time. And I didn't get in tiny. And I was like, okay, I'm not going to, I mean, I think there's the
[23:25]whole idea of a room of your own in the perfect writing space. And I would love to have one. But they're
[23:30]just absolutely not necessary if you want to write. You can write anywhere. And you don't have to go
[23:34]summer nice and pretty. And I did, I went to the Edward, I'll be, um, residency once in Montauque.
[23:41]And it was just so beautiful that I almost didn't write it all. Because every day I just got
[23:45]on my bicycle and I went to the beach. And so I was like, oh my goodness, I have a month at the beach.
[23:50]And so if I'm just sort of like at home, I can, I can work. And you know, I didn't go on a great
[23:55]vacation that summer. But I wrote most of a lot of them. But yeah, um, are you working on a new book?
[24:02]I am thinking of ideas. I'm sort of struggling. I'm just sort of typing. And I feel like I'm a very
[24:07]fast writer. But the beginning is actually my heart is part of the process. And so I haven't
[24:12]settled on what I want to write yet. And I know I will be really happy when I want to pick that story.
[24:17]How long did this particular? This book was strangely quick. I think I wrote the whole beginning
[24:22]to end kind of rewriting as I go in about eight months. So. Yeah. And how closely do you work
[24:27]under your editor's in a Jackson? Yeah. Like the nicest person in the nicest person.
[24:31]How much editing? Like how closely is that? Like how much input or like what's that relationship
[24:38]like? Or do you just like hand it in? It's basically done. Well, you know, it's never quite like that.
[24:42]But I mean, this book is just kind of came almost as a gift, I guess, because I handed it
[24:47]in and there were some line edits and there were some questions. And somehow the very last scene
[24:52]of the book was written in the point of view of the mother instead of the daughter. And that was
[24:57]clearly like a bad decision. And it wasn't even her turn. I think I talked earlier about point
[25:01]of view what turn all the voices. It was supposed to be the daughter's turn. And I think I was
[25:05]a little bit scared to do it. So my editor had me rewrite the last chapter using the point of view
[25:11]that it should be that was going to be the strongest. And that was a bit of work because the last
[25:14]scene is really crazy. And it was really important to get it right. But otherwise, it wasn't that
[25:20]much. I've had other editorial experiences where I've been asked to do a lot more. And so I think
[25:25]as an editor, it's probably almost as difficult to have a light touch as it is to have a heavy hand.
[25:30]So it was really, really helpful and not difficult. Do you do a lot of reading yourself?
[25:34]Oh, I love to read. Yeah. When do you find time to read? When do I find time to read? I read,
[25:38]I mean, unfortunately, I read mainly at night before I go to bed. And so a lot of times I
[25:42]am falling asleep was the book I had. And then I don't read as much as I want to. And I read
[25:48]a vacation and I read in the train. But mainly the day, it's this funny idea where I was
[25:52]like, I'm supposed to be doing something. And so it's hard to read it two o'clock in the afternoon.
[25:57]And so I wish I won't change that mindset a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Great. It's like a
[26:02]permission you have to give yourself. Yeah, you really do. It's like you look at your phone and
[26:07]that's just a bad idea. Do you have any advice? I need a very given advice. Yeah. Any advice to
[26:14]aspiring author? I was thinking about that a little bit about about so many people when they're
[26:19]writing a novel. There's just a school. There's a school for publication and it's so, so strong.
[26:24]And I want it to, I think, everybody wants to get published to the point where they want,
[26:29]they want their book to be done. Like, I can't say in this book, I've been working for so long,
[26:32]I want it to be finished. And I feel like it's really important to remember just like how great
[26:37]it is to be writing. Like, right now I'm not working on a novel that I'm in love with. Like,
[26:42]I'm just sort of struggling for my idea. So I'm not in that writing zone. And I just miss it. Like,
[26:46]I want envy people who are writing. Even though they've never been published. I'm like,
[26:49]oh, but you're writing every day. And so I think it's important to remember to really
[26:53]appreciate the process and how great it is and to not be thinking about what happens when I
[26:59]saw the book and how it will change my life. Because then it just, they're just human
[27:02]expectations and too much pressure. And so I would tell writers to really just enjoy working on it.
[27:06]Yeah. Excellent advice. Okay. Well, thank you for this very nice book, which was really fantastic.
[27:14]Perfect for the summer. It will pull cover little water. It looks like I spelled, but I didn't.
[27:20]It's awesome. I love it. Thanks so much. Thanks again to my sponsor, Libro FM audiobooks.
[27:27]Thanks for listening to moms don't have time to read books. You can follow me on Instagram
[27:31]at moms don't have time to read books and at zippy Owens and my new podcast at kids do have
[27:38]time to read. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[27:42]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and
[27:46]out trim music. Thanks for listening. You can always email me at zippy at zippy Owens.com.